Establishing Premise in Serenity RPG
mcv:
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik on February 24, 2009, 07:27:53 AM
You wrote something that I think is very accurate: "I hope it's not too annoying when I do that, but from my perspective, what people call "Story Now" constantly seems to jump between two extremes, one where it's a completely new way of playing, and another where it's pretty close to what I've been doing (or been trying) for most of my life."
Certainly that has been my experience with the tools and procedures I've been playing with the last several years. The key, for me, is that the play works now. I get what I wanted and it works.
I got what I wanted, and I got play that works. I had to give up a lot of assumptions about what would work and what would not. But when I did, I got what I wanted.
You mean that what I've always wanted is indeed (at least partially) Story Now, but I've been working with the wrong tools? Using a more narrativist system will get me the same thing, but more reliably and consistenty. Is that it?
Perhaps it will also get the other players on board. I'm always a bit annoyed that I'm trying to come up with interesting characters with real personality, and they come up with a name and some stats. (Well, it's not always like that, and the longer a campaign continues, the more all characters (including mine) develop, which is probably why I like long campaigns.)
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Did you get a chance to look at the HeroQuest thread I linked to? I know it is long, but it is a clear example of these procedures. Although it was a one shot at a convention, for me it could easily have served as the first session in a long series of sessions. I do hope you get a chance to go through it. It would give us a framework for discussion from actual play -- which is where I am always most comfortable.
Haven't read all of it yet. There's a lot of stuff in this thread I still need to read and digest. But it still sounds somewhat like an accident: somehow everybody just got it, and started doing your work for you.
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2) You wrote: "I prefer a game and game world that makes sense...I care about the realism, about complex, plausible characters that work realistically as protagonist of a story in that word." Did you write this as a contrast to the sort of play I've been discussing?
No! Not at all. It's just self-analysis. I'm trying to describe in words what I want from a game. And reading it gives me the impression that it's part Simulationism, part Story Now. The problem is, the player who wants a more Narrativist game abnd pointed me to The Forge isn't a Simulationist at all, but a Gamist. No detailed characters with complex personalities, just some stats with a name (that I feel doesn't quite fit in the setting).
And I read some older posts here where people said Nar was much closer to Gam than to Sim, which worried me a bit. But from this thread I get the impression that Nar is more like the natural extension of Sim. And now I find myself worrying how that player will take it.
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3) As for the concept of "solo games" or "solo campaigns" -- I'm fascinated by these terms. Now, I'm not trying to convince you of anything. What I've been writing about may not be your cup of tea, and that's fine. But I need you to understand that nothing I play like (in the HeroQuest game I linked to, in the Sorcerer games I've mentioned) feel "solo" at all.
It's always a group of people gathered together. Doing something socially. Together. We're all interested in what the other people are doing with their characters. This, I'll be blunt, is just a major point of disconnect. That you're focusing so much on what interests the characters seems utterly alien to me since I've learned that what really matters at the game table is what interests the Players. There's just no getting around it.
But I am interested in what interests the characters. But what if various characters are interested in completely different things (perhaps because their players are)? Isn't it the interaction between what the characters are doing that's fun? If one character is slaying dragons on his own, another is involved in courtly intrigue, a third is tending his farm and fighting off raiders, and the fourth is exploring some far away land, then why are these people even in the same game? That sounds like your reading four books simultaneously. It seems to me that you really do need something, anything, that connects them somehow.
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If the PCs work together as a group it's because the Players decide to do it.
But what if some players decide to work together, and one doesn't? (A common occurance in my group.)
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No amount of fiction constraints ("You're all a squad from the FBI") can force that to happen. In my experience it is fictional constraints like this that almost encourage Players to strike out on their own.
But if they don't have anything in common, then there's no plausible reason for them to work together. The only way to plausibly get them to work together is to give them something in common.
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For you, the notion that the PCs are not in the same scene is some sort of solo play.
They don't have to be in the same scene all the time, but they do need something that they have in common, or else their respective adventures will cease being relevant for the others. Being in the same scene could do it, but that doesn't necessarily stop them from breaking up. Having a common goal works better. Being involved on different sides of the same conflict could work too, but is really hard to pull off in my experience.
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I simply see nothing "solo" about the play at my table, and I know my Players would agree. But the games I play offer new ways of building cohesion among the social group at the table and wind everything up in ways that might not be part of how you're seeing play work.
I mostly don't see what you really mean. Do the players really do their own thing, completely unrelated to the others, or do they have something in common? If you're building cohesion, then you're giving them something in common, right? So what is it? What are those new ways of building cohesion?
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A quick note about the Humanity rule from Sorcerer: To be very clear, the rules does not constrain the Player's choices.... it is that there are consequences for those choices. Essentially, when you do something "against" Humanity, you have a 50% chance of the PC's Humanity going down a point. When the PC does something in line with Humanity, there is about a 50% chance the Humanity will go up a point. So the Player can behave any way he wants... he can even dance on the edge of Humanity 0 for while with a Humanity of 1 and doing against-Humanity things as long as the dice favor him. But it is the Player's choice, every time. And if the Player really believes his character would act in a way that threatens his Humanity, he's allowed to drive it down toward 0. And then, if the player decides the risk is getting too great, he can pull back and start doing actions to lift his Humanity. But the point of the mechanic is that the Player chooses -- there is no forcing of behavior.
There is one restriction: Humanity can go up and down, and then it reaches zero, he loses his character. But it's part of the game mechanics, just like injury and death usually is. The consequences become more explicit and less arbitrary. There are clear limits to just how much a character can misbehave, and that gives him freedom within those limits. It makes the misbehaviour part of the game, and puts clear boundaries on it, and that sounds like a very effective mechanism to prevent something I've seen in my group: everybody getting annoyed because they consider one player's character disruptive, without them really being able to do anything about it.
Christopher Kubasik:
Hi Martijn,
I'm slammed on some writing right now, so I wont' get back to this for a while. Luckily, that will give you time for the two length threads at hand. I really think moving forward in our conversation will be helped by this, giving us some shared context to poke at.
I did want to say, though, that this made me laugh (a true, honest laugh of recognition):
"Haven't read all of it yet. There's a lot of stuff in this thread I still need to read and digest. But it still sounds somewhat like an accident: somehow everybody just got it, and started doing your work for you."
Yes! I know! It does seem that way! And if I didn't get the same, reliable results with different Players I'd think the same thing.
We'll talk more about the specifics later. But take a look at what is already written. Notice that the the Players in the HeroQuest game were also very interested in what interested the characters. But without the Players first there are no characters. That's my only point. When I write something like that it is not at the expense of playing from the point of view of characters and their emotions and drives and passions -- but it is an acknowledgement of the reality of what happens when real life people sit down to play together. Hoping that things will work out because the Players will "hide" themselves in their characters is, I have found, an expectation that often leads to disappointment.
But I'm already typing too much... we'll take a couple of days and reconvene.
Dr_Pete:
Hi Martijn, (Christopher, I'll give you a rest, lol)
It sounds like we're discussing very similar issues regarding setting up the game so that it has some cohesion.
My feeling is that yes, there should be something that binds the characters together. There are at least 2 different types of ties I can think of that could work... family and employment bonds. Others might also work.
I think that an important element of this is a collaborative character creation process. How are the characters connected to each other? Starblazer Adventures (based on FATE/SotC) requires players to construct backstory links between the characters as part of the generation process, which might be helpful, though I sense one might want to go a bit further than they do by default. It's a very cool, fairly generic-setting space game which would probably be easy to play in a narrativist way.
I've been told that a very big part of this kind of play is to not constrain the players control over the action of their characters. Lets imagine for a moment that we're talking about the example you mentioned. One character doing courtly intrigue, one slaying dragons, one is tending his herd and fighting off raiders, and one is exploring some far away land. This is the same type of thing I was worried about, but lets go back 1-2 sessions of this theoretical game, and think about how they might have gotten here playing this the "Story Now" way.
The characters, lets imagine, are created as four brothers, all minor landed nobles. They are in a nation on the brink of war with a far away country.
The first one's kicker: While at court, I overheard a plot against the king.
The second one's kicker: I learn that a dragon killed our father.
The third one's kicker: Bandits have raided my land.
The fourth one's kicker: My son has been taken hostage.
Just by trying to do this, I've turned these into somewhat more interesting individual stories. The actions of the theoretical characters are totally bland without some meat as to motivation. You need a reason to "do intrigue" and "farming" has to be among the dullest rp activities... maybe not "roll to paint the wall without dripping" boring, but that's not a game, that's a character sketch. "I plow today"... "ok, roll to see if you hit a rock... ah, a 1, you nick your plowblade"
Now, lets move the game forward a bit...
Maybe the travelling one's son was taken hostage by the king, as insurance. The King wants to send him on a Ambassadorial mission to their enemy nation-- both to gather information, and to keep him away from Belinda. Maybe he's out there working in good faith for the King, maybe he's trying to cement his own power for his comeback.
The first son's intrigue might grow into to seducing/protecting Belinda, as well as fighting over issues of inheritance, since the father is dead. All this while trying to find the enemy agent in court. Maybe he even instigated the exile?
Meanwhile, perhaps the dragon is allied with the kingdom, and sworn to protect it from invasion. Killing it would leave the country in a much worse position to defend itself. On the other hand, maybe it has magical treasure which would be useful. Combat, in and of itself, serves little narrative purpose. He's not going to go up a level, or get rich from it, so why's he off doing it? Some story related reason. Heck, maybe the dragon will offer to place him on the throne, once he sees he's outgunned.
The bandits are scouting parties for the imminent invasion, and the third one is therefore on the front lines of the war that's about to start. His serfs are in need of leadership, and he is in need of backup, but someone has convinced the king not to send him any assistance.
These four guys are in totally different places, but I could see each of the players being genuinely interested in what happened to the others, because the stories are compelling (at least moderately, given that I had to back engineer them), and they are intertwined. The things they are doing are not supposed to be the generic, everyday stuff... clearing dungeons, wandering aimlessly hoping something will attack you. No, you leap straight to the cool bits that put the characters under story pressure... the story is the stuff you want from it, not the xp grinding.
Christopher Kubasik:
Hi Guys,
No big post this time. Again, I'm thinking something through, but haven't written it yet.
But I really liked this: "No, you leap straight to the cool bits that put the characters under story pressure... the story is the stuff you want from it." Exactly! That's the practical effect.
I also want to point you to some threads from a while back. Ron Edwards and three other posters did character creation and scenario background prep for a Sorcerer game online. It wasn't for an actual game -- simply a walk through of how setting, situation, Kickers and so forth all come together. You might want to check them out.
"To Tor, Jesse and Paul" http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=753.0
Art Deco Melodrama http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=770.0
Art Deco Melodrama Part 2 http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=828.0
Art Deco Melodrama The Final Chapter http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=876.0
Christopher Kubasik:
And while I'm at it...
Here are the links to the AP of a Sorcerer game run by Jesse Berneko (it's the game I referenced, where I drove my PC's Humanity to 0)
Gothic Fantasy Part One:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=2702.0
Gothic Fantasy Part Two:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=2807.msg27442#msg27442
Gothic Fantasy Part Three:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=2908.msg28210#msg28210
Enjoy!
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