Spontaneous play in on-line MUSH
LandonSuffered:
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I guess this is a broader question: I thought narratism was "story now," ie, the story is decided before play, but there are also aspects of discussion that talk about "story before" as being narrativist. So, okay, what we are doing is, we are deciding out the story before, and then playing it "now." If I want the story to unfold now without planning the whole thing before, isn't that still narrative of me?
Sorry, yes…if you want a story to unfold before you (that is, you want the game to address a particular premise in play) then you have a Narrativist creative agenda.
There are several RPGs that have been developed that address this desire to address premise in game play through their mechanics. While MUSHes have the ability to address premise and thus tell stories “in the now” (rather than, make up a story about the events that happened in game play at a later date and try to figure out what, if any, premise was addressed) they also address your particular creative agenda. However, they’re not necessarily doing it in the way you’d like.
So to correct my earlier suggestion (somewhat): you might try a more traditional RPG (either in an on-line format or around a table) that has mechanics allowing your play group to address premise and create a story in a way that satisfies your creative agenda in the particular way you prefer.
: )
Callan S.:
Quote from: AJ_Flowers on April 30, 2009, 07:24:23 AM
I'm mulling over a problem with it: Say the scene is, "We're robbing a train to get the magic artifact being transported," and the possible outcomes are "we don't get the artifact" or "we do get the artifact." In this case all the involved players do want to get the thing. I think the d10 solution has the problem of, my actions still don't matter per se, all that matters is the results of that one roll, not how clever I was in completing the action or what I did to do it.
Well, if your actions add a d10 to the "You don't get the artifact", then they had an effect. Characters can't make mistakes?
Also I was thinking outcomes more like "Does the orc village burn" and "Does the elf village burn". Either way, something happens. Like if you changed the second artifact outcome to "Does the artifact fall off the train, into a nearby town, activate and turn them into zombies" then something happens either way. Not getting the artifact is just...nothing happening.
You might even get players staging character accidents, to get this bad zombie result...which is cool, I think! Characters actually failing and players are happy it happens - plot twists happening! All good! But if your thinking 'No metagame thinking, ever, even if it makes a better story' then I guess that'd have to be scolded.
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But if I envision a scene that isn't binary, where three different groups of PCs all want to get the artifact, but only one can. I have had a lot of trouble figuring out how to do conflict resolution in this situation on this game. The standard method that is used is: it's already determined who is getting it, and then we move on to "Part B" of the story next time we scene, but... well, and here I've accidentally introduced the metaphor of a train already.
This is the part where your solution will work, I think: if it's three different people, and they're all making "get the McGuffin" rolls, the GM adds potentially a small bonus depending on what action they take, or takes away if the action is lame, and... then we have an arbiter to decide who gets the thing, which is visible to all players.
You'd have three outcomes "Group A gets it", "Group B gets it", "Group C gets it".
I did suggest the GM could add a bonus to the die roll. I'd suggest from 0-10 (or some cap of your choosing, preset). Don't go with negatives. Only possitives - if its a stupid move by group A, then it adds to group B or C's total. That way every roll is leading toward something happening, even if it's not the thing the player wants to happen. I guess I have a bent for always getting closer to something happening, with no 'nothing'/'whiff' results. YMMV.
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The only potential point of quibble is how much of a bonus certain things might be worth.
Gah!
I think this question starts right out in the social contract (then from there, pierces straight into the very moment of play). What have your players agreed to? Is it
A. You call how much an actions worth and which outcome it applies to. Players accept that, even if it doesn't match their idea of sense at all. They are good sports about it if it doesn't make sense to them. But if it does match their idea of sense of how the game world works, everyone enjoys that syncronicity between you. So either everyones fine with you making your call, or their happy! It's win/win! Well, fine/win!
B. They think their actions will get realistic responces. They will get utterly bitchy when your idea of realism does not match their idea of realism. They will say, rather than it being a missmatch, that your idea of realism is wrong. They will harp and moan, particularly if something went against their character, because 'really' this isn't realistic.
C. The have agreed to see the 'rightness' in whatever call you make, and always see it as realistic. I'm watching this in another forum at the moment. I'm not even sure it's possible, but I'm noting it.
If it's A, then you have no problem at all! Go with your heart notion of how the game world works and assign the amount and which outcome it applies to. If you don't know how it'd work, make it up! You have da powa!
There will be no quibble, except perhaps inside your own mind on how much something gets. And I'm sure you can wrap that one up!
If it's B, your doomed. DOOMED. If it's C, I don't get that one and I think it can't work, it always ends up, in practical terms, as either A or, in terrible circumstances, B.
Where do you think you are? And by 'are' I mean in terms of what people have currently agreed to? Cause your not stuck there, as agreements can end and new ones started.
AJ_Flowers:
Quote from: LandonSuffered on April 30, 2009, 11:49:54 AM
So to correct my earlier suggestion (somewhat): you might try a more traditional RPG (either in an on-line format or around a table) that has mechanics allowing your play group to address premise and create a story in a way that satisfies your creative agenda in the particular way you prefer.
I do. And when I do people generally seem to enjoy it. So I understand the suggestion of, "if this game doesn't fit your creative agenda, play a new game," but this is the game all my friends play and will probably continue to play for many years, as it's ongoing, so I'm looking for ways to squeeze my agenda in there, in addition.
Quote from: Callan S. on April 30, 2009, 03:43:51 PM
Also I was thinking outcomes more like "Does the orc village burn" and "Does the elf village burn". Either way, something happens. Like if you changed the second artifact outcome to "Does the artifact fall off the train, into a nearby town, activate and turn them into zombies" then something happens either way. Not getting the artifact is just...nothing happening.
You might even get players staging character accidents, to get this bad zombie result...which is cool, I think! Characters actually failing and players are happy it happens - plot twists happening! All good! But if your thinking 'No metagame thinking, ever, even if it makes a better story' then I guess that'd have to be scolded.
Ok, I see your point. Yeah, I'm only interested in actions where something happens. Whiff results are pretty boring as a whole. Even failure should be interesting.
(This was actually the catalyst for the train example to begin with - a group of characters stole an item from my character, but then made it clear they were just going to hang on to it and do nothing with it, not even try to destroy it! Yawn.)
As a followup to my post, I ran a scene myself on the game about a week ago that was really well-received. I set the scene up as, you get a distress signal from a ship floating in space, and... then what do you do? I warned people that it was going to be a horror scene so anyone uncomfortable with that sort of thing could back out, but other that that I didn't warn anyone what was going to happen. As for system, I just narrated the scene without dice, but letting characters play out their particular specializations. Like one character happened to be a homicide cop, so he got more information when checking out the bodies.
Early on in the scene I did get a little bogged-down because the game has a lot of 'hacker' characters, and, to me, it's just boring if a guy spends an entire scene messing around with the closest nearby computer instead of engaging the physicality of the setting. After using his own computer for three rounds got him not much additional information, I got him to move into a more dangerous/interesting place just by enticing him with the prospect of a better computer at the ship's security station. Once he got there, he was able to do a scan of the ship for other life-forms and other useful things for the mission. Not that I wanted to make his character useless, you see, but it does get really boring if a character turtles himself in a safe location during a scene and doesn't want to move at all.
I think the scene worked because there was no "player versus player" conflict. It was all a group of characters, working together against the environment (and my character, indirectly, who had set the trap for them). This left less room for conflict about outcome so the scene could become what's happening right now rather than what did we decide was going to happen and how do we get there.
JoyWriter:
Ok, firstly, I'd love to hear about your games, more play reports means more theory fuel, which hopefully in turn means better games!
Ok firstly, how about making a rule that the scene may only be sketched out in brief before it is played, to leave spaces for other characters, and certain limits are put in place to stop derailment. In other words you can say "this must happen in this scene", in order to satisfy GM and player, but that must either be expressed as a header on the top (in some kind of shorthand) or as fictional elements within the scene that make it unavoidable. Otherwise it's like saying you left a priceless and fragile yet invisible piece of art on the floor, but people're welcome to come to your house if you don't break it! No wonder people don't dare participate.
For example, I presume that in a standard TP, the end outcome is unknown, but will be within certain limits? The same should be true of player inspired scenes, there should be blank spaces for other people to get involved, and if something is unacceptable, say so!
Now if this works it should lead to "preventative measures" building up in your game fiction, so as to avoid spoiling the surprise of a scene. I can't tell you what they'll look like, because I don't know the players or the setting, but pick a common interference and try to imagine how to stop it with in fiction tools and you'll be there. Hopefully this will make the setting more substantial.
Another step that I value is making players need each other. If two players want different things, you can link those within the fiction so that they have to defeat each other or compromise to get what they want. The more friendly version of this is requiring someone's cooperation for a job because it is either tied to a resource they "own" or requires their skills. This can to lead to resource speculating, where people insure they sit on stuff others will need, but only with more Machiavellian players. This means that the GMs can insure that players plots overlap, without having to do so much pushing.
Another system that can be quite helpful is influence mapping; it generally builds up with the above, as you define what resources and skills are needed for what, but the idea is that you work out what can affect what, and if it has a chance of affecting something a player is interested in you warn that player by private message, either in character as an actual tip off, or as a vague suggestion that you might want to be there. That way world changing events can exist in a hierarchy, where there are those that change your local world, and up and out to the big ones that change everyone's stuff.
I'd recommend implementing the first two, the first as a rule and the second as an occasional suggestion, and then hope to build in the last one at a later date, as it can be automated with softwear if appropriate, but which takes a whole other set of skills about political map building.
JoyWriter:
Bah, that's some bad text insertion there! I wish I could edit the second "firstly", never mind.
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