Warhammer; Chaos! Order! Molasses!
Frank Tarcikowski:
Callan, that sounds familiar. Back in the old days we were moving through a molasses, too. We somehow had that idea that you had to go through everything in detail. If was fine to finish an adventure and then start the next one a few months of in-game time down the road. But once you started playing, you had to go through the details. You could not, for example, move to the next morning before you had established how everybody spent their evening. You could not just say “we go to a bar”, you had to describe the bar, you had to order your drink… and while you were there and playing through it, naturally your tried to make the scene somehow interesting, stretching it even further.
Sometimes these scenes turned out to be tremendous fun. Sometimes we even embraces these scenes because they were giving us a break from the GM’s railroading us into some sort of nonsensical task that our character had no real motivation for. At other times, these scenes were just dull and boring, but you had to go through them, didn’t you? We never questioned the way we played, at the time. It was the only way we knew.
We made the best of most of these games, but I have a theory where that notion of “you have to go through every detail” originates from. Ever seen a group where the players try to outsmart the GM? Because the GM is trying to railroad and the players are trying to avoid being railroaded, or because the GM is trying to spoil the players’ plans by any means, and the players are trying to put him back to the wall where there is nothing left he can pull out of the hat to stop them? Awful, dysfunctional play.
A group that plays that way is bound to constantly argue about what happened when, who was where, and why what the GM says can’t happen. Anything that was left open could be used by the GM, so the only way for the players to pin down the GM was to mind every smallest detail, from A to Z.
So yeah, that’s my theory as to the origins of this “slow paced” approach. I guess some groups keep it out of habit. I don’t know if that’s what’s going on in your group, actually the charge example makes me doubt it. Maybe and it’s rather that your GM is trying to invoke some sort of atmosphere and thinks that taking his time is necessary for that.
- Frank
Jasper Flick:
Quote from: Callan S. on June 30, 2009, 07:06:41 PM
I mean, as said, I even got that when I charged once - our mini's were placed and on my turn, I moved the amount of squares granted for a charge and placed my figure next to a chaos warrior...annnnd Dan says something like "Okay, your about to charge...". No, I have already charged! This is a dead parrot! ('scuse the python reference).
Could it be an IIEE issue? Vincent's recent Rock of Tahamaat example comes to mind here. I'm not sure because I don't know if your issue is forcefully injected color, or system.
Quote from: Callan S. on June 30, 2009, 07:06:41 PM
It's a guess on my part, but I think it's trying to build it up to be so much more than a minature moving eight inches across a board. I'll grant it does add a tension to the RL atmosphere of play, but its composed of not a little frustration.
If it's like forcefully describing every to-hit roll, then I think it's bad. I've seen it fall flat countless times in miniature combat. It's just not sustainable. "Make every action interesting" is bullshit advice if the average action is insignificant. Personally, I prefer to quikly handle them and only focus on moments worth mentioning. I dunno, stuff like crits and kills.
The same goes for travel. But opinions differ a lot here. Isn't it an issue of working out together how you should handle this? Experience taught me that not talking about this gets you mired in muck fast. Assuming the book is firmly traditional in a Gygaxian sense, it probably won't be much help here.
From the rest of your post it sounds like your play is well-entrenched in GM-entertains-passive-players mode, and you're not happy with it. What can you do if that is true? I'm afraid you suck it up, abandon the group, or talk it out...
(Crossposted with Frank)
An additional common defense of "you have to go through every detail" play: "It's not roleplaying if you do not act it out."
Callan S.:
Hi Frank,
Yeah, in terms of Rons comment
Quote
And oddly enough, playing everything means the stuff we want to play ends up not happening
The thing is, it's not stuff 'we' want to play - or atleast that is not certain for the GM from the outset. In the end I think we played to the GM's predefined script fairly closely - and to be honest I was pretty okay with that this time (hesitant more because I don't know in advance what's in the script, rather than because I'd be following a script). But the GM doesn't really know that. So all this fuzting around is perhaps to give the sense of player agency and capacity to choose, when really it's just sweating the small stuff. Perhaps it's not just to give the impression to players, but also to give the impression to himself that all sorts of things could happen, rather than just what he's scripted.
Our friend Chris ran a game once and at the end in private Dan said it was a good one and Chris was learning and getting out of his heavy railroad ways - I was a little surprised and said to him I think we pretty much went through everything Chris had prewritten. Since there wasn't really anything else but the prewritten stuff, we had gone from one piece to another, like moths attracted to the next beacon of light - sure it might have felt like we were doing what we want, but there weren't exactly two sources of light on offer - just a linear path of single beacons (one beacon at a time). Well, I don't think I described it that clearly at the time, but it seemed to sink in a little and he wasn't so certain it wasn't a railroad. Though he's probably right in that it's not a heavy railroad - instead it's one strung together by our 'moth like reflexes' as you might call it (what we drift toward reflexively), rather than overt force. A much more subtle railroad. One that panders to our reflexes so much we railroad ourselves.
Actually that makes me think of something constructive I could talk about with him - something like "Okay, the player groups attracted to certain stuff like a moth to the flame - but if you only put one up a single flame at a time, clearly we'll just drift toward it. That's kind of following a railroad. So what if we zip past all the single flames you'd find in the fictional world, and find where two flames would show up at once - which one would we drift towards and engage in? There's uncertainty there" or something like that...
Emily Care:
You may be interested in a set of 10 scenarios based on the Warhammer universe that folks in Denmark put together for a con. They keep the flavor of the war against chaos, while tripping you through some moving and hysterical situations of play. Nice to have that dark, bitter taste but in a less sticky and sloggy form. The scenarios are extremely pre-written, but that is all on the table and transparent for the players. There they embrace the railroad.
They are in the process of being translated to English and are available here:
Imperiet, The Empire Anthology
edited once to add:
(En Sommernats Fortaelling, Krigshammeren, Returning Home, The Butterforger and The Hunt have been translated so far.)
Callan S.:
Thanks, Emily!
We played again recently. I think Matt is actually part of this issue, though it was hard to see/remember in the first game. Basically we were to head up to this cave where some orcs were near it and retrieve some treasure for our employer. The description was as vague as that. Weve stopped off at this wizards place, who has many potions and some supplies. And Matt gives plan upon plan upon plan, buying nets and morph potions and more and it keeps going. The thing is, I can't knock this - if you have unlimited time to plan ahead, it makes sense to take your time. For myself, given there was little description of it, I couldn't form any real plan and I decided to just go there and wing it - sometimes the most efficient thing to do is just go, instead of trying to plan for a million things. Plus, it's a game - it's okay to lose. But Matt keeps coming up with plans. I ask about this and he says he doesn't want to get there and then they could have had just the perfect thing but forgot it. I said it's okay, we don't have to be perfect, but...it keeps going. Again, I'll say it makes sense to keep planning when you have time to - this is where some hard mechanics should put a real life time limit on this stuff.
Which leads me to a sublime point - I didn't feel I could just say that. Because for me, roleplay games seem more like a book full of disparate parts - more like a dictionary than a novel, so to speak. You have to act as designer. But I'm not sure Matt was taking on any sort of designer position, he was just playing it. I couldn't suggest adding a time limit to the game, with someone who isn't taking on a designer role.
I considered just stating I was riding ahead. But then I knew what would happen - I'd be acknowledged as 'riding' and the attention would pan back to the planning. If I asked if I'm there I'd be told no, because the amount of time that had passed would be based on how long this gear negotiation would take - ironically too short a time to get there in game, and too long a time in RL. There was no way to escape the molasses!
After a long while, where I'd sort of gone silent because what else could I add, Daniel said to him "So your going now?" and he said "yeah". I wonder if Dan hadn't said that, would he have continued on...and for how long?
Hmm, I really don't want too sound down on this. It might seem like I've written alot, but given the time spent at this stage of RP, I'm not spending much time detailing this relative to the time spent on the activity.
Further in the adventure we came across a fairly classic beaten peasant, who's family and friends were under siege by orcs. Will we help him? I kind of guess this was optional and I was considering it in terms of my character, thinking maybe because it might be the same orcs as we were headed toward and we could whittle them down. Matt says yeah, we'll help you (there's also several NPC's (employers dirty jobs man and NPC friends)). I start to say well yeah, uh, this might help whittle the orcs so...but it's kind of missed in the board set up. I'm wondering if this happens again and my character were, after Matts says we'll do it, to say fuck it, no and stick to that, what would happen? But I think I'll be left wondering because I'm inclined to go with what my characters reflex is, rather than just do it to find out. I don't want my PC to say fuck it, just to see whether that's supported at all.
We pick some orcs off, I shoot one in the back of the head really, really hard. The atmosphere at the game table is a little more towards electric. We save the villagers...and head back to the road. It's kind of not important - theres no real sense of climax - like it was put there to give choice, but it's perhaps not a choice Dan really cared about, except to put it there in case we cared about it.
We get to the cave and the orcs have a camp about 700 meters away from the cave. Blessedly there isn't any huge planning stage this time - go in at night and stuff coins into a bag of holding handed to us for the job (yeah, bags of holding kind of jar me in terms of warhammer, and I haven't even read it as much as Dan and Matt? Or am I way off in getting warhammer? Oh, and it was a box of holding...if that makes a dif). Perhaps too many unknown factors makes Matt overplan? He gets in there, uses the tarp over the treasure to block the entrance and pours coins into the bag. Can't get the bigger tapestries and stuff into it, though. Really I thought this was a risk/reward assessment up to our employers goon but I dunno who decided to go to the cave with the cart. Anyway, while were doing this, the orc camp is attacked by a couple of dozen chaos dudes (some chaos dudes (same ones?) dumped the treasure here previously, because they were under attack). When were just finishing, they see us and start riding over - which is the end of the session. Which I kind of try to find a climax, but at the same time it just feels like it was put there - I can't feel "OMG, no!" like if you rolled high/bad on a critical roll on your PC. This wasn't a roll, it was just...put there? Hard to describe it. Also, there's more to the script, but I'm glossing over it - ask if you want extra details.
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