I hate compromises
Noclue:
Quote from: Filip Luszczyk on March 07, 2010, 03:38:09 PM
Yes! Something concrete from that older MG campaign has finally popped up.
We wanted to re-visit and interrogate a bartender who, previously, sold us to agents from another city. We wanted the bartender to spill everything about those agents, he wanted to prove the Guard is oppressive or something like that, I believe. We played some good cop, bad cop. We lost with a compromise. I suggested a twist: we don't learn anything significant, but only because a dagger thrown from an unknown direction kills the bartender, and we're left with a body on the floor. Seemed adequate to the situation and pretty cinematic. I recall being very enthusiasthic about that outcome. The rest of the group was like, uh, oh, maybe, but no. Then, a few other suggestions were made, before we reached the final outcome, but I had no other ideas. I was at best neutral about those ideas and I felt sort of dissapointed. I don't even recall that final compromise now. However, I'm perfectly sure it didn't affect the campaign at large, that deal with the bartender never came up again, and we didn't engage those agents in later missions.
Hi Filip. I just wanted to focus for a sec on something concrete in the form of your example. Perhaps your group was not up for the twist because it wasn't actually a compromise. They don't get the info. That's cool, but the twist feels like a dead end. The knife thrown wasn't a compromise unless it represents a new avenue for investigation. If you had said something like "You don't get the info because he's killed by knife from somewhere. A very distinctive knife inscribed with the blacksmith's symbol." Perhaps they would have went for it. They didn't get what they were after, but they did get something.
Also, if they lost, then the bartender had to get what he wanted. Did he, in fact, prove that the Guard was oppressive?
Frank Tarcikowski:
Filip,
Let me start by saying that in my last post, I purposefully exaggerated and simplified to get my point across. I wasn’t there, I don’t know the games you played, so I’m really in no position to judge.
Let me continue by clarifying my personal experience with PtA. It's an aside, but since you asked. “Story workshopping”, the way I have experienced it, is really quite fast, slowing down only for a few dialogues. These guys progress the story very quickly, but on the other hand, they also discuss it a lot out-of-character, bring up alternatives, weigh the choices and possible impact on conflicts, development of protagonists, and so forth. Everything is up for grabs and/or arguments, so that’s where the time and attention goes. Still, you’ll find that a lot has happened, in the fiction, after three hours of play. The scenes were focused on outcomes and maybe dialogue, with a few punchy images mingled in between, but not much else in the sense of imaginary context. I don’t know if any of this parallels your games, it was just an association that came up.
A PtA session that suites my preferences, on the other hand, would dedicate much more time to actually establishing the scenes—who’s there, what does it look like, sound like, feel like—and much less to this whole “story workshop” where the group discusses how things could or should go on. It would still last the same amount of real-world time, but in the fiction, probably less scenes would happen, with less plot development. (It would still be fast in comparison to traditional games.) A “fictional detail”, to me, would be for example: “There is snow on the roofs and icicles on the windows.” Or: “She is wearing an elaborate red gown, sexy in a classy way.” Or: “He is standing by the door. You are standing in the corner.” Or: “The massive gurgle of a Corvette V8.” Or: “I am trembling with shame and anger.” My initial thought was that a lack of such details might make it hard for your group to find something that feels “right” as a compromise. This may or may not be the case, probably not, see my last paragraph.
Last, I would like to make some general observations of this discussion. I know how the Forge can be a bitch sometimes. Believe me I know. Story Games is ten times worse. I know what Ron said about stakes. I’m not sure how it applies or doesn’t apply to your PtA hack, but it’s almost a given that someone can be expected to jump in with some misinterpretation of what Ron said, and make some strange accusations of you playing the game “wrong”, when actually the fact that it works for you guys is proof that it can’t be wrong for you—if it really works.
I also see how, in this thread, you are not reacting well to criticism and people questioning your assumptions. Criticism and the questioning of assumptions are vital to productive discourse and are expected at the Forge. Your defensiveness is understandable, but it is also inappropriate and frankly, doesn’t make me much inclined to continue this discussion. The way you dismiss games and designers because you were frustrated by those games, or claim you “fixed” a game, may not be meant nearly as pretentious as it comes across to me, and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. However, I would ask you to consider that you are provoking the reaction which you already expected—sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The cultural thing seems to be a red herring to me, but that discussion would lead too far. I actually flinched a bit at Jeff’s comment myself, but again, found your reaction rather inappropriate. I’m fourth generation German, so I don’t have much connection to my Polish heritage, but do you really think this same thread couldn’t have been started by an American gamer? I doubt it.
Concerning your issue with Burning Empires, Mouse Guard, and PtA as written, I think it has to be noted that many (not all!) games from the Forge share an underlying assumption that the group is dedicated to a cooperative approach to a shared creative endeavor on the grounds of a shared or at least compatible understanding of esthetic preferences. If this dedication is not there in your group, then these games don’t work for you. It’s as simple as that.
- Frank
JoyWriter:
Quote from: Filip Luszczyk on March 08, 2010, 09:37:51 PM
I don't know. I don't quite see how this sort of social crunch aligns with the mechanical crunch for those people. In games like BE or MG specifically, there's quite an excessive amount of the latter. It feels strikingly illusory. It sounds like very basic and sketchy procedures would do. Why have so elaborate procedures for everything else?
I don't quite fit Callan's model, but for me the fact that the system puts you on the spot and says "you have to compromise" is pretty amazing. Why? Because people often just brush over the problem of making a workable compromise; I win/you win/let's forget about it etc.
It's like chess forces you not to merely say "I win", but to engage with the other persons strategy, absorb it, and defeat it.
Now there might be a problem in how the game text actually refers to compromise, because it should say "you have to compromise" to everyone playing, and it could probably do with some kind of strategy guide to stop it being too daunting at first.
"GM offers ideas that you keep vetoing" is not compromise, it's deadlock. What the rules should say is "none of you will get what you want, unless you suddenly find a way to shift it all slightly to make it work together, and then you'll probably get little more than half what you wanted". The rules should set the conditions and expectations at the start of a piece of negotiation so that everyone commits to getting something partial.
In other words, in this case, the rules don't make peace between you, they lock you in a room until you sort it out. (It reminds me of the conclusion of this african conflict, but I can't remember where it was)
Now that's not great if you expect the "resolution mechanic" to resolve your conflicts all by itself, and if you're wedded to the old "cops and robbers" metaphor of rpg rules. That's why the point in the rules that says you have to compromise is so important; during a battle of wits you'll probably be getting more and more hyped, investing more and more in victory for your character, and then suddenly you have to make peace with that person you were competing with. That's quite a tone shift, and it needs to be flagged up as such, it's the equivalent of dropping of a cliff in terms of it's support for un-empathic thinking. Maybe that's intentional, with it acting as an encouragement to shift your tactics, and do the compromise more on your own terms? I don't know the game that well.
It seems to me that you should get everyone used to the idea "you've all lost unless you can pull a way out of it", so instead of preferences expanding when the potential of negotiation is opened, it is clear that that negotiation is occurring within a very limited scope.
Now why would anyone put that into a game? Why would they force you to make that kind of grudging decision? It's often not that cinematic, not that dramatically satisfying, but it is a part of life that doesn't get transmitted very easily through passive media; it's not cinematic because cinema finds it really hard to do! It's a whole region of creative exploration that interactive forms of entertainment/art have a unique power to touch well, because it's all about the feeling of interacting with someone different from you. Why else? Because it's like a death condition in a fighting game, it's another way to loose, and loosing heightens drama (again I'm not sure that this is emphasised or done well in your game). There is a familiar fear among political types of the dead compromise text, which is all waffle and no satisfaction, and many people feel so much energy in things like the copenhagen talks because they want that time to be the time that it doesn't happen. Why (thirdly)? Because sometimes you can do that last minute save, where the compromise is maybe even better than the first two options, or at least as good.
Does that help? Show why someone might want to put compromise into the game as a specific element, rather than just as a hole? In that case the rules should be setting up that next section of the game, and it might just be that they don't do that very well for you; it's not clear how the two game-play modules link up properly.
Callan S.:
Josh, to me that's like saying if were all behind a car pushing, cars are about being together and working together and the car is totally working if everyones behind it, together, pushing (and one guy at the steering wheel, I guess).
I'd grant a game author might want to deliberately put in the features you list. But in all the RPG's you've played, did they always deliberately put them in? Really? Or did they just screw up and this is not an intended element of the activity? And the games broken down as much as the stopped car (even if you can all push the game along)?
JoyWriter:
Quote from: Callan S. on March 11, 2010, 04:13:45 PM
But in all the RPG's you've played, did they always deliberately put them in?
God, no! But they could do. Just like a car breaking down can be made into a fun toboggan-like game, providing you put better handles on the back of the car.
It's not that it must be this way, that it always is this way, but it can be this way. It's a whole set of fun that people can try to support, even though in other contexts it'd be terrible.
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