[S/lay w/Me] Yun-Hai & the Corpse-strewn battlefield
Brendan:
I had a lot of fun in this game! I don't want to repeat myself too much, but I posted some details of things I remembered (and things I didn't grasp at the time) over at Hans's S-G version of this thread.
Hans Chung-Otterson:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on May 25, 2010, 09:12:56 AM
I agree that you apparently put a lot of pressure onto yourself, and with a game like S/Lay w/Me, you don't need to do that - each person is free to please himself or herself, with equal responsibility to respect what's been established already in play.
Ron,
This is good, not only because I'm realizing S/lay supports the kind of free-from-pressure play that I want, but also because, (I hope), playing S/lay can help me internalize the lesson (that I already know intellectually) that I don't need to put pressure on myself, which in the longer run will change my negative behaviors (those ones that I said made the game less fun for me). For me, the gold in this is that I hope to learn to play this way even when facilitating/GMing games like Burning Wheel or Sorcerer--that our collective enjoyment as a group is our collective responsibility.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on May 25, 2010, 09:12:56 AM
1. "The tower is his" - the issue is how this information is genuinely established. When Brendan stated that his character entered the scene from the tower, did he also say, exactly, that the tower belonged to the character? Or did you let the unexpected entry point rattle you and jump to that conclusion yourself?
He didn't say that the tower belonged to his character--it was that I was rattled and jumped to the worst conclusion: "Wait, does that work, rules-wise? Will it work in the fiction?" Rather than pausing, thinking, and seeing that it did work, in all ways.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on May 25, 2010, 09:12:56 AM
It's also worth considering, instead of the "I" player being allied with the rulebook against the "you" player, that both players are looking at the same book with equal status toward it and between them. What I'm trying to say is that you have plenty of room to give initial, briefly-stated information a lot more context.
Meaning, when one person says something that unseats the other for a moment like the tower thing, the other has authority to stop and say, "what did you intend with that statement?", or just flesh that out themselves on their Go?
Quote from: Ron Edwards on May 25, 2010, 09:12:56 AM
I also think that you may be hamstringing yourself by saying "based on the fiction," (I hope I'm not getting too abstract too quickly here) in the sense of trying to play forward toward some story effect. If you instead rely heavily on the fiction as established so far, working to enrich its input, like the beaded leather string, then you'll find that the descriptors mesh very well with it and story effects emerge without forcing them.
I think what you're saying here is a fleshing out of this:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on May 25, 2010, 09:12:56 AM
it's counter-productive to self-dictate your immediate choices in order to impose them.
Right? I had to read that sentence about ten times but I think I get it now.
So instead of drilling an unchangeable concept into stone, you just do your prep, as the book says. Then you dive into the fiction fully, pay attention to it, and see how it see how the Monster/Lover you made will flow from the fiction, without it being this, obviously:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on May 25, 2010, 09:12:56 AM
The thing to avoid for sure, though, is to switch up the listed concepts about either the Monster or Lover later in play, which has a scattering effect on the story.
Thanks Ron! It's probably pretty apparent by now that this is both helpful & interesting to me.
-Hans
Hans Chung-Otterson:
I got to play again yesterday, another one-shot (but not with Brendan this time). I won't write up the full AP but I'll give salient details that illustrate what I want to talk about.
First, I was the Lover/Monster in the first go-round, and I consciously stuck to the descriptors much better this time, to good effect. We were in "The city of Rats where thieves pay taxes," and I chose Fast/Up-Front/Savage/In a Group. I didn't make any notes other than a mental one that "the monster is probably the Rat-men that infest the city", which it did turn out to be, and flowed nicely from the fiction, I thought. They kept swarming at the hero savagely, which all came from me sticking to the descriptors. There was one Rat-Beast that stuck out and kept coming back, but he certainly wasn't the only adversary.
The Hero player chose "I slew men to win my freedom, but never again." She was a woman called "The Crimson Moon," who had fought her way free from the slave pits of the city and was returning to it for the first time in years to seek her goal--finding her daughter.
the Lover was kind of a fawning simp, the son of the head of the merchant's guild, who was Innocent/Approved/Manipulative/Knowledgeable. He stuck to those pretty well, all though Manipulative was less a skewer to prick the hero on and more a "I'm manipulating you to get my physical/emotional needs met." It wasn't a strong element in play, but it was there. He started out Approved, but I realize now that later on the love was very much not Approved--his father, the head of the merchant's guild, was in league with the Rat-men and had Crimson Moon's daughter. This doesn't seem to be a problem, though: it started out approved and as circumstances changed in the fiction the "approved/forbidden" switch got flipped. Perhaps I'm looking at that switch too narrowly, though, since I'm only viewing it from the eyes of the Lover's father.
The one other thing was that the Lover's father seemed to kind of merge with the Monster in the end, as he was the main adversity to the Hero's goal and was in league with the rats. Still, I think it was mostly okay since only the rats ever really threatened her (well, barring one scene where Head Merchant barged in after some lovemaking with rats swarming all about him). It was a little messy, but not problematic for either of us. I'm wondering: How could the game have been better if I had stuck more firmly to the Monster and not conflated it with something else? Is there not a problem here, or am I missing something?
The second round went swimmingly; in both of my plays the first round has acted as a kind of warm-up and we really are able to lean into the game with much more ease on the second round.
My only real note from this one was: While it was satisfying, it wasn't satisfying enough. I've been reading Sorcerer & Sword lately and after the game I thought to myself that my hero, "a Lordly Knight respected by all, whose mind remains his own," would really smoke in long-term S&S play. He was an old man with a limp, but solid beneath his ceramic armor. His goal was one of the main reasons I wanted to see his story play out more: "To find the one spell that can kill my corrupt master," which he did. But there's all kinds of juicy details to a story like that that we didn't get to in the in-the-moment-action of our play in the centerless Igai Desert.
After some thought, I realized, I don't need S&S to do him justice, I simply need to actually play out a whole game of S/lay! I left the session really needing to play that guy more. I don't know if I'll get to, but playing a whole game of S/lay is on my hot list right now.
Hans Chung-Otterson:
Another thing: both times I've played, getting to the Goal has gone pretty traditionally (story-wise, not gaming-wise, but probably that too), in that we both play that it's not easy to reach and build up to winning/losing it. The emergent effect of this is that the Lover is often a tool to help the hero achieve the goal.
The game enforces the build-up to the Goal somewhat in that you can't totally have it/not have it until the Match is resolved, but I'm interested in playing with the Goal a little bit: seizing it right the hell up front and seeing what happens. I suspect that this will divorce the Lover from it and leave the Lover-chasing/spurning aspect of the story to develop more on its own, apart from the Goal.
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