Biasing the moment; also mechanical spines (rather than organic ones)
Callan S.:
I started up a play by post recently and near the start, an NPC character approaches a gap in a wall where a monster was. Da da da, it pops out and bites his arm off. The thing was, he's still alive, standing there, stunned and...all the player characters head off in other directions!
Now I'm tempted to say the thing bites him in half . But instead I phrase along the lines of wow, I'm surprised no one saved him (and said that's entirely valid play and cool) and that I'm not gunna say he gets killed right now, instead leave it so you know it wasn't that the GM didn't describe things well enough or that the GM said he died before you could post anything - instead it was just that no characters present saved him. Those are the characters. Just savour that as it's interesting. I also said sure, you could countermand that by posting you save him, but is that really what your character would do?
Of course, the very next post someone says their character saves him. And I'm wondering, did I bring up a moment to savour, or just bias the whole thing utterly in trying to draw some attention to that tidbit? Or is it actually wishful thinking on the players part, they were playing how the character goes, and the character goes in a non perfect ivory tower manner - but then their attentions drawn to it and bang, they slap on a coat of political correctness?
You can't really know, of course. But I did want to raise it as an interesting point that they all didn't (and just as cool a way to play). And I'm wondering how to talk about that interesting point without biasing it - or indeed, on a lateral thought, whether that if you can't help but bias it to them, then it is not an interesting point for them to begin with? That they are already polarised one way and don't find it interesting to look both ways (even though their characters, as far as I could tell, certainly did look the opposite way)?
On a seperate note I've set up the game with a primitive structural spine, where the ending of this campaign is defined at 1000xp, and instead of basing XP gain purely somehow on fictional events, there's a base line amount of XP for each contributing post. Not that anyone else really cares about potential weasel words, but just in case someone did *lol*, 'contributing' means if you write 'What do I see?' it contributes. If you write three seperate posts with 'What' then 'do' then 'I' then 'see' it's not four contributing posts. It's just getting around that, which is pretty objective AFAICT.
Anyway, the thing to note is that momentum toward the ending of the session (ie, the big finale! The big thing) isn't dictated by some sort of 'when it feels right' fictional judgement. It is mechanically paced (there are some bonuses on top for fictional things, but that simply speeds the game toward the finale rather than controls whether it moves at all). For anyone reading about murk recently, it's a contrasting design to consider. I'd propose that murk is at it's heart some sort of id or ego that grasps the mechanism it's presented where mechanically things don't move on unless they say it does, and takes that mechanism (in quite a display of system mattering) to stop anything happening until it's done right (by that id or ego's decree). Indeed on that matter I've been thinking 1000xp is not long enough and how am I gunna pack everything in - this applies to me as well. It's a kick up my bum as well - I don't have some supremely disciplined ego that'll dictate game pace ideally simply by purity of my soul or something. I err as well.
Otherwise there's the urge to spin things out until they are 'just right', and since the mechanics throw that ability in the GM's lap, it's simply system mattering when it happens. Railroading? It's as much valid system use as throws in the street fighter video game are (despite how people call throws 'cheap' as much as they call railroading 'cheap'). I dunno, but to me the 'fiction' is always the obvious facade or mask of someones inner wants/ego. When you hinge an activites progress toward it's ending on 'fiction', you hinge it on someones ego. Starkly and simply.
oculusverit:
Callan,
Just one question to clarify your position on the biasing thing... and if this is an irrelevant question for some reason, please let me know.
Does the system that you're using have some sort of "morality" mechanic that might have pushed the characters into acting a certain way, like pushing him towards saving him? Like Alignment in D&D or Morality/Humanity in White Wolf, or something like that?
Callan S.:
It's called a Rifts game, but that means I'm just canabalising bits of texts from the book (which is all you ever can do, really). The game has alignments in that text - I didn't ask anyone to fill one in (one player asked about filling in alignment...I think I forgot to answer them on the matter...). So apart from blind chance, nothing mechanical promotes a certain fixed in stone morality.
masqueradeball:
I want to reply to this... it seems like theres a really interesting discussion point here, but I have to admit that I can't follow your point exactly. Could you rephrase/explain so I can be sure I understand you.
Callan S.:
Which part, Nolan? I'll assume the first part.
Okay, what I'm saying is that I tried to leave a moment where the guy doesn't die because the GM just says he does or the GM wasn't very clear - instead I gave a moment where they could countermand as players the action. So in that very moment they'd know that if the guy dies, it hinged entirely on their characters continuing as they previously appeared to, not some sort of GM fiat or misscommunication. And while that might not make the characters seem all happy and lovely, it is damn interesting.
BUT, in trying to draw attention to the moment, perhaps I triggered a guilt responce, or seemed to be giving some sort of GM cue? So in trying to make the gameplay of the moment about it, I made the gameplay of the moment not about it (with help from guilt responce or gamer GM cues training). Possibly.
Further, if you can't help but bias someone on this, are the capable of enjoying that moment? I'd say perhaps not. Atleast not unless they train themselves out of such an easy to trigger bias.
I'll quote my post from the game verbatim, shortly.
My second subject's probably more engageable.
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