[ingenero] creative tension
Graham W:
Steve,
I think that being creative, on your own, is actually quite difficult. (In Play Unsafe, I take a very positive tone, but doing it on your own is hard.)
Here are some circumstances that make it easier:
1. When everyone else is doing it too. That way, everyone's improvising, building on each other's ideas. Try to do it on your own, in a traditional GMing-a-scenario role, and it's difficult. It might work if...
2. There are strong genre expectations. For example, in Call of Cthulhu, when the Investigators ask an ally for help, he will get out some books to help them research. In Lacuna, the friend in authority is obviously a double agent. With strong genre expectations, you can improvise all day.
Further examples! As a GM, Poison'd is easy to improvise, because you simply set the players against each other. Lacuna is easy to GM in a different way, because of those genre expectations.
It sounds to me as though you were trying to improvise a plot, by yourself, in a weakly-defined setting. That is very difficult. It sounds, too, as though the plot was drifting long before you ran out of ideas: the thugs failed to capture the PCs, so they went to someone in authority...that sounds like a drifting plot, to me. So I suspect things went wrong before you ran out of ideas.
Can I ask you a question? Were you desperately trying to think of creative, amazing things to happen? (Your comment on Bangs makes it sound as though you were.) That is often a recipe for disaster. One of the main ideas, in Play Unsafe, is that you should be obvious.
Thus, if it's obvious a fight should happen, have a fight. (You can always cut straight to the end of the fight or something.) If it's obvious the friend-in-authority should betray them, then he should betray him; but if it's obvious he should help them, then he should help them.
What do you think? I hope some of that helps.
Graham W:
Bollocks! I was reading two threads at once and posted in the wrong one.
Mike Sugarbaker:
Quote from: stefoid on March 14, 2011, 02:39:29 PM
Whats your alternative, simply call the player on it? In my example, its pretty straight forward case of "investment mismatch" , but maybe its a bad example. If it really is just a case of "something you said doesnt match my imaginary world", actual creative differences. what then?
You need more than "tell me more" because "tell me more" may just dig the hole deeper - that is, they may add MORE crap you don't think fits in the world. Mere elaboration doesn't increase the chances that something will stop tweaking your sense of the world and start fitting into it. I think in the end there's no substitute for getting on the same page in advance w.r.t. the game world and what's appropriate there (per Graham's point 2) - I mean, Archipelago has the "do it differently" option but that's disturbing to many kinds of play, and not very articulate when there's a lot in a setting to be conformed with.
stefoid:
In an ideal world everyone is on the same page and contributes stuff that is instantly appreciated by all.
contracycle:
This could be some kind of failure to invest, to take the play of the game in an unserious light. But it may also as you say just be a kind of creative difference.
You try to talk about this do this directly. "I find your abtsract names disruptive to the game. It makes NPC's into tokens instead of people". Or, you might bring a book of names to the table, or print out a list of real names, or even just bring a telephone directory, and say: "If you are struggling for names, look in this".
If that doesn't work, then you might have a more serious problem related to differing buy-ins to the tone or nature of the setting. But people often struggle to come up with names on the fly, I think it's a sort of skill that regular GM's learn, but which most players in most games don't need to. There is a reason for the existence of online random name generators, and if it's only names in which problems are found, then providing some kind of resource for finding them might be all you need.
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