Does chance favour a good story?
Judd:
Simon,
You have mentioned knowing what the players will do before they do it a few times. Any particular reason why that is important to you?
Also, having a game where all of the characters are cursed by the gods is absolutely awesome, an amazing way to tie the group together.
Judd
Unforgivingmuse:
Eric, brilliant!
Ludic peripety, I've never heard the term before, but that is exactly what I was looking for earlier. I may even introduce that in my blog. Some more research there. I read large parts of Aristotle's works, but I must have zoned out for peripety.
(I switched to Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters, which was is much more accessible book).
Judd, yes you got me there, I did sort of imply that didn't I?
Quote from: Unforgivingmuse on March 09, 2011, 11:33:08 AM
I like to think I can predict what most of the player characters are likely to do in a given situation, but I still get caught out occasionally.
It was more of a self-mocking prelude to my original question than a claim of actual prescience. I intended to imply that despite my best guesses to the variety of possible actions they might take, I'm still surprised when they opt for something that seems unlikely.
And thank you for the praise about the gods' curses; I've developed this revision in a vacuum with only my players for feedback, so it's very good to hear that from another human being, and someone who knows what they are talking about to-boot.
You are human aren't you?
Simon
Judd:
Quote from: Unforgivingmuse on March 09, 2011, 11:33:08 AM
What I worry about is the question of whether I encouraged it to happen? I don't think the player gets so frustrated that they felt the character's suicidal charge was necessary to break the monotony, quite the opposite.Whilst it might sound like I'm ducking some sort of responsibility in my GMing, it is interesting to note that the player characters who this tends to happen with are exactly the kind of have-at-ye characters that take on these kind of odds in stories. Could it be that with a strongly narrative style of game that this sort of thing is inevitable; that experienced players get so tuned into their characters, that they will push themselves (and possibly all their companions) towards certain death, simply because that character would in a story? And that somehow, chance seems to encourage it.
I don't know the answer, Simon. You tell me. Do the mechanics of your game encourage it? Is it something about the GMing? If players get in over their heads, will they be bailed out or will they bleed to death in the street?
In my own gaming, those are the moments I shoot for. I don't have an arc, don't have any idea where things are going. I put forth conflicts without any idea as to how the players will deal with it. I'm not set on any outcome. We might fight the dragon, we might cut a deal with the monster. The players might become the dragon's agents in the world or they might die by fiery breath.
Roger:
Your game is an interesting case.
For certain historical reasons, a lot of games focused on the narrative have arisen, to various degrees, from the foundations of Lajos Egri's "The Art of Dramatic Writing". That book specifically refutes Aristotle's Poetics. As I'm sure you are aware, Aristotle's position in Poetics is that plot (mythos) is primary and character (ethos) is secondary. In contrast, Egri suggests that character is primary and plot is secondary.
As an RPG design space, I don't think it's been well-explored. It may well be that players find themselves inclined to lead their characters along the path of Aristotelian tragedy, which are characterized by extensive suffering by the protagonists.
Cheers,
Roger
Erik Weissengruber:
I like to see mechanics that allow meaningful transformation of the imagined space as a whole.
Burning Empires:
- the Maneuver roll retroactively puts the characters' individual moves (which are never just individual, crowds, followers, etc. are always involved) into the perspective of the ongoing war against the Vaylen
- it also sets up the context in which future individual moves will be taken
- some I've played with don't like the absence of a direct causal connection between each action of the characters and the results of the grand maneuver, but it has never bothered me.
(Fortune plays a role here)
Zombie Cinema:
- the proximity or distance of the Zombies is the net result of characters' actions
- their relative position sets constraints and qualitative factors for the subsequent actions of the characters
(is this resolved through inflexible Karma? -- I forget)
Dresden Files
- The rules encourage linking character accomplishments to transformation of the City Sheet.
- In last night's game the PCs were ambushed in a Toronto park by a duo of invisible Goblins. (resolved with standard FATE mechanics: Fortune with a lot of currency-mediated Drama on the part of players and GM)
- the PC who caught the arrow in the chest ("A frickin' arrow --- in 2011!) made a bargain with the mystical werewolf guardians of Toronto's ravines: mystical healing now in return for a vow to bring them the head of a corrupt cop who has been getting on their case. (going with the DFRPG's rules regarding how all sorts of supernaturals make bargains with mortals, no rolls involved. Drama resolution following explicit game text rules).
- I took the City Sheet and considered how the night's actions might have affected the City as a whole. Our entry for the Ravines classified the Ravines' Aspect "Nature Rules Here" and its associated Faces (the werewolves) as a Threat to the city. The entry of humans into a formal pact with the Faces of that Location motivated me to switch that classification to Theme. This switch will constrain what I have the wolves do later. (Drama)
An abstract space of fictional possibilities can't be mapped onto the unfolding, temporal thing that is Aristotle's mythos. But the both ideas posit a matrix out of which characters emerge and in which they can act, and which can be transformed by character action.
Many games let chance (which is not the same as upredictable player input) affect that matrix through the use of dice, cards, etc. Such Fortune mechanics have lead, in my experience, to the creation of good stories but only because the range of possible outcomes dictated by those mechanics had well thought-out relationships to System and Colour.
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