Does chance favour a good story?
Unforgivingmuse:
Wow, I can see why I need to get the hang of things here before we get into any serious dissection.
I'm not looking for advice, I don't think.
Chris
The narrative comes from big plot arcs that happen at the same time as the characters have some smaller, but perhaps significant task to complete, but I'm very good at winging it if they go off plot.
This group about three years, yes every month, three years, between 25 and 50, the whole spectrum. Before you ask, I've been doing it about 20 years.
Roger
Yes, I author my own plotlines. there are sub-plotlines within plotlines within master-plotlines.
Yes, I rewrite the plot arcs, often between sessions.
Why not come up a quick sub-plot as it suggests itself -ie a character takes an interest in a particular NPC and wants to meet them again -so a quick subplot could give that NPC a little backstory, that either aids or hinders the characters in their current task, it's not locked down.
The current example is that the characters are trying to smuggle the lord of a particular region through enemy lines and back into his own city. They have been posing as mercenaries working for the enemy as part of an advance group trying to establish a bridgehead on the far bank of a flooded river. They have just arrived on rafts when the entire mercenary group are attacked by a high level elemental -the kind only used by a top level enchanter in battle.
The players have not encountered such a high level enchanter before, but they have had plenty of build up, enough to know that, firstly such an enchanter would be a problem on his own, but secondly would be too valuable to be out without guards. The other thing they were supposed to have figured out (but it may not have yet dawned on them), is that this enchanter is quite likely to be on their side.
-My bit of plot is that the elemental has destroyed the rafts, killed a few of the mercenaries and scattered the survivors.
Half the player characters have done the sensible thing, but wouldn't you know it one went and flew over (yes, that one could fly) to have a look and got shot, and the gung-ho character has now charged the position, against eight guards and a high level mage.
Against the odds three of the guards have now been slain or incapacitated by this character. To fix things the remaining players should get the lord up to declare his identity, (but I'm not banking on it). However, they only have seconds to act, and that enchanter by rights should do something that could not only kill the character attacking, but the lord as well -which will mess with my plot, in no small way.
But I'll manage. I'm not actually asking for help, I was trying to establish if this occurred in other peoples games or not -almost out of interest.
Judd:
Mr. Muse,
Hi, I'm Judd. What is your name?
When I GM lately it is mostly Burning Wheel and Apocalypse World. In these games, I never try to guess what the players will do. I set up a situation that usually starts off simple and through character actions becomes nice and complicated. I have no idea what they will do or how they will react.
I think there are a few things that need defining and discussing.
In my system narrative is king
What does that mean to you? Does this mean results of die rolls are disregarded? Is the system your GMing or the game mechanics as written?
Author my own plots.
What do you use for inspiration? Where do these plots come from? I get that some of them come from the character's actions in the game.
For example, in Burning Wheel, I build the going's on in the adventure based on the character's beliefs, instincts and traits.
Having peaked at the web site linked above, are all of the characters cursed by the gods and thus shunned by their friends and family?
Ron Edwards:
Hey guys,
He's Simon! Already signed off as such. Y'all are missing that for some reason.
Simon, go with what Judd's asking. It's kind of a big deal. And welcome; it's great to see this kind of topic here.
Also, I'll be moving this thread to Game Development in a day or so, where it belongs. No big deal though.
Best, Ron
Unforgivingmuse:
Thanks Ron, I'm realising that my actual question is less relevant to this discussion, than how my system mechanic relates to a narrative form of play. I can see why that might interest people.
Judd, thanks for taking an interest. Tefr is not simply a mechanic, it is a mechanic embedded firmly in a world. There is a great deal of history, both mythological and political, as well as a current world landscape. It has been written in such a way that it all provides a lot of plot hooks for game masters to use for larger or medium plot arcs. Character level plot arcs are more standard much as you do with your Burning Wheel system, but clearly it will also be shaped by the larger story.
The system itself, is a more or less familiar percentile system, anyone who has toyed with Chaosium games in the past could pick it up rapidly. The magic is fairly unusual though, but fits strongly with the world.
Die rolls are necessary, but only combat needs them intensively, and I don't personally put a lot of combat into my scenarios -some, but I prefer to use other forms of conflict and a lot of focus is on character interaction. That said, the system could quite happily be used in a more game oriented way.
As for authoring my own plots, that is what I do: I'm an animator, illustrator, and writer, ideas make me a living. Thinking about characters for books is not so different to those in a scenario, you throw a situation at them and you imagine how they will respond to it. Sometimes I'm inspired by reading real history, local myths or legends, but a lot simply flows from the Tefr world as I'm musing it over.
The gods' curses are pretty much the premise for the player characters, it's what sets them apart from the rest of humanity. It is not an absolute rule -all rules are there to be broken- however, it can give the characters a slight advantage over their non-cursed fellows, and it leads to a lot of good roleplaying. I'll start a separate thread about that, it's what needs a thorough playtesting.
Simon
Erik Weissengruber:
Someone in internet land coined the term "ludic peripety" to specify that kind of randomly produced sudden change in a game's fiction that still has meaning.
If I do a move in Apocalypse World I could cream an NPC from a long ways away with my sniper rifle OR do it and give myself away, OR bring hell on myself and never nick the target.
One roll will determine that.
In this game you don't bring things to dice resolution without the expectation that there will be an unpredictable outcome dictated by the game's mechanics (the "ludic" bit, the play with the dice), and that sharp or sudden reversals will be interesting (like the plot reversals or "peripetia" that Aristotle mentions in his discussion of dramatic plots).
Raw chance won't.
My recent play with 4E (largely satisfying but I don't like the D&D colour enough to stay in) saw both Crits and Fumbles and both were really dramatic. BAM! 1st level loser bites it and I need a re-roll. WHACK! That's how my Eladrin puts petty humans in their places!
However, I knew that my character was under fire and underpowered and that any violent confrontation could bring glory or defeat.
Players have to know what chances they are taking and what those chances mean in a particular game.
Some folks I played Burning Empires with did not like the fact that scrabbling for bounus dice and giving help only shifted the chances of being successful in the grand strategy maneuvers that cap a BE session. For me, that's what I feel a lot of politics is like: you scramble, scheme, plan but in the end the goddess of Fortune has a lot to do with deciding who wins and who loses. But that grand strategy level won't bring an end to a campaign. It records twists and turns and tells us how close we are to ending a Phase and on whose terms that end will be decided.
But in both games the chances I took as a player were made with full awareness of an enthusiastic acceptance of the kind of chances offered in each of those particular games and those presented to the PCs by the fiction.
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