Expectations, Authority, and SIS Clash
Justin Smith:
I really like the Threat Moves! It really gives me cool images and ideas to bring into play. I am not using Countdown Clocks yet, I want to see how pieces fall together this session before I create one. I have some rough ideas sketched out, but I want to see how play proceeds first.
As an MC, I am having a lot of fun. Though I'm kinda feeling overwhelmed at times (5 players, is a lot for me), but the moves helped a lot in that regard. If I begin to feel like its too much, I can just look down and go BAM! with something cool.
For an MC stand point, the Hx questions plays into how I use moves to pits the players interests against each. At the end of a session, they looked at who spent the most time with each other, and did things together. So they were referencing in game events. But hey, this is from an MC P.O.V.
On the advancement, I've been listening to what they think is cool and foreshadowing peoples advancements, so that when they unlock having a gang, the possibility of one would've been announced.
Ah! I forgot to the highlighting at the beginning of a session! My bad.
Irminsul:
Weird. This somehow turned into a "help my AW game" thread, which isn‘t the issue. The game is fine and I‘m enjoying myself! So I don't think prep has much to do with expectations or SIS clash. Although it might be a symptom of Authority issues?
But, I’ll devolve here and say that on the prep side: I think you are being a little, not dishonest, Justin but maybe obfuscating what is happening in “prep“. Mainly because you've admitted to me that you don't prep per se. You see prep as a potential railroad and avoid it. I think you daydream, but an actual Front is not something you've written out as far as I know.
But again I feel that is a complete side issue, at least as far as I'm concerned. I think that this symptom is actually one of Justin's great strengths as a Game Master: his ability to run completely un-prepped, completely on the fly, and by the seat of his pants. He is never caught with his pants down because he can't be! Again: this is a strength!
I'm talking about the Authority to enforce tone specifically. Or maybe genre color. SIS stuff. Like we are all on different pages so what the SIS "looks" like is a jumble of silly, absurd, serious, over-the-top, realistic, et cetera and my expectations, meaning what I expected the game to be about, color, or even genre, are then not met.
Like how I read Apocalypse World and had a vastly different view than Justin did: he saw grindhouse over-the-top blood and guts crazy absurdity; I saw specifically the part that said: “make the characters seem real” as I quoted in the OP. Therefore my expectations were not met.
I believe Justin just "goes with the flow" and adds to whatever the players are doing. If they are being crazy cannibal killers then he accommodates for that and gives the players “what they want“. This can be a good thing! But sometimes it is dizzying to me, to me, because it turns the fiction into a jumble of visions that don't mesh, for me.
Partially this is due to expectations as I said earlier.
For example we played Sorcerer for maybe 30 minutes until the game fell apart. Justin and I have discussed this and I’m not blaming anyone here. But I think what happened was everyone heard “Demon” and thought scary monster that wants to eat souls, kill people, whatever. In actuality I am now thinking that Demons could have wants to help people, or save kittens, or seek knowledge or whatever. All of those “could” get a character in trouble - which I think is the point. Like I said: we didn’t exactly get to play long before our characters gave in to our demons and once again devolved into a gore-fest and killed NPCs and each other. I know I didn’t realize I was supposed to refuse my characters Demon, that was never stated. So we all just had fun “being evil”.
FreeMarket is another example, and maybe the best, although that would be a much longer play report. I’d be fine going into it if anyone wants. Simply put: my expectations compared to the rest of the group’s, including Justin’s, was all over the board as could be seen by what was going on in the fiction.
Irminsul:
I feel I need to state this: I also don’t want this to change into a “help Justin become a different type of GM” (note that I purposefully avoided “better“) thread. Justin is good, great even, at what he is good at which is high-octane fast-paced over-the-top action. We all have our weaknesses and strengths and styles of Gming yeah. Me, myself, and I just need to be aware of this and not expect dramatic emotional moments or difficult emotional choices -- which Justin and I have also discussed at great lengths in person. (You should see our conversation on “Does character exist?” and “Why don‘t your characters portray any emotion and why can‘t you become emotionally attached to you character and advocate for them?”).
As far as prep goes: I’d say in a favorable light that who cares if you, Justin, can’t or choose not to craft Bangs or Fronts or whatever. Maybe it just isn‘t your style. I certainly shouldn’t, even if I do, care. But…
By “obfuscating what is happening in prep“ I mean you may have overstated your actual prep. For example: you said you “foreshadow” getting gangs and such. I disagree, in as firm but nice a way as I can. For example: I reached an advance for my Chopper and I said, “hey I think I’ll take an extra 20 dudes for my biker gang”. So you had me find them as I scouted out the area the gasoline trade was going to go down. At no time before that did you say, “there is a gang of bikers out in the swamps” before I had taken that advance. Just sayin‘. This is not in any way an issue, it worked out perfectly, I’m just calling you out on what you claim you prep, and I could go on. Okay?
Another potential issue that I mentioned in the OP but didn’t expand too much on is the lack of color. We all tend to avoid, no more like forget, anything that might even resemble descriptions, which at times causes fiction confusion which then ripples into the SIS for me. I think we get caught up in the ultra violence and crazy quick pace of the games and just don‘t take time to calm down and describe stuff. I’m specifically calling this out because I feel this might be why the SIS feels so jumbled to me. Like we might make time to have a color scene occasionally or take a second or two to describe the scenes.
A great example to my mind on different expectations is our FreeMarket game. Everyone was on completely different pages in-game and out I feel:
I was playing a face-man trying to drum up patrons for our MRCZ, which was some sort of “pocket pet” thing and dealing with a rival from my past.
Eric’s character was making drugs and trying to, I dunno, get people high maybe? I think he also had a bit of a propaganda thing going on too, but I don’t recall exactly what or why.
Andrew was chasing after some lost love and a weird animal. I’m not sure what was going on there. But it seemed like he was going for something with a deeper emotional drama factor which was cool, even if it was a bit out of place.
And Jack, poor Jack, was trying to run the Printing side of things by himself and make pocket pets, you know like we were supposed to do, but everyone was doing their own thing.
See, nobody was really participating in what the MRCZ was about. What I felt the game should be focusing on, so my expectations were again not met. Even though we sat and talked about what we wanted to do before we started playing and came up with the MRCZ idea.
I honestly don’t have any clue why we would have been upgraded to the next MRCZ tier. We didn’t do what we set out to do, heck we didn‘t do much of anything useful! Other than going after strange side-plots anyway. Then there was some fictional cues that were off to me, and once again I think only me: like, for example, we shared our dorm with a group of hygiene-challenged comic book geeks and my character was killed by a plastic lightsaber. Yeah, it was funny. Maybe, again, I just wasn’t expecting absurd. But the comic book MRCZ was completely unreasonable when we/I tried to talk to them. They seemed like they were there just to be a gamer joke and were nearly sociopaths and suicidal in their actions. Again to my mind anyway.
And just to be clear: “Gonzo Apocalypse World” isn’t the issue here. I’m not saying we are playing wrong or that I’m not having fun. Not at all! But that I had different expectations. It is that I was expecting that characters would act like real people because that is what the AW book says in the player section and the MC section. At best all of the characters are caricatures. I expected, as the AW book states: for characters to be played “as though they are real people”.
Erik Weissengruber:
Kudos to alll of you for putting your table's problems out there for everyone to see.
Even if you talk out this stuff face to face later, I would like to hear your group's response to the issues raised here.
My Freemarket experience is parallel to yours. I have to get Colour agreement before I ever start running that game again. I need to share genetic engineering stuff and film clips if that's what I want to see games, and I sure want to see youtube videos of bizzare sexy performance art or twisted robot combat if that is what the players want to be doing.
hix:
Thanks for the clarification about what you want out of the thread, Irminsul. I'm not a fan of the "You're playing it wrong; I will help you" responses, either!
If it helps, with all of the questions I was asking I'm trying to visualise what happens at the table when you guys sit down to play (I sometimes find that hard to do just from reading actual play reports!). Hx, advances, and highlighting stats are all points where the game's mechanics interact with the game's fiction really lightly, and I'm just curious about whether your group responds to those moments with the same sense of tone-clash.
Again, to help me visualise things: What's it like during this game where everyone at the table, including you, thinks that what's going on in the story is awesome? When everyone agrees that (despite their differences in tone) that the story is cool or hilarious or fun? Like, what do you say to each other? How do you express your approval to each other? and what sort of events in the game trigger it?
Oh, and welcome to the Forge, Justin! (And Irminsul, if someone hasn't welcomed you before now.)
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