Lamentations of the Flame Princess is made of lies
C. Edwards:
Quote from: contracycle on October 14, 2011, 03:50:48 PM
But instead, they jettisoned the very idea of the beautiful vs. grotesque completely in favour of a knowing, detached cynicism. So the contradiction between you and the players didn't result in a refinement or negotiation or evolution or sharing of ideas about what you had originally envisioned, but the need to completely ditch all that stuff and find something new.
I'm not so sure about that. I mean sure, they seem to be starting off cautiously, detached and cynical even. But as play proceeds, emotional investment builds, and new situations and crisis present themselves it becomes "okay, what about NOW!". Maybe the detached cynicism is reinforced, maybe it isn't. It seems to me that the whole point is that the players get to decide what their characters find beautiful or precious enough try and save when faced with blood-drenched, life-stealing horror. Some days you scramble away in a desperate attempt to save your own skin, other days something possesses you and you can't stand to leave another innocent person behind to face the darkness alone.
David Berg:
Quote from: lumpley on October 14, 2011, 07:17:20 AM
I don't think a simple instruction would do, no, and in fact that instruction might already be in the text. Simple instructions aren't game design.
Gotcha. I didn't know whether or not there might be something in the design that would work in tandem with such an instruction to produce what you were going for. I'll be curious to hear your eventual takeaways on the synergy between LotFP's rules and GM text.
lumpley:
Hey so "grotesque and beautiful" is really doing it for me:
I thought I would be in charge of what's grotesque and what's beautiful, and what it means, in the game.
I thought that the PCs would be neutral in grotesque/beautiful terms, vulnerable to both the grotesquerie and the beauty that it'd be my job to introduce.
But Eppy created a character who is provocative in grotesque/beautiful terms, thereby making himself an active participant in the grotesque/beautiful game I thought I'd be playing by myself.
The game's rules backed Eppy (by default, but nevertheless): they made his provocative character just as competent and self-possessed as all the others, without warning Eppy that by crossing out of grotesque/beautiful neutrality he was crossing into MY territory.
His character wasn't and isn't a problem herself, but she revealed that Eppy wants to play the grotesque/beautiful game with me.
Is THAT a problem? Well, I hadn't expected it. I was startled!
Everybody with me now? More or less?
My choice at that moment was to (a) explicitly cut Eppy out of participation in the grotesque/beautiful game, forcing him to reimagine his rules-affirmed non-problematic character, to protect the play dynamic I'd imagined for myself in my private head; or (b) accept Eppy as a participant, accept that hey, we're playing the grotesque/beautiful game together, I'm not playing it by myself, and figure out what that'd mean for the play dynamic, and especially for my own prep going forward.
In the moment, I chose (b), but without having any clear idea what it would mean. I wasn't confident that anything could reconcile my vision with the reality of the game. I had this immediate hint about Vance, but it took me a couple of days to figure out that oh, Vance is what reconciles them. If I prep like I were Vance, instead of prepping like it were Dogs in the Vineyard, I'll still be introducing a ton of grotesque and a (smaller) ton of beauty, just as I hoped, but everyone will get to play the game with me.
Which is exactly what happened!
What I find most provocative, though, is this: in retrospect, of course Lamentations of the frickin' Flame Princess would want a solid dose of Vance. Of course it would! The fact that I arrived at Vance mid-setup instead of setting out with Vance in mind suggests to me that Lamentations' game design is a deeper, stronger channel than I took it for.
-Vincent
JimLotFP:
Can you define what exactly you mean when you say Vance?
lumpley:
Maybe. I can try.
By "Vance" I mean selfish NPCs who put their own personal comfort and convenience at the center of the moral world, and a moral world that doesn't systematically contradict them. That, in fact, doesn't have a moral center at all, but allows all interactions to run their course without comment.
So for an example, imagine a vampire-hag who comes into the children's bunkhouse at the new moon. Imagine the PCs waiting there to confront her, and unshuttering their lanterns when they hear her feeding.
In a straight-up horror game, I have her look up at them, mouth dripping gore, eyes scorching, hissing, full of hunger and hate and revealing something more deeply rotten in the world than just herself. She's caught out in her evil, so maybe she attacks, or flees, or laughs, or puts their lights out with her power, or changes form, or something, right?
In a Vance-esque game, I have her look up at them, mouth dripping gore, eyes scorching, and she hisses "put out your lights! They disturb my doings and I find your scrutiny offensive."
Her relationship with the moral world is different, and thus, the way I think of her and handle her as GM is different. Does this make sense at all? I'm really not confident that I can explain it.
-Vincent
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