decoupling Reward Systems from broad-scale Story Arcs
Dan Maruschak:
Dave, I think it's hard for me to talk about game design in such an abstract way. If you were trying to actually design a particular game or achieve a particular effect it might be easier to keep the conversation grounded. At a conceptual level, I think the important thing is to keep player choices and resolution system results either orthogonal to the question of plot progress (e.g. maybe there's mechanical support for having evolving relationships but nothing that affects the character's goal: the Ringbearer is guaranteed to get to Mt. Doom, but the game is about figuring out how the Fellowship feels about each other along the way) or coordinated with it in a way that's fun (e.g. a pacing or level-of-detail mechanic rather than "reality-simulator" mechanics). You don't want the game sending mixed signals.
Obviously, I think my own game Final Hour of a Storied Age does pre-outlined plot well (although it's a GM-less game and a collaboratively created plot -- I'm skeptical that it would work if you just ripped the collaborative front-end out of my game and replaced it with a GM-decided plot, I think there wouldn't be enough buy-in). A big influence for me when writing my game was thinking about the difference between writers who work to an outline and writers who do "discovery writing", which is more like normal Story Now design where you have strongly defined characters who bang up against each other and create "plot" as they go. While a discovery writer is more prepared for surprising events, an outline writer generally knows the events in the plot but is open to being surprised by things they find out about the characters or about nuances of how particular scenes play out (at least that's my opinion). In my game, players usually have only a rough sketch of the character at the end of chargen and end up getting to know the character through play by describing their actions.
I think generalized conflict mechanics (like with negotiated stakes or whatever) could work too, but you need to figure out how to make sure that the stakes people agree to aren't going to interfere with the plot. The biggest problem I have in Mouse Guard is that the rules say players are supposed to determine their own goals in a conflict, so it's hard to put a conflict in the middle of the GM's turn because the players may not say they want the thing you think they should want. In general, I've grown kind of skeptical of negotiated stakes games (and they seem to be less popular in more modern indie games) because determining "good" stakes is something that seems to take a lot of skill or at least good storytelling instincts. I think there's potentially a way to work with slightly more mechanically discrete stakes that you could "open up" as the story progresses (e.g. killing a named NPC isn't allowed until Act II, killing a major villain isn't allowed until Act III, etc.). This could potentially give your story-builder some building blocks to work with that they could accurately determine whether they were sufficiently stable to build plot contingencies on. (I haven't really thought this through in too much depth).
Callan S.:
I think Filips outline is one that can possibly exist and could possibly be the case here. If it is the case yet is covered up for being called rude to talk about, that is a dire situation.
Ron: I'm not sure what you mean by preferences in regards to Filip's post? If it's along the lines of my question below, as to why roleplay when you could read aloud to a select group a text you've written? It seems a valid issue? Some desires just can't be forfilled by roleplay - roleplay can't do everything, of course.
David Berg:
Gareth, I think I follow you. So, as part of the GM's endeavor to tell the players what constraints they're operating within scene by scene, a cutaway is one more tool in the toolkit. It may be more fun and more elegant than simply saying, "Okay, guys, don't room near the starliner's reactor core."
Planning such cutaways as part of prep allows/requires the GM to put some thought into what the relevant constraints will be before the chaos of actual play. There are all sorts of options -- a list of planned cutaways could be a way to manifest plot points, or it could be a call for additional, supplementary plot points to fill in gaps.
It also fits well with Todd's "make a movie" focus on an imaginary audience.
contracycle:
Callan, there's a big difference between saying "I've had negative experiences with this sort of thing" and saying "the people who do this sort of thing are a type with some sort of malevolent personality problem. I have never disputed that plenty of people HAVE had bad experiences, and I've also said that most of the existing GM advice as to how to do this sort of thing have played a big role in that. What I dispute is the attribution of intentionality.
David, yes that's it. Now the larger point is this: those cutaways are useful primarily because the help frame the at-the-table activity in the context of existing task resolution systems. That is, to some extent - how much of an extent I'm not yet sure - they are solving a problem that arises precisely because the rest of the system is based on the world physics model.
As you say, the cutaway serves to communicate the existence of constraints scene-by-scene, while the boxes-and-arrows example I gave previously was an attempt to imagine how the same sort of constraints could be communicated action-by-action. It is that function of communication that I think will be key to properly facilitating story-before games.
The cutaways example and Todd's wagon-chase example both rely expressly on a cinematic convention that is commonly shared by players and GM's, and that provides a framework in which a working relationship can be conceived and understood. But there are a lot of other situations in which the conventions are not so widely understood. For example, if you project the game into an alien society where the rules of appropriate conduct are quite different to those in our world, there is always the danger that players acting with perfectly good intentions will do things that will, should, must trigger extreme responses that can derail the planned story. Say, a player does something which breaks the law in a manner that appears trivial to us but is serious in context lese-majesty being a prime example. The response required could have such negative consequences that it effectively hijacks the direction of play. PC1 insults the king and gets thrown in the Tower, PC's 2 and 3 plot to free him before he gets beheaded. Even if they succeed, whatever mission or direction they had been working towards before is now redirected to a game of "being outlaws". The GM either intervenes, or tosses their prep in the bin.
So my general thrust is this: just as story-now had to break away from the quest for system to "better model reality" and instead discover "how to preserve protagonism and agency", I think story-before will have to figure out "how to communicate scope and constraint". Maybe not only that, but I think it's going to be a necessary part of it. Todd does this explicitly, the cutaways do it implicitly - how can it be done systematically?
Callan S.:
Gareth, I don't know Filips intent in his post, but I didn't read any description by him of negative intents. The road to hellish gaming is paved with good intentions. To me, Filip is just describing the details of the paving stones. If Filip's been judgemental, just ignore that part of the post, because the rest simply describes circumstances and, by my estimate, is quite important to consider.
Filip, sorry to keep talking about you in the third person reference.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page