[Obsidian, Champs, Babylon Project] Incipient Narrativism and its discontents
David Berg:
Roger, that bit on superfunctionality is as clear and concise a take as I've ever seen on that topic. Good stuff!
Erik, I've been meaning to start a Story Before Participationist Rewards thread for a while now. If you've got some AP to start one from, please do. If not, I'll try to get to it soon. You might wanna read this and this first.
Erik Weissengruber:
I don't have much AP to add beyond my FATE and Diaspora APs and the few comments here.
And there I was just recording play experiences. I never even thought I was doing story before.
But by all means start that thread.
Erik Weissengruber:
Quote from: Erik Weissengruber on December 02, 2011, 12:44:22 PM
* Who out there has come across Participation-friendly techniques where they didn't find them?
Rewrite that as "didn't expect them"
Web_Weaver:
Quote from: Erik Weissengruber on December 02, 2011, 12:44:22 PM
* Who set out to do some Story Now, but because of some the techniques and reward mechanisms at work in a particular game, you ended up dreaming away. And liking it?
This last one has certainly happened to me. We selected a setting and general themes as a group, James Bond meets Magical Victoriana, I set up a situation which I was convinced was grabby and full of thematic choice for the characters. Chose HeroQuest as a game that supported me with player choice in conflicts. And started play clearly aiming for Story Now.
Within a single session it was very clear that the players' were giving far more focus for cool character expression and were seeing my initial mission-like setup as a fun ride. I believe it was the apparent structure of mission brief / journey with incidental intrigue and NPC introduction / arrival in enemy territory, that convinced everyone that the whole point of play was to get their action-spy-steampunk geek on, and not to engage with the difficult and situational conflicts that I had carefully arranged to confront the characters and organisation.
But it was cool, I just switched my expectations once I began to realise they were simplifying the situation and seeing the morally ambiguous stuff as just colour in a game that should be about identifying the bad guys and putting an end to their scheme. Let's face it James Bond isn't full of ambiguity so this was probably always likely without a clear "let's subvert the genre" request.
The only regret in this otherwise fun game was pointing out to a player that was sensitive to CA issues that we were clearly in functional Constuctive Denial territory BEFORE we had finished the final session. This caused unnecessary problems at the table. Nothing too serious, but enougth to wish I had kept quiet until we had finished.
Ron Edwards:
Hi everyone,
I think the thread is fragmenting a little. It might be useful to consider how many related threads are happening at once, choosing which one your idea-of-the-moment fits into best, and starting new threads when necessary. There seem to be two dedicated interests as well, (i) doing Story Now with significant setting content, and (or versus) (ii) doing some other CA with Story Before techniques of some kind, and I think it'd be helpful to remember how different they are.
decoupling Reward Systems from broad-scale Story Arcs
[Sorcerer and more] A whole lot about setting which introduces my essay Setting and emergent stories
Sandboxing - story before, story now, story after
Setting and emergent stories
[Obsidian, Champs, Babylon Project] Incipient Narrativism and its discontents
Story before: the real culprits?
How Glorantha both inspired and frustrated my play.
[Feng Shui]Stumbling into Narrativism
[D&D3.0] Zac's examples (split)
Story before, Story Now, Bunch of Crap?
Most of these are actually still current, so again, consider posting very specifically to the one you really should be enhancing, or starting new ones.
Best, Ron
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