[Pitfighter] SBP: is there anything better to roll for than success?
David Berg:
"SBP" stands for Story Before Participationism. It's basically gaming where (a) the GM makes certain things unavoidably happen in play as a part of getting across a "story" (by which I mean a plot, experience, or other sort of vision) they've conceived, and (b) the players are aware of this and are engaged in contributing meaningfully to that story.
In this thread about SBP, Frank T. made an interesting assertion that rolling dice for momentary success and failure of character actions can be fun even in a context where major plot points are never in doubt. You can't stop the jewel thieves' escape, but you can reveal your character in ways that enrich the story, or all sorts of other good things.
So what play contributions qualify here as good things? One way to look at it is that they ought to offer meaningful reflections of both the GM's planned content and the content of the fiction to date. A reflection, in this sense, means expressing a unique interpretation of what's come before, and a unique choice of what can and should follow. This needn't be explained (and is probably better if it isn't), but it does need to be expressed. Frank's Star Wars game provides a perfect example, when the Han Solo clone sells out the Alliance. That player saw a Star Wars in which that can happen, and through her actions got everyone else to see it too.
So, here's the question for this thread: Yes, rolling for success can produce these good things. But are there better ways to produce them in more regular and rewarding fashion?
David Berg:
In high school and college, I ran a homebrew I called Pitfighter. It was a severely abashed Story Before Illusionist game, using resolution rules derived from AD&D2. The particular kick I was high on at the time as GM was "my world, my conspiracies". I'd filled the globe with cool factions doing various covert things to rule the world. The players' job was to discover enough of my hidden info to save the world. Which I pretty much ensured, doling out reveals at just the right moments to elicit gasps and outcry.
None of that had anything to do with the dice. The PCs winning a fight or picking a lock just determined how much I'd need to intervene to get the PCs to the next reveal.
The players eventually realized that the game was most fun when they engaged with my world and my conspiracies, and they found various ways to do this. Giving emotional responses to my reveals. Asking questions and expressing curiosity about my facts and factions mentioned but not yet seen. Theorizing about how my world worked and what must also be true based on what they knew. Processing what had just happened, providing their unique stories and takes on what had happened, what it all meant, and how it all mattered. Proposing additional material to me by fishing around for it in-character.
Again, no connection to the dice. I maximized the emotional responses by timing my managing my reveals. I rewarded fishing that matched my vision of my world with free resources. Processing, theorizing, and curiosity all tended to happen after some conversation with some NPC, and en route to a decision about what to do next or how to prepare for what they'd do next.
We stuck with the dice because they performed several important functions. They took the social responsibility for simply deciding "You succeed" or "You fail" off of anyone at the table. (Well, most of the time. When I couldn't let something succeed, I had various techniques for that, most of which seem weak now.) They created anticipation and suspense, as they were picked up, shaken, and rolled. Whenever the extremely unlikely happened, it was neat to be greeted by a situation we wouldn't simply have come up with ourselves.
That's all good generic "play a game instead of just making stuff up". But it has nothing to do with Story Before, nor with the Illusionism I practiced then and the Participationism I'm interested in now. There's got to be a more optimal solution, right? There's got to be a better way of looking at what to resolve, and how to go about resolving it, and how to view outcomes, and what outcomes to produce. A way that inspires meaningful, reflective interactions between the players, the GM's plot, and the fiction thus far.
Whatcha got?
stefoid:
I use the example of the rickety, decrepit rope bridge across the chasm to get to the castle. Theres no other way around, the bridge must be crossed, but for some reason a challenge is warranted. Perhaps a character is afraid of heights , or overloaded with loot or something else that makes rolling worthwhile ( as opposed to narrating crossing the bridge and etting on with it).
So we're rolling, but failure isnt an option - a character falling to their death on the results of a dice roll isnt acceptable. So we dont roll for WHAT happens (as in, does the character get across the bridge at all) -- we know they do, thats a given. We roll for HOW. In what manner does the character proceed across the bridge? Do they conquer their fear and stride across? Or must they be carried at great inconvenience and humiliation? Do they manage to get their great sack of loot across or is something dropped, never to be recovered?
So your SBP is like one giant bridge - you pretty much know WHAT is going to happen, your just looking for those points where HOW is important, and focusing on those moments.
David Berg:
Steve, yeah, game-appropriate measures of HOW could definitely be a good thing to resolve! In my Pitfighter game, I'm not sure what that'd be. Maybe how much a character behaved like a given faction? (Domineering vs manipulative, perhaps? Using murder or using misinformation?)
Here's a thought:
In many RPGs, a mechanical resolution produces an outcome. Player creativity then fills out the details of how that outcome specifically occurs; that is, what it looks like. These details are mere color, with the outcome itself being the fuel for the next situation of play.
What if we exactly inverted that? Mechanically resolve color, and then player creativity fills out the details of success/failure? Because, in SBP play, the outcomes of character tasks don't have to be the main ingredient for subsequent situations. In fact, the purpose of play might come across more clearly if they aren't. An alternative is to look at it as the GM's plot dictating situations, and the characters' progress in that plot only that dictates the next situation.
So, in my Pitfighter game, what mattered was progress in the characters' understanding of my factions and their schemes. Where they were along that arc dictated what situation could happen next. So, if we're going to give the dice a similar role to the one they perform in most "roll to succeed/fail" RPGs, the appropriate thing here would be to "roll to advance your understanding or not".
What if, whenever you had a chance to learn truth or be fooled, there was a fun mechanic for that? And everything else was just "say what happens"? That might be putting the focus in just the right place.
Ron Edwards:
Stephen,
I am concerned that you have not yet processed Story Before as a concept. Here and as I now realize, in your previous thread, your description is way, way too broad - it basically says, "When the GM puts in important stuff happening." That is not what I mean by those terms.
Story Before means the players have no power whatsoever over the story. They get to be in the story, and that is all. So this is a double-check - are you sure you're really getting this?
It's an important issue. I'm just now working up some pretty massive posts about it. I'm worried that you're lunging forward without internalizing the single most important point.
Story Before does not merely mean "prep cool things to happen." It means prepping cool things to result, during play, from what happens.
Best, Ron
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page