[Pitfighter] SBP: is there anything better to roll for than success?
Anders Gabrielsson:
I forgot to mention one thing that makes Smallville interesting in this context: it puts weight on things that are internal to the characters more than on their capabilities. When you're playing a game like that it matters less if you can't affect the plot because you can focus on how the plot affects you.
David Berg:
I can't really infer anything from those accounts about how well the relationships and the GM plots get along. This, though:
Quote from: Anders Gabrielsson on December 01, 2011, 06:19:56 AM
I forgot to mention one thing that makes Smallville interesting in this context: it puts weight on things that are internal to the characters more than on their capabilities. When you're playing a game like that it matters less if you can't affect the plot because you can focus on how the plot affects you. (Emphasis mine. -D.B.)
That is a great way to tie this all back to the beginning of this thread.
My brainstorming here has mostly been about general types of resolution outcomes. I think the question now is, how can these be used to support SBP play specifically? How do they help players contribute their own unique reflections and twists on the fiction and GM plot to date?
Given that resolution mechanics, among other functions, tell us what to pay attention to, and when, I think that's where we'll find our answers.
How:
First, a quick observation on how resolution mechanics elicit a given type of contribution:
We can be reminded to contribute stuff we might otherwise forget. (Cyberpunk 2020: Next to the Perception score I'm about to roll, I see that the score factors in my Low Light Eye Implants.)
We can be required to contribute stuff we might not naturally bother with. (Swords Without Master: You can't narrate at all without first rolling to establish whether the tone of your narration will be Grim or Jovial.)
We can be rewarded for contributing stuff we might otherwise value. (Smallville: Address your relationship with the highest attached die, and you gt to roll that die toward success in your action.)
On the Fruitful Void front, the objective here is to supplement narrative contributions rather than supplant them. Grim/Jovial can act as a creative constraint and springboard. You don't get to decide for yourself whether the event is grim or jovial, which is a sort of loss, but you have plenty of other things to decide and relate, and working the established to into those other things can be a fun challenge.
What:
I think Anders' point about "internal to the characters" is a nice match for the "reflection and twist" I've been talking about. I actually think we can extend that from "what do the characters think about all this now?" to "what do the players think?" Of the techniques I mentioned in my second post, I think all of them fall under this umbrella. Processing, theorizing, and curiosity can all be expressed in or out of character. Emotional response is more in-character, and fishing is more out of character, but I don't see any hard lines.
Let me demonstrate all this with an example of a requirement:
You jump for the truck! The GM will decide whether you make it or not. Before they can decide, however, you must roll accordingly on the Reflection Table:
Character's current state: 1d10
Story tone: 1d10+10
Relevance of earlier events: 1d10+20
Anticipation of future events: 1d10+30
And then each entry on the Reflection Table has some game/plot-relevant focus for the resulting narration. Like, if I roll "27 - paranoia", I think of an earlier event that makes my character anxious, and I connect that to my current truck-jumping via whatever links I prefer -- mood, motivation, flashback, etc.
The GM then incorporates all this narration into their decision of whether the action succeeds or fails, and how, and why, and what else is revealed in the process. Maybe something is recorded that affects the GM's prep for next session.
That was an inelegant example, but hopefully it illustrates various possibilities.
Here's a simpler option:
Tell the GM one question you'd like to ask them, and how your current action relates to that. If the GM is psyched about your question, you succeed. If the GM isn't interested in your question, you fail.
When:
Part of the question "is there anything better to roll for than success?" is, "is there any time that's better to roll than when a character tries to do something?"
"Character tries something" has all sorts of utility as a mechanics trigger, but in SBP specifically, I think the utility comes down to "a situation that arises in the fiction that we can easily recognize". I suspect that anything that meets that criteria should be actionable, and I think we have some fun options.
(You could do "a situation that arises at the table that we can easily recognize" too, but that risks rules-leading boardgamey territory as mentioned earlier.)
Example:
During char-gen, you pick 3 adjectives that define your character. Then, you (perhaps with the help of the whole group) classify 3 situations that will ideally show those qualities to an audience. Those are the situations in which you engage your character-focused mechanics.
From my vague memory of Die Hard, John McClane is Heckled, Ornery, and Tough, and these are shown in situations of Unpleasant Duty, Social Conflict, and Violence. So you'd roll whenever your McClane character enters one of those situations.
If you had 4 player characters, that's 12 situations, which might sound like a challenge to recognize at first, but hey, remembering 7 in Apocalypse World isn't hard, so I'm optimistic.
So that's a trigger for resolution of character-based stuff. Let's look over my full list of what sorts of things one might resolve. I'll see if I can provide an appropriate trigger example for each:
1) Coloring events. Game or group defines what sorts of events deserve additional exploration of color. "Whenever you enter a new location", "Whenever anyone dies", "Whenever magic is used", etc.
2) Resolving fictional positioning. Whenever a character stands to gain, lose, or change. Probably whittled down to the types of gain/loss/change relevant to the particular type of plot.
3) Adding context. Not sure. Whenever something random happens? Whenever someone (in or out of character) asks "Why?"
4) Manipulating the medium. This one is challenging to tie to the fiction. The Romeo and Juliet formula tied style of presentation to tone of fictional content -- crazy jump cut camera-voguing for action scenes, naturalism for quiet reflective scenes. You'd probably have to tie moods to events associated with them. Example: roll the "medium change" dice when there's an Intimate Moment, a Desperate Gambit, or Death is On the Line.
5) Developing character. Covered above.
6) Relating participants to fictional elements. Any time a new element is introduced. Any time an old element takes on new relevance. Might wanna whittle down "elements" into types, like Person, Place, Object.
7) Refining possibility space. This is a natural fit for crisis points, when conflicts of interest cannot build any further, and something has to give.
contracycle:
I'm a little concerned that this is heading generally in a direction that IMO goes rather to far in eliminating player input to situation. I don't really want to shift player decision and character action so far away from what is going on. It may be true that I want to be able, as GM, to specify that the truck gets away, but I don't think that means, say, that I want to shift the question of whether a character can gun down one of the goons defending it away from a putative "shoot people" score and onto a "why I want to shoot people" score.
One of my interests in all of this is to approach a kind of historical simulation. I'd be interested in exploring historical situations in a way that allows players to live the experience in much the way that the people there at the time did. This means that they do really need to be able to act in ways that bear directly on the situation. I'm not averse to some of the shift into a characters perceptions and internal processes and so on, but I don't want to eliminate the directly situational concerns. The players have to have buy in to the thing that matter in the situation.
David Berg:
I'm with you. I don't want to minimize "what is going on right now" either. Do you think what I've been exploring here will do that?
I have two thoughts on that:
1) Is it really that different?
In a typical task resolution system, I get to decide "I will attempt to jump onto the truck", which is already significant in that it's dictating a direction for the fiction different from if I had done something else. Further, I get some say over whether that attempt succeeds, in the form of spending resources, calling on my character's strengths, describing positioning in order to lobby for situational bonuses, etc. However, all this influence I have is fed into a whirlwind of social and systemic interpretation -- do you actually get to roll for that, does this bonus actually apply here, oops you rolled badly, etc.
In what I'm proposing, the significance of choosing to attempt action is unchanged, and the influence over success is still present but muddy. It's just a different kind of muddy.
Trying to show the GM all the cool ways I'll interface with their plot if they let me catch the truck doesn't strike me as any less meaningful than trying to show the GM why my position on the staircase qualifies as a Height Advantage.
2) I've tried having no influence over success in small doses, and liked it
When I run Delve, there are encounters with knowns and unknowns. Sometimes the players do a lot of planning, sometimes they do very little. But there's always some moment where the players will just try something, without knowing much about it. I'd say these moments are characterized by fear, anticipation, and extreme attention to the GM's feedback as it's delivered. As long as I'm not a dick, it's super fun, and well-suited to SBP.
What do you think? Am I missing your point?
Callan S.:
Are you sure that's an example of no influence? In a 4E recent lair assault game, the players made this big plan to cross a chasm of lava to get to the door on the other side. They formulate the plan, get across - fake door.
Sounds like there is no influence, except they went this way after a T intersection. So they could have gone the other way.
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