How Glorantha both inspired and frustrated my play.
Web_Weaver:
Story before
Have been reading David's thread:
Decoupling Reward Systems from broad-scale Story Arcs
And Ron's thread:
Incipient Narrativism and its discontents
In the latter I asked if Story Before as a term has any real use outside of the context of Story Now?
I'm, going to try and rephrase that more reflexively.
When I read David's description of Story Before Participationism, I can recognise at least a semi-functional play style, but it reminds me of many games that looking back were often doomed to fail. In my experiences as soon as the GM starts to construct more than a loose structure of a story that he becomes invested in, everyone else has to invest in it for things not to degenerate, and I have yet to see this happen in a way that I can have any fun.
As a GM with this kind of goal I had to spend a lot of time persuading and explaining in what was effectively a soft force manner. And, as a player I had to curtail my own idea of character or situation to fall in with the often less inspiring notions of the game.
So example: I am going to talk about Glorantha as if you know this stuff, trust me on this it isn't that vital if the names don't make much sense.
I remember being very inspired by a Gloranthan character of mine. This was mainly due to the 100 word method of Character Creation.
Hero-wars kind of encouraged you right from the off to move your character out of the standard Gloranthan tropes. The way for example, that characters could be equally effective even when they weren't dedicated members of a cult structure aiming at 'Rune Status,' which was pretty much the point of Runequest, made me very excited.
So I picked a loner character, an Orlanthi focused on wilderness aspects who had no aspiration to move behind initiate status, but was interested in other forms of magic.
As his character developed in play he became very focused on two related things, a fascination with water as a symbol of magic, and a recognition that in his homeland of Furthest, water was also a potential rallying call for otherwise unrelated groups to unite against the nominally occupying Lunars.
My story itch ran wild, I could imagine my character going in several directions and none of them ending well for him, he was almost certainly going to be pulled apart by forces greater than him if he had the courage to take his ideas forward. In all of my Roleplaying experiences I have never been as excited by potential as that moment. And of course it was doomed to fail miserably because the GM wasn't running a Story Now game. I could't even express the idea to him, because putting it into tangible story arc form was inherently limiting and not 'the exiting thing'.
In trying to explain it later to the GM I picked on one idea that could have happened. My character could have become a shining example of inclusive humanism (not quite the term because he would be including non-humans but you get the drift) that was at the same time xenophobic to the point of fascism to outsiders, that's never going to end well for the character. His response was that in order for that cool story to have happened I would have had to explain it to him ahead of time so that he could bring it into play. It isn't easy to explain that by doing this I would have been limiting the potential into a pre-prepared story.
Web_Weaver:
So returning to the question. To me the term story before implies that before we begin the exploration we have already narrowed down the options for play.
It doesn't matter if the ideas that inform the narrow choices are collaborative or even player focused, what mattes is that before we start we have removed a whole load of possibilities and throughout the multiple sessions this narrowing will probably occur multiple times.
It's the point at which you prune that makes all the difference. If you prune before play then you will never have the experience of watching the tree grow naturally.
So I would see Story Before Participationist as possible only if everyone gets to prune before play, which seems to limit the idea of exploration, or if during a play session everyone gets to have input into the next pruning, which could very easily result in unsatisfying compromise play unless everyone is bought into a very strong vision. And a strong single vision is kind anathema to the idea of exciting potential.
I am aware I am viewing this through a narrow lens of Story Now, but I can't see any way of marrying this idea with any other type of play I have experienced. All of the functional Runequest or Call of Cthulu, or even non Story Now HeroQuest I have ever played or run has been much more based on aiming towards a preconceived climax. To me that's not Story Before, that's Story Structure as a framework for exploration of character. Where is the participation in that?
Ron Edwards:
Hi,
Great topic. I'm posting to let you know that I have plenty to say about this, although I'm not able to devote time to it for a little while.
Best, Ron
Abkajud:
Web,
I don't think you're defining Story Now too loosely at all - - if players cannot freely make decisions about where they want to take things in terms of theme, it cannot be Story Now.
It seems to be possible that pre-determined events (but not outcomes) can be a feature of Story Now play without turning it into something else. The game Montsegur 1244, for example [http://thoughtfulgames.com/montsegur1244/] has a relatively "staged" plot:
"Montsegur 1244 is a tragedy in four acts... The acts are:
Prologue: The Assassination in Avignonet
Act One: The Siege Begins
Act Two: Winter Hardships...."
And so forth. In short, the game comes pre-packed with specific, if large-scale, events that serve as a backdrop to the smaller, personal stories that get swept up in the tide of war and politics. It's a bit like Polaris, but with even more of a "so, you're probably gonna die. What do you do?" theme going on.
It's not about "who's framing the plot?" per se; it's about "can the players react to events however they wish?" That's the real takeaway for Story Now, but again, only with regard to tackling theme.
Callan S.:
Quote
So I would see Story Before Participationist as possible only if everyone gets to prune before play, which seems to limit the idea of exploration, or if during a play session everyone gets to have input into the next pruning, which could very easily result in unsatisfying compromise play unless everyone is bought into a very strong vision. And a strong single vision is kind anathema to the idea of exciting potential.
Yeah, but you have to think in the context of not having authored at all, before, only ever passive audience to books. But now you can suddenly author AND you have an audience. It seems incredibly exciting and the pruning and strong vision seem a great new thing in contrast with having, for years and years, merely being a reader of books. Compared to all those years, it seems alot more 'now'.
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