How Glorantha both inspired and frustrated my play.
Paul Czege:
The idea of "pruning" as a fundamental contribution is pretty thought provoking. A lot of the conflicts the first time I ever played Universalis were about what should not be allowed in the story. The mechanics worked brilliantly for this, and the resulting story was pretty powerful. In conch-style games that give players uncontestable full-bore story power I've seen a lot of ridiculous stories that players try to convince themselves are awesome. Why are there so few games that recognize the importance of "everyone gets to prune"?
Paul
contracycle:
Well, my first response to this is to think, more or less, "so what". OK, so, this isn't for you - that's fine, nobody is forcing you to play this way, I hope, so what does it matter?
Taking your last point less flippantly, I think you're raising a question about what the agenda is. I don't think that SBP is a "story based" agenda in the same way that Story Now is. In fact I see no reason for making reference to story in this context at all. As you say, the story structure really just serves as a platform for the exploration of character - or, indeed, setting or situation. I'm quite conscious of the fact that I borrow from story structure, like the idea of the three act play, not to really "tell a story" as such but in order to provide a somewhat directed play experience. The story in this case is a means, not an end.
Abkajud:
So does pruning mean veto power, or the ability to go back and retroactively remove things from the "pool" of available subjects, setting elements, etc.?
@Contra:
Eero has written some interesting stuff about the utility of ignoring the nature of emerging events of play as "narrative", in that it can change the players' priorities from playing the game to "getting the story right".
This happened to one of my players yesterday in a session of Apocalypse World - - John, playing Rue (a Gunlugger), was debating whether to follow Diamond (the Chopper) into the cave to chase after Old Hugo, a sickly villager who turned out to be a sleeper agent for the local warlord. (Oh, and John is super-new to RPGs - he'd played D&D3 previously, but before this game, that was all.)
Me: "Well, you did whang your head pretty hard on that rock; you're at 6 o'clock. Do you want to go with Diamond?"
John: "I'm kind of afraid of getting hurt even worse. But, you know, if I stay behind, I'm kind of writing myself out of the story."
Me: "Maybe, yeah. But try not to think about that so much as what you, John, want to get out of this session. What seems more interesting to you?"
John: "Checking out the cave."
Me: "Boo [the Angel, back in town] can patch you up if you need it, too."
John: "Yeah, that's true. Ok, I'm in."
Obviously, if I hadn't said anything, he would have done the same thing. But I think it's important to make it clear to everyone in Story Now play that they don't have to follow "hooks", or "stay with the party", or anything, if they don't wish to.
If anything, I'd say that SBP is an example of play in which the "story" or "plot" is absolutely paramount (as, likely, one person took the time to write it up and then "install" the characters in it), and if you don't engage with the material as/when it's presented, it's like playing Pac Man by putting a quarter in and then walking away from the machine. There's an expectation that if you sit down for some Story Before that you at least broadly understand how it works; if you know this but choose not to act accordingly, you're ignoring the social contract of play.
Ron Edwards:
Hey everyone,
The trouble is that we have two very, very different topics at hand.
1. My setting essay is strictly and only from within the desire to play Story Now. I wrote it for people who have no idea what Creative Agenda is, no interest in anything except the one that they want, in this case, Narrativist, and quite likely, no real contact with systemic thinking except for various catch-phrases from RPG books. It is not supposed to be a comparative treatise at the level of CA. It’s about getting detailed settings and certain texts to work for Story Now play.
Before anyone wrinkles their noses at me for being so limited in outlook, I want to point out that people have been asking me for years to provide exactly such a techniques-based discussion of ways to achieve a given Creative Agenda goal, without reference to other ones, without any discussion at that level.
2. Therefore, “Story Before” and “Story Now,” in that essay are pure techniques terms. Using “Story Now” as a techniques term is not a violation of the Big Model terms; it makes sense insofar as the essay takes that Creative Agenda as a given and (locally) a universal, and hence, invisible.
3. It may be terribly tempting to say, “Gee, if Story Now is a CA, then Story Before must be its own CA,” but that does not stand up. In order to talk about techniques-families, which is what I’m trying to do, and what David is trying to do as well, we have to take CA as a pure and simple given – and indeed, treat it as a universal even when it’s not – in our respective cases. In other words, the Before/Now comparisons in each discussion have to be firewalled away from one another.
4. In my discussion, Story Now techniques are being discussed in the “universe” of Story Now CA. In David’s, CA is going unnamed, which is sort of an outstanding “if” in his thread, understandable considering that David is himself still dubious about the whole concept. Furthermore, we have never discussed whether guided-story, high-Force techniques go with any given CA, except to highlight that they go quite horribly with Narrativist play. Most of the time we’ve talked about them insofar as they feed into a certain application within Simulationist play. But I have never said, and I do not think, that the techniques he’s talking about are ear-tagged with that.
Jamie, I think that if you want to discuss your own experiences – which are, effectively, Narrativist play in a deep setting context – then you’ll have to jettison Story Before issues from the discussion entirely, and talk about something else. Or if you want to talk about those issues, then you’ll have to take off those Story Now lenses entirely.
I think the problem is illustrated by your brief summary of Story Before (“what it means to me” as you put it) and your use of the term Character Exploration, which at the fully abstract, all-CA level of Big Model talk, are both full of wailing siren alarms for me, begging for dissection and discussion and clarification. I just drafted an example which was so rich and stinky with fun potential that I realized it was a threadjack, so I deleted it.
Let me know if any of this makes sense. When David got all excited about “Ohhh! Story Before! Ooh! Aah!”, I groaned inwardly because I knew that CA-confusion was going to crop up sooner or later, the exact thing that I wanted to avoid by writing that essay the way I did. But here we are, and now let’s deal with it.
And then we can talk about pruning, because until we get the CA-universe settled for a given thread about these techniques, one man’s pruning will be another’s castration.
Best, Ron
David Berg:
Hi Jamie, I have two quick notes to share here:
1) You inspired me to write about some of my own play that could have gone the route of your Glorantha game, but didn't. I think it expresses my take on most of the issues you've raised here. I also managed to find alternatives to the term "story", which could be handy.
2) I'm fully with Ron on the unsettled nature of where the SBP technique set can be used. I'll also agree that Narrativism is clearly not a natural fit. Whether it's a possible fit, I don't know.
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