[Pitfighter] how I learned to push my GM plots into play
David Berg:
Hello,
This post is part background for my other Pitfighter threads, part summary of my take on a classic problem in RPG play, and part response to Jamie's recent encounter with this problem.
Terms:
First, a few terms I'll use here (and would be happy to see used elsewhere):
1) Before, Now, After. When any activity (formal procedure, casual group chat, writing ideas, etc.) is performed relative to a given session of play. More specifically, for this discussion, when any decision or determination is made.
2) Outcome. How a situation of play, as faced by the player characters, resolves.
3) Play Situation. Something the player characters do address, regardless of whether it's choice, dice, or Force that brought them there.
4) Plot Situation. What's going on in the player characters' world, regardless of whether they can or can't and do or don't address it.
The GM's Evolving Wants
I went into GMing with an explicit intent to do Plot Situation Before. I was excited to have all of my cleverly-written developments, with my various schemes and factions, occur during play. However, unlike Montsegur 1244, which does Plot Situation Before, I also wanted the players involved in that plot somehow. Exactly how, I hadn't though about.
As we began play, I tried to engage the players with my plot by offering them a difference-making role in it. Boom! The Montsegur formula is out the window. You can't script that the Cathars are besieged by the Catholics in Act 4 if you're going to be enlisting the players to prevent the siege in Act 1!
But I didn't realize that I was wrestling with an incompatibility here. I was getting a big high off the players' involvement, which I didn't want to back off from. I told myself that I was willing to be flexible about my plot's specifics, so I thought that the players' impact could simply be incorporated. And there were some times when I was right!
So, at this point, I'm no longer doing Plot Situation Before; I'm doing Play Situation Before. This is vastly more rewarding. In Montsegur, the Catholic invasion doesn't always even get talked about by the player characters. Sometimes the context that it lends to the relationship dramas in the castle, while valuable, is completely unspoken. In my Pitfighter game, on the other hand, my Mandragon invasion was all anyone could talk about! When, how, what does it mean, what can we do about it, what should we do about it?! We had some sessions where the back and forth was truly glorious, with the players captivated by my every nugget of revealed plot, and me captivated by their every response.
Unfortunately, the dirty secret I never faced up to was that you can't do Play Situation Before without doing Outcomes Before. I would start with a Situation I thought was open-ended, but then realize in the moment that there were certain ways it couldn't wrap up if I was going to introduce my next Situation.
It took me a while to catch on. Before I did, I used a lot of awkward Force. "Oh, crap, I can't let you take the pirates' boat! Uh, it catches fire." Probably the worst possible solution for long-term play, as it short-circuits player expectations about how to contribute.
My friend Marc ran a 3-year Rifts campaign right before this, and he had a different problem. He refused to use Force, but wasn't prepared to support play outside his plot. So there was a lot of meandering about in There's Nothing Fun To Do Here land.
Different approaches, but Marc and I had the same problem. As GMs, we valued player choice and hated the idea of railroading. But we were addicted to Play Situation Before! We tried to have it both ways, and it didn't work (colorful examples in next post).
The GM's Awakening About Situation
At some point, Marc and I both had our awakenings, and realized, "Oh yeah, being able to get Situation 2 into play means a limited range of Outcomes for Situation 1." This is the point when you might think we'd say, "Hey, maybe we should evaluate what we really want to do with our plots, and get the players on board with that." But no! We did what a lot of GMs apparently do, if the bulk of "good GM advice" out there is any indication:
We tried to plan the connection between Situations so perfectly, to cover everything the players might do so thoroughly, that no Force would be needed. I'd anticipate that the players taking the pirate ship would be bad for my plot, and so I'd make that an obvious impossibility from the outset. Thus no last-minute "Uh, wait, no! Your plan that should have worked, doesn't!"
And this is where the dream began to die. Have you ever tried to do this? It is not fun. If you're psyched to be making up stories and enlisting other people in experiencing them and adding to them, then the last thing you want to do is go over your exciting yarn with a magnifying glass and pre-play out everything that might happen.
But it's tough to see another way out! If this soul-crushing method was completely ineffective, it'd be easier to write it off. But it actually does work, if you're willing to put in the time. My friend who spent two months prepping each session never used Force and only rarely had a brief departure into No Fun Here land.
Two months. Count me out, man.
The Patch
In the end, my group did what a lot of groups do: we found a balance:
1) I did some planning to avoid using Force.
2) With lots of practice, I was eventually able to anticipate a Force moment on the horizon and ad-lib something to make sure it didn't arise.
3) Sometime I wouldn't feel comfortable using Force, and the players would wander off the plot, and then I'd just try to help make the off-plot tangent enjoyable, with humor or whatnot. Like the nasal-voiced armorer who kept trying to sell the party an Enchanted Stoat.
4) And every once in a while, I would use Force, and it'd be awkward, and there'd be moments of anger or resentment, but the players would forgive me because they knew the pattern (I wouldn't do this too often), and the social activity of play was fun enough (thanks in no small part to my engaging plot) for us to persevere past some hitches.
Conclusions
Look at all that. That isn't the right way to do anything. It's unreliable, risky, and demanding.
And yet, the overall experience of play, over many many sessions, was positive. Maybe that's because we started young, with tons of free time to waste, and played often enough to develop some serious skills over the years. By the time of my college Pitfighter game, I probably had over a thousand hours of GMing under my belt. But I don't think that's the only reason.
I think the basic thing we were attempting is incredibly powerful and attractive. (I've ranted about why enough elsewhere, but will repeat here if requested.)
I also think that, absent relevant rules or guidance, it's somewhat natural for GMs to fall into Outcomes Before, even from a starting point as innocuous as "I've come up with some cool stuff I want to happen in play!"
Ps,
-David
David Berg:
Quote from: David Berg on November 13, 2011, 04:45:58 PM
Marc and I had the same problem. As GMs, we valued player choice and hated the idea of railroading. But we were addicted to Play Situation Before! We tried to have it both ways, and it didn't work (colorful examples in next post).
As promised:
Marc's Resigned TPK
Marc's failures were actually in refusing to apply Force and then refusing to support the consequences.
There was a badass NPC merc who'd grabbed the crystal we were after. Marc's plot included a secret about how this merc had been hired by our boss, and would simply hand us the crystal and tell us info about our boss if he knew who we were. Marc spent the whole scene waiting for any PC to refer to any other PC by name, so he could bust out this reveal.
But we never did.
So we fought the merc, and let the dice resolve things, and the merc got away with the crystal, and Marc was done. He had nowhere to go from there. Without the leverage of the crystal, he had all our characters killed in their sleep that night by our boss. Game over.
A week later, Marc decreed that he'd been off his game that night, "So let's pretend that session never happened, and here's a new point to continue from." So he was willing to change his m.o. to overcome total catastrophes.
The more frequent problem was minor catastrophes, where the characters spent a lot of time wandering through There's Nothing Fun To Do Here land.
My Awkard Ad-libbed Force
My failures were in awkward applications of Force. "Now that I realize you're about to do a thing that'll obviate my planned next Situation, uh, well, something changes and now you can't do that."
It's been a while, but I vaguely remember that the players, en route to the next big location/scene/discovery of my plot in Haven, got attacked by pirates they'd earlier pissed off. I was planning it just as an adrenaline boost as a reminder, "These guys are out there and they have some mysteries about them too!" The players came up with some cool ideas about using positioning and minor spells to knock enemies off the boat, and generally outsmarted their way out of any significant injuries. They won handily, and it was a fun scene.
But then the had the brilliant idea to grab the pirates' abandoned ship and use it to infiltrate them. Or something. Whatever it was, it would take them far from Haven. So just as the players are set to act this plan, I say, "The pirate ship is on fire. It's a lost cause. It's gonna sink." I, of course, don't have any satisfactory answers to "How and when did it ignite and why didn't we notice?"
Worst thing possible.
By bouncing from "contribute by coming up with clever ideas, acting, and rolling dice to succeed" to "no, wait, that clever idea doesn't count, no action, no die roll", a GM will short-circuit player expectations about how to contribute. This can lead to quitting, disengaging, or maybe even giving grief out of resentment.
We only avoided this as described in "The Patch" in my previous post. And because we started young, when we had tons of free time, and we just liked hanging out together. We also played enough in middle- and high-school that I probably had 1,000 hrs of GMing under my belt when I began my college Pitfighter game.
David Berg:
A final note about characters, character creation, and expectations:
At the point where I as GM began doing Play Situation Now, the players' range for exploring their characters took on some serious constraints. If this had cut off what they'd been excited about in the first place, that could have been a deal-breaker! That sounds to me like what happened in Jamie's Glorantha game.
Fortunately, Pitfighter was my baby from the ground up. My campaign plot was already partly formed in my mind before we even agreed to play. So, when I introduced the setting, the players were getting the right idea. And, when they made characters, I worked with them, to tie their interests to mine (and even a little bit to my plot, though I wasn't aware how crucial that would be).
All this meant that when my Force popped up, at least the players weren't having much anticipated or hoped-for content yanked out form under them. If we'd been using someone else's world that the players had learned from a book, and character creation had been done individually, that probably would have been disastrous.
Web_Weaver:
Quote from: David Berg on November 13, 2011, 05:17:39 PM
Fortunately, Pitfighter was my baby from the ground up. My campaign plot was already partly formed in my mind before we even agreed to play. So, when I introduced the setting, the players were getting the right idea. And, when they made characters, I worked with them, to tie their interests to mine (and even a little bit to my plot, though I wasn't aware how crucial that would be).
All this meant that when my Force popped up, at least the players weren't having much anticipated or hoped-for content yanked out form under them. If we'd been using someone else's world that the players had learned from a book, and character creation had been done individually, that probably would have been disastrous.
I wasn't sure where you were going until this final point, but that does make sense, in the same way I can't see how a stong vision for how the story will play out is possible with Story Now play, it is certainly vital in many play styles. But, if the GM is not up-front about the expectations of play then it is easy for a player to get the wrong idea.
Indeed in the example of M 1244, you are not really using the structure of play set out, as somthing to play with. But this kind of game has proven problematic for many. Just look at how many people play Burning Empires with the idea that the general play informs the meta-plot at every turn, instead of using the meta-plot as a backdrop for the main play with at most an occasional influence upwards.
In my instance some of the fault in my example was the GM's choice of game, Hero-Wars had a very stong Story Now supporting text, with both the presentation of the setting and many of the mechanical systems pushing the game in that direction. To then attempt to GM it with contrary expectations; with a Story Now blind spot, formed by years of playing RuneQuest; without realising that it is necessary to point out that the game was going to be traditional in structure and play style, was doomed before the start. In fact the game payed out OK but it never really grabbed me after my realisation that the potential I had glimpsed was being denied.
Roger:
Did you ever try revealing your plots to the players prior to play? If so, how did that work out for you? If not, why not?
Cheers,
Roger
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