How to enjoy Story Before without Participationism
Josh Porter:
So, I've been playing in a fairly new game of Dresden Files recently. We've got four sessions under our belts so far. The game is a spin-off of the Dresden Files game I ran previously, set in the same world, but featuring new characters in a new location. I really like my character, a soft-hearted sasquatch who doesn't want to end up alone like the rest of his kind. Lloyd is his name.
But I'm having a problem with the game.
My friend is GMing, something he has done many times before, and he seems to be stuck in dungeon crawl mode in a game that doesn't dig on that type of playstyle. It seems very Story Before to me, but, as I'm not the GM, I can't say for sure. He's set up many threads of plot for us to follow and given us the choice on which to go for, but I get the feeling that nothing my character does will change the outcome of the narrative.
We spend a lot of time driving to the next place to talk to someone in a diner by happenstance who reveals a quest. That sort of thing. The GM makes a big deal of the quest-giver to try and ensure that we use the appropriate skill to get the quest info. Here's an example from the last session: "'You come into the diner. There's a cop at the counter and a waitress pouring coffee. You see some missing persons flyers posted above the counter. Does anyone want to roll Investigate?' 'Sure. I go look at the flyers.' [roll] 'I got a Good.' 'OK, you notice that these are some hikers who went missing yesterday. They haven't been seen since.' 'Cool, I walk back to the car.' 'Does anyone want to talk to the cop?' 'OK, I'll do it. I talk to him.'" And so on.
It seems like he has every single scene planned out beforehand and is just waiting for us to push all the relevant buttons so he can move us to the next one. But when we're actually getting into the characters and interacting with each other we get things like: "Doesn't anyone want to roll Alertness?" Someone usually resigns to roll Alertness and then notices thing X: the clue to the next place to go. So we get in the car and drive to a new town and talk to the people in the diner.
Now I don't want to be too negative here. I am not shitting on Story Before or Participationism here, as they can be fun in their own ways. But I don't think that's what I expected from this game. I'm not even sure if that's what's truly going on. It really feels like I'm playing World of Warcraft, except way slower. Whether my die rolls succeed or fail, I know we're going to get the information we need to proceed to the next plot point no matter what, and that bothers me.
What I have done, as a result, is take the least expected paths for my character at every conceivable turn. I guess I'm childishly trying to throw the GM off his story by inverting his expectations. But it doesn't seem to work. When another sasquatch secretly came and met with Lloyd and told him about a missing sasquatch Lloyd knew, I slow-played it. I walked back to camp and sat quietly, not telling the other characters. One of them had seen me secretly meeting and Lloyd didn't know. I planned to sneak off in the middle of the night and go find the lost yeti, and hopefully he would follow me and we'd have an adventure together, off the books. But it was not meant to be. As soon as I get back to the rest of the characters, the GM says, "So he tells all of you about the missing sasquatch. What do you do?" Son of a bitch! I'll try another tactic. I tell the group that it is simply unheard of for one yeti to seek out another (all this made sense based on the world-building we'd done about bigfoots). I tried to convince everyone not to go, as it would be suprememly disrespectful to us bigfeet. I still had dreams of sneaking off in the night. But after I had refused many times, the GM looked at me irritated and said, "Come on dude." And so I was shamed into following the plot again.
So what do I do? How do I break out of the tyranny of the "clue X leads to diner Y leads to quest Z" plot? What can I do as a character or as a player to either enjoy the way the game is run, or rebel against it and win? Please no "just quit the game" answers. I love the people playing and I have almost no free time to game outside of this, so starting a new game with a different group isn't a valid option at the moment. I need to adapt to this game or tear it asunder!!!
stefoid:
ha, I could have written this post myself.
This kind of play makes me want to smash things.
If youre not prepared to adjust your own expectations, theres nothing you can do, you are doomed to not enjoy this game and trying to change the nature of the game will not help AND it will piss people off at the same time.
There is no magic bullet other than to not play. If you want to play a different style of game, youre going ot have to run it yourself when this one is over, in the (probably vain) hope that the group will adopt your style of play.
Alfryd:
I imagine the folks here'll say your situation would require more analysis before any definite conclusions could be reached, but FWIW I recall an earlier thread on the subject that I bumped into browsing the archives: frustration with "enigmas".
Here's the money quote:
In other words (and Paul said this first, so he gets credit), these types of rolls in many role-playing games are really no different from the “Find secret doors” rolls in a dungeon crawl. The players more or less roam around in Brownian motion until they bump the notch for the secret door the right way, and when they do, a panel slides aside and they can flow through it to bump around looking for the next one.
Quote
What I have done, as a result, is take the least expected paths for my character at every conceivable turn. I guess I'm childishly trying to throw the GM off his story by inverting his expectations. But it doesn't seem to work. When another sasquatch secretly came and met with Lloyd and told him about a missing sasquatch Lloyd knew, I slow-played it. I walked back to camp and sat quietly, not telling the other characters. One of them had seen me secretly meeting and Lloyd didn't know. I planned to sneak off in the middle of the night and go find the lost yeti, and hopefully he would follow me and we'd have an adventure together, off the books. But it was not meant to be. As soon as I get back to the rest of the characters, the GM says, "So he tells all of you about the missing sasquatch. What do you do?" Son of a bitch! I'll try another tactic. I tell the group that it is simply unheard of for one yeti to seek out another (all this made sense based on the world-building we'd done about bigfoots). I tried to convince everyone not to go, as it would be suprememly disrespectful to us bigfeet. I still had dreams of sneaking off in the night. But after I had refused many times, the GM looked at me irritated and said, "Come on dude." And so I was shamed into following the plot again.
I've run into something like this situation myself, though the GM in question at least had the grace to nudge me back onto the main plotline by relatively subtle methods.
Though, for the love of all that is holy, I remain baffled by why players should have to explicitly call for Awareness checks in situations where there is something significant to be aware of. It's like GMs assume the PCs are blundering about with blindfolds on unless noted otherwise. I guess, on that note, I might be inclined to ask, "Where was my awareness check to detect this NPC who was following me?" Which may or may not be helpful, depending on whether the other players are likely to sympathise.
So, yeah, I'm with stefoid. Offhand, I can't think of any simple solution to this problem. You'll pretty much have to 'get with the program', or persuade your group to adopt a very different approach.
stefoid:
Quote from: Josh Porter on December 15, 2011, 03:41:06 PM
Here's an example from the last session: "'You come into the diner. There's a cop at the counter and a waitress pouring coffee. You see some missing persons flyers posted above the counter. Does anyone want to roll Investigate?' 'Sure. I go look at the flyers.' [roll] 'I got a Good.' 'OK, you notice that these are some hikers who went missing yesterday. They haven't been seen since.'
I love this bit.
Josh Porter:
So the real question is: "How do I get on board and/or have fun with this?"
I have no problem getting into Participationist roleplaying. But the story in this one plods along its course, never speeding up and getting to the action. The action (conflict of any kind really) happens when we've gotten through enough of the ploddery to the point where the action was destined to happen all along. Has anyone in a similar situation succeeded with pushing straight through to the things that matter? If that was the case, I'd probably be having a ball, but I don't know how my character can make that happen.
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