How to enjoy Story Before without Participationism
Chris_Chinn:
A couple of years back, I made my last attempt to play in an Illusionist game. It was a game of Unknown Armies, with the players playing police detectives investigating what appeared to be the work of a serial killer, but actually was a series of magical rituals.
Like you, I tried two different tacks at different points in play:
1) Push the investigation
I would have my character make reasonable assumptions and investigation actions, and, sometimes it would reveal a clue, sometimes it would be a dead end, but ultimately it would peter out and nothing I could do would make the situation move forward.
2) Ignore the investigation, play character development with the other players
Whenever we did more than a few minutes of this, some form of crisis or clue-bat would swing at us and end that whole process.
What I realized after a point, was that the real "game" happening here was this: Whatever the players were actively trying to do, the GM would tease along, stall, then finally block and divert. Clues had to be strung out slowly, after all, that's "how suspense works" (at least in misguided Illusionist game advice). Players ignoring the clue trail for too long had to be stopped, otherwise "There's no story".
There's a difference between challenges to goals in play (which, you could say is a feature of all game activities) and stonewalling all goals in play. I cannot possibly fathom any fun in the latter, and when I realized this was the pattern the GM repeated over and over, I gracefully left.
Is there a way to make this fun for you? I don't know, I feel like "types of fun" are like genres of music- there's some you like, some you don't like, and while you might shift over the years, it's pretty hard to FORCE yourself to enjoy something you don't.
Chris
Callan S.:
Hi Josh,
How long are session times with this group, traditionally?
You might find the GM is in part trying to forfil an expectation even you impose - that it has to go for X number of hours.
Another reason it goes slow might also come from an expectation of your own - that fiction comes first in deciding events and in deciding what rules are used. He can't just cut to the chase - that's too boardgamey! No, the fiction has to decide the pace - and that's what you want, isn't it? Fiction comes first. I'm pretty sure that was the prob in an account I gave awhile ago, where I described the effect as like walking through molasses.
So, maybe if you have expectations like these, your contributing to your own problem? How is a GM supposed to pad out X number of hours? What will definately keep you occupied and not fall short your time expectation? How is play supposed to leap onto something else yet at the same time adhere to the pace of fiction and not be 'boardgamey' in how the next events progress is determined?
What play do you want? If you've just sat down without thinking about that, yet this slow game thing doesn't work for you - well, whats wrong with what the GM does? He's certainly put thought into what he wants to do. One of the strong expressions of having really thought about what play you want is to have written an RPG. It certainly cuts to the chase more than trying to be a sasquach that runs off into the woods.
Alfryd:
Quote from: Callan S. on December 16, 2011, 02:17:41 AM
Another reason it goes slow might also come from an expectation of your own - that fiction comes first in deciding events and in deciding what rules are used. He can't just cut to the chase - that's too boardgamey! No, the fiction has to decide the pace - and that's what you want, isn't it? Fiction comes first. I'm pretty sure that was the prob in an account I gave awhile ago, where I described the effect as like walking through molasses.
I'm a little unclear on what 'fiction first' means in this context, so unless you want to clarify, I'm going to temporarily assume (A) that this is relevant to Josh's problem and (B) that 'fiction first' means 'strong attention paid to the details of in-world causality'.
If that's the case, I would hold that while 'fiction first' might well bog things down a bit, it would also help to solve one of Josh's other problems- The example Josh mentioned of an in-group NPC who trails Lloyd and rats on his meeting is just such an example. If fiction (consistent in-world causality) were genuinely first here, the GM would not be able to arbitrarily decide that this NPC was present to view that meeting. He would have to roll one or more Stealth vs. Awareness tests to ensure that the NPC was able to follow Lloyd without being spotted, and if he failed, Lloyd would be able to either shake off the tail, or perhaps, failing that, to try to persuade or intimidate them into silence.
The details of in-world causality don't, in themselves, amount to a Force technique. The problem is the selective cherry-picking of details of in-world causality by illusionist GMs, which they can get away with largely thanks to Rule Zero and similar textual exhortations. But that selective cherry-picking, in itself, constitutes a metagame agenda, and therefore has nothing to do with in-world causality.
Josh Porter:
Callan, in regards to the time each session lasts, we play for about three hours a week. It's not that long of a session, at least in my experience. I can see what you mean about the expectation that a session should last X number of hours, but I don't think that's a factor in this game. Usually, at the end of the session, the GM expresses that he wanted to get through more in the time we had. I don't know what that says about the game exactly. Maybe he wants us to roll skills as quick as we can in every scene so that it can move to the next one. But I feel that that style of play takes much of the roleplaying out of the game and makes the players very one dimensional. "We are just characters here for the quest! We have no interest in anything beyond the quest!" That kind of thing.
Now as far as the fiction needing to lead to the lead to the good stuff as opposed to cutting right to the chase, I think I follow your train of thought, but I'm not sure. Are you saying that every game needs to build up to climax? I get that and mostly agree. But I do think that even in the scenes leading up to the climax there should be risks, stakes, consequences, and ways that the players can impact the story. It seems like the characters in this game are only allowed to influence the narrative in the planned out "conflict scenes", as though those are the only times our decisions make any difference whatsoever.
Now I should also clarify the scene I transcribed in which my character was having a secret conversation with another sasquatch. The character spying on my was not an NPC, but another player character. When the GM announced that the party was informed of the conversation, he was dictating my character's actions, not an NPC's. When I disagreed the conversation went like this:
"So he tells you everything that they talked about..."
"No I don't, I stay quiet and go poke the fire with a stick."
"So you don't tell anyone?"
"Nope. I just look very concerned."
[Casper, the character who had witnessed the conversation, comes over and sits by me around the fire.]
"I ask Lloyd what's going on. He looks troubled."
"I'm OK man, I just have some things to think about."
"So you tell him what you talked about with the yeti..."
""No I don't. I just sit staring into the fire."
"Hrrrrrrrrrmmmmmm! [annoyed grunt] So you don't tell anyone?"
"Nope."
"Why don't you just tell Casper."
"OK, fine. I have a quiet conversation with him and fill him in a bit."
"OK, so he tells the group that a sasquatch is missing. What do you all do about it?"
I was hoping for a two-man side quest of some sort with Casper, but the need for the group to know was paramount, I suppose. And then the whole "yetis don't look for each other" conversation was had. I hope that clarifies things a bit.
Callan S.:
If you think of the GM not playing out a world, but a single character like the rest of the players do, you can sort of see your doing the same thing as the GM and he the same as you. You don't want to just roll quickly because that takes the roleplaying out and makes characters "Were here only for the quest" one dimensional. HE doesn't want to just cut to the action, because that takes the roleplaying out and makes the world/his character "I'm only here as a vehicle for the characters" one dimensional. You want to hide information from the other PC's/players for your fictional reasons. HE wants to stubbornly hide information from the PC's/players for his fictional reasons. You want ways to affect the story, but don't find any means offered by the GM. Maybe he wants ways to affect the characters as much as they expect to affect the story, but doesn't find any means offered by the players.
Really, with this method, even if a player starts determining story, they simply reverse the roles and they become the story before, participationist GM themselves. With 'character background before' replacing 'story before', ie, my character would do this and this because it's in his/her background...
Maybe that's not the case at all, but like I raised before on thinking about the play you want/how you would structure play you want, it's worth thinking how you'd do it - and whether that'd be different from how this GM does it?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page