On Wed, Apr 05, 2006 at 10:36:17PM -0500, Karen Cravens wrote: >Okay. So I'm thinking "Why *doesn't* it feel right to just fiat >something and move on?" When I'm GMing, that is (perhaps oddly, I >don't care deeply if we roll any dice at all when I'm a player). > >I think the problem relates to fiction, again, and that darn >"storytelling" label. I'm thinking that I don't so much want to *tell* >a story as I do *discover* a story, just like when I'm reading a book >or whatever. That's certainly true for me, and I think it's a substantial part of the reason I go on about not wanting to hew reflexively to the conventional paradigms of story construction. I'm thinking about this a lot at the moment in the context of the Atlantis game, which is starting to approach its visible end (and which I was running last night). The players have known from the start that Atlantis is going to sink; what's interesting to them is just why, and how, and what they're going to do about it. And _that_ is the story that we-collectively are telling. As a GM, I can say that Atlantis is hurtling down the rails to its inevitable doom. Well, "down the road" might make more sense; there's a bit of scope for steering and the angle at which it's going to hit, but basically it _is_ going to get there: the water is going to roll in and the place is going to sink. This is actually a great deal more plot constraint than is usual in the games that I run. So - I say "so", but it wasn't a conscious decision, and I'm only really noticing it now - the PCs have a lot _more_ freedom than is usual. They're aristocrats (well, and one slave with a forbearing mistress); they're not being sent on missions, trying to make ends meet, or any of the usual "adventurer" things, but rather they're basically at liberty to do more or less what they like. Contrast the I-Cops campaign, in which the PCs are agents of a fairly controlling organisation; each adventure starts with "this is where you're going today, and here are your objectives". Once they've gone to the site of the adventure, though, they're basically at liberty to solve the problem in any way they can, including utter screw-ups and total successes. >Which is just wrong, because I do like to *write* stories, and I do >like to GM vs. just being a player and getting to discover stories, so >it doesn't quite make sense that I feel that way about the randomizers. The process of invention which I experience when writing a story is fundamentally unlike that which I experience when preparing a game, or GMing, or playing - they're _all_ different experiences. Some people react to this by building rules that try to force events to transpire in a particular way - the "forgeite-narrativist" approach (somewhat simplified for the purposes of my argument), which goes to great lengths to tell the sort of story that is told in the genre the game author is either emulating or inventing. My reaction is rather to say "all right, the setting may be piratical adventure, but I don't _automatically_ assume things will come out the way they do in the films". Some of the fun is in exploring the way the GM, players and luck combine to make things happen. Take out the luck, and effectively you have a collaborative story-telling session - which may be quite fun as a change of pace, but it's not a _game_ in the sense I understand it. -- Roger, gaming grognard (evidently rambling today) Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
