I had a thought, inspired by a thread over in the Fudge List here: http://www.phoenyx.net/wirebird/fudge/main/00044121/threads.html (and the threads that inspired it, but mostly as I was replying to that post there.) 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. 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. It's maybe not quite that, either (so hard to put words on a gut feeling like that) but that's a bit closer to getting it nailed down, anyway. ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
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/
>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. See, though, that's what I can't figure out. I can't put my finger on *why* (or even *if*) the process is fundamentally different for me, and why I want the process to work more like writing a story but feel more like reading one. >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. This is kind of it. I can't figure out why a collaborative story-telling session (which doesn't sound at all bad to me) feels like cheating at a game: yay, I got the results I wanted, but boo, the *process* wasn't as much fun. Why does it have to be a game? Or more correctly: Why do I feel like I should play a game? *Some* people are perfectly happy with the collaborative story-telling session... why am *I* not? It seems like I ought to be. Why are *you* not? ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 05:54:36PM -0500, Karen Cravens wrote: >This is kind of it. I can't figure out why a collaborative >story-telling session (which doesn't sound at all bad to me) feels like >cheating at a game: yay, I got the results I wanted, but boo, the >*process* wasn't as much fun. Why does it have to be a game? Or more >correctly: Why do I feel like I should play a game? *Some* people are >perfectly happy with the collaborative story-telling session... why am >*I* not? It seems like I ought to be. Where we diverge, I think, is that I'm not necessarily looking for those same results. It's a different form; if I write short prose fiction I don't expect to get the same story I'd have told if I'd been doing it as a comic. I want elements from the emulated genre, certainly, but I don't expect or want the whole thing to work that way. >Why are *you* not? Short version is: I've tried it and I don't particularly like it. I think there are two very distinct pressures as a player. In one direction: "What would my character do in this situation?" In the other: "What decision would make for a good story?" Often of course they're in the same direction, but... one of things I like about role-playing is the psychological simulation, and there are some people who _would_ say "hang on, let's short-circuit this whole complicated adventure and simply shoot the bad guy now". As a GM, I think it gets more into the social contract. I do insist on absolute power; everything, even expenditure of "plot points" in systems that have them, ultimately has to be approved by me. The bonus for the players is that I use that power for good - in other words, so that we all enjoy ourselves. If "building an interesting story" and "having a good time" diverge, which sometimes they do, I go with the latter. If I'm writing a story, the characters may well decide to go off and do their own thing (this isn't just me - ask most writers), but they won't get inconvenient criticals on their Forensics checks when I don't want them to solve the mystery just yet. I think that gaming does need that random element, the occasional confounding influence that will throw things in a completely new direction and make players and GM think on their feet. Even the best collaborative writing session tends not to have this same leavening of the unexpected. There's always negotiation - "hey, what if X did this?" "No, that'll break Y that we want to use later" which makes for a smoother story but a less immersive experience. -- Roger, gaming grognard Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Thu, 6 Apr 2006, Karen Cravens wrote:
> See, though, that's what I can't figure out. I can't put my finger on
> *why* (or even *if*) the process is fundamentally different for me, and
> why I want the process to work more like writing a story but feel more
> like reading one.
I think the main difference is the process of discovery. It's like
coming to a bend in the path through the woods... what's just around
the bend?
In a traditional roleplaying approach, the characters will round the
bend, and the GM will narrate for them they discover... "Look, a
cougar, crouching on a rock, ready to spring! What do you do?"
In a forgite-narrativist approach, there are going to be rules to
group-negotiate or contest for the right to narrate what's around the
bend... if Karen wins the right to narrate, there's a cougar, ready
to spring. If Bill wins the right to narrate, there's a pixie, ready
to offer aid. (This is a bad example because it's not really a
conflict.)
There's no discovery there... there's a negotation of events, in which
someone decides an outcome _before_ it actually happens in the story.
It's the whole negotiation of Stakes... instead of there being a range
of possible outcomes, Stakes are boiled down to just two. If Karen
wins, we get a cougar; if Bill wins, we get a pixie.
So when we actually get to the part of _narrating_ what's around the
corner, it's already been decided... there's no surprise. There's no
_discovery_. And because the Stakes were negotiated, neither side can
get a result that they find undesirable. _This_ part appeals to me
to some extent, but the negotiation part seems to take all the fun out
of it. Back to that discovery aspect... if I get to negotiate all the
outcomes, so that even if I lose, the outcome is still acceptable,
there's no unexpected outcome that pushes me out of my comfort zone a
little and stretches me somehow.
Hm. The negotiated story-telling takes power away from the GM and
puts it in the hands of the players. And in doing so, it takes away
the GMs ability to _surprise_ the players.
Everybody around me seems more creative than I am. Because their
ideas are _cool_, while the ideas I thought up are mundane? Because
my ideas are _known_, while their ideas are _unexpected_. My ideas
(often) follow a logical progression of thought... _their_ ideas
spring into my consciousness out of nothingness, to surprise me with
the sudden shock of creative power. (Yo, I'm channelling John Wick
here.)
In traditional roleplaying, we are constantly being surprised. In
negotiated story-telling, we control the surprise factor by
negotiating outcomes. We might be surprised by a creative suggestion
for a Stake, (Player of a Demon Lord to a Angelic Champion of Light:
"If you win, I am banished from this world forever. If _I_ win, you
become my apprentice.") but we are never surprised by the _process_
itself.
I think that's what killed _Dogs In the Vineyard_ for me... I didn't
find the process to have any elements of surprise in it. (That and it
turned roleplaying into a stilted, mechanical give-and-take.)
> This is kind of it. I can't figure out why a collaborative
> story-telling session (which doesn't sound at all bad to me) feels
> like cheating at a game: yay, I got the results I wanted, but boo,
> the *process* wasn't as much fun. Why does it have to be a game?
> Or more correctly: Why do I feel like I should play a game? *Some*
> people are perfectly happy with the collaborative story-telling
> session... why am *I* not? It seems like I ought to be.
I think collaborative story-telling could be fun, but it's not the
same thing as the discovery of roleplaying.
Some of it may be that we're just not used to it. It feels a lot like
what the GM does when he fudges the dice, and roleplaying in general
has had a strong tradition of fudging being "wrong."
Also, I think some of it is the "now" vs the "future". In negotiated
story-telling, you are working on _future_ events. In traditional
roleplaying, you are working on events _as they happen_. This is
highlighted by _With Great Power..._'s "Pencilling" and "Inking."
When you're Pencilling, everyone in the group is giving input into the
scene... what they think would be cool, what _your_ character might do
or feel, and so on. Then once you've decided all of the details, you
"Ink" it by narrating the final version.
There's a lack of "letting the dice stand" here... there was no chance
for things to go weird or unexpectedly that wasn't deliberately
introduced by a player. While the dice might be capable of
introducing things I find undesirable through extreme results, there's
a range of "the unexpected" somewhere between "extreme" and "average"
that I desire from them.
--
Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) Gamers List Owner
[ General RP Discussion -- http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/ ]
And old UNIX programmers never die, they just lose their grep.
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On Tue, Apr 11, 2006 at 03:19:57PM -0500, Carl D Cravens wrote: >Hm. The negotiated story-telling takes power away from the GM and >puts it in the hands of the players. And in doing so, it takes away >the GMs ability to _surprise_ the players. I think that that's where the narrativist tendency started to declare itself as separate, pre-Forge - in that removal of GM control. Remember Whimsy Cards? (See http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/systemdesign/cards/whimsycards.html if not.) As far as I could see, the point of those was to give the _players_ the ability to surprise the _GM_, not just (as had always been possible) by saying "my character does X unexpected thing", but by having an explicit (even if still GM-mediated) input to the environment not necessarily tied to the individual PC. In effect, they were a way of letting the player say "we're feeling a bit overpowered, we could use some help here" or "this seems too straightforward, let's have some complications". There's the germ of a good idea there. I think it's a rare game these days where the GM doesn't allow any sort of player input into the narrative. But for me at least it has to be fairly quick and simple to continue suspension of disbelief; a player says something like "maybe I'll run into one of my old pirate drinking buddies" or "I hope we don't get pulled by the cops", something in-genre and _in-game_ that gives me a hint as to what he wants to happen. If we have to step outside the game, to become authors explicitly, that breaks it for me. That surprise is certainly a part of why I like dice, too. Even in a system with fudge points*, I know that when I send my character into a fight he _may_ just lose... and it helps to keep me suitably on edge, because that's what the character knows too. * including actual Fudge points of course, but also Possibilities, Luck points, whatever limited resource gets you a temporary exemption from the normal rules of the game. >I think that's what killed _Dogs In the Vineyard_ for me... I didn't >find the process to have any elements of surprise in it. (That and it >turned roleplaying into a stilted, mechanical give-and-take.) I haven't played it but I've looked over the shoulders of people who were. It seemed to me like training wheels - this is the sort of story _that will happen_, but once you get used to a story happening you want to go on to make up your own that go in different directions. I agree with what you've said here, but I also think that immersion is important. If the mechanics get in the way, they throw me out of immersion; the difference between forgeite-narrativist and traditional games is that in traditional games the mechanics are there to cover the stuff that you can't do directly (e.g. combat), while in the f-n games they're supposed to cover every sort of conflict. Remember those arguments in the late 80s about interpersonal skills - how much should you reward a glib player vs a skilled character? With hindsight I see that as another foreshadowing of the f-n school of thought, because an f-n advocate's answer would be "the character's skill is the only thing that matters". One could even say that f-n advocates are really not narrativists at all but _simulationists_ - except that the process they're trying to simulate is not any sort of reality, but rather the mechanical basis of genre fiction. -- Roger, gaming grognard Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, 11 Apr 2006, Roger Burton West wrote: RBW>Remember those arguments in the late 80s about interpersonal skills - RBW>how much should you reward a glib player vs a skilled character? With RBW>hindsight I see that as another foreshadowing of the f-n school of RBW>thought, because an f-n advocate's answer would be "the character's RBW>skill is the only thing that matters". One could even say that f-n RBW>advocates are really not narrativists at all but _simulationists_ - RBW>except that the process they're trying to simulate is not any sort of RBW>reality, but rather the mechanical basis of genre fiction. Am I the only one who reads "f-n" as "effin'"? -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Thu, Apr 13, 2006 at 03:28:24PM -0500, Karen J. Cravens wrote: > On Tue, 11 Apr 2006, Roger Burton West wrote: > > RBW>Remember those arguments in the late 80s about interpersonal skills - > RBW>how much should you reward a glib player vs a skilled character? With > RBW>hindsight I see that as another foreshadowing of the f-n school of > RBW>thought, because an f-n advocate's answer would be "the character's > RBW>skill is the only thing that matters". One could even say that f-n > RBW>advocates are really not narrativists at all but _simulationists_ - > RBW>except that the process they're trying to simulate is not any sort of > RBW>reality, but rather the mechanical basis of genre fiction. > > Am I the only one who reads "f-n" as "effin'"? Is it supposed to mean something else? -- Chuk Goodin cgoodin@sfu.ca Alien Light GM http://www.phoenyx.net/alienlight ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
