plot questions
William Clifford
While working on the Kharzom campaign I've been thinking a lot
about plot in RPG's. I've also been reading some old posts here that I
kept and have a lot of questions. Here goes.
What's the difference between and event and an incident?
What's a plot macguffin (I know this one but I couldn't explain
to anyone if they asked me for some reason)? How does it differ from a
plot hook?
Can a simulationist game be said to have a plot even if it's a
plot after the fact (so to speak)? Oddly enough I think I'm beginning to
understand where the simulationists have been coming from all this time
(simulationist is still a rotten term). Where have all the simulationists
gone? And could Kornelson please send me or re-post his definitions of
the different kinds of games (freeform was one)? I remember it vaguely but
not what they were. Suddenly it has become very important.
Also if a character can be said to be DIP or DAS why not a plot?
(to this end could somebody remind me what DAS stands for again. thanks).
This reminds me of another good post from the past. I believe it was Mary
Kuhner who most elequently distinguished plotting, scripting, and
preparing. I thought I had exported it to a file where it and Sarah's
post on timetables would compete for brilliance. Alas, Sarah's is a lone
star.
I read the four stances as applied to players but why not
also to the GM? (Instead of IC we's have IW for In-World or IS for
In-Story, not real clear on how that would work since IS would
effectively be the same as author for GM's no?)
In my mind there is a significant difference between a plot and
a story. Does anyone else see this? Would it help future discussions if
we distinguinished the two?
Lastly, I keep reading this acronym IIRC in different posts. I
can't figure out what it stands for for the life of me. I hope I haven't
accendentally used it's expansion anywhere in this post. Most embarrassing.
Thanks in advance,
-William Clifford
Mark C. Wallace
In article <Pine.HPP.3.91.960708...@river.it.gvsu.edu>,
William Clifford <clif...@river.it.gvsu.edu wrote:
What's the difference between and event and an incident?
Kevin, or one of the Dibble fans would have to cover that - it
has to do with whether a particular entity advances plot and
story.
What's a plot macguffin (I know this one but I couldn't
explain to anyone if they asked me for some reason)? How
does it differ from a plot hook?
THe Maguffin (I've never heard 'plot' used as an adjective for it) is
what everyone in the story seeks. A friend defines it as what the
characters want, but we don't. Personally, my definition is a trifle
more complex, but every time I talk definitions, those damm vultures
start homing in on me.
ALl plot is, imho, driven by conflict. Conflict represents two factions
(a protagonist and one or more antagonists) who have conflicting desires
for a limited resources. That resource, that prize, is the maguffin.
I read the four stances as applied to players but why
not also to the GM? (Instead of IC we's have IW for
In-World or IS for In-Story, not real clear on how that would
work since IS would effectively be the same as author for GM's
no?)
I'd be itnerested in an exploration of this, both because I believe that
the setting is the GM's character, and because I'm interested in
anything which advances mty understanding of the art of GM'ing.
In my mind there is a significant difference between a
plot and a story. Does anyone else see this? Would it
help future discussions if we distinguinished the two?
My high school english teacher told me that "The plot is 'the king
died'. The story is 'The king died; the queen cried.'" Following his
examples, I'll leave you to develop your own conclusions.
Lastly, I keep reading this acronym IIRC in different
posts. I can't figure out what it stands for for the
life of me. I hope I haven't accendentally used it's expansion
anywhere in this post. Most embarrassing.
If I Recall COrrectly.
--
Mark C. Wallace, guerilla semiotician
"Go softly, for you tread on my dreams" - Yeats
John Novak
> What's the difference between and event and an incident?
> What's a plot macguffin (I know this one but I couldn't explain
>to anyone if they asked me for some reason)? How does it differ from a
>plot hook?
For both sets, I'd say they're the same thing. Event is incident, and
macguffin is plot hook. There might be some sort of magnitude
argument (an event is "more important" than an incident, perhaps) but
I don't generally distinguish.
Other people may have finer definitions than I do.
> Can a simulationist game be said to have a plot even if it's a
>plot after the fact (so to speak)?
I'm beginning to hate that word, "Plot."
Yes, sim games have plots, even while they're happening. They're just
freer-form and more spontaneous than other games.
> Oddly enough I think I'm beginning to
>understand where the simulationists have been coming from all this time
>(simulationist is still a rotten term). Where have all the simulationists
>gone?
This one is finishing his thesis and looking for a job, praying to God
that the one ends just when the other begins.
> Also if a character can be said to be DIP or DAS why not a plot?
Design at Start, Design in Play.
To my mine, the analogy is strong.
In a sense, DAS:dramatic (or plotted)::DIP:simulationist.
> Lastly, I keep reading this acronym IIRC in different posts. I
>can't figure out what it stands for for the life of me. I hope I haven't
>accendentally used it's expansion anywhere in this post. Most embarrassing.
If I Recall Correctly.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
http://cegt201.bradley.edu/~jsn/index.html
The Humblest Man on the Net
John Novak
>ALl plot is, imho, driven by conflict. Conflict represents two factions
>(a protagonist and one or more antagonists) who have conflicting desires
>for a limited resources. That resource, that prize, is the maguffin.
Good God!
I almost agree with this!
My main quibble is that this is a narrow definition of conflict.
You give a classic man against man conflict (or men against men) where
I think that man against nature, man against supernatural, and man
against himself are all options, too.
Magnus Lie Hetland
Mark C. Wallace wrote:
>
> In article <Pine.HPP.3.91.960708...@river.it.gvsu.edu>,
> William Clifford <clif...@river.it.gvsu.edu wrote:
> In my mind there is a significant difference between a
> plot and a story. Does anyone else see this? Would it
> help future discussions if we distinguinished the two?
>
> My high school english teacher told me that "The plot is 'the king
> died'. The story is 'The king died; the queen cried.'" Following his
> examples, I'll leave you to develop your own conclusions.
I think the original version of this story/plot was meant to distinguish
between a narrative without plot and a narrative with plot.
Without plot:
'The king died, and the queen died'
With plot:
'The king died, and the queen died of grief'
Here we have causality between the events.
Now story is often used in another sense altogether. There are of course
many definitions, but most of them are based on this distnction:
Story (or the 'fabula' of the russian structuralists) focuses on
characters, meaning, motivation, values etc.
Plot (or 'syuzhet') focuses on the events of the narrative, and to some
degree, the causality between them.
But not all theorists agree, of course. To some it is more like the
distinction between story (the events in chronological order) and the
discourse (or plot - the story as it is presented in a medium).
A good place to look for a description of the differences is
"Structures of Fantasy" by Richard Michaels. Most of this book can also
be found online at http://www.mmsysgrp.com/megahits.htm
Another site of articles describing the meaningfulness that is
characteristic for the 'story' of the narrative as opposed to the 'plot'
and how the plot springs from the same source is found at
http://www.teleport.com/~bjscript/windex.htm
Both are really neat sites.
>
> --
> Mark C. Wallace, guerilla semiotician
> "Go softly, for you tread on my dreams" - Yeats
--
Magnus
Lie
Hetland
Mark C. Wallace
In article <4rshbg$9...@cegt201.bradley.edu>,
John Novak <j...@cegt201.bradley.edu> wrote:
(in response to my posting, relevant portions of which included below)
MCW> All plot is, imho, driven by conflict. Conflict represents
MCW> two factions (a protagonist and one or more antagonists) who
MCW> have conflicting desires for a limited resources. That
MCW> resource, that prize, is the maguffin.
JSN> Good God!
JSN> I almost agree with this!
JSN> My main quibble is that this is a narrow definition of conflict.
JSN> You give a classic man against man conflict (or men against men) where
JSN> I think that man against nature, man against supernatural, and man
JSN> against himself are all options, too.
You'll forgive me for quoting far more than my usual wont, but I found
it necessary in this instance.
What, in my post, led you to infer that the antagonists and protagonists
were men? They could easily be supernatural entities (forces or
creatures), nature, or factions within the self.
Though, on a separate note, I've found very few GM's who can handle a
man vs nature plot and make it dramatic. Far too often man vs nature
becomes player vs game systems or player vs gm. Anyone inclined to
discuss that, please move it to a separate thread.
And John, be warned. Agreeing with me is dangerous. Remember, I'm not
a human - just a hologram from Neptune.
Mary K. Kuhner
>Though, on a separate note, I've found very few GM's who can handle a
>man vs nature plot and make it dramatic. Far too often man vs nature
>becomes player vs game systems or player vs gm. Anyone inclined to
>discuss that, please move it to a separate thread.
>Mark C. Wallace, guerilla semiotician
I've seen this done successfully a couple of times, though never by a GM
who straightforwardly set out to do it.
_Paradisio_ had a long lost-in-the-woods sequence (though both player
and character had grave and justified doubts about the objective reality
of those woods). It worked because the focus was all on the character's
reactions--would she accept or deny what she was perceiving? Would she
give up? The forest survival itself was handled very simply, with
almost no mechanics--mainly a running report of what her situation was,
so she could make high-level decisions. It was one of the more
dramatist-style parts of the game, but not enough so to become "player
versus GM" for me.
The halflings-in-Geary campaign had a long stretch which was mostly
"halflings versus house". The house was haunted, but not very actively;
mostly it was concealing its secrets behind a lot of doors and facades.
The halflings had to live with its peculiarities (they had nowhere else
to go) and slowly work out its backstory. I suppose this is arguably
"man versus man" with the ancient builders as antagonists, but it felt
very different from having a living, active opponent.
The key to making man versus nature work would have to be coming up with
ways that the players could make meaningful, informed decisions that did
not reduce to mechanics-playing--some way that player thought and
attention to the actual description of the natural setting can allow the
character to accomplish her goals. I think that's the key to making
*any* situation work--the player must be able to make sensible
decisions, and must feel that the decisions are linked to the
description of what's happening. This is easy enough in combat (for
most players) because at least a few decisions (do I run or fight?
which opponent do I choose?) are clearly important and clearly
accessible to player decisionmaking, even if the details of combat are
abstracted or mechanized away. It's harder in wilderness survival, but
there should be some way to do it.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Andrew Finch
John Novak (j...@cegt201.bradley.edu) wrote:
: >ALl plot is, imho, driven by conflict. Conflict represents two factions
: >(a protagonist and one or more antagonists) who have conflicting desires
: >for a limited resources. That resource, that prize, is the maguffin.
: My main quibble is that this is a narrow definition of conflict.
: You give a classic man against man conflict (or men against men) where
: I think that man against nature, man against supernatural, and man
: against himself are all options, too.
The above definition works even for man against himself, where the
conflict is internal, the same person may be both protagonist and
antagonist, and the limited resource, the macguffin, is inner peace (or
whatever). For a classic example, there's Dr. Jekel and Mr. Hyde.
David
Keith Kornelsen
Clifford wrote:
> Can a simulationist game be said to have a plot even if it's a
>plot after the fact (so to speak)?
Yes; it just wasn't plotted... :)
>And could Kornelson please send me or re-post his definitions of
>the different kinds of games (freeform was one)? I remember it vaguely
>but not what they were. Suddenly it has become very important.
KORNELSEN. With an E. Don't do that, it makes me twitch.
Can't send eMail right now, it's being crass. Here are
where I put the lines now:
Interactive Storytelling: Out beyond the far end of roleplaying,
this is where the GM is really a storyteller being assisted by
the players.
Freeform (Mechanicsless) Roleplaying: Let's pretend! No rules, but
we have someone who decides what's fair and usually tries to tie our
actions together (whether to make a story or just to keep us as a group).
Quasi-Mechanical Roleplaying: Well, we know that our Referee is
a little bit biased. And they know it, too. So whenever there are
situations that are hard to decide, they consult dice, or give us
a little game with rules to play that simulates the situation in some
way.
Mechanical Roleplaying: Because we can't remember which of us is
best at swordfighting, we wrote it down as a comparison to average.
My swordfighting is 14 compared to an unskilled normal's of 7. And
both me and my GM have the same idea what my character can do; he
just has to look at my sheet to avoid all of those problems.
Sure, that work takes time, but hey.
Diced Roleplaying: The GM should be free to do more important things
than decide every little sword stoke. And I'm not sure he'd do it
perfectly, anyway. So we bring in dice, and the game world becomes
that much more an independent thing.
Wargaming: Off the far end; we don't need a GM, everything we want
to do in our world is covered in the rules.
I would really like to explore these levels and layers more
completely. Especially the area around Quasi-mechanical. Sarah,
are you reading this?
Andrew Finch
Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
: >Though, on a separate note, I've found very few GM's who can handle a
: >man vs nature plot and make it dramatic. Far too often man vs nature
: >becomes player vs game systems or player vs gm. Anyone inclined to
: >discuss that, please move it to a separate thread.
: I've seen this done successfully a couple of times, though never by a GM
: who straightforwardly set out to do it.
I have seen and experienced this done well by a GM who set out to do just
that (a heavily plotted game by Dreaming Dragon Productions, and if
you've ever seen there work, you'll know what I mean). I have put John
Kim through part of the same run (just a start), and have dreams of
finishing some day.
By the way, John, if you're out there, will you be at Gen Con?
David
John Novak
In <4rtsk0$4...@nntp4.u.washington.edu> mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>>Though, on a separate note, I've found very few GM's who can handle a
>>man vs nature plot and make it dramatic. Far too often man vs nature
>>becomes player vs game systems or player vs gm.
>I've seen this done successfully a couple of times, though never by a GM
>who straightforwardly set out to do it.
[Paradisio and other examples snipped]
I've seen it fail, too.
I was about to claim that I'd never even seen it attempted, until I
recalled a stretch of about three campaign sessions of a Traveller game
where the characters were trapped on a fairly hostile world (with
really goofy natural phenomenon, but don't get me started...) while
repairing the truly horrendous damage done to our ship.
>The key to making man versus nature work would have to be coming up with
>ways that the players could make meaningful, informed decisions that did
>not reduce to mechanics-playing
This was one of the key mistakes that Mike made during that stretch.
As I see them, he did the following things wrong:
o He did rely, very much, on mechanics for things which I (as a
mechanical, diced GM myself) would simply have waved away after the
first time through.
o The man against nature thing was _too_ severe. He put us in a
very bad situation (relying on dice, of course) where we could
literally expect no help from the outside world whatsoever. This
equates to, "A few bad die rolls, and you're bleached bones in the
desert, chums." To me, that's boring.
o As you say, there was not much that was interesting to do, and
few high level decisions to be made. There were some, but in my
retrospective opinion, most of the other things to do on that planet
were merely distractions, and annoying distractions at best.
Realisitcally, there was nothing to do except wait for the die rolls
to be such that our ship was repaired.
This is a subtle point, and it does reflect badly on the players. I'm
not sure if I'm expressing myself clearly, either. The other things
to do on the planet were, mainly, investigating _other_ wrecks. I
think we were doing this in the hopes of finding something we could
use to speed up our repair process, but we never did. That alone
makes the other things to do into what I consider distractions.
Worse, something _invariably_ went wrong each time. We'd be attacked
by fauna that would naturally be very tough to kill, thus injuring
someone and reducing our manpower, or some dink would fail a driving
roll (see also, diced details that sane human beings don't bother
with) thus injuring someone or breaking something....
A lot of things to screw with, and nothing even remotely helpful.
o Extending the last point, Mike didn't know his players. In
the simplest form, you should have a handle on whether your players
are going to enjoy rooting around after tubers to survive another
night, or if they're going to want to reduce it to a single die roll
or a single decision by the GM and then get on with it.
With almost a year's perspective on those particular events, the
whole thing spiralled out of control because players and GM did not
understand one another. I very much believe that Mike thought we
would be disappointed if he compressed two months of time into a few
dice-clatters, three sentences of explanation, and we were on our way
again. So he put things on the surface of the abandoned, quarantined
planet to keep us from getting bored.
We, in turn, very much _wanted_ to be done with the whole sorry affair
and tended to believe that Mike wouldn't be inflicting this whole,
deadly boring affair on us if there weren't some point to it. So we
investigated the little sensor blips, excavated the other wrecks and
grew steadily more irate at stewing on the surface of the goddam
planet trying to figure out what the bloody point was.
Does this sound like the resident simulationist found someone who was
even more simulationist and found the thing patently absurd? P'raps.
But anything can be taken to extremes.
John Novak
In <4rtakv$2...@clarknet.clark.net> m...@clark.net (Mark C. Wallace) writes:
>MCW> All plot is, imho, driven by conflict. Conflict represents
>MCW> two factions (a protagonist and one or more antagonists) who
>MCW> have conflicting desires for a limited resources. That
>MCW> resource, that prize, is the maguffin.
>What, in my post, led you to infer that the antagonists and protagonists
>were men? They could easily be supernatural entities (forces or
>creatures), nature, or factions within the self.
I generally don't anthropomorphize nature to the point where I
consider it to be "competing for resources." If the point of an
adventure is to get a message or deliver a package through dangerous
frontier-like terrain, then the main thrust of the conflict is man
against nature. What limited resource is the terrain competing for?
You could claim that the terrain "wants" to prevent that message from
getting through or "wants" to kill that man, but only if you
anthropomorphize nature to an extent I find silly.
Further, while I'll give you part of the point on gods and the
supernatural, I'll also claim that gods and the supernatural can be
motivated by things other than simple competition of resources. A
classic storyline from almost every mythological background runs as
follows:
Man encounters divine agent (or vice-versa).
Divine agent gets a bug up its ass.
Divine agent makes life hell for man.
Man overcomes this, or is slain by it.
What resource is being competed for there? I suppose you could call
the man's destiny the resource in question (Is his destiny to die
horribly as an idle diversion for bored old Zeus, or is his destiny to
live to a ripe old age and sire many sons?) but I think that's pushing
it a little far.
If you want to take my point to an extreme, you could claim that
human being, being irrational at the best of times, can act like the
gods in this respect, but for my games and (in the written genres) my
storytelling and reading pleasure, I prefer human enemies with material
reasons to hate each other.
>Though, on a separate note, I've found very few GM's who can handle a
>man vs nature plot and make it dramatic.
I tend to agree, especially since I as a player and a a GM find
character to character conflicts _far_ more interesting.
>And John, be warned. Agreeing with me is dangerous. Remember, I'm not
>a human - just a hologram from Neptune.
Ah, but have me agree with you is likewise dangerous.
I am, after all, the Bastard Grad Student From Hell.
John Novak
>: My main quibble is that this is a narrow definition of conflict.
>: You give a classic man against man conflict (or men against men) where
>: I think that man against nature, man against supernatural, and man
>: against himself are all options, too.
>The above definition works even for man against himself, where the
>conflict is internal, the same person may be both protagonist and
>antagonist, and the limited resource, the macguffin, is inner peace (or
>whatever). For a classic example, there's Dr. Jekel and Mr. Hyde.
I can go along with that.
It pushes the resource competition idea a little bit farther afield
than I'd like to take it, but if that's how far your definition goes I
won't question it.
Anne B. Nonie Rider
m...@clark.net (Mark C. Wallace) wrote:
MCW> All plot is, imho, driven by conflict. Conflict represents
MCW> two factions (a protagonist and one or more antagonists) who
MCW> have conflicting desires for a limited resources. That
MCW> resource, that prize, is the maguffin.
In one sense, that's true. However, the term "maguffin" (however
spelled) is usually used to indicate that the prize is a little
contrived, a little obviously dropped into place to create conflict.
In RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, to me, the Ark is a maguffin;
these characters' pasts aren't involved with it, their
desires don't intersect with it, their futures don't
depend on it, except as it's used for the plot. You
could have a nearly identical story about another object.
In THE LORD OF THE RINGS, to me, the Ring is NOT a maguffin
because it's inherent to the situation, and its own traits
seriously affect what goes on. If you told the exact same
story except that the Object was a sword that could kill
Sauron, it would become a totally different story. (Why would
it affect the bearer? Why would you send a hobbit? How would
his own weakness affect it? And so on.)
Like the term "plot device", the term "maguffin" may be
technically neutral, but to use it is to call attention
to the artificial aspect of the story.
--Nonie
Carter Butts
Keith Kornelsen wrote:
>
> Interactive Storytelling: Out beyond the far end of roleplaying,
> this is where the GM is really a storyteller being assisted by
> the players.
>
> Freeform (Mechanicsless) Roleplaying: Let's pretend! No rules, but
> we have someone who decides what's fair and usually tries to tie our
> actions together (whether to make a story or just to keep us as a group).
>
> Quasi-Mechanical Roleplaying: Well, we know that our Referee is
> a little bit biased. And they know it, too. So whenever there are
> situations that are hard to decide, they consult dice, or give us
> a little game with rules to play that simulates the situation in some
> way.
>
> Mechanical Roleplaying: Because we can't remember which of us is
> best at swordfighting, we wrote it down as a comparison to average.
> My swordfighting is 14 compared to an unskilled normal's of 7. And
> both me and my GM have the same idea what my character can do; he
> just has to look at my sheet to avoid all of those problems.
> Sure, that work takes time, but hey.
>
> Diced Roleplaying: The GM should be free to do more important things
> than decide every little sword stoke. And I'm not sure he'd do it
> perfectly, anyway. So we bring in dice, and the game world becomes
> that much more an independent thing.
>
> Wargaming: Off the far end; we don't need a GM, everything we want
> to do in our world is covered in the rules.
Interestingly, I have a very similar perspective...I tend to
think of RPGs as residing along a continuum like so:
Authored Freeform "Simulative" Pure
Story Gaming RPGs Simulation
Total<---------------------GM Control------------------------------>None
Joint "Storytelling" Wargaming
Storytelling RPGs
At the one extreme, the authored story, the "GM" (or author) creates a
tale without overt input from others (though there is always _some_
outside influence); at the other, the pure simulation (such as,
say one of the Navy's flight simulators), the GM dissolves into the
world itself. IMHO, the continuum then represents different degrees to
which the will of the GM controls the nature of the reality: on the one
hand, the author's will subsumes even the players temselves, while on
the other the GM is entirely lost in the Laws 'O Nature (TM). In the
middle, the GM in various ways compromises with a more or less objective
set of rules to decide the nature of events.
Of course, another way of looking at the whole thing might be to
add another dimension, like so:
Simulation + Player Joint
(Single User) | Control Storytelling
|
|
|
| GM
War Most| Control
<None-----------------------------+-------------------------------Total>
Games |Games
|
|
| Free Form
|
|
| Authored
Real Life :-) - Story
IMHO, this player control dimension isn't really all that useful...you
get most of the utility from the model with just the GM control element.
Obviously, there's no one way to look at the situation, but this seems
logical to me....
-Carter
Andrew Finch
John Novak (j...@cegt201.bradley.edu) wrote:
: You could claim that the terrain "wants" to prevent that message from
: getting through or "wants" to kill that man, but only if you
: anthropomorphize nature to an extent I find silly.
I think we've gone ahead and anthropomorphized a bunch of numbers on a
piece of paper to a ridiculous level, giving it its own personality and
ongoing life in the campaign world (called a player character), so I
don't find it such a stretch to anthropomorphize the game world itself,
which then 'wants' certain types of things to happen (called a 'genre'),
and in certain ways (called 'drama').
: Further, while I'll give you part of the point on gods and the
: supernatural, I'll also claim that gods and the supernatural can be
: motivated by things other than simple competition of resources.
Who said that the competition had to be 'simple', or what a 'resource'
was limited to?
: Man encounters divine agent (or vice-versa).
: Divine agent gets a bug up its ass.
: Divine agent makes life hell for man.
: Man overcomes this, or is slain by it.
: What resource is being competed for there?
I don't know, the above is not a plot. If you would like to make it a
plot, as in the story of Oedipus (This is the story of Eodipus Rex, who
made it into Freud's index, it seems he had an odd complex, because he
loved his mother...), then it's usually called Man gainst Fate, the
resource is man's right to freedom and his obligations to society, and
the macguffin is the actual strings of Fate around some prophecy.
To play out actual versions of these plot lines, which make perfect sense
within the genre, try 'Theatrix - Ironwood', pay big money to Diviners,
guess the color of Fate's underwear, and possibly even get kissed before
you're... sorry, can't say that with the kids around.
: If you want to take my point to an extreme, you could claim that
: human being, being irrational at the best of times, can act like the
: gods in this respect, but for my games and (in the written genres) my
: storytelling and reading pleasure, I prefer human enemies with material
: reasons to hate each other.
: Ah, but have me agree with you is likewise dangerous.
: I am, after all, the Bastard Grad Student From Hell.
Funny, I've never seen you in class.
David
John Novak
>: You could claim that the terrain "wants" to prevent that message from
>: getting through or "wants" to kill that man, but only if you
>: anthropomorphize nature to an extent I find silly.
>I think we've gone ahead and anthropomorphized a bunch of numbers on a
>piece of paper to a ridiculous level, giving it its own personality and
>ongoing life in the campaign world (called a player character),
You may anthropomorphize numbers into a character.
I represent characters with numbers. Subtle difference.
>Who said that the competition had to be 'simple', or what a 'resource'
>was limited to?
Don't quibble over the word 'simple.'
>then it's usually called Man gainst Fate, the
>resource is man's right to freedom and his obligations to society, and
>the macguffin is the actual strings of Fate around some prophecy.
If you want to classify man's right to freedom as a resource, you're
perfectly entitled to do so. I remain content in thinking that
someone came up with a catchy phrase (all plot is driven by conflict
and the competition for resources) and then beat everything with a big
wrench until it fit.
Yes, the analogy _can_ be made, but as it goes farther and farther
afield, I don't think it's a particularly good analogy, and I think
it's more limiting than helpful. Particular as it applies to
humanifying nature to the point where the Forest Perilous "wants" to
kill someone, when it's only just a particularly dark forest.
>: Ah, but have me agree with you is likewise dangerous.
>: I am, after all, the Bastard Grad Student From Hell.
>Funny, I've never seen you in class.
You're not in any of my classes.
And when I'm not teaching lab, I'm hiding in my office from advisors.
Anne B. Nonie Rider
mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>>Though, on a separate note, I've found very few GM's who can handle a
>>man vs nature plot and make it dramatic.
Depends on how long and complex a plot you have in mind.
I got wonderful response to one of my early Champions runs:
The group's based in Austin, Texas, which tends towards
flash floods during the rainy season. Listening to the news,
we find out the cops are asking us to come out to a trouble
site.
A van full of teenagers tried to drive through a flooded
area and have been washed downstream. The van is precariously
wedged against a tree; the rescue folks can't safely get
a helicopter low enough to help them without risking
dislodging the van, which would overturn and drown the kids.
The flood's still in full spate, so boats/swimmers aren't
an option.
The van's about half under water. Most of the kids got out
onto the side that's above water--thus making the van even more
unstable. The driver's trapped with a broken leg wedged under
the dashboard, which was crunched on impact with the tree.
One other kid stayed in the car, where she's holding the
driver's head above water.
So, with no supervillains or guns, the group's got to
get them all to safety, knowing that once you start getting
some folks off, the van may overturn. And we didn't have
a superman type who could just fly off with the van.
I won't overload you with the details, but we succeeded--
and the group's plans brought out some wonderful secondary
aspects of the characters, especially when Matrix had to
use his agent skills rather than just acting as group brick,
while our cop/agent Shadow needed all his strength.
We've had a couple of fires that kept us lively also,
but that flood was certainly the best.
--Nonie
Andrew Finch
Carter Butts (ea...@son3.mc.duke.edu) wrote:
: IMHO, this player control dimension isn't really all that useful...you
: get most of the utility from the model with just the GM control element.
Now I have to disagree. Player control is essential to the style of
roleplay I prefer. That's where the GM dissolves into the players.
David
Kevin R. Hardwick
On Mon, 8 Jul 1996, William Clifford wrote:
> While working on the Kharzom campaign I've been thinking a lot
> about plot in RPG's. I've also been reading some old posts here that I
> kept and have a lot of questions. Here goes.
>
> What's the difference between and event and an incident?
Here is the post that introduced the distinction--I've also included some
of the commentary that this post inspired:
From krhr...@wam.umd.eduThu Jun 29 21:26:36 1995
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 09:21:23 -0500
From: "Kevin R. Hardwick" <krhr...@wam.umd.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy
Subject: Another Definition of Plot
Ansen Dibble, in PLOT, a book in Writer's Digest Book's series THE
ELEMENTS OF FICTION WRITING, defines "plot" as follows:
"Plot is built of significant events in a given story--significant
because they have important consequences. Taking a shower isn't
necessarily plot, or braiding one's hair, or opening a door. Let's call
them incidents. They happen, but they don't lead to anything much. No
important consequences. . . . By the way they are weighted and presented,
by what they lead to, these events are trasnformed from incident to plot."
(p. 5)
Plot events, Dibble goes on to add, have "important consequences and make
a meaningful difference in the story's fictional world. They are causes
that have significant effects. Cause and effect: that's what makes a plot."
(pp. 5-6)
"Plot is the things characters do, feel, think, or say, that make a
difference to what comes afterward. . . . Thought or emotion crosses the
line into plot when it becomes action and causes reactions. . . . Any
action, however seemingly trivial, can be vital and memorable if it has
significant consequences and changes the story's outcome. . . . Plotting
is a way of looking at things. Its a way of deciding what's important
and then SHOWING it to be important through the way you construct and
connect the major events of your story. Its the way you show things
mattering." (p. 6)
Dibble argues that plots should revolve around a "central conflict" in
which there is "something quite specific and vital at stake . . . to one
or more pf the characters involved." (p. 16)
----------
Here is a further exploration of this idea, coming from an exchange with
David Berkman (aka Andrew Finch):
On 27 Mar 1995, Andrew Finch wrote:
> Kevin R. Hardwick (krhr...@wam.umd.edu) wrote:
>
> Plot is not the stuff that happens in your world, plot is the stuff that
> happens due to the characters' dramatic necessity, and that stuff is how
> we know the characters and their dramatic necessity.
>
> Plot is character.
>
> : For Dibble, plot is rooted in cause and effect. For Field, it is rooted
> : in dramatic structure, by which he means "a linear arrangement of related
> : incidents, episodes, and events, leading to a dramatic resolution." (p.
> : 35) It strikes me that these two ways of looking at plot, while similar,
> : are distinctly different as well.
As it happens, Dibble does not equate character and plot. Plot, Dibble
says, consists of "causes that have significant effects. Cause and
effect: that's what makes a plot." Certainly character has an enormous
role to play in plot as Dibble defines it, but in this definition
character does NOT reduce to plot, or vice versa.
Now perhaps the difference between your statement and mine is semantic.
You argue that "plot is not the stuff that happens in your game world."
Certainly I would agree; game world INCIDENTS are not plot--those
incidents become plot EVENTS only when they "make a meaningful difference
in the story's fictional world." And "meaningful difference" implies a
particular perspective--these events must be meaningful TO someone, and
that someone is usually a character. If what you mean by "dramatic
necessity" is that some things matter to a character, I can accept
that . . . [unhelpful testiness snipped :) ] . . . Furthermore, the
definition I have suggested--a plot event is an incident that matters to
a character--highlights the ontological status of the event as something
external to the character; incident becomes event when it interacts with
character. Plot is not JUST character--it is incident too. Plot is the
convergence of the fictional world and character. Or, put another way,
the game world is the context within which characters create plot.
This is what Field means when he says that "in order to create a character
we must first establish a CONTEXT of character." (pp. 55-56) Go back to
the cup metaphor on page 23. The game world is the context that "holds the
content" that is character. They are NOT identical, just as in the metaphor
the cup and the coffee are not identical. But you cannot have the one
without the other; they are not the same thing, but they are each necessary
to have a story.
----------
Hope this helps,
My best,
Kevin
Kevin R. Hardwick
On Mon, 8 Jul 1996, William Clifford wrote:
> I read the four stances as applied to players but why not
> also to the GM? (Instead of IC we's have IW for In-World or IS for
> In-Story, not real clear on how that would work since IS would
> effectively be the same as author for GM's no?)
Certainly the four-stance model, at least as I originally proposed it
(its been modified some over the last two years) applies to GMs--it
applies to anyone seeking to derive meaning from an rpg. I don't see the
need to substitute IW for IC--after all, there are occasions when a GM
adopts an IC perspective--for me it happens all the time. I would
suggest that for most GMs the IC stance is shallower, since the GM does
not get to "wear" the character(s) for anywhere near the same length of
time as does a player, and has to be prepared to switch out of character
rapidly as well.
Just to push this a bit further--what separates the IW stance you are
proposing from an authorial or actor stance?
If it would be helpful, I can send you the article on which all this was
based, or repost it.
All my best,
Kevin
Kevin R. Hardwick
On Mon, 8 Jul 1996, William Clifford wrote:
> Also if a character can be said to be DIP or DAS why not a plot?
> (to this end could somebody remind me what DAS stands for again. thanks).
Well, as I use the term (but not as Peter Jackson uses it :) your
statement above is meaningful.
Plot inheres in a game anytime a character with motivations interacts
with a game setting in some sort of meaningful way (ie., a way that
engages those motivations.) Not all plots, then, are pre-planned--you
can get perfectly good plots from "DIP."
However, IME, DIP plots tend not to be as tightly focussed as DAS plots,
nor do they permit the use of a variety of story-telling techniques that
may, for some people, make the resulting story more effective, or have
more impact. For example, it is much harder to foreshadow in a DIP plot
than in a DAS plot. Likewise, flashbacks, cut-scenes, thematic imagery,
and so on are easier to use in a DAS plot. These devices, and others
like them, are not equally desirable for everybody--we've had long
discussions here about the utility--the costs and benefits--of these
methods. In general, I would suggest that a GM uses DAS plots when he or
she, and his or her troupe, want to emphasize the coherence of the story,
and want to utilize narrative devices that make that possible.
But, either way, you will get a story of some sort. What is at stake is
the *quality* of the resulting story. For some people that is important,
and for others not as much.
All my best,
Kevin
William Clifford
On 9 Jul 1996, John Novak wrote:
> In <4ru1ta$m...@crl.crl.com> bcks...@crl.com (Andrew Finch) writes:
>
> >: My main quibble is that this is a narrow definition of conflict.
> >: You give a classic man against man conflict (or men against men) where
> >: I think that man against nature, man against supernatural, and man
> >: against himself are all options, too.
>
> >The above definition works even for man against himself, where the
> >conflict is internal, the same person may be both protagonist and
> >antagonist, and the limited resource, the macguffin, is inner peace (or
> >whatever). For a classic example, there's Dr. Jekel and Mr. Hyde.
>
> I can go along with that.
>
> It pushes the resource competition idea a little bit farther afield
> than I'd like to take it, but if that's how far your definition goes I
> won't question it.
I have a quibble with this. Man vs *** descriptions apply to
plots after the fact and strike me as being useless in RPG terms. One of
the problems is that the story that goes on in an RPG is both developed
and experienced in play and is pretty much non-reproducible ever
afterwards. Sure you can play the same campaign twice. Same setting,
same "plot" in the sense of what may have been planned ahead of time but
change the players and the characters and it's a completely different
experience.
We need something that describes plot as it is experienced by the
players and GM. For the most part we have been talking about plot as it
is developed as though by a writer even to the point of recommending
books on writing as useful GMing tools. I don't question that this is
useful but I think we're past the point were what writers need to know
about plot is useful to us as GM's and players.
This is why I thought the distinction between story and plot might
be useful. The story is something that is experienced and plot is only
part of that. In an RPG the story is not just experienced but
participated in by the players (i'm including the GM as a player here).
Some people have reacted fiercely to a having a coherent plot in a game
before-hand. They didn't want their experience railroaded. Compaint
bothers me a lot and I have yet to see an adequate defense for having one
(aside from just personal taste in games). I guess that is why I've
brought up this whole can of worms again.
And believe me, I'm sick of the word plot too. It has a lot of
slightly different meanings that are usually "commonly" understood
from context and here we are trying to use it in a rather specialized
context.
And if you just say "plot" enough times to yourself it becomes
a meaningless sound.
<sigh>
-William Clifford
Andrew Finch
William Clifford (clif...@river.it.gvsu.edu) wrote:
: I have a quibble with this. Man vs *** descriptions apply to
: plots after the fact and strike me as being useless in RPG terms. One of
: the problems is that the story that goes on in an RPG is both developed
: and experienced in play and is pretty much non-reproducible ever
: afterwards.
Hmmmm.... now, I'll agree that the man vs. *** descriptions is not that
terribly useful, but it has some value, at least for me, at least as far
as plot design goes. I think about these things when I decide what the
conflict of the main plot is going to be, how it will evolve, and what
information and events are likely to intersect the lives of the PCs. This
provides insights into possible sub-plots for various characters.
: books on writing as useful GMing tools. I don't question that this is
: useful but I think we're past the point were what writers need to know
: about plot is useful to us as GM's and players.
I'm not, but I also see the value in going further, so... lead on McDuff.
: And if you just say "plot" enough times to yourself it becomes
: a meaningless sound.
Try one hand clapping.
David
Andrew Finch
John Novak (j...@cegt201.bradley.edu) wrote:
: If you want to classify man's right to freedom as a resource, you're
: perfectly entitled to do so. I remain content in thinking that
: someone came up with a catchy phrase (all plot is driven by conflict
: and the competition for resources) and then beat everything with a big
: wrench until it fit.
Of course, it may fit because it fits.
I could sit here smugly and say that life is a competition for resources,
and I would be on a tough soap box to knock down. because from one fairly
clear point of view, it is.
: Yes, the analogy _can_ be made, but as it goes farther and farther
: afield...
No, it actually stays in the exact same place. Drama is conflict, all
conflict occurs over some *thing* of value, whether that thing is tangible
or abstract does not matter. Therefore, all drama is about a conflict over
some limited resource (if it were unlimited, there would be no conflict
for it). Abstract resources are very common, very understandable, and not
at all 'far afield'. In fact, the abstract ground of emotional and
psychological needs is some of the most interesting and commonly used
ground for srories of all kinds. The best external conflicts are often so
interesting because they also create internal, abstract, conflicts, for
such odd resources as love, respect, freedom, and inner peace.
: I don't think it's a particularly good analogy, and I think
: it's more limiting than helpful. Particular as it applies to
: humanifying nature to the point where the Forest Perilous "wants" to
: kill someone, when it's only just a particularly dark forest.
But of course the forest 'wants' to kill someone, because, as a plot
device, it's an external reflection of our human fears. Here, there be
monsters. No, the forest is not sentient, but that won't stop it from
being 'dark and brooding', or 'full of perils', because the viewer is
sentient.
Three men are watching a flag flapping in the breeze. The first one says
that the flag is moving. The second one says that he's wrong, it's the
wind which moves. The third says they are both wrong, it is the mind
which is moving.
- Zen Koan
David
John Novak
>I could sit here smugly and say that life is a competition for resources,
>and I would be on a tough soap box to knock down. because from one fairly
>clear point of view, it is.
That's nice.
It isn't what I'm talking about, though.
>: Yes, the analogy _can_ be made, but as it goes farther and farther
>: afield...
>No, it actually stays in the exact same place. Drama is conflict, all
>conflict occurs over some *thing* of value, whether that thing is tangible
>or abstract does not matter. Therefore, all drama is about a conflict over
>some limited resource (if it were unlimited, there would be no conflict
>for it). Abstract resources are very common, very understandable, and not
>at all 'far afield'.
I don't have a problem with abstract resources.
I don't have a problem considering, say, the love of a woman to be an
abstract resource, or one's freedom, or one's happiness.
I merely subtract mentally from the weight of any analogy which
requires anthropomorphism to the point where I have to consider some
very large, vast, and completely impersonal [set of] forces as a
competitor in any real sense.
>But of course the forest 'wants' to kill someone, because, as a plot
>device, it's an external reflection of our human fears. Here, there be
>monsters. No, the forest is not sentient, but that won't stop it from
>being 'dark and brooding', or 'full of perils', because the viewer is
>sentient.
Then calling it man vs himself with sanity or peace of mind as the
resource makes more sense. I consider it an analogy stretched and
fraying.
Kevin R. Hardwick
On Tue, 9 Jul 1996, Carter Butts wrote:
> Interestingly, I have a very similar perspective...I tend to
> think of RPGs as residing along a continuum like so:
>
> Authored Freeform "Simulative" Pure
> Story Gaming RPGs Simulation
>
> Total<---------------------GM Control------------------------------>None
>
> Joint "Storytelling" Wargaming
> Storytelling RPGs
Interesting--this isn't my perception at all. I will certainly agree
that in an "authored story" the GM has total control. But it has been my
experience with the "Joint Storytelling" category that the GM must
*surrender* control, at least as compared to some games which do not
aspire to emphasize the story that the game will produce.
I also think that the contrast between "pure simulation" and
"story-telling" is false. I suppose it comes down to what you mean by
"simulation." But in my experience, those games that have felt most real
and true to life have also been those games that self-consciously
emphasized the story. Is a simulation, then, something other than an
attempt to create verisimilitude and "realness" in the game?
Part of the problem, I think, is that at the extremes one or the other of
the two fields of responsibilty (player and GM) is absent. For the
author writing the story, there is only the author; for the player in a
flight-simulator, there is only the player. I don't dispute your
analysis of either of these two situations--its the stuff in between that
gets fuzzy.
> IMHO, the continuum then represents different degrees to
> which the will of the GM controls the nature of the reality: on the one
> hand, the author's will subsumes even the players temselves, while on
> the other the GM is entirely lost in the Laws 'O Nature (TM). In the
> middle, the GM in various ways compromises with a more or less objective
> set of rules to decide the nature of events.
I think you can create such a spectrum of rpg. In some games the GM is
very autocratic, while in others the GM's authority is dispersed. But I
don't think this spectrum corresponds to an aspiration to emphasize the
story telling aspects of the game (which in any case will *always* be
present).
I've seen storytelling games that were very autocratic, and I have seen
story-telling rpgs in which the GM's authority was widely shared indeed.
I think what you have to analyze is the *extent* of authority possible in
a game. Who has responsibility to do what, and when?
Traditionally, it seems to me, GM authority is focussed on two places:
1.) the setting, and
2.) action adjudication.
Now, in a strongly simulationist game (in the sense that you seem to be
using the word, and in consonance with the way it has been used by many
rgfa contributors) the GM often shares responsibility for action
adjudication with the players--the GM's ability to decide things by fiat
is restricted by a set of pre-agreed mechanics, with the goal of
controlling at least the latitude that the GM possesses to be arbitrary.
In some game systems that seek to enhance the GM's ability to keep the
story coherent (but not all) this restraint on the GM is relaxed--the GM
is granted more authority. To this extent, your analysis above is
reasonable.
However, in games which decenter the GM's authority for action
adjudication, the GM's control of the setting is often quite explicitly
autocratic indeed. And conversely, in games that emphasize the story
(eg. THEATRIX) the GM's control of the setting may be quite relaxed, and
the players may have quite a bit of room to improvise the setting.
The question becomes even more complex when you look at the authority in
the game reserved for the players. Typically that is focussed on
1.) characterization--what matters to the character, and
2.) portrayal of the character--what the character is *like*, and
3.) emotive content of the character--what the character *feels*, and
4.) action--what the character *says* and *does*.
Now, I have been in games in which, to one degree or another, the GM has
intervened in one or more of these aspects. To the extent that the GM
does so, the game is, it seems to me, more autocratic. But the
connection between story-telling and "simulation," and the GM's
provlivity to intervene in these areas of player autonomy, has been weak,
it seems to me.
All my best,
Kevin
John H Kim
Hi -- I've had a million things to do at the moment, but I want
to throw in some comments before the topics completely disappear.
Kevin brought up the example of creating a character with the
express intent of exploring some theme. I think this is something
worth considering -- in that I think there are probably different
purposes for which people create characters. That is to say: one player
may create a character with the idea of exploring some theme in mind,
while a different player might create a character because he is
interested in the background without knowing where it will lead.
It seems to me that having explicit "campaign themes" defined
at the start is a move designed to encourage players who have an agenda
for what they want to happen to that character (I suspect this
requires a Develop-at-Start bent to some degree).
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Kevin R. Hardwick <krhr...@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
>Right. My character is ex-CIA, in Mark's Bureau 13/WoD/X-Files fusion.
>He is ruthless and amoral--a cold-blooded killer verging on psychopathy.
>The story line I am exploring here is redemption. He strikes a
>balance--and more than a few sparks--because his instrumental morality
>is not shared by other members of the troupe.
>
>This kind of character matches nicely with several of the themes that
>Mark has suggested--what does it mean to be human?
Hmmm. Interesting. For example, I created a cold-blooded
killer for a _GURPS Space_ game (Cain) -- but originally I had no idea
that he was going to be exploring the theme of redemption. I thought
that he would be a solidifying force, a leader for getting things done.
He didn't show a whole lot of emotional depth.
As it turns out, however, the other characters had more morals
than him -- and he was forced to choose between his work and his
artificial "family" (of fellow genetically engineered agents). At
this point, he gained a strong death wish and his story *did* become
about redemption.
-*-*-*-
The worry I would have in creating characters this way is that
the result might be more two-dimensional -- that is, I might highlight
only one side to that character because that is the "designated
theme". For example, my current PC in a _Call of Cthulhu_ game is an
ultra-conservative police inspector in London at the time of the
Jack the Ripper killings.
I can't say offhand what themes are being explored with this
character. His personal life has not been highlighted at all, but I
am considering it. Currently, I guess I would say that he is exploring
faith in the system, since he often tries to do things "by the book"
and that is coming into conflict with what he is finding.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Kim | "Faith - Faith is an island in the setting sun.
jh...@columbia.edu | But Proof - Proof is the bottom line for everyone."
Columbia University | - Paul Simon, _Proof_
John H Kim
OK -- this is a bit of a comparison between DAS and DIP plotting...
Kevin R. Hardwick <krhr...@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
>On Mon, 8 Jul 1996, William Clifford wrote:
>> Also if a character can be said to be DIP or DAS why not a plot?
>> (to this end could somebody remind me what DAS stands for again. thanks)
DAS means "Develop at Start", BTW. This would imply that the
GM has a plan at the beginning of the campaign on approximately where
it will lead and/or some important features of how it will develop
(like theme, twists, etc.)
Obviously, real games are a mixture of DIP and DAS -- although it
may be illustrative to talk about extremes. Most GM's will have *some*
idea at the beginning of where things will go -- at least on the short
term. However, most do not have any sort of resolution or over-arching
storyline planned.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>However, IME, DIP plots tend not to be as tightly focussed as DAS plots,
>nor do they permit the use of a variety of story-telling techniques that
>may, for some people, make the resulting story more effective, or have
>more impact. For example, it is much harder to foreshadow in a DIP plot
>than in a DAS plot. Likewise, flashbacks, cut-scenes, thematic imagery,
>and so on are easier to use in a DAS plot.
Huh? I don't really see the problem with flashbacks or cut
scenes, in particular, or really with any of these. My current game
is a mixture of DIP and DAS -- but I certainly have a lot of on-the-spot
creation of thematic imagery, flashbacks, etc. It isn't that tough to
create a flashback if you know the character history -- but at the same
time playing things out can be very illustrative.
Obviously foreshadowing is more difficult, but it can certainly
be done... Rather than inserting in elements to foreshadow planned
events, you throw in little random vignettes or more often, little
vignettes will just happen on their own. Then, later on, you plan
major plot elements which reflect those little vignettes. (i.e. Rather
than writing in Foreshadowing for the Plot, you write the Plot based on
chosen Foreshadowing).
This is actually very useful, in that the foreshadowing doesn't
stand out as such. Often, when I encounter foreshadowing in a planned
run, you have an effect like: "Gosh, why is the GM spending so much
time describing the weather and how animals are behaving. It must be
*foreshadowing*." This method guarantees that the elements blend in.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Obviously the DIP plot elements can become a bit of a jumble,
but there is a return in terms of flexibility, I think. I am pleased
with how things are going right now in my campaign, but I don't know
where they will lead -- because at this point it is the players who are
directing the action as much as myself.
I would like to go into more examples of this later, because
I do see it as a serious shift in play style -- but that'll have to
wait for a later post.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>In general, I would suggest that a GM uses DAS plots when he or she,
>and his or her troupe, want to emphasize the coherence of the story,
>and want to utilize narrative devices that make that possible.
>
>But, either way, you will get a story of some sort. What is at stake
>is the *quality* of the resulting story. For some people that is
>important, and for others not as much.
On the one hand, certainly the more effort you put into
developing an RPG campaign, the better it will turn out in the end.
This is pretty universally true.
The question is, is a campaign better for having a planned story
arc? I don't know very clearly, but I do know that some of my favorite
campaigns ended *completely* apart from where I would have predicted --
and ones where I tried to impose a story arc often fell flat.
I think *especially* if you have DIP players, then you should
avoid trying to make long-term plans until you see how things work
out in play. If you plan a standard pulp story arc, and it turns out
that you have a Weak-Jawed Hero as the leader -- then the game could
completely collapse.
Kevin R. Hardwick
On Wed, 10 Jul 1996, William Clifford wrote:
> I have a quibble with this. Man vs *** descriptions apply to
> plots after the fact and strike me as being useless in RPG terms. One of
> the problems is that the story that goes on in an RPG is both developed
> and experienced in play and is pretty much non-reproducible ever
> afterwards.
I don't follow you here--can you expand this thought?
You would seem to have accepted my contention (developed more fully in my
ongoing exchange with Peter Jackson) that it is useful to think of "plot"
in (at least) two seperate fields of endeavor--that of the critic,
concerned to analyze an existing work, and that of the author, concerned
to create a work. What I don't understand here is why you argue that
"Man vs. ***" descriptions are useful primarily to the critic, and not to
the author.
I question your assertion that "the story that goes on in an rpg is both
developed and experienced in play." To an extent you are correct, it
seems to me. But only to an extent. That is because the license to
adopt the authorial stance is divided, in an rpg, between players and
GM. But just because the responsibility to author the narrative is
divided does not mean that the GM, or players, or both cannot intervene
to enhance the coherence and quality of the narrative. Since the GM
controls much if not all of the setting, the GM is in a position to
develop plots before the play begins. Thus, while the players may
primarily develop and experience the story mostly in play, this may
not be true for the GM. (As an aside, it is worth noting that some
players also pre-develop the narrative, if only for their particular
character--eg., my character Raines, discussed on a different thread, who
has a broad pre-figured narrative direction.) The irreproducibility of
rpg narratives stems, it seems to me, from the fact that the
responsibility to create the story is divided. But that does not mean
that it cannot, to a certain extent, be pre-developed before play begins.
All my best,
Kevin
William Clifford
On Tue, 9 Jul 1996, Kevin R. Hardwick wrote:
> Just to push this a bit further--what separates the IW stance you are
> proposing from an authorial or actor stance?
Just throwing some ideas around hoping they don't disrupt any
nearby glass houses.
> If it would be helpful, I can send you the article on which all this was
> based, or repost it.
I'm interested even if no one else is. Anything to expand my
rapidly growing file on RPG theory.
-William Clifford
William Clifford
On 10 Jul 1996, Andrew Finch wrote:
> William Clifford (clif...@river.it.gvsu.edu) wrote:
>
> : I have a quibble with this. Man vs *** descriptions apply to
> : plots after the fact and strike me as being useless in RPG terms. One of
> : the problems is that the story that goes on in an RPG is both developed
> : and experienced in play and is pretty much non-reproducible ever
> : afterwards.
>
> terribly useful, but it has some value, at least for me, at least as far
> as plot design goes. I think about these things when I decide what the
> conflict of the main plot is going to be, how it will evolve, and what
> information and events are likely to intersect the lives of the PCs. This
> provides insights into possible sub-plots for various characters.
>
> : books on writing as useful GMing tools. I don't question that this is
> : useful but I think we're past the point were what writers need to know
> : about plot is useful to us as GM's and players.
>
> I'm not, but I also see the value in going further, so... lead on McDuff.
And here I hesitate. Perhaps it's not that we're getting past
what writers need to know but rather what writers take for granted in the
course of writing. In this case, what writer's take for granted GM's cannot
ignore. A writer can do anything they want with a story (Just ask William
S. Burroughs) where story in a RPG is a participatory thing and while the
GM has a lot of power over the story the GM does not have total control
over it.
I realize I'm treading on already well trodden ground here. Sorry.
Consider it the running start before the big leap.
Consider a game like a company in the stock market. If I remember
from my finance class correctly the person with majority stock has more
shares in the company than and other single shareholder. The GM is this
person in a game. The GM does not have (or does not always have)
controlling stock. Controlling stock is the 51% or more needed to make
the company do pretty much whatever it is you want it to do. Controlling
stock is divided among the players (at least in my games and the games
I've seen played since this is very much a group contract issue). Pretty good
analogy, I think. It may even be useful sometime later in describing the
degrees of control over the game different GM's have.
Plot (n) has at least two uses when it comes to the story. Plot
can be the overall scenario the characters are embroiled in or the big
problem they have to solve before the story is over. This applies to
GM's in RPG's very well. If the GM is like me and makes up his own worlds
and grand scenarios and looming troubles on the horizon then yes the GM
definitely crontrols the plot of a game.
The other common use of plot (at least on this newsgroup) is the
use where the plot of the story is in the hands of the character. What
the character does about the grand problems and looming troubles is
entirely up to them. In that sense the GM doesn't control the plot of the
game but that should be up to the players. If they don't want to go deal
with the invasion of the Dark Lord (tm of Klee-Shay 1996) in the south,
well I guess the game is going to have to take a different direction.
Railroading the game most obviously teleporting unwilling PC's
into the fray by some archmage. But the cry against dramatic games is a
little more subtle and much less well stated.
Here's the big leap (I hope).
Writers, at least the good ones, create a story by taking stream
of life (whether based on real life or imaginary) events and putting them
into a context where they stand alone as a single experience. I hope
everyone understands this because I don't want to get into art theory at
the moment. Is it the GM's job to create a single, stand-alone experience
(and thus a story) out of the events in the lives of the characters? I
think this may be what people (I don't remember precisely who. Mr. Ruggles
definitely and a couple of others a while back) have been getting at when
they say they don't have or want a "plot" in their games.
Hell yeah, it's a group contract issue but can you see where two
different assumetions, both implicit and not well understood about what,
can lead to an ugly time in a game?
* * *
> : And if you just say "plot" enough times to yourself it becomes
> : a meaningless sound.
>
> Try one hand clapping.
Sorry but I gave up studying cranky eastern mystics. Not smart
enough I guess.
-William Clifford
Andrew Finch
William Clifford (clif...@river.it.gvsu.edu) wrote:
: Is it the GM's job to create a single, stand-alone experience
: (and thus a story) out of the events in the lives of the characters?
I think this should be restated to take advantage of our perceptions of
the group contract. It's never just the GM, although the group contract
may give that entire burden to the GM, our group contract certainly does not.
So...
Is it the group's job to create a single, stand-alone experience (and
thus a story) out of the events of their characters' lives?
David
Anne B. Nonie Rider
Hmmm... All this talk of Man vs. XXXXX strikes me as
pretty useless for the kind of roleplaying I do.
Maybe it's a female thing, but to me, the structure of
the game is at least as much Man and Man (how the team
interacts and unites) as it is Man vs. anything.
I don't think of games in terms of whether my character was
fighting Man, Nature, or Destiny... I think of games in
terms of who my teammates were, how we talked, feared,
defended each other, gave each other support or walked away
to brood.
Sure, Man vs. XXXXX is a staple of litcrit terminology,
but it's just plain no gaming use to me.
--Nonie
Brian D. Howard
>The key to making man versus nature work would have to be coming up with
>ways that the players could make meaningful, informed decisions that did
>attention to the actual description of the natural setting can allow the
>character to accomplish her goals. I think that's the key to making
>*any* situation work--the player must be able to make sensible
>decisions, and must feel that the decisions are linked to the
>description of what's happening. This is easy enough in combat (for
>most players) because at least a few decisions (do I run or fight?
>which opponent do I choose?) are clearly important and clearly
>accessible to player decisionmaking, even if the details of combat are
>abstracted or mechanized away. It's harder in wilderness survival, but
>there should be some way to do it.
One of the best examples of man vs. nature I've seen was a group of characters
abord an ocean liner (there to meet contacts) which was attacked and began
sinking. At the same time were many conflicts on different levels. The ship
could not have been saved, although they did try anyway.
For one, they had to compete with an over-large group of passengers and crew
for limited life-boats. For another, they had limited time to figure out what
to do. The aft was sinking first, so not only did they have to get off the
ship in time, but if they wanted anything from the aft end, they had to get to
it before it was under water. They had to decide who was in charge, what they
would take, (they knew there were islands not very far away, but knew nothing
about them) and how to get off the boat. (By the time they figured out that
yes, the ship was a goner, they also figured out that they had no reasonable
chance of making it through panicked crouds to a life boat.) There was some
conflict with others, and even some amongst themselves, but man vs. nature
seemed represented as well.
Q - qxlrnglx - Brian D. Howard
"Hey, our government may not be perfect, but 54% of voting Russians seem to
prefer it to communism...whew, that was close, wasn't it?"
Carter Butts
Kevin R. Hardwick wrote:
>
>
> Interesting--this isn't my perception at all.
I wrote that it was "similiar" because your ordering of game
classifications seemed to me to be fairly close to my continuum
model. But read on....
> I will certainly agree
> that in an "authored story" the GM has total control. But it has been my
> experience with the "Joint Storytelling" category that the GM must
> *surrender* control, at least as compared to some games which do not
> aspire to emphasize the story that the game will produce.
Well, keep in mind that "control" here refers to control of
external events...IME, there's a lot more leeway for the GM in Everway
(for example) than in, say, Supremacy (provided you are using a
referee).
>
> I also think that the contrast between "pure simulation" and
> "story-telling" is false. I suppose it comes down to what you mean by
> "simulation." But in my experience, those games that have felt most real
> and true to life have also been those games that self-consciously
> emphasized the story. Is a simulation, then, something other than an
> attempt to create verisimilitude and "realness" in the game?
The problem may be semantic...by "simulation" I mean that the
external Laws 'O Nature (what ever they may be) are set out, and
carried out, in a formalized, consistent fashion. Hence, there's more
simulation in a system in which you always (for example) fall at a
rate of 4 meters per second than one in which the GM makes up how
rapidly you fall on the spot. Realism, of course, is a seperate issue.
> Part of the problem, I think, is that at the extremes one or the other of
> the two fields of responsibilty (player and GM) is absent. For the
> author writing the story, there is only the author; for the player in a
> flight-simulator, there is only the player. I don't dispute your
> analysis of either of these two situations--its the stuff in between that
> gets fuzzy.
Well, obviously this is going to be rough, as it is simply a
categorization imposed for convenience, but OTOH it also seems to
describe a lot of stuff pretty well - including the fact that part
of the perceived difference between detail (or simulation) oriented
games and free-form (or story, if you like) oriented games can be
captured by looking at the degree of arbitrary GM power. (As described
by the game rules. Obviously, rules can be ignored, but all that
does is change the game from one type into another.)
> I think you can create such a spectrum of rpg. In some games the GM is
> very autocratic, while in others the GM's authority is dispersed. But I
> don't think this spectrum corresponds to an aspiration to emphasize the
> story telling aspects of the game (which in any case will *always* be
> present).
Perhaps I should not use the term "story" in this way...I
chose it because (IME) "story-oriented" is popularly used to indicate
systems in which the GM has extensive perogative over the Laws 'O
Nature. Obviously, there will be story elements in any interesting
game (using it in the looser sense), but I intended to use this other
meaning of the word.
(Maybe we need a better one...)
>
> I've seen storytelling games that were very autocratic, and I have seen
> story-telling rpgs in which the GM's authority was widely shared indeed.
> I think what you have to analyze is the *extent* of authority possible in
> a game. Who has responsibility to do what, and when?
Hmm. I thought that _was_ what I was doing, more or less...but
I may not have been very clear on that. What I was trying to look at
was the "tension" between the more-or-less objectively defined rules
and the will of the GM. IMHO, you can explain a lot with that axis
alone...but, as you say, there you can understand more by adding
additional dimension (such as player control). Likewise, it may be
that in a game with extensive GM control, the GM will _delegate_ that
to the players. While this wan't explicitly in the model, it doesn't
hurt it either, because the model is about what the GM is "legitimately"
(as per the Rules (TM)) empowered to do (not what he or she does, per
se).
>
> Traditionally, it seems to me, GM authority is focussed on two places:
>
> 1.) the setting, and
> 2.) action adjudication.
>
> Now, in a strongly simulationist game (in the sense that you seem to be
> using the word, and in consonance with the way it has been used by many
> rgfa contributors) the GM often shares responsibility for action
> adjudication with the players--the GM's ability to decide things by fiat
> is restricted by a set of pre-agreed mechanics, with the goal of
> controlling at least the latitude that the GM possesses to be arbitrary.
X-actly.
> In some game systems that seek to enhance the GM's ability to keep the
> story coherent (but not all) this restraint on the GM is relaxed--the GM
> is granted more authority. To this extent, your analysis above is
> reasonable.
Indeed.
> However, in games which decenter the GM's authority for action
> adjudication, the GM's control of the setting is often quite explicitly
> autocratic indeed. And conversely, in games that emphasize the story
> (eg. THEATRIX) the GM's control of the setting may be quite relaxed, and
> the players may have quite a bit of room to improvise the setting.
That's an interesting point. My analysis is not that
complex: While it might be interpreted as being more "action centered"
than not, it really has a very general index of "GM Control." IME,
for _most_ games this seems to be sufficient...but natch there will
be outliers which treat certain aspects of the game world very
differently from others. I'm not disputing that...but I'm also not
claiming to have the True Vision of All Gaming (TM), either. I
simply think that you can understand what makes one game different
from another (including the more subtle differences noted in various
debates of "story" versus "simulation" or "rules") in _many_ cases
by looking at this variable.
> The question becomes even more complex when you look at the authority in
> the game reserved for the players. Typically that is focussed on
>
> 1.) characterization--what matters to the character, and
> 2.) portrayal of the character--what the character is *like*, and
> 3.) emotive content of the character--what the character *feels*, and
> 4.) action--what the character *says* and *does*.
>
> Now, I have been in games in which, to one degree or another, the GM has
> intervened in one or more of these aspects. To the extent that the GM
> does so, the game is, it seems to me, more autocratic. But the
> connection between story-telling and "simulation," and the GM's
> provlivity to intervene in these areas of player autonomy, has been weak,
> it seems to me.
I'm not sure that it's all that weak...games such as (to use
an earlier example) Everway give much more leeway period (to both
player _and_GM) than games such as GURPs in terms of how the character
works. But, on the other hand, yes, the differences are not perfect,
and this is one of the weaker aspects of the control model. That's
part of why I put in that player dimension, though it's always nice
to keep things simple. :-)
In any case, these are all valid compaints...I don't see the
GM control model as The Answer (SM) to everything. Nevertheless,
after having heard some of these "story" versus "simulation" debates
for the Nth time, I have come to think that some of the confusion
and, sometimes, _hostility_ could be averted if people looked at
the structure of gaming a little differently. The little 1-D model
which I propose is nice because it's neat, easy, and IMHO gets most
of the Stuff That Matters (R); it's not the only perspective, of course,
and it's certainly not The Truth (C), but only a filter for percieving
certain aspects of things.
-Carter
Brian D. Howard
In article <Pine.HPP.3.91.960710...@river.it.gvsu.edu>, William Clifford <clif...@river.it.gvsu.edu> wrote:
> I have a quibble with this. Man vs *** descriptions apply to
>plots after the fact and strike me as being useless in RPG terms. One of
>the problems is that the story that goes on in an RPG is both developed
>and experienced in play and is pretty much non-reproducible ever
>same "plot" in the sense of what may have been planned ahead of time but
>change the players and the characters and it's a completely different
>experience.
> We need something that describes plot as it is experienced by the
>players and GM. For the most part we have been talking about plot as it
>is developed as though by a writer even to the point of recommending
>useful but I think we're past the point were what writers need to know
>about plot is useful to us as GM's and players.
>be useful. The story is something that is experienced and plot is only
>part of that. In an RPG the story is not just experienced but
>participated in by the players (i'm including the GM as a player here).
>Some people have reacted fiercely to a having a coherent plot in a game
>before-hand. They didn't want their experience railroaded. Compaint
>bothers me a lot and I have yet to see an adequate defense for having one
>(aside from just personal taste in games). I guess that is why I've
>brought up this whole can of worms again.
It seems to me like you're confusing plot and resolution.
Plot, (to me, anyway) is just a basic framework. Plots are descriptions like:
The characters are on a sinking ship, what do they do?
The characters are involved in an assassination plot, or any of a bazillion
others. You can play out the plot over and over with other groups and you
will get similar plots. Similar events will probably happen in each game.
The resolution, the end result, will be different, yes.
The plot is an improtant part of the story. The trick is for it to be
flexible. If you have already decided what's going to happen, then the game
is really Man vs the Icy-Hand-of-Fate. There's no reason that a plot should
railroad the players into anything, unless the GM is so fond of his ideas that
he'll make sure they happen no matter what the players do. So basically I
think what I'm saying is that, to me, plot makes the difference whether the GM
has thought out ideas before hand, or whether he just makes everything up as
he goes. The GM planning ahead will generate recurring themes, tied around
past plots and events. The players will see the world changing around them.
Players of John's games should notice a lot of continuity caused in part just
by that. (Unless he's changed a lot in the last three years or so...)
To me that's the mark of a good GM.
(Oh, and complaint is just one form of feedback from your players. If you
don't like it, teach them a better way to give feedback, or make a point of
asking them for comments each session. It makes for a good way to wrap up for
the night, and it helps everyone keep track of their interests in the game.)
Q - qxlrnglx - Brian D. Howard
I used to be humble, but then I realized I wasn't as cool as I thought.
John H Kim
This concerns the question of "simulation" in regards to RPG's.
As usual, we are treading over old territory. I certainly agree with
Kevin's reply to Carter Butts that "joint storytelling" does not
correspond to greater GM control.
However, he seems to be equating "simulation" to something
different than is commonly referred to here -- which difference I
would like to clarify...
Kevin R. Hardwick <krhr...@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
>I also think that the contrast between "pure simulation" and
>"story-telling" is false. I suppose it comes down to what you mean by
>"simulation." But in my experience, those games that have felt most real
>and true to life have also been those games that self-consciously
>emphasized the story. Is a simulation, then, something other than an
>attempt to create verisimilitude and "realness" in the game?
Of course it's different! I thought we had nailed this down
before, Kevin. As it has generally been used here, "simulation" is a
process by which the GM tries to respond without taking meta-game
factors into account -- i.e. avoiding storytelling techniques. It does
not mean "anything which creates the feeling of realness" in a game.
>
[Later in his article]
>Now, in a strongly simulationist game (in the sense that you seem to be
>using the word, and in consonance with the way it has been used by many
>rgfa contributors)
Just as a suggestion... if everyone else is using that meaning
for "simulationist", I would think it is much easier on the conversation
if you use that as well -- keep quotes or something around it if you
think it is inappropriate to the literal meaning of the word.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Let me take a simple example:
The players have to investigate one of four different hotels for
clues in a mystery. At this point, they don't have a whole lot of
information on which one of the four is really the one they are
interested in (the one where Mr. X stayed). Thus, their choice will
be somewhat arbitrary.
A storytelling GM decides before-hand that the second hotel
they visit will be the one they are interested in. Thus, she only
prepares the descriptions of two hotels: Hotel #1 (the false lead),
and Hotel #2 (the target). Further, she tailors Hotel #1 so that they
will realize early on that it is not the one (thus leaving the
description incomplete).
Thus, when the players say they go to investigate the
"Oak Tree Inn", the GM uses the description for Hotel #1. It doesn't
matter which of the four names they say, she will always use that
description, and it will never be the correct one.
In contrast, a simulationist GM might create rough outlines for
all four hotels. He might decide beforehand that the "Oak Tree Inn"
is the hotel they are interested in, and thus, if the players say
they are going there -- they will find it on the first try.
-*-*-*-
The key here is that if the PC's go to the hotels one by one,
the storytelling GM will be able to give fuller and richer descriptions
of the hotels which may give more of a feeling of "realness". The
simulationist GM's descriptions may be a little more hollow because
his preparation is more sketchy.
The flip side of this is that the storytelling method may be
missing out on a certain amount of flexibility. Imagine this: rather
than going to the hotels one by one, the players decide to cursorily
check the appearence and location of the four hotels. They then take
off on a different tangent, trying to reconstruct Mr. X's route --
and then they investigate the hotel which is along that route.
Since the simulationist GM decided on all this starting with
Mr. X and his route in the first place, he will have consistent
answers for all of this, and the players might be able to track Mr. X
in a way which he hadn't expected at all.
The storytelling GM will have a much harder time for this, because
she spent more of her time preparing for the scenes at the hotel, not
wandering around the city. Instead, she finds an excuse to slip them a
clue leading them to Hotel #2. They don't notice this as "unrealistic",
thus the feeling of "realness" is maintained. However, the alternate
possibility was lost out on.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
[Re: GM authority over the setting and action adjudication]
>
>Now, in a strongly simulationist game [...] the GM often shares
>responsibility for action adjudication with the players--the GM's
>ability to decide things by fiat is restricted by a set of pre-agreed
>mechanics, with the goal of controlling at least the latitude that
>the GM possesses to be arbitrary.
[...]
>However, in games which decenter the GM's authority for action
>adjudication, the GM's control of the setting is often quite explicitly
>autocratic indeed. And conversely, in games that emphasize the story
>(eg. THEATRIX) the GM's control of the setting may be quite relaxed, and
>the players may have quite a bit of room to improvise the setting.
Huh? Kevin, I certainly agree that storytelling does not
correspond to GM authority, but I think this correspondence is equally
unwarranted. There is nothing about mechanical or joint action
adjudication which corresponds to greater GM control over setting, or
the inverse.
I would offer as examples _Amber_ and _Ars Magica_. _Amber_
gives much greater GM control over action resolution, but there is
no corresponding player control over setting. AM, in contrast, has
mechanical resolution, and also has greater player control over
setting (i.e. troupe-style play, whimsy cards).
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <Pine.HPP.3.91.960708...@river.it.gvsu.edu> William Clifford <clif...@river.it.gvsu.edu> writes:
> Also if a character can be said to be DIP or DAS why not a plot?
>(to this end could somebody remind me what DAS stands for again. thanks).
Sure, a plot can be designed at start or developed in play. _Sun in
Splendor_ was about "an Imperial exploration vessel dares the Forbidding
of the South, following the trail of the Mad Prince" and that's pretty
much what happened. Its sister campaign, _Sunrise War_, started out as
"the PCs are invited to go on a mining expedition, and uncover a
sleeping creature." As it turned out, a lump of metal they dug up
played a key role in the outcome of the entire war, but I didn't even
know (as GM) that there was going to *be* a war until about 1/3 of the
way through the three year campaign. The first campaign was fairly
strongly designed at start (DAS), the second was almost totally
developed in play (DIP).
The combination of a DAS GM and DIP players can be a little tricky; it
is hard for a DIP player to contract to make a character that will fit a
particular plotline. (Sun in Splendor had the advantage that once the
voyage started, individual PCs were in a poor position to back out even
if they had wanted to.)
The reverse combination also has pitfalls. I sometimes start a campaign
with very little knowledge of the game world. This is not acceptable to
DAS players, because it prevents them from making good characters.
If the GM can do either style, it might be ideal to try to match the
players' preferences....
> I read the four stances as applied to players but why not
>also to the GM? (Instead of IC we's have IW for In-World or IS for
>In-Story, not real clear on how that would work since IS would
>effectively be the same as author for GM's no?)
One question that we've found useful in understanding GMing styles is
"do you have to believe in the world?" GMs who say "yes" are often
using something much like IC stance (in brief, interrupted flashes) to
determine what NPCs will do, both on and off stage. They need
suspension of disbelief in the world in order to be able to get far
enough IC to generate interesting and "correct" NPC responses. I run
like this: if I lose belief, suddenly coming up with what happens
next becomes horribly difficult and labor-intensive. (I'm lazy, so
this is very bad.)
GMs who say "no" are more on the Author side of the line: they work out
what needs to happen from an external perspective, rather than from
inside the heads of NPCs. Generally they can't really believe in the
world, since they are too aware of creating it, but this is not a
problem for their style. I believe Kevin describes his GMing style this
way.
The "IC" style of GMing can be a problem for a GM who likes to preplot,
because he may find that his NPCs refuse to do what he wants (just as
PCs played in this style do). It seems better suited for a relatively
loosely plotted game. It can be a real lifesaver for an improvisational
GM--all you need is a glimpse of a character and events unfold from
there.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <4rudcq$7...@cegt201.bradley.edu> j...@cegt201.bradley.edu (John Novak) writes:
>With almost a year's perspective on those particular events, the
>whole thing spiralled out of control because players and GM did not
>understand one another. I very much believe that Mike thought we
>would be disappointed if he compressed two months of time into a few
>dice-clatters, three sentences of explanation, and we were on our way
>again. So he put things on the surface of the abandoned, quarantined
>planet to keep us from getting bored.
>We, in turn, very much _wanted_ to be done with the whole sorry affair
>and tended to believe that Mike wouldn't be inflicting this whole,
>deadly boring affair on us if there weren't some point to it. So we
>investigated the little sensor blips, excavated the other wrecks and
>grew steadily more irate at stewing on the surface of the goddam
>planet trying to figure out what the bloody point was.
>Does this sound like the resident simulationist found someone who was
>even more simulationist and found the thing patently absurd? P'raps.
I think that pacing is one dramatic tool that even strict simulationists
need to use, and to be willing to use, in order to make the game work.
"Go fast through the boring parts and slow through the interesting
parts" is the basic principle, and it sounds so simple. Two problems:
(1) which parts are boring, and which parts are interesting?
(2) how do you make the game speed up or slow down?
We recently realized that for me as a player, the conferences among crew
members on Radiant are just about as interesting as anything in the
game, and they *need* to be done out in full. The GM had been trying to
hurry them along on the grounds that they weren't that interesting
(everyone knows that two PCs belonging to the same player shouldn't
spend time talking to each other, no?) The standard answer to such
confusions is "ask the player(s)" but *I* didn't realize how important
the conferences were to me until well into the game. I guess you just
have to *keep* asking.
How do you speed up a game, without abstracting away player
decisionmaking? Conversely, how can you slow it down without
information overload? It's easy enough in the case of the crew
conferences; just do them as full dialog. But how do you, say, slow
down the merchantile part of the campaign (the PCs solicit cargo,
bargain for it, work out contracts, and make deliveries) without getting
bogged down in details that neither player nor GM know?
I'm sure Chernoi's grasp of the market is much better than mine, but if
that grasp is reduced to a die roll the merchanting scenes whiz by, and
we end up with a campaign that is "about" what the characters do between
merchant runs, since next to no play time is spent on those.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Mary K. Kuhner
>For one, they had to compete with an over-large group of passengers and crew
>for limited life-boats. For another, they had limited time to figure out what
>to do. The aft was sinking first, so not only did they have to get off the
>ship in time, but if they wanted anything from the aft end, they had to get to
>it before it was under water. They had to decide who was in charge, what they
>would take, (they knew there were islands not very far away, but knew nothing
>about them) and how to get off the boat. (By the time they figured out that
>yes, the ship was a goner, they also figured out that they had no reasonable
>chance of making it through panicked crouds to a life boat.) There was some
>conflict with others, and even some amongst themselves, but man vs. nature
>seemed represented as well.
This is a really nice example, because the PCs had a number of
meaningful decisions to make, and those decisions didn't depend too much
on the mechanical implementation--they were the kind of decisions the
players, as well as the characters, could usefully stew over. The
timeline imposed by the sinking of the boat is good too: I think
critical situations like this may work better in RPG than situations of
the form "you are lost in the wilderness and need to survive".
Mary Kuhner
mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Kevin R. Hardwick
Gosh, John. I think I'm in 100% agreement with you--a first! Anyway,
just to be sure . . .
On 11 Jul 1996, John H Kim wrote:
> DAS means "Develop at Start", BTW. This would imply that the
> GM has a plan at the beginning of the campaign on approximately where
> it will lead and/or some important features of how it will develop
> (like theme, twists, etc.)
Exactly.
> Obviously, real games are a mixture of DIP and DAS -- although it
> may be illustrative to talk about extremes. Most GM's will have *some*
> idea at the beginning of where things will go -- at least on the short
> term. However, most do not have any sort of resolution or over-arching
> storyline planned.
I tend to agree here as well--although I have played in games that *did*
have planned resolutions to them. For an example of that, see the
scenario in FENG SHUI, or similarly the scenario in IRONWOOD. So while
they are less common, I think it is useful to identify them as a distinct
phenomena in their own right.
But in general, I think you point out something important that tends to
get neglected--that in practice, most games embody a bit of both approaches.
I wrote:
> >However, IME, DIP plots tend not to be as tightly focussed as DAS plots,
> >nor do they permit the use of a variety of story-telling techniques that
> >may, for some people, make the resulting story more effective, or have
> >more impact. For example, it is much harder to foreshadow in a DIP plot
> >than in a DAS plot. Likewise, flashbacks, cut-scenes, thematic imagery,
> >and so on are easier to use in a DAS plot.
To which John responded:
> Huh? I don't really see the problem with flashbacks or cut
> scenes, in particular, or really with any of these. My current game
> is a mixture of DIP and DAS -- but I certainly have a lot of on-the-spot
> creation of thematic imagery, flashbacks, etc. It isn't that tough to
> create a flashback if you know the character history -- but at the same
> time playing things out can be very illustrative.
> Obviously foreshadowing is more difficult, but it can certainly
> be done... Rather than inserting in elements to foreshadow planned
> events, you throw in little random vignettes or more often, little
> vignettes will just happen on their own. Then, later on, you plan
> major plot elements which reflect those little vignettes. (i.e. Rather
> than writing in Foreshadowing for the Plot, you write the Plot based on
> chosen Foreshadowing).
You are right, I think. A DIP plot most certainly can use these
devices--I did not mean to imply otherwise, although what I wrote above
certainly could be construed to do so--my fault.
Anyway, it *has* been my experience that these narrative techniques
*function* differently in a DIP plot as opposed to a DAS plot--for
example, in a DAS plot you might use a flashback to "set up" the climax
of the story, or an important theme in the story--while in DIP plots they
more often function to enhance or explore or deepen characterization.
That's been my experience, anyway.
In general I think the observation I've made is fair--that DAS plots on
the whole tend to be more coherent and "tight" than DIP plots. I don't
think this implies anything at all about which style is "better" though,
since it all depends on what you are trying to achieve in the game.
> This is actually very useful, in that the foreshadowing doesn't
> stand out as such. Often, when I encounter foreshadowing in a planned
> run, you have an effect like: "Gosh, why is the GM spending so much
> time describing the weather and how animals are behaving. It must be
> *foreshadowing*." This method guarantees that the elements blend in.
This is certainly true. Its been my experience that foreshadowing in a
DAS plot is hard to pull off effectively, and must be done in
moderation. When it works, however, it has worked very well, for me.
Like anything else, YMMV.
> Obviously the DIP plot elements can become a bit of a jumble,
> but there is a return in terms of flexibility, I think. I am pleased
> with how things are going right now in my campaign, but I don't know
> where they will lead -- because at this point it is the players who are
> directing the action as much as myself.
No argument from me on this one--I'm glad your game is going well :)
> I would like to go into more examples of this later, because
> I do see it as a serious shift in play style -- but that'll have to
> wait for a later post.
Please do post them--I always enjoy reading about your experiences.
> On the one hand, certainly the more effort you put into
> developing an RPG campaign, the better it will turn out in the end.
> This is pretty universally true.
Agreement.
> The question is, is a campaign better for having a planned story
> arc? I don't know very clearly, but I do know that some of my favorite
> campaigns ended *completely* apart from where I would have predicted --
> and ones where I tried to impose a story arc often fell flat.
I'm not sure its the right question, at least posed in such a broad
fashion. Both approaches have their merits, and their flaws, it seems
to me. I've enjoyed playing in and running both styles of game.
> I think *especially* if you have DIP players, then you should
> avoid trying to make long-term plans until you see how things work
> out in play. If you plan a standard pulp story arc, and it turns out
> that you have a Weak-Jawed Hero as the leader -- then the game could
> completely collapse.
This strikes me as very sound advice.
All my best,
Kevin
John Novak
In <4s3sff$6...@nntp4.u.washington.edu> mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>>Does this sound like the resident simulationist found someone who was
>>even more simulationist and found the thing patently absurd? P'raps.
>I think that pacing is one dramatic tool that even strict simulationists
>need to use, and to be willing to use, in order to make the game work.
Oh, hell yes.
And the misuse of this policy gives not only the problem of boring the
players when they could move on to more interesting things, but it
also begets a meta-problem: the thought will slowly creep into the
players' minds, "This is boring. But he's dwelling on it. What are
we missing?" This in turn can at times create the feedback loop I
spoke of earlier, where the GM thinks, "They're concentrating on their
surroundings. They must like this."
Uncontrolled feedback loops suck.
I have a dim recollection of someone else in the group (I was new to
Mike's GMing style) eventually asking him what the hell we were
supposed to be doing there, which threw a spanner into the feedback
gears...
>(1) which parts are boring, and which parts are interesting?
>(2) how do you make the game speed up or slow down?
>How do you speed up a game, without abstracting away player
>decisionmaking?
This is one case where I tend to rely on player feedback. Immediate
player feedback. I know that when I feel my actions have eben
(charitably speaking) "abstracted" I will immediately stop the GM,
cutting him off in mid-sentence(*) if I must and tell him, "Whoah,
wait, stop, cease. I had things I wanted to do and need more direct
details." That at least gets the issue on the table.
>Conversely, how can you slow it down without
>information overload?
And another concern, back on the meta-level: How do you slow things
down without giving a free clue to all the players that they should
Pay Attention? Difficult [for me] to stage an ambush if the players
have to travel for sixty days, and the ambush takes place on the
thirtieth day. If I were to gloss over thirty days in five minutes,
then slow down, as soon as I specifically mention, "The thirtieth
day," the players will know something is up.
* Because sometimes the GM will say something like, "After three
months spent lazing around the town enjoying the fruits of your
labours," (which is where I would break in) "The following extremely
important event happens," after which the GM may very well give
information that the characters shouldn't have until it actually
_happens_.
Good players will ignore the extra information about the future, but
it strains SOD.
Andrew Finch
John H Kim (jh...@konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu) wrote:
: Of course it's different! I thought we had nailed this down
: before, Kevin. As it has generally been used here, "simulation" is a
: process by which the GM tries to respond without taking meta-game
: factors into account -- i.e. avoiding storytelling techniques. It does
: not mean "anything which creates the feeling of realness" in a game.
I have no real problem with such a definition, except that it seems to
reduce simulation to meaning 'non-dramatic'. That doesn't equate very
well with how I would normally undertsand 'simulation', in a technical or
non-technical manner. Simulation seems to imply the creation
vissimilitude, some form of fidelity to the original. Do we really wantto
narrow it to 'no dramatic techniques'? If we do, fine, if we don't, then
I think Kevin's point is valid, that simulation has little to do with how
many or few mechanics are used in the game.
<snip>
: The flip side of this is that the storytelling method may be
: missing out on a certain amount of flexibility. Imagine this: rather
: than going to the hotels one by one, the players decide to cursorily
: check the appearence and location of the four hotels. They then take
: off on a different tangent, trying to reconstruct Mr. X's route --
: and then they investigate the hotel which is along that route.
As a storytelling GM, if I had some story reason to make it the second
hotel, then that same reason will guide me in handling the above case as
well.
Also, a concentration on storytelling does not imply a lack of knowledge
about one's world, or a consistent use of improvisation. A storytelling
GM might very well have complete floor plans of all 4 hotels, the route
which Mr. X took, why he took it, whom he met, etc. Why all this detail?
Because it's important to the *story*.
Now, I, myself, improv. a lot, and would likely be making up much of this
on the spot, but that's my style. However, if this is a mystery, I might
have much of this worked out in advance as well, wher ethe detail is
necessary to the plot, and too intricate to improv. easily.
: correspond to GM authority, but I think this correspondence is equally
: unwarranted. There is nothing about mechanical or joint action
: adjudication which corresponds to greater GM control over setting, or
: the inverse.
Agreed.
I think we are talking improvisation here, which often goes with a
storytelling emphasis, but is really a bit of a horse of a different color.
David
John H Kim
Hmm. This is a reply to Carter Butts regarding his contrast
of "storytelling-oriented" and "simulation-oriented" games. I may be
repeating a lot of what Kevin said here, but perhaps I can contribute
something. Carter uses _Everway_ as his primary example of a "storytelling-
oriented" game, which puts me at a bit of a disadvantage since I have
not played or even seen that game. However, I've never been one to
let lack of knowledge get in the way of debate... @-)
-*-*-*-
One of the key issues here is the concept of "GM authority".
As I understand it, Carter is using this to mean the breadth of
possible GM decisions according to the letter of the rules. Kevin
is referring (I think) to a more general, social sort of power.
As an example, a while ago I had started a _Champions_ game,
suggesting that it be a rather light sort of superhero game. Instead,
the players came back to me with a counter-suggestion... They wanted
to instead be a more mundane team of private detectives investigating
the supernatural, and built their characters around that idea. This is
"authority" in the social sense -- I didn't choose what the campaign
activity was about, they did.
On a given microscopic sort of decision, I agree that a
freeform or storytelling GM has more breadth of decision-making
ability. However, this doesn't neccessarily translate into overall
autocratic dominance of the game.
A few games do describe the decentralization of GM authority.
_Ars Magica_ did this with "troupe style" play (which switches off
GM's) and Whimsy Cards. _Theatrix_ does this with troupe play and
"Plot Points". However, by and large, this larger-scale "dominance"
is an uncodified social contract between the players and the GM.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Carter Butts <ea...@son3.mc.duke.edu> wrote:
>Likewise, it may be that in a game with extensive GM control, the GM
>will _delegate_ that to the players. While this wan't explicitly in
>the model, it doesn't hurt it either, because the model is about what
>the GM is "legitimately" (as per the Rules (TM)) empowered to do (not
>what he or she does, per se).
Hmmm. You might want to have a look at _Theatrix_, because
the rules explicitly say that the GM should delegate some control to
the players. Of course, the GM does have power of veto over these,
but the rules specify that he is not to abuse that veto.
There is no hard-and-fast rules which the players can point
to and say "That veto is illegitimate", but just because it isn't
formalized doesn't mean that it isn't in the rules.
A Lapalme
Andrew Finch (bcks...@crl.com) writes:
> William Clifford (clif...@river.it.gvsu.edu) wrote:
>
> : Is it the GM's job to create a single, stand-alone experience
> : (and thus a story) out of the events in the lives of the characters?
>
> I think this should be restated to take advantage of our perceptions of
> the group contract. It's never just the GM, although the group contract
> may give that entire burden to the GM, our group contract certainly does not.
>
> So...
>
> Is it the group's job to create a single, stand-alone experience (and
> thus a story) out of the events of their characters' lives?
>
Care to give an example or two before people plunge in? The above can and
will be easily misinterpreted. Do you mean one single stand alone
experience for the whole group? If so, what did you have in mind?
Alain
Karen J. Cravens
In article <4s3ee8$g...@inet-nntp-gw-1.us.oracle.com>,
nri...@us.oracle.com (Anne B. "Nonie" Rider) wrote:
>Maybe it's a female thing, but to me, the structure of
>the game is at least as much Man and Man (how the team
>interacts and unites) as it is Man vs. anything.
>I don't think of games in terms of whether my character was
>fighting Man, Nature, or Destiny... I think of games in
>terms of who my teammates were, how we talked, feared,
>defended each other, gave each other support or walked away
>to brood.
Maybe it *is* a female thing... I know *I've* been hitting "N" a
lot in this thread. ("Who CARES who's versus what?")
--...................................................................
Phoenyx Roleplaying Listserver - majo...@phoenyx.wichita.ks.us
Home of chrome-L, Cyborg Superhero PBeM RPG
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Carter Butts
John H Kim wrote:
>
> One of the key issues here is the concept of "GM authority".
> As I understand it, Carter is using this to mean the breadth of
> possible GM decisions according to the letter of the rules. Kevin
> is referring (I think) to a more general, social sort of power.
Really, I am not sure that "authority" is what I had in mind.
I used "control," which is proabably just as bad, but the idea was that
you could order most games based on the latitude the GM has to decide
the "objective" aspects of the game world, and that by looking at
such an ordering you could easily understand 3 things:
1. At one extreme, RPGs merge into authored stories
2. At the other extreme, RPGs merge into pure simulations
3. In between, many of the L&F issues surrounding games are
determined by where those games reside on the "GM Control" axis.
If you read my previous post (response to Kevin), I tried to
make it clear that I was not proposing this as The Only Way to
Understand Games (TM), but only as a useful tool...I do not think that
much has been shown to indicate that this tool is not useful.
>
> As an example, a while ago I had started a _Champions_ game,
> suggesting that it be a rather light sort of superhero game. Instead,
> the players came back to me with a counter-suggestion... They wanted
> to instead be a more mundane team of private detectives investigating
> the supernatural, and built their characters around that idea. This is
> "authority" in the social sense -- I didn't choose what the campaign
> activity was about, they did.
>
> On a given microscopic sort of decision, I agree that a
> freeform or storytelling GM has more breadth of decision-making
> ability. However, this doesn't neccessarily translate into overall
> autocratic dominance of the game.
>
But again, I'm not referring to autocratic dominance specifically....
> A few games do describe the decentralization of GM authority.
> _Ars Magica_ did this with "troupe style" play (which switches off
> GM's) and Whimsy Cards. _Theatrix_ does this with troupe play and
> "Plot Points". However, by and large, this larger-scale "dominance"
> is an uncodified social contract between the players and the GM.
These fine distinctions are beyond the scope of this
classificatory scheme...though I'm sure you could expand it to deal
with these points, if desired.
> Hmmm. You might want to have a look at _Theatrix_, because
> the rules explicitly say that the GM should delegate some control to
> the players. Of course, the GM does have power of veto over these,
> but the rules specify that he is not to abuse that veto.
>
> There is no hard-and-fast rules which the players can point
> to and say "That veto is illegitimate", but just because it isn't
> formalized doesn't mean that it isn't in the rules.
Theatrix sounds like an outlier (tho I've never played it, and
hence can't say much about it), one for which this simple schema is
of limited value. That's OK by me; I'm only trying to get some gross
distinctions here....a more subtle scheme, with more dimensions, is
doubtless required to catch all the outliers.
-Carter
Kevin R. Hardwick
On 11 Jul 1996, John H Kim wrote:
> This concerns the question of "simulation" in regards to RPG's.
> As usual, we are treading over old territory. I certainly agree with
> Kevin's reply to Carter Butts that "joint storytelling" does not
> correspond to greater GM control.
>
> However, he seems to be equating "simulation" to something
> different than is commonly referred to here -- which difference I
> would like to clarify...
I think you are correct, John. I've been using the term "simulationist"
in a sloppy and inconsistent fashion.
I thought your examples were truly excellent--they were very informative.
Thanks.
My best,
Kevin
Kevin R. Hardwick
I thought the following was a terrifically cogent and useful summary of
several months worth of discussion. Every now and again someone manages
to summarize concerns in an especially concise and nuanced fashion--I
thought this was one of those posts.
Neel--might you think about including this, or some of this, in the FAQ?
My best,
Kevin
Andrew Finch
A Lapalme (ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) wrote:
: > Is it the group's job to create a single, stand-alone experience (and
: > thus a story) out of the events of their characters' lives?
: Care to give an example or two before people plunge in? The above can and
: will be easily misinterpreted. Do you mean one single stand alone
: experience for the whole group? If so, what did you have in mind?
Actauuly, that was pretty much the point, that it is up to the group to
decide that experience, and part of the group contract, and not simply in
the hands of the GM.
David
John H Kim
Another reply regarding the term "simulation", in reply to
David Berkman. I am making more use of my example of a scenario
where the PC's are searching 4 hotels for clues in a mystery -- they
are trying to find the one where Mr. X stayed. My suggestion was
that the storytelling GM might fudge things, deciding ahead of time
that the second hotel that the PC's search is the correct one --
allowing him to make the two hotel descriptions more vivid, because
he doesn't have to detail out all four.
David Berkman <bcks...@crl.com> wrote:
>John H Kim (jh...@konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu) wrote:
>: As it has generally been used here, "simulation" is a process by which
>: the GM tries to respond without taking meta-game factors into account --
>: i.e. avoiding storytelling techniques. It does not mean "anything
>: which creates the feeling of realness" in a game.
>
>I have no real problem with such a definition, except that it seems to
>reduce simulation to meaning 'non-dramatic'. That doesn't equate very
>well with how I would normally undertsand 'simulation', in a technical or
>non-technical manner. Simulation seems to imply the creation
>vissimilitude, some form of fidelity to the original.
Hmmm. I think that this is perfectly in keeping with the common
understanding of the term "simulation". Technical simulations will
typically reproduce a number of the relevant causes and features of
the phenomena, but will rarely try to reproduce the "feel" of the
experience. What is more, they frequently try to reproduce the actual
process (to illuminate the nature of that process).
I think my example of searching hotels is a fine one: one GM
concentrates on descriptions to make the "feel" of the first two hotels
more vivid -- another GM describes all four in lesser detail in order to
reproduce the process of searching. I think that most people would
agree that the latter is more "simulationist", even though the
effect in the game may be less vivid and life-like.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>Also, a concentration on storytelling does not imply a lack of knowledge
>about one's world, or a consistent use of improvisation. A storytelling
>GM might very well have complete floor plans of all 4 hotels, the route
>which Mr. X took, why he took it, whom he met, etc. Why all this detail?
>Because it's important to the *story*.
But David -- the rest of us, at least, live in the real world.
No one has unlimited time and effort to spend on every aspect of the
game. Heck, I'm lucky if I don't have to make up essentials on the
spot. The question, then, is what you will focus on.
A strongly simulationist GM will start with the back-story of
Mr. X. She will reason through what Mr. X would have done in that
situation. Based on that, she will deduce what clues were left behind
which the PC's could find. Note that this may leave the PC's struggling
with very few clues, or it could lead to their picking up on something
with no particular challenge.
A strongly storytelling GM, OTOH, will start with what sort of
story he wants to produce. Since this is a mystery, he tries to produce
a chain of clues which will satisfactorily lead the characters to the
solution while still being challenging. He may also want to spend some
time considering the proper atmosphere for certain scenes and preparing
vivid descriptions.
Thus, if they spend an equal amount of time on preparation, the
simulationist GM might have a less satisfying story, but she will know
more about what Mr. X did (since that is where she started).
Bruce Baugh
In article <d1b5x0C/k4NR...@southwind.net>, pho...@southwind.net (Karen J. Cravens)
<Pine.HPP.3.91.960708...@river.it.gvsu.edu>
<4s0mom$f...@crl.crl.com> <4s3ee8$g...@inet-nntp-gw-1.us.oracle.com> wrote:
>Maybe it *is* a female thing... I know *I've* been hitting "N" a
>lot in this thread. ("Who CARES who's versus what?")
Unless something has happened to me that's failed to register yet, it's
not just a female thing.
While it is true that all stories can be described in terms of conflict,
I don't think that it's necessarily useful to do so, and I don't think
that "X versus Y" is the right framework for some of my favorite stories
and gaming.
Bruce Baugh <*> br...@aracnet.com <*> http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce
See my Web pages for
New science fiction by Steve Stirling and George Alec Effing er
Christlib, the mailing list for Christian and libertarian concerns
Daedalus Games, makers of Shadowfist and Feng Shui
Unsolicited commercial e-mail will be proofread at $50/hour, min $100.
Keith Kornelsen
nri...@us.oracle.com (Anne B. "Nonie" Rider) wrote:
>Sure, Man vs. XXXXX is a staple of litcrit terminology,
>but it's just plain no gaming use to me.
Amen; Thank you for summing up my position as well. No, it
isn't a "female thing". :p
--Your Intrepid Kornelsen
Brian D. Howard
In article <4s3ee8$g...@inet-nntp-gw-1.us.oracle.com>, nri...@us.oracle.com (Anne B. "Nonie" Rider) wrote:
..
>Hmmm... All this talk of Man vs. XXXXX strikes me as
>pretty useless for the kind of roleplaying I do.
>
>the game is at least as much Man and Man (how the team
>interacts and unites) as it is Man vs. anything.
>
>I don't think of games in terms of whether my character was
>fighting Man, Nature, or Destiny... I think of games in
>terms of who my teammates were, how we talked, feared,
>defended each other, gave each other support or walked away
>to brood.
You have a very valid point. In many ways that would be much more
useful. However, don't you think that the confrontation at hand will affect
how characters interact. I think that any group of people will treat each
other differently planning business strategy than they will in a crisis.
In life/death situations you can still make judgements on how characters treat
each other, but to say that the conflict itself is useless implies that it has
no effect on the interaction involved.
Q - qxlrnglx - Brian D. Howard
"Happiness is having your house finally clean after months of clutter."
William Clifford
On 12 Jul 1996, John H Kim wrote:
> A strongly simulationist GM will start with the back-story of
> Mr. X. She will reason through what Mr. X would have done in that
> situation. Based on that, she will deduce what clues were left behind
> which the PC's could find. Note that this may leave the PC's struggling
> with very few clues, or it could lead to their picking up on something
> with no particular challenge.
>
> A strongly storytelling GM, OTOH, will start with what sort of
> story he wants to produce. Since this is a mystery, he tries to produce
> a chain of clues which will satisfactorily lead the characters to the
> solution while still being challenging. He may also want to spend some
> time considering the proper atmosphere for certain scenes and preparing
> vivid descriptions.
>
> Thus, if they spend an equal amount of time on preparation, the
> simulationist GM might have a less satisfying story, but she will know
> more about what Mr. X did (since that is where she started).
Okay, I was with on the original hotel example. There you
provided two clearly different approaches to GMing the "Find the clues"
stage of the game. The dramatist assumes that the characters are just
going to find them because that is what is necessary for the story. The
Simulationist does not assume anything about the PC's and lets them roam
the setting and maybe they'll find what they are looking for.
This extention of your original example doesn't cut it (at least
from where I'm standing). For one thing, there is absolutely no reason
whatsoever that the storytelling would NOT begin with MR. X and work out
the proper chain of events from there. This is especially true if the GM
was not above sending the PC's to the Schroedinger's Inn to find the proper
clues in the proper order.
When it comes to describing the whole of an adventure the terms
dramatist and simulationist break down considerably. What was, in your
first example a clearly a distinction of technique for specific in-
game problems cannot be applied to the whole of a game even if the GM
uses one technique for every problem the PC's encounter (indicated a very
poor GM IMO).
It seems to me that to describe the whole of a game from the GM's
POV you would have to talk about agenda. "For such and such a stage I will
give the PC's this much, but here they're on their own." Or if you are
just ad libbing/DIPing the whole session you could talk about
possibilities. If you were to map out an entire adventure in both space
and time what would you get? Areas where everything is in it's place and
moves autonomously (simulationist?) and other areas where the necessary
encounters/implements to continue the game are waiting for the characters
wherever they turn up (Dramatist?) and still other areas where there are
no pre-planned possibilities because the GM hadn't considered that the PC's
might end up there in the course of their travels. There is at least one
other area I can think of but my ability to describe it suddenly fails me.
No matter.
If you want to talk about the whole game before it been played it
seems to me that agenda and possiblity are the only things that can be
applied (so it seems to me at the moment). Specific problems/encounters and
the means of guiding the action for those problems cannot adequately
describe the whole of a game.
Too much abstract thought. My head hurts now. Ugh. I should come
up with an example.
-William Clifford
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
In article <4rrsj8$p...@cegt201.bradley.edu>, j...@cegt201.bradley.edu (John Novak) writes:
|> Design at Start, Design in Play.
|> To my mine, the analogy is strong.
|> In a sense, DAS:dramatic (or plotted)::DIP:simulationist.
I don't think this works. Consider the following scenarios.
Scenario #1: A DAS simulation
The world is the modern day -- except that astronomers have detected
a giant asteroid that will impact the Earth in 7 days and wipe out
humanity in a cataclysmic fireball. As GM, you've set up the reactions
of the media, the government, and the masses pregame. The players will
create PCs, and just play out the last 7 days of their lives. Pure
simulation, with most of the sim done pregame.
Scenario #2: A heavily plotted DIP game
The PCs are Greenpeacers, out to protest French nuclear testing. You
are a plotting GM, who's worked out an intricate plot involving
perfidious French miltary officers, culminating in a commando raid
against the PCs' ship, the _Rainbow Trout_.
However, the players (acting with usual PC illogic) decide to go to
Burma. So you rewrite the plot in midgame, creating a secret cabal
between the French military, SLORC, and the heroin trade, that
culminates in a commando raid against the PCs' ship, the _Rainbow Trout_.
Neel
Kevin R. Hardwick
On Fri, 12 Jul 1996, Carter Butts wrote:
> Really, I am not sure that "authority" is what I had in mind.
> I used "control," which is proabably just as bad, but the idea was that
> you could order most games based on the latitude the GM has to decide
> the "objective" aspects of the game world, and that by looking at
> such an ordering you could easily understand 3 things:
>
> 1. At one extreme, RPGs merge into authored stories
> 2. At the other extreme, RPGs merge into pure simulations
> 3. In between, many of the L&F issues surrounding games are
> determined by where those games reside on the "GM Control" axis.
I've got no problem with scehmas--but this one is of limited utility, for
me. It has not been my experience that rpgs fall onto a spectrum that
runs from "authored stories" to "pure simulations."
But of this works for you, far be it from me to tell you not to use it :)
My best,
Kevin
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.960712...@rac5.wam.umd.edu>, "Kevin R. Hardwick" <krhr...@wam.umd.edu> writes:
|> I thought the following was a terrifically cogent and useful summary of
|> several months worth of discussion. Every now and again someone manages
|> to summarize concerns in an especially concise and nuanced fashion--I
|> thought this was one of those posts.
|>
|> Neel--might you think about including this, or some of this, in the FAQ?
|>
|> My best,
|> Kevin
I want to keep the glossary short, so that it stands a chance of
actually being read, but I have no objection to creating a Plot
FAQ for this newsgroup.
I will need some (much!) help, since the questions that surround plot in
RPGs touch nearly every aspect of the hobby -- the amount of
direction, scenario design, and character design. I suspect that
a Plotting FAQ will have to practically be a ``Lore of rgfa'' FAQ.
This is actually a big argument in it's favor -- my own gaming has
gotten quite a boost from reading this group, and it would be nice
if all this could be distilled into an easily accessible form.
I think the best way to produce the FAQ will be to compile a list
of common questions, and their answers. I want to do this in
two stages. The first stage will be to collect questions. When I
feel a comprehensive list has been generated, I'll toss it out
to the newsgroup and collect answers.
Neel
-----
Confused by all the weird terms? Check out the .advocacy FAQ at:
http://www.mit.edu/people/neelk/rgfa-glossary.html
-----
Ennead
Carter Butts (ea...@son3.mc.duke.edu) wrote:
: Authored Freeform "Simulative" Pure
: Story Gaming RPGs Simulation
: Total<---------------------GM Control------------------------------>None
: Joint "Storytelling" Wargaming
: Storytelling RPGs
This approach seems deeply flawed to me because it ignores the
role of the consensus reality, upon which both mechanical and freeform
gaming depends.
Given the fact that rules systems cannot possibly cover every
contingency that might arise in an RPG, the "proper" application of the
mechanics must be determined _somehow_. Traditionally, this is the GM's
role. A game in which the GM exercises little authority or control is one
in which consensus is used to determine how the mechanics ought be applied
to the in-game situation. And yet the game is no more "mechanical" for
this lack of GM authority -- in fact, some might argue that a game in
which consensus is used in the place of the GM is actually "more
freeform."
Similarly, a freeform (mechanicless) game may grant the authority
to adjudicate action resolution either to the GM _or_ to the group as a
whole, with or without dice use. Should consensus be privileged over GM
fiat, the game is in no way made _less_ freeform.
I don't think that the relationship you imply between GM control
and formalized mechanics is an accurate representation of how these
factors interact in RPG.
-- Sarah
Andrew Finch
John H Kim (jh...@ciao.cc.columbia.edu) wrote:
: >I have no real problem with such a definition, except that it seems to
: >reduce simulation to meaning 'non-dramatic'. That doesn't equate very
: >well with how I would normally undertsand 'simulation', in a technical or
: >non-technical manner. Simulation seems to imply the creation
: >vissimilitude, some form of fidelity to the original.
: Hmmm. I think that this is perfectly in keeping with the common
: understanding of the term "simulation". Technical simulations will
: typically reproduce a number of the relevant causes and features of
: the phenomena, but will rarely try to reproduce the "feel" of the
: experience.
When the *experience* is what is being simulated, the 'feel' is
everything, even in highly technical circles. For example, the
reproduction of music so that it has all the 'feel' of being in front of a
live sound stage, commonly known as hi-fi, for hi fidelity. There may be
many technical aspects to such an endeavor, but the end result is
described in very subjective terms. If the 'feel' of a simulation isn't
right, it's not much of a simulation.
I think that's even closer to the common usage of the word 'simulation'.
The only simulation where the 'feel' of the experience is unimportant
occurs in labs, and probably isn't very relevant to simulation in an RPG.
That is a *role-playing* game. Roleplaying connoting the attempt to enact
a character, and game connoting the attempt to do so with some regards
towards the fidelity of the experience (ie. it's a guided experience, and
not simply a child's recess activity). The question seems to be how best
to achieve that fidelity of experience, and that's a very legitimate,
very open question. But, to say that the 'feel' is not important to the
simulation...
: I think my example of searching hotels is a fine one: one GM
: concentrates on descriptions to make the "feel" of the first two hotels
: more vivid -- another GM describes all four in lesser detail in order to
: reproduce the process of searching. I think that most people would
: agree that the latter is more "simulationist", even though the
: effect in the game may be less vivid and life-like.
I can't hold with the example because it does not make sense, for me. Why
must the second GM describe the hotels in lesser detail to help reproduce
the process of searching? I should think that detail would be central to
the search, which only takes on a fidelity of experience when there is
detail. If the ;atter is 'simulationist', but makes the game 'less vivid
and life-like', then I have to wonder what is being simulated, and why?
Simulationist would seem to be a label I would more readily give to the
'dramatist' in your example. If the details don't matter, then on what
basis is the search being simulated by the second GM? A die roll? That's
not simulation, but a substitution of roleplay for mechanics. Maybe we
need the label 'abstractionist' for this behavior, which seems more on the
opposite end of the spectrum to what I think of as a 'simulationist'. And
I think what most people commonly mean by simulation, as well.
: >which Mr. X took, why he took it, whom he met, etc. Why all this detail?
: >Because it's important to the *story*.
: But David -- the rest of us, at least, live in the real world.
: No one has unlimited time and effort to spend on every aspect of the
: game. Heck, I'm lucky if I don't have to make up essentials on the
: spot. The question, then, is what you will focus on.
The answer is 'those details which provide for the fidelity of the
experience', if you care about simulation.
: A strongly simulationist GM will start with the back-story of
: Mr. X. She will reason through what Mr. X would have done in that
: situation. Based on that, she will deduce what clues were left behind
: which the PC's could find.
No problem, and that is the advice I would give a dramatist as well. It's
necessary so that the mystery actually hangs together when you're done,
providing a believable 'story'. If you're unconcerned with the 'feel' of
the experience, as you suggest for a simulationist, then it really
doesn't matter whether the clues make any sense, or lead anywhere. In
fact, shoe-horning the PCs into this adventure by biasing yourself
towards Mr. Xs story, could be seen as an invitation to railroading. Now,
fact is, we are all concenred with the story. If what the players go
through isn't fun, then we can probably agree we've missed something
about the experience. That's why we take care to make sure that MR. X's
'story' makes sense, that the details hang together, that it 'feels'
possible and real.
To me, the real difference is that the simulationist stops there, putting
up a mental barrier about thinking any further on how this will play
out,keeping the world free of meta-game contamination.
: Note that this may leave the PC's struggling
: with very few clues, or it could lead to their picking up on something
: with no particular challenge.
Yes, it could, for a simulationist. A dramatist takes one little extra
step though. With just the same concern for the details of the world, the
dramatist then asks whether this will be 'fun', how will it play out, and
what will the experience of playing through it be like? Then she takes
the time to make changes and open up possibilities based upon the
meta-game experience.
: A strongly storytelling GM, OTOH, will start with what sort of
: story he wants to produce. Since this is a mystery, he tries to produce
: a chain of clues which will satisfactorily lead the characters to the
: solution while still being challenging. He may also want to spend some
: time considering the proper atmosphere for certain scenes and preparing
: vivid descriptions.
: Thus, if they spend an equal amount of time on preparation, the
: simulationist GM might have a less satisfying story, but she will know
: more about what Mr. X did (since that is where she started).
Well, my version of the dramatist actually starts with the PCs, and asks
the question, 'why is this important?' The story develops from there, and
a plot structure is formed. Then the backstory is dealt with, including
all the details for Mr X. Yes, this does take more time, and given equal
amounts of time, the simulationist will know about Mr. X, and the
dramatist will have a half-baked bit of nothing. However, given adequate
time, the dramatist will have all the necessary world details, an
excellent framework upon which she may freely improvise, knowing she won't
be creating impossible future hassels (that's in part why we bother with
the plot framework), and a fair certainty that the story will actually be
interesting, even given several unusual angles of attack by the PCs.
Given the same amount of time, the simulationist will have a lot of
details about the plumbing systems in use by those hotels.
Both simulationists and dramatists are interested in simulation. Both are
interested in details. The difference is in what you allow yourself to
work with, and on what basis you spend your available time.
David 'entirely unbiased and flame retardent' Berkman
Kevin R. Hardwick
On 12 Jul 1996, John H Kim wrote:
David Berkman wrote:
> >I have no real problem with such a definition, except that it seems to
> >reduce simulation to meaning 'non-dramatic'. That doesn't equate very
> >well with how I would normally undertsand 'simulation', in a technical or
> >non-technical manner. Simulation seems to imply the creation
> >vissimilitude, some form of fidelity to the original.
>
> Hmmm. I think that this is perfectly in keeping with the common
> understanding of the term "simulation". Technical simulations will
> typically reproduce a number of the relevant causes and features of
> the phenomena, but will rarely try to reproduce the "feel" of the
> experience. What is more, they frequently try to reproduce the actual
> process (to illuminate the nature of that process).
Hmm. John--let me describe my personal oddessy, and then you tell me
where I go wrong in my use of the term "simulation." I'll focus on
combat, which seems to me to be a touch point for simulationists (and the
place where this conversation most impinges on the diced/diceless debate).
I started out playing a home-grown system based on D&D, which worked fine
until I started participating in the SCA. At that point, I realized that
D&D and its variants did not simulate medieval combat, or at least SCA
combat :) especially well. So I then spent many years, in the company of
a bunch of fellow travellers :) trying out systems, and adapting systems,
to accomplish this end. None of them especially worked very well.
Ultimately, I realized that what I wanted to simulate was not a third
person perspective of fighting--the sort of thing that someone watching a
fight and trying to predict its outcome might come up with--but rather a
first person perspective of a fight--the kind of thing that the person
actually in the fight experiences. If you aim for that--for a simulation
of what it is like to be in a fight--then how can you avoid trying to
"reproduce the feel of the experience?" The *feel* of it, as well as
the first person decision matrix, is precisely what you *are* trying to
reproduce.
It seems to me that if I follow your definition through to its logical
conclusion, I wind up with the rather odd conclusion that simulationist
GM styles do not cater to the IC player! Surely this cannot be right.
Where have I gone wrong?
:)
My best,
Kevin
Anne B. Nonie Rider
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu wrote:
> How do you speed up a game, without abstracting away player
> decisionmaking? Conversely, how can you slow it down without
> information overload?
And under what circumstances do you just flat-out tell the
players what's going on? If they're going to be stuck on this
quarantined planet for two months, do you just say so and ask
if they want to play it out?
Example: Dennis created a superhero campaign, primarily using
villains and plots from his first player Sean. Later, Sean
moves out of state and, with permission from Dennis, opens
a different branch of the same campaign.
We, in Sean's campaign, encounter and defeat a really unpleasant
villain.
A month later, Sean tells us the villain escaped. We spend
half a session trying to think of ways to track him down or
outthink him, or sulking because we feel railroaded, before
Sean mentions during a soda break that actually the villain
had escaped because DENNIS wanted to use him for the other
group, so it wasn't relevant to us anyway.
So, how would other GMs have handled this?
I see this as two decisions, assuming that Sean and Dennis
agree that Dennis's group gets to fight the villain: Do you
tell Sean's group that he escaped, since it's part of their
expanded world, or conceal it because they can't do anything
about it?
And, if they ARE told about it, do you 1) block all attempts
to find the villain, without explaining why? 2) let Sean's
group find the villain if their methods would work, and tell
Dennis his scenario is messed up? 3) Tell the players from
the beginning, "The following won't affect you, since it's
for Dennis's group, but XYZ escaped..."
And no, I don't think there's a right answer, which is why
I'm asking for variety. Myself? I'm not likely to share a
campaign, but the one time I gave my players info that I
wanted them to know they didn't have to act on, I just
told them so.
--Nonie
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <4seftl$i...@inet-nntp-gw-1.us.oracle.com> nri...@us.oracle.com (Anne B. "Nonie" Rider) writes:
>And under what circumstances do you just flat-out tell the
>players what's going on? If they're going to be stuck on this
>quarantined planet for two months, do you just say so and ask
>if they want to play it out?
When Jayhawk was captured by Paradisio, the GM said to me (her player):
"I doubt very much if she can ever escape or be rescued. She might have
some effect on the course of events as a prisoner, or she might not.
I'm willing to play this out if you want to, or to drop following her as
a PC if you would prefer that." I decided--I'm not sure why, honestly--
that I wanted to follow what happened to her, and that turned out to be
one of the two central sequences of the campaign. (She never did
escape, really, and the other PCs didn't even try to rescue her. But
interesting things happened during her captivity, and eventually her
actions did influence the other PCs' fate.) I was glad he
asked, though. In a different mood I might well have said "Hell no--
way too depressing."
[Sean lets the villain escape so that he can star in Dennis' campaign]
>So, how would other GMs have handled this?
>I see this as two decisions, assuming that Sean and Dennis
>agree that Dennis's group gets to fight the villain: Do you
>tell Sean's group that he escaped, since it's part of their
>expanded world, or conceal it because they can't do anything
>about it?
>And, if they ARE told about it, do you 1) block all attempts
>to find the villain, without explaining why? 2) let Sean's
>group find the villain if their methods would work, and tell
>Dennis his scenario is messed up? 3) Tell the players from
>the beginning, "The following won't affect you, since it's
>for Dennis's group, but XYZ escaped..."
I wouldn't be likely to share a campaign like this either. The one time
we did so, we agreed that the games were *not* bound by each others'
continuity and would be considered to be in parallel worlds if they
needed to diverge. As it happened, they remained compatible, but we
didn't make any effort to keep them so.
But in a similar situation, I would probably reason like this:
If the villain escaped and the PCs could reasonably find out about it, I
have to tell them. Otherwise the two campaigns aren't in the same world
anymore anyway, and I might as well just let them diverge and nip the
whole problem in the bud by throwing out the escape idea. This is also
the problem with option (2) in the second set; if I'm willing to mess up
Dennis' scenario, I could save a lot of pain by doing it immediately.
Option (1) is a campaign-destroyer if you have stubborn players; the
loss of trust when they find out they were tackling a metagame-
ordained insoluble problem is often irretrivable. I'd either go for
(2) or (3) (depending on how my players felt about Dennis' game) or
I'd try to contrive things so that my players heard about the escape
only *after* Dennis' group had either caught the villain (so they
wouldn't feel obliged to act) or failed to do so (so they could,
presumably, act freely).
I've almost never seen good results from having two GMs running
campaigns in the same time and place. It can work if one game is far
future or past of the other, but there are tons of pitfalls if you're
trying for tight synchrony. I'm always amazed at proposals (like Torg's
Infiniverse or White Wolf's mega-LARP) to try to tie a lot of games
together--they seem fordoomed to miserable failure. It may be possible
with two games, if the GMs are good friends and communicate well. I
can't imagine it working with dozens of games run by strangers.
Putting aside the shared-campaign thing, if I felt obliged to put
something in my game that I *really* didn't want my players to interact
with, I think I'd tell them so up front. "I want to abstract the week
you spend at Court: I don't think I can run it, and it's going to be
deadly boring." If the players disagree--time for a lot of negotiation.
Maybe one of them has an idea for how to run it. But I try not to do
this kind of thing.
I have occasionally said to a player: "The direction you're going in
will be impossible for me to run for. Can we change it?" Usually they
are amassing the kind of power which leads a PC to sit around all day
giving orders to NPCs and getting reports back, and I am neither willing
nor able to run such a game. Surprisingly often I find out that the
player doesn't want to either, and was waiting for me to find an in-game
way to stop him. I'd rather negotiate; changing in-game stuff for
meta-game purposes can fail in horrid ways. At least, you really want
to know whether the player *wants* mass power or is just going along
for some other reason....
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Lise Mendel
Anne B. "Nonie" Rider <nri...@us.oracle.com> wrote:
> Example: Dennis created a superhero campaign, primarily using
> villains and plots from his first player Sean. Later, Sean
> moves out of state and, with permission from Dennis, opens
> a different branch of the same campaign.
>
> We, in Sean's campaign, encounter and defeat a really unpleasant
> villain.
>
> A month later, Sean tells us the villain escaped. We spend
> half a session trying to think of ways to track him down or
> outthink him, or sulking because we feel railroaded, before
> Sean mentions during a soda break that actually the villain
> had escaped because DENNIS wanted to use him for the other
> group, so it wasn't relevant to us anyway.
>
> So, how would other GMs have handled this?
Have the escape happen while the villain is en-route to a prison
facility distant from Seans campaign, and close to Dennis's, while
Sean's PCs are already getting involved with the next villain menace.
At the same time, the GM should tell the players what's going on. That
way the PCs can send a warning to Dennis's players and get on with what
they're doing. If the PCs in Dennis's campaign are low profile, Seans
group can alert the proper authorities, who should (we hope) assure them
that they can handle it. Then it's up to Dennis whether the authorities
warn his PCs or not.
This gives the players _and_ characters both a reason to let it go :-)
--
Lise Mendel
Mommy to Abigail (5/9/93) and Dorothy (10/19/95)
http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/
Peter T. Jackson
In message <4s3bkj$d...@crl.crl.com> Andrew Finch wrote:
> William Clifford (clif...@river.it.gvsu.edu) wrote:
>
> : Is it the GM's job to create a single, stand-alone experience
> : (and thus a story) out of the events in the lives of the characters?
>
> I think this should be restated to take advantage of our perceptions of
> the group contract. It's never just the GM, although the group contract
> may give that entire burden to the GM, our group contract certainly does not.
>
> So...
>
> Is it the group's job to create a single, stand-alone experience (and
> thus a story) out of the events of their characters' lives?
I don't think so. My experience of gaming sessions is strongly influenced
by my character, especially when it has gone well and I have spent a lot
of time IC. Since no-one else has the same character they must all have
had a different experience. So where it is important (during play) there
can be no single experience, and it should not be the group's job to
attempt the impossible.
--
Peter Jackson
John Morrow
>until I started participating in the SCA. At that point, I realized that
>D&D and its variants did not simulate medieval combat, or at least SCA
>combat :) especially well. So I then spent many years, in the company of
>a bunch of fellow travellers :) trying out systems, and adapting systems,
>to accomplish this end. None of them especially worked very well.
My experience is as a person who never participated in the SCA (though
I've watched a few fights), yet I was once a player under a GM who was
in the SCA and who had overlaid his own (more realistic) combat system
over D&D. Most of the other players also had no combat experience.
Well, it was a slaughter. No, OUR slaughter. A half dozen orcs in
proper shield wall formation could quickly make minced-meat out of a
similarly sized group of 3rd-6th level characters because we didn't
really know how to do combat. The system accounted for all sorts of
modifiers to good tactics but we never quite got the hang of them.
And my (now) wife stopped playing fighters because she didn't
paricularly care to or know how to describe exactly *how* her
character was hitting an enemy and felt that simply saying "I hit him"
was sufficient. Did I learn alot about combat? Probably. Was it
much fun? Not most of the time.
My point? Detailed combat is great for people who know the nuances.
It can be a true horror for those who don't really know what they are
doing. Sure, one can min-max the rules to figure out the best tactics
but that requires yet another sort of personality -- that of a
statistics fiend. The effect is not unlike being asked exactly which
type of lockpick your thief is using and how they insert it into the
lock mechanism or, perhaps, like being asked exactly which herbs one
gathers and how they prepare them to make the healing potion. I find
myself wondering, "Is this detail really necessary?"
My own personal opinion is that it is better to abstract such that
major tactical decisions and approaches are possible (e.g. quick and
dirty vs. slow and careful, striking to kill vs. striking to wound or
subdue, fighting defensively vs. fighting offensively, etc.). The
players can then fill in sufficient detail to make the situation
plausible for them. When a thief picks a lock, they obviously use the
best tools and best approach for the situation without the player
having to know exactly what to do. When a healer collects herbs to
make a healing potion, they do their best to pick the right ones and
do their best to make the right potion without the player having to
know exactly what to do. Why is it such a stretch that a fighter is
choosing the best tactics and taking the best opportunities to achieve
some combat objective (e.g. to kill, subdue, wound, disarm, flee,
etc.) without having to micromanage each blow in a way not done for
any other skill? Why does the player have to apply tactics that their
*character* had better well already be using as reflected in their
skill rating or roll (or description)? Isn't a good fighter getting a
better chance to hit because they are deploying better tactics such as
feints? If so, then why do players get to declare such manuevers and
then get extra "plusses" for the manuevers?
Yes, YMMV and you might like them. But I'm wondering why, exactly,
people need all that detail in their combat but rarely want it anywhere
else.
>Ultimately, I realized that what I wanted to simulate was not a third
>person perspective of fighting--the sort of thing that someone watching a
>fight and trying to predict its outcome might come up with--but rather a
>first person perspective of a fight--the kind of thing that the person
>actually in the fight experiences. If you aim for that--for a simulation
>of what it is like to be in a fight--then how can you avoid trying to
>"reproduce the feel of the experience?" The *feel* of it, as well as
>the first person decision matrix, is precisely what you *are* trying to
>reproduce.
Oh, certainly. But then I have to ask what, exactly, the feel is. I
suspect that someone who has fought in the SCA or who plays paint-ball
has a different opinion about than a person who takes notes watching
_Highlander_ or _Blade Runner_. And I suspect that they both have a
different opinion than the person who fought with bayonette in muddy
ditches or did Recon in Vietnam. And even within each group, you will
get different opinions ranging from horror through analysis into an
adrenaline high. And if someone else tries to push their feel on you,
how well will it take and will it feel right?
I experience abject terror when I ride many roller-coasters. I have
to force myself to ride (facing my fears and all that) and don't have
any fun at all on them. My wife loves them and has been going to a
Six Flags park nearly every week to ride them. Which -- fear or
thrill -- best simulates the subjective feel of riding a
roller-coaster? That is where I see the problem. I would much prefer
that combat systems let you map whatever feeling you want on the
actual process by abstracting out.
>It seems to me that if I follow your definition through to its logical
>conclusion, I wind up with the rather odd conclusion that simulationist
>GM styles do not cater to the IC player! Surely this cannot be right.
>Where have I gone wrong?
Actually, you have gone wrong. Simulation can be third or
first-person. For example, most flight simulators have a cockpit view
and a "chase plane" view from outside the plane. One better captures
the feel of being in the cockpit but both are simulations.
What a dramatist "simulator" would do, though, is try to anticipate
what will provide the best impact on the player. The effect that this
would produce, if it would work anything like it does in many RPGs, is
that the pilot would always have some terrible problem occur that
almost makes them fail but they would pull through in the end and just
make it. :-) (Yes, I know that is a harsh oversimplification but
the point is that the game would try to "play the player" for maximum
impact).
There are three things that bother me about the game attempting to
provide me with the "maximum impact" most of the time -- (A) it feels
artificial to me and destroys my SOD because I can often see it coming
(see my cynical remarks above about almost failing but succeeding
anyway), (B) I've had the GM guess wrong too many times such that
they've destroyed the bit that interested me in order to move along
the bit that they *thought* should interest me, and (C) I have an
innate resentment to being manipulated and tend to fight any such
attempts on purpose.
With respect to (A), see _Last Action Hero_ and the kids reaction to
what happens. Many dramatist games where the GM is trying for some
specific effect feel like that to me. With respect to (B), I've
litterally had GMs rush me past the pieces of several games that I
really cared about in order to move me along to some "save the world"
plot resolution that I really wasn't ever that interested in (in part
because I rarely feel that the GM will ever let the PCs fail
regardless of what they do in such games). With respect to (C), I
simply don't like having someone else tell me what to feel. Movies
are often ridiculed for being "manipulative" when the director/writer
pushes too hard to get a particular effect. I often feel that way
about how this is done in RPGs.
True, this might only be because it is badly done. But I've rarely
seen it done right, though YMMV.
John Morrow
Peter T. Jackson
In message <Pine.SOL.3.91.960709...@rac3.wam.umd.edu> "Kevin R. Hardwick" wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 8 Jul 1996, William Clifford wrote:
>
> > Also if a character can be said to be DIP or DAS why not a plot?
> > (to this end could somebody remind me what DAS stands for again. thanks).
>
> Well, as I use the term (but not as Peter Jackson uses it :) your
> statement above is meaningful.
It is meaningful both ways, but the meanings are different. That is the
problem.
> Plot inheres in a game anytime a character with motivations interacts
> with a game setting in some sort of meaningful way (ie., a way that
> engages those motivations.) Not all plots, then, are pre-planned--you
> can get perfectly good plots from "DIP."
>
> However, IME, DIP plots tend not to be as tightly focussed as DAS plots,
> nor do they permit the use of a variety of story-telling techniques that
> may, for some people, make the resulting story more effective, or have
> more impact. For example, it is much harder to foreshadow in a DIP plot
> than in a DAS plot. Likewise, flashbacks, cut-scenes, thematic imagery,
> and so on are easier to use in a DAS plot. These devices, and others
> like them, are not equally desirable for everybody--we've had long
> discussions here about the utility--the costs and benefits--of these
> methods. In general, I would suggest that a GM uses DAS plots when he or
> she, and his or her troupe, want to emphasize the coherence of the story,
> and want to utilize narrative devices that make that possible.
>
> But, either way, you will get a story of some sort. What is at stake is
> the *quality* of the resulting story. For some people that is important,
> and for others not as much.
And for some of us, not at all.
--
Peter Jackson
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.960714...@rac3.wam.umd.edu> "Kevin R. Hardwick" <krhr...@wam.umd.edu> writes:
>Ultimately, I realized that what I wanted to simulate was not a third
>person perspective of fighting--the sort of thing that someone watching a
>fight and trying to predict its outcome might come up with--but rather a
>first person perspective of a fight--the kind of thing that the person
>actually in the fight experiences. If you aim for that--for a simulation
>of what it is like to be in a fight--then how can you avoid trying to
>"reproduce the feel of the experience?" The *feel* of it, as well as
>the first person decision matrix, is precisely what you *are* trying to
>reproduce.
>It seems to me that if I follow your definition through to its logical
>conclusion, I wind up with the rather odd conclusion that simulationist
>GM styles do not cater to the IC player! Surely this cannot be right.
>Where have I gone wrong?
>Kevin
I think you are confusing issues. The decision whether to present an
objective or subjective view of combat is not, in my opinion,
necessarily a simulation/drama issue at all: it has more to do with GM
versus player control of character subjective experience. Some GMs and
players are comfortable with the GM attempting to show what the PC's
subjective experiences are; others consider that strictly the territory
of the player. Extreme simulationists usually leave character
experience alone, and extreme dramatists often try to manipulate it, but
in the middle ground there's no obvious correlation. It's not clear
that IC play requires GM description of the subjective; the player could
do that herself, given a good objective description and good firewalling
techniques.
Your combat system is trying to get the player to feel the way her
character would feel in a fight; to the extent that it is a simulation,
that's what it's trying to simulate. You shouldn't expect this to have
the same results as a system that focusses on simulating the *results*
of combat and does not tackle the subjective experience at all. Two
simulations, sure, but of different things! One will be accurate
subjectively, but perhaps inaccurate objectively; the other will be the
reverse. (No finite simulation can do justice to everything; you'd need
a brain the size of the universe to run it....)
What makes me consider your combat system dramatist is not that it
aims for the subjective aspect of combat; I can see a freeform
simulationist doing the same thing, and indeed our space opera campaign, when
it actually has combat, works a lot like that. The dramatist aspect is
that you determine *what* subjective experience you want, and arrange
things to produce that experience, whereas I would expect a
simulationist to simply follow through the fight attempting to indicate,
at each moment, the subjective impact of what is actually happening.
We had a very short fight, our third, in the space opera campaign last
week. Some people we'd thought were friendly boarded the ship and turned
out to be under hostile control. Vikki pulled a gun on them and shot
two before the battle android they'd brought with them took action (it
did something which conclusively ended the fight). We have no
functional combat mechanics for this campaign, so the GM solicited
a statement of intent ("I'm going to shoot that one first, then work
leftwards--and yes, I'm shooting to kill, one bolt each through the
head.") and a general die roll for success. He then described a *very*
subjective first-person view of what Vikki saw as she tried to
do this, down to her failure to recognize the android quickly
enough to change targets. But I had no sense that he
had any intentions about how Vikki (or I) would react to the combat--
he was just providing as much information as he could about what the
course of events was like from Vikki's point of view. I presume a
dramatist would have had some effect in mind. He might have wanted the
fight to be tense, or ironic (it turned out not to matter whether Vikki
hit her targets or not), or to illuminate some quality of Vikki's
personality such as her lack of compassion or her quickness to react
to threat.
From my point of view as a GM, I see myself as a simulationist when I am
working purely from a mental model of events and people, and attempting
to describe the outcomes of that model; I see myself as a dramatist when
I envision an outcome (be it a plot result or an emotional state) that I
want and use it to determine either the kinds of things that happen or
the ways that I describe them. I can meddle *heavily* in PC subjective
experience and still be using simulationist tools, if I am not directing
my efforts to a determined end but simply attempting to indicate how the
interaction of PC and situation would, "in fact", work out.
To me, as a GM, the two approaches feel very different. I use a lot of
simulationist tools because the dramatist tools often jeopardize my
suspension of disbelief, and this causes me trouble in GMing.
I ran Feng Shui recently, and after a couple of scenarios my ability to
come up with continuations totally dried up--the NPCs were not real to
me, so they weren't presenting me with any ideas about what they'd do
next. But I do use some dramatist tools to keep the game from going off
in uninteresting directions--the trick for me is to use them lightly,
and keep them in areas where they damage SOD the least. Mainly I use
drama to indicate when to add new subplots, and to control pacing; I try
to keep it out of resolution of existing issues, where it's more
problematic for me. Obviously this is all going to be very personal.
In any case, there's a whole grab-bag of tools here, and lumping them
into two camps probably is not helping us much in understanding them.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Ennead
Carter Butts (ea...@son3.mc.duke.edu) wrote:
: Really, I am not sure that "authority" is what I had in mind.
: I used "control," which is proabably just as bad, but the idea was that
: you could order most games based on the latitude the GM has to decide
: the "objective" aspects of the game world, and that by looking at
: such an ordering you could easily understand 3 things:
: 1. At one extreme, RPGs merge into authored stories
: 2. At the other extreme, RPGs merge into pure simulations
: 3. In between, many of the L&F issues surrounding games are
: determined by where those games reside on the "GM Control" axis.
Thinking further about my problems with this schema, I find myself
focusing on the second of the above hypotheses: that there is an extreme
at which RPGs merge into pure simulations.
It seems to me that one of the fundamental difficulties with the
perception of RPGs as simulations is that RPGs (unlike either computer
simulations or wargames) allow their participants a range of options far
exceeding those covered in the rules systems driving the simulation
"engine." It is this aspect of RPGs which necessitates the empowerment of
either the GM or the group (or both) to adjudicate actions which fall
outside the boundaries of the system in operation.
I consider this absolutely crucial to our understanding of what
RPGs are and how they operate. The user of a military flight simulator
cannot decide to leave the aircraft, go to the base cafeteria, and have a
cup of coffee. The program will not _permit_ this action; it has been
designed to simulate flight, and it cannot therefore be used to simulate
actions which fall outside of this arena of activity. Similarly, the
player of a wargame cannot utilize a military or political strategy unless
it is supported by the rules. Such unsupported strategies are simply not
a part of the game: in the absence of rules to cover their utilization,
they effectively do not _exist_ in the "reality" created and defined by
the game. In arcade-style games, there are often visual elements of the
background which cannot be manipulated as objects. The player of "Prince
of Persia" cannot choose to go through any of the doors seen on the far
walls: those doors are understood to be background detail only; the game
itself does not permit movement "forward" or "back," but only left/right
or up/down.
I think we would all agree that this sort of constraint, while
acceptable in a computer or board game, would be utterly unacceptable in
an RPG. In fact, even the barest hint of this sort of player constraint
is often lambasted as either "railroading" or "illogical world
construction" when it appears in an RPG. While the players of other games
accept the idea that if the rules don't allow for an action, it cannot be
done, the players of an RPG do not operate under this assumption. Only if
the rules expressly _forbid_ an action will the RPG players accept it as
an "outside" option, and even then, they will often object to the
restriction as "unrealistic" or "unfair."
It is this peculiarity of role-playing games that demands the
incorporation of interpretation into the accepted rules of the game. If
the rules do not describe falling damage, the generally accepted solution
is to create them, rather than to state that "you can't fall; it just
doesn't happen." Of course, most rules systems _do_ include falling
damage. The aspects of the game world which they do _not_ describe,
however, are legion, and gamers generally understand that these aspects
are to be maintained through means other than the rules, rather than
dismissed as "non-existant" within the game world reality.
The extreme image of the RPG which borders on a wargame or
simulation by virtue of being self-perpetuating -- ie requiring neither GM
nor group consensus to drive it -- is, I believe, a myth. It may only be
realized if the participants of the game willingly restrict their actions
_only_ to those activities covered by the rules system. In many RPGs, a
combat sequence _might_ be conducted without recourse to any authority
other than the rules system and the dice, but this is only because game
engines are often designed to cover this arena of activity in excruciating
detail. (Even in this arena, however, circumstances will often arise for
which outside adjudication or interpretation [either by a designated
authority, such as the GM, or by the group as a whole] is required.)
But a single combat sequence, or even a string of them, does not an RPG
make. I do not believe that a game in which the participants restricted
their actions _only_ to those activities fully covered by the mechanics
would be recognizable as a role-playing game at all. Too many of the
factors which make an RPG recognizable as such -- the setting, for
example -- would be absent.
: If you read my previous post (response to Kevin), I tried to
: make it clear that I was not proposing this as The Only Way to
: Understand Games (TM), but only as a useful tool...I do not think that
: much has been shown to indicate that this tool is not useful.
It seems too deeply flawed a tool to be useful to me or to my
understanding of RPG, and I hope that I've managed to explain my reasons
why. I'm not trying to pick on you, though: your schema, while I consider
it flawed, has led me to think and to revise a number of my earlier
assumptions (in an old debate with Erol Bayburt, I actually described a
very similar schema myself, which now I have reconsidered and rejected),
and for that I owe you great thanks.
Take care,
Sarah
Ennead
Keith Kornelsen (knel...@agt.net) wrote:
: I would really like to explore these levels and layers more
: completely. Especially the area around Quasi-mechanical. Sarah,
: are you reading this?
I am now. Real Life (tm) has been pretty hectic for the Ennead
these past weeks -- we've been throwing a wedding for Jenn and Kip -- and
so I haven't been able to devote too much of my time to .advocacy lately.
Now that the last houseguest has finally removed himself from our couch,
the Cosmic Encounter game has been put away, and the booze bottles have
all been buried in the backyard, I can see that I have a lot of catching
up to do. Alas, this is still a busy time of the year for me, so I'm
going to have to cut back on my participation in the discussion. All the
same, I hope to be able to get in a few licks every now and again.
So...what about my gaming neighborhood did you want to discuss?
The Quasi-Mechanical is certainly my group's favored level of
formalization, but I'm not quite sure what sort of exploration you had in
mind. Forgive me for being so reactive, but my intellectual energy is at
a low ebb right now, and although I'd love to engage in a discussion about
this topic, I may need to ask you to carry more than your fair weight of
the "initiatory spark" part of the discourse until my brain recovers.
I did have one question about a different area of your typology,
though. I'm not quite sure how the dice issue fits into the equation.
You seem to be placing "Diced" at the high end of formalization, even
beyond "Mechanical," and I'm not convinced by this allocation. For one
thing, it seems to me that dice themselves may be used at any stage of
formalization, from Interactive Storytelling to Mechanical. It also seems
to me that a mechanical system _without_ dice could be even more
formalized than one with dice, although it would not necessarily be so.
_Theatrix_, for example, formalizes its diceless adjudication system, yet
is not a system that I would consider particularly "formal." One could
also, however, imagine a diceless system based on the rule of "best skill
level always wins no matter what," which would be far more "formal" in
feel and in effect than a diced mechanical system would be.
Thoughts?
-- Sarah
John H Kim
Hmmm. Alright, here are some random and rather incoherent
musings on what "simulation" means in the semi-philosophical bent that
many posters have been talking about (i.e. subjective experience, plot,
incidents versus events, etc. )
As a thought, perhaps "simulation" implies a specialized attention
to some aspect of objective reality. Just as a "dramatic" game must
focus on a certain part of the characters' (or players') subjective
experience -- a "simulationist" game must choose a part of reality which
is being focussed on.
I would agree with some criticisms of my attempt to extend
earlier examples -- there is no hard-and-fast rule which will point
out one game as purely "simulation" and another as purely "drama".
However, I do think that there is a distinction of form. Let me reply
to some points first, though...
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
David Berkman <bcks...@crl.com> wrote:
>John H Kim (jh...@ciao.cc.columbia.edu) wrote:
>:> Simulation seems to imply the creation vissimilitude, some form of
>:> fidelity to the original.
>
>: I think that this is perfectly in keeping with the common understanding
>: of the term "simulation". Technical simulations will typically repro-
>: duce a number of the relevant causes and features of the phenomena, but
>: will rarely try to reproduce the "feel" of the experience.
>
>When the *experience* is what is being simulated, the 'feel' is every-
>thing, even in highly technical circles. For example, the reproduction of
>music so that it has all the 'feel' of being in front of a live sound
>stage, commonly known as hi-fi, for hi fidelity. There may be many
>technical aspects to such an endeavor, but the end result is described
>in very subjective terms. If the 'feel' of a simulation isn't right,
>it's not much of a simulation.
Uh, David, I think you've answered your own question. The
experience of going in front of a live sound stage is extremely different
than the experience of sitting at home and listening to a recording on
a fancy stereo. It reproduces the *sound*, but not the feel of the
experience. It does not attempt to reproduce the whole of the
experience.
The technical simulation tries to reproduce a few of the
parameters of the experience -- in this case the sound. Similarly,
an RPG combat might try to reproduce the maneuvering and health damage,
without tackling the larger question of how the character feels about
this -- instead leaving it up to the player to decide.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Perhaps, then, the essence of a simulation is that it aims for
a limited fidelity -- rather than an overall experience. Responsibility
for the experience as a whole is divided up among the players and the
GM. The GM might not present a story which coherently subdivides the
incidents into a single meaningful experience. Instead, it is up to
the players individually to interpret the events into meaning, and
to fill in parts that are not handled by the GM.
Anne B. Nonie Rider
I'm afraid the term "simulation" is likely to continue
to confuse those of us who aren't at the heart of
the terminology wars.
Me? To me, it means "attempting to simulate a particular
place/time/culture/battle", after the style of those who
re-fight Gettysburg or demonstrate barn raising.
A "simulationist" GM would therefore be, to me, one who
tries to tuck the gamers into a historical niche as
accurately as he can, as Scott Ruggels setting a game in
WWII would probably describe the correct underwear and
toothpaste. I would also extend the term to those who
ditto with magic, like adding wizards behind the scenes
in the Crusades, as long as the point of the game
continued to be historical accuracy or verisimilitude.
Could someone go back and explain, for dumb me, why the
term should instead be used for a GM who designs a world
that goes on about its business whether or not the PCs
are watching?
Me, I assume that every farmer you pass in the fields
has a life, and every inn room you stop in had a previous
tenant, but I sure don't consider it a "simulation" of
anything. What am I missing?
--Nonie
Bruce Baugh
In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.960714...@rac3.wam.umd.edu>, "Kevin R. Hardwick" <krhr...@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
>But of this works for you, far be it from me to tell you not to use it :)
Sir, who ARE you, and what have you done with the REAL Kevin Hardwick?
This is as bad as the Ruggels clone that was posting for a while.
:-)
--
Mary K. Kuhner
j...@cegt201.bradley.edu (John Novak) writes:
>And another concern, back on the meta-level: How do you slow things
>down without giving a free clue to all the players that they should
>Pay Attention? Difficult [for me] to stage an ambush if the players
>have to travel for sixty days, and the ambush takes place on the
>thirtieth day. If I were to gloss over thirty days in five minutes,
>then slow down, as soon as I specifically mention, "The thirtieth
>day," the players will know something is up.
>John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
We use the tactic of asking the player "what is your standard road
procedure?" and getting a pretty detailed description, without tying it
down to a particular day. This is helpful because asking for the
standard procedure doesn't even guarentee that *anything* will happen on
the trip; it's something we might well do anyway, just to learn a little
more about how the characters operate.
Then the GM introduces the ambush at the point where it breaks
routine--if the PCs have an outrider she may spot it, or the first they
know may be a hail of arrows, but in either case the players have
already made their deployment decisions as part of the standard
procedure, and so they don't have to try to decide on a deployment while
struggling with out of character knowledge.
As a player I also use dice a bit in such situations. In the _Radiant_
campaign the GM fairly often asks me "Who, if anyone, is on watch at 2
am on the third day in port?" I can work out from standard procedures
whether or not they are standing watches, but I roll dice to see who's
awake, because their watch schedule is too fluid for me to deduce.
It helps if the GM is not always planning a big shindig when he asks
such questions, but is sometimes just going to tell you that a message
arrives, or there's a weird story on the news.
Agreed that it's a hard problem, though. A form of it which has always
bothered me is when PCs search a large building. I'd like to hear how they
search the area right around the thing they're looking for, to determine
if they have a chance to find it. I *don't* want to hear how they
search everything else. Standard procedure can help here too, but it's
sometimes hard to get enough detail without giving the secret away.
It works a lot better than asking about a specific room, though.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Andrew Finch
John Morrow (mor...@newton.crisp.net) wrote:
: Yes, YMMV and you might like them. But I'm wondering why, exactly,
: people need all that detail in their combat but rarely want it anywhere
: else.
But I do. We roleplay through starship engine repairs (as seen on
previous flames).
David
: And if someone else tries to push their feel on you,
: how well will it take and will it feel right?
No, but then I rarely get strange GMs wandering in off the street to
evangelically push their gaming style on us. That's what .advocacy is
for. As a matter of actual practice, our group has its own flavor (rocky
road) which seems to suite us well, and makes roleplaying through combats
both fun and possible.
David
John H Kim
Okay -- sorry about the long delay in replying regarding this.
I have not had a whole lot of time recently, but have recently come to
think about what "simulation" means. I have been working towards
contrasts versus "dramatic", which I think is useful, but insufficient
to show what "simulation" is about.
In general, when I say "simulation", I think of a game where
the GM creates background independently of the players. There is a
group agreement over what the game will be centered around (i.e. who
the PC's are, what situation they will be in, what they will be doing).
The players then create their characters according to their own agendas.
The key during play is that the GM is guided by his vision of
the world, not the coherence or the outcome of the story. Let me start
with some background...
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
When I first got to college (at U of Chicago), one of the first
games that I got involved with was as close to a pure simulation as I've
played in, the "Mirrorworld" campaign. The GM had a complex fantasy
universe which was based around a variety of magical principles, and
the PC's were agreed to be a team who were searching for ways to repel
a forest which was invading their world.
On the one hand, it was not a great campaign, but I was quite
intrigued by how the whole game dynamic worked. Every game I had been
around was built around "plot hooks" -- the GM would come up with a
small number of leads for the GM to follow (shrinking down to the
extreme case of only one path), and the players picked among those.
This game was literally built around an open-ended problem.
The GM didn't know how the forest could or should be repelled. Rather,
it had the opposite dynamic than usual for me -- the players would
develop plans and inform the GM towards the end of the session where
they were headed, and he went off and prepared in response to this.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
This and other games at U of C had a strong influence on me.
I guess there were a few essences of this:
1) Worlds which were interesting in-and-of themselves
2) A difference dynamic of player/GM-guided direction of the game,
with the players much more responsible for direction
3) A greater degree of soul-searching for character goals -- since
clear goals were not provided by the scenario
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu> wrote:
>"Kevin R. Hardwick" <krhr...@wam.umd.edu> writes:
>>Ultimately, I realized that what I wanted to simulate was not a third
>>person perspective of fighting--the sort of thing that someone watching a
>>fight and trying to predict its outcome might come up with--but rather a
>>first person perspective of a fight--the kind of thing that the person
>>actually in the fight experiences. If you aim for that--for a simulation
>>of what it is like to be in a fight--then how can you avoid trying to
>>"reproduce the feel of the experience?"
[...]
>>It seems to me that if I follow your definition through to its logical
>>conclusion, I wind up with the rather odd conclusion that simulationist
>>GM styles do not cater to the IC player!
Hmmm. This sound remarkably familiar (being a subject of earlier
threads). First of all, I would agree with Mary that my description of
"not being concerned with `feeling'" is inaccurate -- a simulationist
game might indeed concentrate on a subjective description of combat.
The essence is a bit more mysterious -- I'm goint to leave that
for a further post.
-*-*-*-
However, I would say that I think it is a fallacy to say that
a game which "simulates" an objective view of combat does not cater to
the IC player. Indeed, I recall that a great many of the self-styled
"IC" players in prior threads have said that they do not want either
the GM or the system intruding upon how their character interprets events.
For example, in an objective system, I might decide that my
character pictures the fight as a blur -- he continues to attack what
is in front of him even though I know from the outcome of a fellow
player's fight that there is a threatening opponent to the side whom
he could guard against if he was calm and defensive. I might not want
either the GM or the system telling me whether my character loses his
head at this point.
John H Kim
Hmmm. Another belated reply to David Berkman here regarding
"simulationist". As part of his post, he objected to using the term
"simulationist" as a description of the GM in my example -- but then
later used this term in the manner I was talking about.
-*-*-*-
[I had described a simulationist GM who worked out the details of what
a Mr. X did by dealing with him, then walking through what sort of
clues he would leave behind.]
David Berkman <bcks...@crl.com> wrote:
>John H Kim (jh...@ciao.cc.columbia.edu) wrote:
>: Note that this may leave the PC's struggling with very few clues, or
>: it could lead to their picking up on something with no particular
>: challenge.
>
>Yes, it could, for a simulationist. A dramatist takes one little extra
>step though. With just the same concern for the details of the world, the
>dramatist then asks whether this will be 'fun', how will it play out, and
>what will the experience of playing through it be like? Then she takes
>the time to make changes and open up possibilities based upon the
>meta-game experience.
Yes, that's exactly it. Thank you.
In many cases, I would prefer that the GM not go through that
process of deep meta-game consideration, but instead take the time to
broaden her own suspension of disbelief in the world, and consider
further in-game issues. Now, your opinion seems to be that this game --
without GM guidance -- would simply be less fun. However, this has not
generally been my experience.
I see it more as a division of labor. In the case of a
simulation, it is more up to the players to decide what sort of things
would be fun for them and to point themselves in that direction.
Of course, there are a lot of tools for this -- pacing being one of
them. I find it is very important as a simulationist GM to be willing
and able to skip over fair amounts of time at player request, for
example.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>: Thus, if they spend an equal amount of time on preparation, the
>: simulationist GM might have a less satisfying story, but she will
>: know more about what Mr. X did (since that is where she started).
>
>Well, my version of the dramatist actually starts with the PCs, and asks
>the question, 'why is this important?' The story develops from there, and
>a plot structure is formed. Then the backstory is dealt with, including
>all the details for Mr X. Yes, this does take more time, and given equal
>amounts of time, the simulationist will know about Mr. X, and the
>dramatist will have a half-baked bit of nothing. However, given adequate
>time, the dramatist will have all the necessary world details, an
>excellent framework upon which she may freely improvise, knowing she
>won't be creating impossible future hassels (that's in part why we
>bother with the plot framework), and a fair certainty that the story
>will actually be interesting, even given several unusual angles of
>attack by the PCs.
Well, I would revise the latter to the dramatist having adequate
time *and skill*. My experience has generally been that most GM's will
not be able to achieve this state even when given quite excessive amounts
of time and even a copy of _Theatrix_. @-)
As for myself, I almost never have adequate time.
-*-*-*-
>
>Given the same amount of time, the simulationist will have a lot of
>details about the plumbing systems in use by those hotels.
This is a cheap shot, David. As for myself, in simulationist
games, I generally spend my extra time on NPC's and history. Sure --
a lot of that stuff may never come to light. However, it is interesting
to work out and adds to my enjoyment as well as deepening my general
understanding of the world.
Kevin R. Hardwick
On 16 Jul 1996, John H Kim wrote:
> As a thought, perhaps "simulation" implies a specialized attention
> to some aspect of objective reality. Just as a "dramatic" game must
> focus on a certain part of the characters' (or players') subjective
> experience -- a "simulationist" game must choose a part of reality which
> is being focussed on.
Yes--and a game that chooses to focus on "experience," whether or not it
is dramatic, can still be simulationist.
This is an important point, for me, since it has been my experience that
games can be *both* dramatic (that is, focussed on a coherent story, which
they accomplish by way of a plot) *and* simulationist (that is, focussed
on evoking a particular experience, which they accomplish by way of
verisimilitude.)
Obviously you can have games that are dramatic but not simulationist, and
likewise games that are simulationist but not dramatic. But the two
categories are not exclusive--they can have a strong overlap.
> Uh, David, I think you've answered your own question. The
> experience of going in front of a live sound stage is extremely different
> than the experience of sitting at home and listening to a recording on
> a fancy stereo. It reproduces the *sound*, but not the feel of the
> experience. It does not attempt to reproduce the whole of the
> experience.
Uh, John, it seems to me that the analogy David suggests here is pretty
powerful. The hi-fi stereo system attempts to reproduce, to the extent
possible, the experience of hearing a musical production in an artificial
setting--say, your living room. The rpg game system (with players and GM
attached :) attempts to reproduce, to the extent possible, the experience
of being a different person (character) from a different time or place
(the game setting) in an artificial setting--say your living room.
Now your larger point, it seems to me, does stand. In both cases the
system cannot deliver the full experience--you have to decide just what
aspects of the full experience you will focus on. But either way, you
are still focussing on the *experience,* which is unavoidable, it seems
to me.
Now it does seem to me that, in this light, there is a possible criteria
we might use to distinguish between types of games.
Some games assume that there is some an immutable reality, which can be
described objectively, independent of characters who perceive it. The
game rules, as interpreted by the GM, provide that description--it is up
to the player of the character to figure out how their character
interprets the objective, pre-existing reality that they perceive. A
good example of this kind of game might be CYBERPUNK.
Other games assume that what is important is not the objective reality,
but rather what the characters perceive. This does not mean that they
reject the existence of an objective reality, but it does mean that they
believe that reality is at all times interpreted, in the act of
perception. The GM's job is to present to the various players reality
*as they perceive it,* and it is the player's job to then make any
further idiosyncratic interpretations of that perception. An example of
this might be ARS MAGICA, which suggests that reality is what medieval
people perceived it to be (this is not a perfect example, btw, because
not *all* medieval people shared the same "social construction of
reality"--and the "medieval paradigm" in any event has been
controversial--many people have rejected it.)
We could, it seems to me, attach philosophical labels to these two
perspectives (and the rather distinct styles of play that emerge from
them), but I have been lambasted in the past for doing so, so I'll leave
that to others :)
The critical point, I think, is that this division is to a certain extent
independent of drama.
All my best,
Kevin
Andrew Finch
John H Kim (jh...@konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu) wrote:
: In many cases, I would prefer that the GM not go through that
: process of deep meta-game consideration, but instead take the time to
: broaden her own suspension of disbelief in the world, and consider
: further in-game issues.
I believe in doing both. One does not preclude the other, nor is it
really a matter of time. If I'm going to run a game, I put in the time to
make it run well. We may disagree as to what's important...
: I see it more as a division of labor. In the case of a
: simulation, it is more up to the players to decide what sort of things
: would be fun for them and to point themselves in that direction.
That is using the meta-game, and a property of the dramatic style. Again,
fact is, the players decide what's fun for themselves and are an active
part of creating the group experience in *any* good game, according to
the group contract. I believe that the difference is that in a
simulationist game, the players decide the direction of the game based
purely on the IC viewpoint, and in a dramatist style, they base these
decisions freely upon meta-game factors as well.
: Well, I would revise the latter to the dramatist having adequate
: time *and skill*. My experience has generally been that most GM's will
: not be able to achieve this state even when given quite excessive amounts
: of time and even a copy of _Theatrix_. @-)
I've never said it was easier. :)
And yes, I have here used your definition of 'simulationist', as I did in
my first post, but I will reiterate that, to me, the term 'simulationist'
would seem to include an effort at the fidelity of the experience, but
your useage (and mine, here) is not congruent with this. We need another
term. Simulationist is highly misleading, as though a dramatist has a
flimsy, less believable world, or that things will happen for no apparent
in-game reason in a dramatist game, or that effort is not directed
towards continuity, and these are all false. I'm not sure I have a better
word yet, but dramatists take as much effort to 'simulate' as
simulationists. If the difference is the use of meta-game factors, what
do we call the game style which makes an attempt not to contaminate the
in-game perspective with the author or audience stance?
: >Given the same amount of time, the simulationist will have a lot of
: >details about the plumbing systems in use by those hotels.
: This is a cheap shot, David. As for myself, in simulationist
: games, I generally spend my extra time on NPC's and history. Sure --
: a lot of that stuff may never come to light. However, it is interesting
: to work out and adds to my enjoyment as well as deepening my general
: understanding of the world.
Yes, it was a cheap shot. However, as a dramatist, I am as likely to work
out many of the details of Mr. X's route and activities as well, for the
story's sake, becuase simulation is important to my games.
David
Andrew Finch
John H Kim (jh...@konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu) wrote:
<snip>
: -- the players would
: develop plans and inform the GM towards the end of the session where
: they were headed, and he went off and prepared in response to this.
Exactly why I plot. To give myself the greatest flexibility in allowing
this to happen. I do most of the planning early, developing a framework
which can be modified, and provide direction, even in the face of a lot
of player direction. Pradoxically, I've found that if the plot is good,
and based upon the characters' dramatic needs, it will need less
modification, even in response to open improvisation.
: This and other games at U of C had a strong influence on me.
: I guess there were a few essences of this:
: 1) Worlds which were interesting in-and-of themselves
This is important, definitely. It sparks creativity in both players and GM.
: 2) A difference dynamic of player/GM-guided direction of the game,
: with the players much more responsible for direction
Absolutely.
: 3) A greater degree of soul-searching for character goals -- since
: clear goals were not provided by the scenario
Definitely. I plan scenarios based on character goals as decided by the
players.
: The essence is a bit more mysterious -- I'm goint to leave that
: for a further post.
Waiting...
David
Andrew Finch
John H Kim (jh...@konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu) wrote:
: Uh, David, I think you've answered your own question. The
: experience of going in front of a live sound stage is extremely different
: than the experience of sitting at home and listening to a recording on
: a fancy stereo.
In fact, the entire purpose of the many thousands of dollars spent on
hi-fi equipment is to minimize that difference, to provide the 'feel' of
being in front of a live sound stage. Stereo came about as a way of
providing the brain with the info it needs to localize sounds. Speakers
are rated on their subjective 'breadth and depth of stage', and whether
the sound stage produced holds up out of the prime center listening
position. They are rated on their 'boxiness', or the degree to which the
speaker seems to disappear (if it sounds like a speaker, it's too boxy).
Fancy delay equipment is used to add the echoes that would occur in a
concert hall, or small jazz club. Speakers are phase aligned to produce
the kind of coherent wave fronts that actual live music produces.
: It reproduces the *sound*, but not the feel of the
: experience. It does not attempt to reproduce the whole of the
: experience.
Yes, it does. That is the entire point of spending thousands of dollars
on hi-fidelity stereo equipment. To get as close to the original
'experience' as possible.
: Perhaps, then, the essence of a simulation is that it aims for
: a limited fidelity -- rather than an overall experience. Responsibility
: for the experience as a whole is divided up among the players and the
: GM.
I agree that repsonsibility is distributed, but the gestalt of the
experience is the goal, at least for me. No, you can't simulate
everything, so you concentrate on capturing those factors which make the
esxperience feel 'live', which, at least for my group, means reproducing
the subjective viewpoint.
David
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <4sjd7f$f...@cegt201.bradley.edu> j...@cegt201.bradley.edu (John Novak) writes:
>In <4sgb27$9...@nntp4.u.washington.edu> mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>>Then the GM introduces the ambush at the point where it breaks
>>routine--if the PCs have an outrider she may spot it, or the first they
>>know may be a hail of arrows, but in either case the players have
>>already made their deployment decisions as part of the standard
>>procedure, and so they don't have to try to decide on a deployment while
>>struggling with out of character knowledge.
>You'd think I would be able to pull this off, but for some reason--
>maybe it's one of the few circumstances where my poker face breaks
>down, or maybe I have some tell-tale mannerism that people learn to
>pick up on-- the players always seem to twig to this before something
>happens.
The trick is that there shouldn't *be* any "before something happens."
If the interaction between the PCs' plans, some secret die rolls, and
the ambushers' plans is such that the first the PCs know of their
problem is a hail of arrows, you start with the hail of arrows. This
does take trust on the players' part, but if you have that it can work
well. (It helps to occasionally show them how you are reaching your
decisions. We sometimes use after-game discussions for this.)
>>It helps if the GM is not always planning a big shindig when he asks
>>such questions, but is sometimes just going to tell you that a message
>>arrives, or there's a weird story on the news.
>I'll bear that in mind for the more SF type campaigns, but it's more
>difficult to do when you're in a fantasy setting.
A fantasy example is the "ambush" which is really another group of
travellers trying to conceal themselves out of fear of the PCs.
[searching a building]
>Too, it tends to be a dead giveaway if I have one room far more
>detailed than the others. Usually I'm not that transparent, but after
>a few minutes of getting more descriptions out of me, players can
>usually tell which room is the important room.
Perhaps you are over-preparing. If you improvise *all* the rooms from
sketchy notes, the key room will be harder to detect than if you detail
it and improvise the others. But this does take a lot of facility with
improv. I'm okay at bedrooms, kitchens, etc. but not so good with
armories or labs....
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Andrew Finch
Ennead (enn...@teleport.com) wrote:
: Inner peace is a "limited resource?"
For a man in existential crises, yes, it certainly is.
Look, we are dealing in a world of symbols and abstractions, that is, in
part, what a dramatic medium is about. If you insist that these concepts
relate only to those things which can be touched and held, then you miss
a great amount of the depth, and, for me, much of the fun.
: No, no. I'm sorry. I just can't buy it. Conflict of some sort
: as the driving force of drama, yes. Competition for limited resources?
: No.
A) Conflict is always over something, yes?
B) If there were in infinite amount of that something, there wouldn't be
any competition over it, yes?
Therefore) All conflict is over some limited resource, whether that
resource is abstract or not.
It doesn't matter whether you, or ,I buy that the resource even exists.
All that matters is that it has value to the participants in the
conflict, and that they accept it as a commodity worth fighting for.
David
Andrew Finch
John Novak (j...@cegt201.bradley.edu) wrote:
: It very much begs the question of what's being simulated, but as far
: as I've seen the discussion go, there are really only two or three
: things that fall under the aegis of the common usage:
: o Simulation of the "real world" effect where the extras are
: people.
: o Simulation of the "real world" effect where the heroes are no
: more inherently special (by the rules of the game world
: "physics") than anyone else.
: Calling up exotic interpretations (like, "I'm trying to simulate
: drama") are merely annoying and very unhelpful.
Replace the words 'real world' above, with 'genre', and the attempt to
simulate 'drama' becomes quite real, and very meaningful. If the world
which you are attempting to simulate has never existed outside of a
fiction, such as 'Pulp', and is itself dramatic, then you end up
simulating the same kinds of drama, in order to achieve fidelity to the
original. And this is really the case with the vast majority of games,
which are really about Fantasy, or Pulp, or Cyberpunk, than they are
about the world in which we actually live.
David
Mary K. Kuhner
Hywel asks for general ideas on doing non-combat activities in the kind
of detail usually reserved for combat.
The main questions for the GM to ask, in my opinion, are:
--What are the meaningful decisions the player can make? Note:
player, not PC. PC decisions that the player cannot contribute to are
not really satisfying.
--What information does the player need in order to make these
decisions?
Often, the decisions will have to be jury-rigged by the GM for the
specific situation, because most non-combat situations are like the
starship engine repair--you probably won't be doing this very often, so
it's hard to pre-arrange a system for it.
What meaningful decisions could be involved in engine repair?
Well, there's a tradeoff between how long it takes and how well it gets
done, but this can be kind of abstract. There are possible decisions
involving materials--are we willing to cannibalize other ship's systems
for parts? Are we willing to risk destroying irreplaceables? (My ship
crew recently jury-rigged their Jump drive in a way that would have left
them stranded if it failed, because their supply of Jump crystal would
have been destroyed.) Are we willing to do permanent damage to the
engine in order to make this one Jump? Are there extra resources we can
bring to bear--for example, can we raid a derelict for parts?
Most of these questions require the GM to give the players a bit of
information, so that the players can make an intelligent decision--
"You think you can have the drive repaired in an hour if you're willing
to use the guts of the life support system to do it, but then you'll
only have air for the next eight hours. No, you don't think you can get
life support working again without more supplies, if you do this. If
you don't do this, it will take about three days to repair the drive,
and maybe a 10% chance that it never will work."
The key is to find decisions that the players can understand with a
minimum of added knowledge, since they probably don't want to listen to
a lecture on engine repair techniques, even if the GM could come up with
one. Also, the decisions shouldn't be obvious ones: there should be
room for use of judgement. It's easier said than done, of course, but I
think focussing on "how can the player make an informed, interesting
choice here?" is the best way to make these scenes work.
If there are no choices to make, no amount of mechanics will make the
process interesting, and you had best abstract it. If there is no way
the player can contribute to making a choice--for example, if the GM
finds herself saying "You could either use a rheostat, with 40% chance
of working, or a gamma tube, with 80% chance of working"--again there's
no point and it's better to abstract.
For me, personally, the important decisions in combat scenes are
generally the ones that systems hardly touch (or need to): which
opponent do I engage? Do I fight or flee? Do I kill the wounded or try
to save them? Do I ambush or fight openly? Look for similar
choices in non-combat situations. In a chase scene: Do we split up or
stay together? Are we willing to trespass? Are we willing to risk
getting hurt in this pursuit? Do we believe passers-by when they tell
us which way the quarry went? Are we trying to be sneaky? In a repair
scene: How much are we willing to sacrifice? How do we trade off time
versus surety of success? How can we get additional parts or data that
will help us?
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Unknown
In article <4sgb27$9...@nntp4.u.washington.edu>, mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
> Agreed that it's a hard problem, though. A form of it which has always
> bothered me is when PCs search a large building. I'd like to hear how they
> search the area right around the thing they're looking for, to determine
> if they have a chance to find it. I *don't* want to hear how they
> search everything else. Standard procedure can help here too, but it's
> sometimes hard to get enough detail without giving the secret away.
> It works a lot better than asking about a specific room, though.
I guess for me it would depend on how important the thing they are looking for
is. If it is central to the whole game (they've been looking for it for years
and years) I would probably make them game out the whole search, room-by-room.
If it is incidental, I would probably use a skill roll to see if they get into
the right area, then tell them that they've found something out of the ordinary
there- either tell them straight out what they've found or pick on a detail
that they have noticed is different or out of place that may lead them on to
the right track.
The really difficult form of the problem is when you are in an intermediate
stage, where the thing they're looking for is important enough that you'd like
the players to feel that they've found it because they were clever but you
definately don't want to waste an hour on the subject. Here the only workble
solution I've found is to get a standard procedure out of the players. One way
which does work is to be up-front about this and get them to search the first
room in play (after all, it could be in the first room) then assume they tackle
other rooms the same way. If any rooms are different enough fro the norm that
the standard procedure isn't adequate, game out the first example of that as
well.
For example, they've been searching a mansion and started with the bedrooms.
They search in the wardrobes, under the bed, behind the mirror, around the
fireplace, up the chimney and in the posts of the four-poster beds. When they
get to the kitchens, they'r going to have to come up with a new method.
This can work well for the set watches method as well. Game out the first one
or two alerts that they have, real or otherwise. Surely they are going to have
false alarms quite often? Probably once a night at least in the forest, for
example. The first one or two instances could be a fox sneaking up to snaffle
food from the packs, but that's OK: you can see, as GM, how the player
characters react to the threat and assume they will react the same way next
time.
You might have to warn your players that that is what you're going to do,
because some awkward people will say things like "But if I'd known this was
going to be the example, I would have put my armour on first". If you think
this is a danger with your group (we've managed to avoid it in recent years),
it is best to warn them somehow and thus forestall argument.
Cheers, Hywel Phillips.
Unknown
X-News: hepax3 rec.games.frp.advocacy:30606
>: Yes, YMMV and you might like them. But I'm wondering why, exactly,
>: people need all that detail in their combat but rarely want it anywhere
>: else.
>
>But I do. We roleplay through starship engine repairs (as seen on
>previous flames).
I missed recent posts, so I thought I'd ask you whether you have developed some
general techniques for detailed roleplaying of non-combat situations.
I've felt irritated for a while now by the disparity between combat systems and
the rest of the game. Often, like your starship repairs example, you might
want to make something other than combat the focus of big chunk of the session,
but published systems give one next to no help in doing that.
I can sort of think how I might proceed with the starship engine example- maybe
draw out a map of faults for myself and a few diagnostics to start the players
going, then treat it as a "virtual" or "imaginary" set of little logical
puzzles, exploration by computer (like a maze).
What I am after I guess is a list of "standard metaphors" to apply to
situations. The example above has two in it:
1) On the basis of perhaps incomplete information, solve a logical puzzle.
(The old favourites like one of us lies and the other tells the truth, or the
person sitting to the left of the lady with the hat has a blue coat).
2) Explore a maze.
Other example could be
3) Dumb Luck.
4) Grind an opponent down.
5) Find the correct place to strike.
6) Say the right thing at the right time in the right place to the right
people. (eg convince HAL to open the pod bay doors, defuse the riot by making a
speech).
7) Run a race or chase an opponent. (eg run a tracer circuit and try to come up
with a fast enough program to overtake the error as it propagates through the
ship).
8) Make the right imaginative connection (sort of overlaps, but it's the old
sound of one hand clapping or work out that to renew the land you have to
sacrifice yourself to the old gods).
9) Diplomacy and making the right alliance (like getting the hyperdrive
controller and dilithium convertor to talk to each other and hence bypass the
faulty dilithium router box).
etc.
Do you have any more formalised list of suggestions like this, or are you a
good enough GM to do it on the fly (I'm not, sadly!) :-).
How do you go about it, as GM, faced with a problem you've never gamed out
before but would like to do now, at once, this session?
Cheers, Hywel Phillips.
Ennead
Andrew Finch (bcks...@crl.com) wrote:
: The above definition works even for man against himself, where the
: conflict is internal, the same person may be both protagonist and
: antagonist, and the limited resource, the macguffin, is inner peace (or
: whatever).
Inner peace is a "limited resource?"
Damn, I never knew that. I say we go and kill everyone in the
Ashram right now. They're hogging all the inner peace and leaving none
for the rest of us. It's a matter of emotional survival, guys.
No, no. I'm sorry. I just can't buy it. Conflict of some sort
as the driving force of drama, yes. Competition for limited resources?
No. That's an option, to be sure, but I would hardly call it a
prerequisite for drama.
-- Sarah
John Novak
In <1996Jul17.153611.1@hepax3> htp@hepax3 (H.T.Ph...@rl.ac.uk) writes:
>I guess for me it would depend on how important the thing they are looking for
>is. If it is central to the whole game (they've been looking for it for years
>and years) I would probably make them game out the whole search, room-by-room.
>If it is incidental, I would probably use a skill roll to see if they get into
>the right area, then tell them that they've found something out of the ordinary
>there-
But this, too, relates back to the central problem-- in handling the
two cases differently, your players will probably twig to the idea
that one is important, the other not. They may even twig to this
before you reveal what they're looking for.
If a cursory, "No, you find nothing," is given, they know it isn't
important. If you respond, "Tell me how you're searching the place,"
then they know something important is there.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
http://cegt201.bradley.edu/~jsn/index.html
The Humblest Man on the Net
John Novak
>Could someone go back and explain, for dumb me, why the
>term should instead be used for a GM who designs a world
>that goes on about its business whether or not the PCs
>are watching?
That's precisely what I consider a simulationist game. It's not
necessarily simulating something that was or is "real" but it's
simulating something that has an existence outside the narrow
solsistic view of the players.
In this way, to my mind, it simulates "life" in that most of us
realize that there are six billion people out there who lead lives
completely independent of and uncaring about us-- until we happen to
do something that makes our interests align properly.
It very much begs the question of what's being simulated, but as far
as I've seen the discussion go, there are really only two or three
things that fall under the aegis of the common usage:
o Simulation of the "real world" effect where the extras are
people.
o Simulation of the "real world" effect where the heroes are no
more inherently special (by the rules of the game world
"physics") than anyone else.
Calling up exotic interpretations (like, "I'm trying to simulate
drama") are merely annoying and very unhelpful.
--
John Novak
In <4sgb27$9...@nntp4.u.washington.edu> mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>We use the tactic of asking the player "what is your standard road
>procedure?" and getting a pretty detailed description, without tying it
>down to a particular day.
A good plan.
I tend to do that, too.
>Then the GM introduces the ambush at the point where it breaks
>routine--if the PCs have an outrider she may spot it, or the first they
>know may be a hail of arrows, but in either case the players have
>already made their deployment decisions as part of the standard
>procedure, and so they don't have to try to decide on a deployment while
>struggling with out of character knowledge.
You'd think I would be able to pull this off, but for some reason--
maybe it's one of the few circumstances where my poker face breaks
down, or maybe I have some tell-tale mannerism that people learn to
pick up on-- the players always seem to twig to this before something
happens.
>It helps if the GM is not always planning a big shindig when he asks
>such questions, but is sometimes just going to tell you that a message
>arrives, or there's a weird story on the news.
I'll bear that in mind for the more SF type campaigns, but it's more
difficult to do when you're in a fantasy setting.
>Agreed that it's a hard problem, though. A form of it which has always
>bothered me is when PCs search a large building. I'd like to hear how they
>search the area right around the thing they're looking for, to determine
>if they have a chance to find it.
Heh.
I know exactly what you mean.
Too, it tends to be a dead giveaway if I have one room far more
detailed than the others. Usually I'm not that transparent, but after
a few minutes of getting more descriptions out of me, players can
usually tell which room is the important room.
--
Scott A. H. Ruggels
Kevin R. Hardwick wrote:
>
> On 12 Jul 1996, John H Kim wrote:
>
edit
>
> Ultimately, I realized that what I wanted to simulate was not a third
> person perspective of fighting--the sort of thing that someone watching a
> first person perspective of a fight--the kind of thing that the person
> actually in the fight experiences. If you aim for that--for a simulation
> of what it is like to be in a fight--then how can you avoid trying to
> the first person decision matrix, is precisely what you *are* trying to
> reproduce.
>
> conclusion, I wind up with the rather odd conclusion that simulationist
> Where have I gone wrong?
How you went wrong is that you did not take into account, the lack of
same said experience of your players. You may have fellow gamers who also
have had similar experiences to yours, and while many members of the SCA
game, they are a subset of the gamers. So without that experience, they
are clueless as to what is the correct course of action, that there more
experienced and better trained characters might know. In a well
designed simulationist mechanic, the optimal course of action in a real
world situation, should be mirrored by a mechanic, or decision path that
leads to the same or similar result. Learning the mechanic, sunbstitues
for learning the swing and block routines for the sword and shield.
Habituationg the mechanic, should result in the similar result in the
game, that the longer, sweatier, and more dangerous learning of the
ssword and shieled does.
Now there is also a problem with your approach in terms of point of
view. By adopting this subjective model, you are using your experience as
the model, for producing, other "characters" simulated experience. This I
believe is going too far.
If there were a group of characters in a white room, with four rocks in
the middle of the floor. All people would agree that the room is white,
and that there are 4 rocks on the floor, but due to experience (real or
numerically reproduced by skill values) and the filtration of the scene
through the characters personality you would get a much different point
of view. The GM describes, "You are all standing in a room, evenly space
around eachother, in a circle, inside a white room 6 meters square with a
3 meter high celing, and flourescent lighting. In the center are 4 rocks,
three 20cm in diameter, and 1 30cm in diameter. They are speckled,
rounded, and not touching each other". The Architecht would observe the
room, and find it boring, or pleasingly minimalist, The geologist would
identify the rocks as some form of Granite. The Cabbie would look at the
room, the rocks, and other than thinking that the big one wouldn't clear
the rear differential on his cab, would find the room, dull, and stand
rocking on his heels waiting for something to happen, The artist would
try to determin if the rocks were composed, or randomly placed, The
Gardener, would thing that the rocks might be nice additions to a
landscaping project he has in mind. Each of these people would ask
different questions about the same elements present. The architecht
might ask if the walls were drywall or stucco, The geologist would ask if
he could approach, to touch the rocks to make a clearer determination of
the rock's origin (if a real geologist, by determining the size of the
Quartz, Feldspar, and other crystals that give the granite its unique
speckled appearance, or if a P.C. Geologist, would ask to roll against
his geologist skill, to identify the rocks). The Cabbie would ask the
obvious, "What th' hell we doin' heah?" The artist would probably try to
stop the geologist from moving any of the rock, but ask if there was any
significance to the layout( or consult the "artist" skill on the
character sheet). The gardener might ask, how heavy they are? or also
attempt to touch the rocks.
The reason for this example is that what you are doing by adopting this
"subjective" system, is that you are forcing all of the player characters
to be in effect experiencing the combat through the viewpoint of, oh say,
the "Geologist". You are not allowing the character's personality very
much lattiuted in filtering the experience. Now Melee combat is fairly
straight forward, but not really. Someone who learned to fight at a
Kendo School, will have a different decision tree, than an SCA fighter,
or a Hell's Angel. And what might be valid for medieval sword and shield,
definately is not for firearms combat, and firearms combat itself is
different depending on the type of firearm used, the time period, and
the environment. Paintball experience may transfer to outdoor combat,
but only grossly. But even in paintball, the experience is different for
each player.
Most computer military simulators, simulate a point of view, but by
putting a P.O.V. into a universe constructed by objective mathematical
formulas. That a lot of RPG's produce S.O.D. destroying results in combat
is because of poorly designed and researched models. Not because the
method is unsound. But imposing your experience onto the actions of
another character in regards to the "feelings" and less so to the
outcome, means that they player can bring little of his or her
imagination to the proceedings.
Now personally, I have to engage in RPG combat after an emotional
disconnect, and I admitted that I goslightly OOC during combat. This is
so that i don't take the combat >personally<. So I am less concerned with
the "feelings" than with results and acurate modelling to produce
accurate results.
Then there is the expectations of the players. Precious few of the gaming
pale males, have been a real fight, and I only have been in a few
fistfights. But most players perceptions of fights are derived from the
visual media, films or television. So A real fight only lasts a couple of
blows before the odds cascade against the disadvantaged participant, and
he ends up on the ground getting his head kicked. Not much fun, and not
"dramatic" and even this ardent simulationist admits that I have to
tailor the fights to movie expectations sometimes (Note; >sometimes<).
Even if you win, the fight is over pretty fast.
Ideally, the GM should describe only the basics of the fight and its
environment to the players, keepijg it clear, and avoiding confusion.
and allowing the player's characters to filter the events throught the
presonalities and experiences they have made. It would also help, if the
GM could provide first person narratives from various sources (to be read
off time) that describe the feelings and decisions and actions during
fights, and find a P.O.V. that is close to what they believe their
characters think, and sense like. Objective only goes so far, but it
allows the players imaginations to be engaged more fully.
Does this help explain it?
Scott
Necros
Dragon Storm is a "dark ages fantasy" type system, but here are
some ideas I like to use for non-combat:
Party comes to a devistated village and the villagers beg them
to help rebuild. The game mechanics require a contest roll for anything
the PC might fail at.
Put the PCs in an encounter with an enemy that they must
negotiate with. My favorite way to do this is have the enemy with
something the characters need and vice versa.
My third favorite is to send the PCs to a village that their
home village was trading with and has gone silent. They must find out
why and return with a report. This can lead to a truck load of
non-combat possibillitys.
Drain a shifter,
Necros
Scott A. H. Ruggels
Peter T. Jackson wrote:
>
> In message <4s3bkj$d...@crl.crl.com> Andrew Finch wrote:
>
> > William Clifford (clif...@river.it.gvsu.edu) wrote:
> >
> > : Is it the GM's job to create a single, stand-alone experience
> > : (and thus a story) out of the events in the lives of the characters?
> >
> > I think this should be restated to take advantage of our perceptions of
> > the group contract. It's never just the GM, although the group contract
> > may give that entire burden to the GM, our group contract certainly does not.
> >
> > So...
> >
> > Is it the group's job to create a single, stand-alone experience (and
> > thus a story) out of the events of their characters' lives?
>
> I don't think so. My experience of gaming sessions is strongly influenced
> by my character, especially when it has gone well and I have spent a lot
> of time IC. Since no-one else has the same character they must all have
> had a different experience. So where it is important (during play) there
> can be no single experience, and it should not be the group's job to
> attempt the impossible.
Exactly the point I was trying to make to Kevin. Bra-vo! well said.
Scott
Kevin R. Hardwick
On 17 Jul 1996, John Novak wrote:
> In <4sh9s5$m...@inet-nntp-gw-1.us.oracle.com> nri...@us.oracle.com (Anne B. "Nonie" Rider) writes:
>
> >Could someone go back and explain, for dumb me, why the
> >term should instead be used for a GM who designs a world
> >that goes on about its business whether or not the PCs
> >are watching?
>
> That's precisely what I consider a simulationist game. It's not
> necessarily simulating something that was or is "real" but it's
> simulating something that has an existence outside the narrow
> solsistic view of the players.
I don't think the distinction is quite so neat as this implies. Let us
assume, for the moment, that the opposite of "simulationist" is
"dramatic," since that is in part, it seems to me, what this term has
been coined to do. I think it is a false distinction. To test the
distinction, we need to ask whether this attribute of "simulationist"
games--a "world that goes on about its business whether or not the PCs
are watching," is *absent* from dramatic games. And in practice, I think
you will find that the answer is clearly no--dramatic games that try in
same fashion to reproduce an experience in practice must also have this
kind of setting.
> In this way, to my mind, it simulates "life" in that most of us
> realize that there are six billion people out there who lead lives
> completely independent of and uncaring about us-- until we happen to
> do something that makes our interests align properly.
Precisely. So, if I want the story that the game produces to feel right,
to reproduce or evoke a credible experience, then it must also have this
attribute--a sense that the world extends beyond the immediate concerns
of the particular characters. But of course I can still support that in
the setting, and also act to reinforce or make more coherent the
narrative that the game produces, by plotting with the motivations of the
characters in mind.
> It very much begs the question of what's being simulated, but as far
> as I've seen the discussion go, there are really only two or three
> things that fall under the aegis of the common usage:
>
> o Simulation of the "real world" effect where the extras are
> people.
> o Simulation of the "real world" effect where the heroes are no
> more inherently special (by the rules of the game world
> "physics") than anyone else.
>
> Calling up exotic interpretations (like, "I'm trying to simulate
> drama") are merely annoying and very unhelpful.
No one has to my knowledge suggested such an interpretation, however.
What has been suggested is that it is useful to consider a game that
attempts to evoke or reproduce a particular kind of subjective experience
"simulationist." Indeed, from certain viable philosophical ways of
understanding the world, it is *necessary* to define simulationist this
way. You may not subscribe to those particular asssumptions about how
the world works, but you need to account for the beliefs of those people
who do.
My best,
Kevin
Kevin R. Hardwick
On Wed, 17 Jul 1996, Scott A. H. Ruggels wrote:
> Now there is also a problem with your approach in terms of point of
> view. By adopting this subjective model, you are using your experience as
> the model, for producing, other "characters" simulated experience. This I
> believe is going too far.
Not necessarily. There are many things you can do to decenter the
authority of the GM. Its a cooperative exercise, after all--the illusion
of the game is thoroughly consensual.
<useful description of a simple setting that can be experienced from a
variety of IC POVs deleted for space.>
> The reason for this example is that what you are doing by adopting this
> "subjective" system, is that you are forcing all of the player characters
> to be in effect experiencing the combat through the viewpoint of, oh say,
> the "Geologist".
Nonsense! You can see the fallacy if you turn the question around--ask
yourself "as GM, what can I do to support the various POVs of the various
characters who are experiencing this?" Rather than force each player to
adopt a single POV, as the objective model suggests, you present detail
as necessary to support the "minds eye" vision of each character.
There are some practical problems to overcome here, but I have developed
techniques that seem to work OK, for my group. The trick is not to
over-ride, but rather to add to, the individual imaginations of your
players, who (in my group, anyway) are all cooperating with me to support
the setting, *as their character might see it.*
So, to return to your example (a group of characters enter a white room,
which contains four smallish rocks.) Let's say that they are an
architecht, a gardener, and a geologist.
GM to party: "You enter a white room, which is empty except for some
rocks in the corner." [I like to keep the description rather sparse
initially--I'll add details as the players request it, and I'll tailor my
responses to them to what I know about their characters.]
Architecht: "How big is it?"
GM: "Oh, its about the size of your typical living room, maybe 18 x 15.
The walls are plaster stucco. Its rather undistinguished--whoever
designed it didn't have much imagination."
Geologist: "I go over and look at the rocks."
GM: "They are field quartz, roughly 10 pounds each. There are four of
them."
Gardener: "I'll pick one of them up."
GM: "Its really quite a handsome rock--the quartz is white, tinged with
shades of pink. It would make a really nice border for a bed of
tiger-lillies."
And so on. I start with a relatively spare canvass, and fill in the
details, as requested, from each character's POV. Sure, this requires a
stretch of imagination from me, and some effort from the players to keep
me filled in on just what their POV is likely to be (eg., for a start, good
character descriptions, updated periodically), but it is by no means
impossible to do.
I find that by doing this--by ensuring that every character's POV gets
some validation during the game--I give my player's *more* scope for
their imaginations. The alternative is a world with a set
objectivity--and if my character's perception of that objective world
is somehow out of whack, my SOD gets damaged. For example, say my
character is an aristocrat who is predisposed to believe that all
peasants are uncivilized barbarians. If the GM decides that,
objectively, the peasants in fact are fine, upstanding folk, and I
still want to play this character, I've got a real dilemma. The GM
makes his objective pronouncements about how the world is, and I the
player have to filter them to fit my character's POV, all the while
knowing that that POV is in fact a false one (even though my character
is fundamentally committed to it.) A subjectivist GM, OTOH, will
emphasize to this character those elements of the setting that support the
character's predisposition--on the theory that those are the things this
particular character is likely to see first, and to remember longest.
This doesn't mean that the peasants cannot *also* be honest and
upstanding--but it does mean that, on the whole, this particular
character will not see those aspects *first.* Such an approach, it
seems to me, is less disruptive of the IC stance, for the player.
Mark and I recently had a long discussion about this, in the context of
his ongoing game. Maybe he can comment?
My best,
Kevin
Scott A. H. Ruggels
Anne B. Nonie Rider wrote:
>
edit
>
> A "simulationist" GM would therefore be, to me, one who
> tries to tuck the gamers into a historical niche as
> accurately as he can, as Scott Ruggels setting a game in
> WWII would probably describe the correct underwear and
> toothpaste.
Which army? :-) Some of them had tooth powder as opposed to paste, and
the underwear was dictated as much by the climate as regulation.
I would also extend the term to those who
> ditto with magic, like adding wizards behind the scenes
> in the Crusades, as long as the point of the game
> continued to be historical accuracy or verisimilitude.
Still on target.
>
> Could someone go back and explain, for dumb me, why the
> term should instead be used for a GM who designs a world
> that goes on about its business whether or not the PCs
> are watching?
Well, I could, but would it be important to you? Basically they try to
postulate a set of initial starting conditions, and use models of smaller
discrete processes to carry the events along.
>
> Me, I assume that every farmer you pass in the fields
> has a life, and every inn room you stop in had a previous
> tenant, but I sure don't consider it a "simulation" of
> anything. What am I missing?
>
The fact that in a lot of games you are a minority, and in a lot of cases
the farmers in the fields are nothing more than moving scenery, and that
the implications of their work, their field's output, when the harvest
is, how many wagons they will need, the distance to the market, and their
tax burden, is simply ignored because it "is not iimportant to the
story". The simulationist GM does not ignore this. He may simplify it,
and he may never bring it to the attention of the players, but the
farmers and their products are there none the less, and if at some point
there is a need for the P.C.'s to either bargain with farmers, or have to
become farmers themselves. he is ready :-)
I like watching Property damage. I watched the final chapter of Macross
Plus with Bob. I grooved on the massive amounts of property damage caused
when the two hot headed pilots had a fight in the middle of downtown in
their mechas. Bob, who became rather engrossed in the story, was quite
shocked at the level of carelessness, and irresponsibility exhibited by
these two "professional" pilots. Missiles impacted sky scrapers, and
autocannonshells walked up towering apartment buildings, and supersonic
flights in the financial district sucked the windows out of the office
buildings and showers of glass rained down onto the street below. I was
enthralled by the images and the technical animating skill displayed in
this film. Bob was appalled by it, and it sort of soured him on the
ending. He took the world as full of people and implications. I took it
as a piece of well executed techinical animation, with a tinge of
nostalgia for when i first saw Macross in the early 80's. Most people
treat games, the way I approached the film. Bob took the film as you took
the game.
A simulationist >knows< the world has processes that may be independant
of the player characters until such time as they run across evidence of
it, and they figure out what the evidence means. They find the evidence,
not because it would be in the best interests of the story, but because
they used their skills and characteristics and legitimately "found" it
9or missed its significance. the character's reactions are factored in,
and the implications noted as to what this might do to the observed
process. Is this clearer, or have I confused the issue further?
Scott
Lise Mendel
Andrew Finch <bcks...@crl.com> wrote:
> Ennead (enn...@teleport.com) wrote:
>
> : Inner peace is a "limited resource?"
>
> For a man in existential crises, yes, it certainly is.
Um... within a man in existential crises, yes. BUT - that doesn't mean
that inner peace is a finite resource, and that seeking inner peace is a
'zero sum game'. If I find inner peace, I don't take it from you, in
fact, I might even help _you_ find it.
>
> Look, we are dealing in a world of symbols and abstractions, that is, in
> part, what a dramatic medium is about. If you insist that these concepts
> relate only to those things which can be touched and held, then you miss
> a great amount of the depth, and, for me, much of the fun.
>
> : No, no. I'm sorry. I just can't buy it. Conflict of some sort
> : as the driving force of drama, yes. Competition for limited resources?
> : No.
>
> A) Conflict is always over something, yes?
Over something or triggered by something.
>
> B) If there were in infinite amount of that something, there wouldn't be
> any competition over it, yes?
Nope. Conflict is not necessarily competition. There are some people who
will come into conflict over something whether it is limited or not --
child A has a toy, therefore child B wants it. Adding an identical toy
won't stop the conflict. Adding twenty identical toys won't stop the
conflict.
>
> Therefore) All conflict is over some limited resource, whether that
> resource is abstract or not.
>
> It doesn't matter whether you, or ,I buy that the resource even exists.
> All that matters is that it has value to the participants in the
> conflict, and that they accept it as a commodity worth fighting for.
>
I think you're getting tautological here.
Defn: All conflict is competition for a limited resource.
Defn: Limited resources are anything that causes competition.
--
Lise Mendel
Mommy to Abigail (5/9/93) and Dorothy (10/19/95)
http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/
Andrew Finch
Kevin R. Hardwick (krhr...@wam.umd.edu) wrote:
: So, to return to your example (a group of characters enter a white room,
: which contains four smallish rocks.) Let's say that they are an
: architecht, a gardener, and a geologist.
<examples snipped>
Exactly. I would easily go one step farther, and, in most cases, am happy
to have, for example, the geologist declare what kinds of rocks he's
seeing. Then I, as GM, am simply along for the ride, or only one
participant in an evolving group experience. I keep the power of veto to
assure a certain consistency of effort, and to keep the mysteries of the
game (which would otherwise be less fun).
David