Approaches to prep in RPGing - GMs, players, and what play is *about*

[soviet]

I think one of, maybe THE, major difference between what you see in narrative games and what you see in games that focus on situation/setting/meta-plot is that in the former the NATURE of the character is the crux of the game. In games of the later sort this is never a fundamental issue. Instead the issues focus on the external life of the character, what they do, what physically happens to them, etc. So you see, for example, a 5e D&D character, which is pretty much a fixed thing. Even if you actually do something with BIFTs, you have a class, you have those character traits, and nothing really changes. You get basically one chance to further define your character at 3rd level, and that's pretty much it. The mechanics of what and how you affect the external world is what the game is all about. Its not that some sort of changes are forbidden, nor that they never happen, they simply aren't relevant to anything that the game deals with.

OTOH, while we haven't played Stonetop yet, it is VERY clear that who each character is, in a larger internal sense, how they think about the world, about Stonetop (the town), each other, and their own character abilities, is going to be pretty important. Even if you play in a pretty shallow way WRT your character's personality and such, you will at least have to face up to the implications of your character's actions WRT Stonetop! Every character is highly connected to the community and if you were to just play your character like a D&D adventurer taking treasure and power for themselves, etc. I am pretty sure that will create some pressures on you. Likewise any other way you portray your character, and things like your instinct is going to actually do stuff in game.

Further developing my theme from earlier posts, I think this represents 2 distinct ways a game can be 'character driven'. A sandbox D&D game is, for instance, character driven in that the PCs make all the decisions. Where do we go? What dungeon do we loot? Do we kill the dragon, or open the Forbidden Gate? And that may evolve into "I built a castle, I tamed the lands, I killed off the evil giants" etc. The GM may even be making up some of this stuff specifically to aim it at these PCs. OTOH, while that element exists to a degree in, say, Blades in the Dark, a lot of what the game is about is "what is the cost of this vice I have?" or "Do I kill my friends to get ahead?" etc. which are all fundamentally internal to the character. BitD can be played by people that largely ignore the internal, and D&D can be played by players who spend half their time dealing with their PC's internal demons or whatever. Its just more about how the game is focused, and that impacts the sorts of techniques, like PREP that we are going to want to use, and how we are going to want to use them.

The example that always stuck with me was the code of honour, I think from Ron Edwards.

The gist of it is that in some games if your PC has a code of honour, the expectation is largely that you will embody that at all times during play. It's a static fact of your character. 'I'm a samurai, we don't do that here'.

But in a narrativist game the expectation might be that your code of honour is a time bomb waiting to explode. Do you betray it now? How about now? How about now? It may be that the character does stand firm on it, in which case we will explore the cost in terms of battles not won, friends not helped, etc. Or it may be that the character breaks the code, and the consequences are to their position, their family name, etc. Either way there is a choice to make and a price to pay, and things cannot stay as they were originally. The character is in flux.

 

[niklinna]

OTOH, while we haven't played Stonetop yet, it is VERY clear that who each character is, in a larger internal sense, how they think about the world, about Stonetop (the town), each other, and their own character abilities, is going to be pretty important. Even if you play in a pretty shallow way WRT your character's personality and such, you will at least have to face up to the implications of your character's actions WRT Stonetop! Every character is highly connected to the community and if you were to just play your character like a D&D adventurer taking treasure and power for themselves, etc. I am pretty sure that will create some pressures on you. Likewise any other way you portray your character, and things like your instinct is going to actually do stuff in game.

And yet in Stonetop all this is coming from Setting first. Or rather, a template of Setting...and templates of Character. We are asked to define our characters' positions in town, and a few key relationships with other PCs and with NPCs. So there is some muddiness here about what comes first. Again it's a matter of degrees, but I know I didn't start character creation by thinking about personal goals or ideals: I looked over the available playbooks and picked one first, and then it presented prompts for what my character is supposed to be concerned with, and that's all in relation to the setting. And all we have on the playbook is a single Instinct, which might come into conflict with...something. But there's no formalized other character attribute for it to come into conflict with.

In other words, I am finding it hard to be relentlessly positive about Stonetop, from the perspective of Character => Situation => Setting. But at least it means I'll be able to understand it! (And I am looking forward to it; I just wanted to point out this seeming discrepancy.)

Edit: Fixed a typo.

 

[niklinna]

The example that always stuck with me was the code of honour, I think from Ron Edwards.

The gist of it is that in some games if your PC has a code of honour, the expectation is largely that you will embody that at all times during play. It's a static fact of your character. 'I'm a samurai, we don't do that here'.

But in a narrativist game the expectation might be that your code of honour is a time bomb waiting to explode. Do you betray it now? How about now? How about now? It may be that the character does stand firm on it, in which case we will explore the cost in terms of battles not won, friends not helped, etc. Or it may be that the character breaks the code, and the consequences are to their position, their family name, etc. Either way there is a choice to make and a price to pay, and things cannot stay as they were originally. The character is in flux.

Yes, this—your code of honor is not something for the GM to provide opportunities to exhibit, it's for the GM to challenge, at every turn!

 

[pointofyou]

The example that always stuck with me was the code of honour, I think from Ron Edwards.

The gist of it is that in some games if your PC has a code of honour, the expectation is largely that you will embody that at all times during play. It's a static fact of your character. 'I'm a samurai, we don't do that here'.

But in a narrativist game the expectation might be that your code of honour is a time bomb waiting to explode. Do you betray it now? How about now? How about now? It may be that the character does stand firm on it, in which case we will explore the cost in terms of battles not won, friends not helped, etc. Or it may be that the character breaks the code, and the consequences are to their position, their family name, etc. Either way there is a choice to make and a price to pay, and things cannot stay as they were originally. The character is in flux.

This seems like a good description of the idea. It seems to capture the problem I've seen and had with this type of play which is that if you as a player want to play an honorable character you might not want that to be under threat from the game. That's really more a matter of taste than good/bad.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

This seems like a good description of the idea. It seems to capture the problem I've seen and had with this type of play which is that if you as a player want to play an honorable character you might not want that to be under threat from the game. That's really more a matter of taste than good/bad.

I think this gets at a core difference between trad and non-trad games (storygames, story now, narrative, etc.), which is that in trad games PCs are typically trying to minimize negative consequences basically all the time. Story games often not only encourage inviting and leaning into those consequences, but have mechanical incentives to do so. For example, in Blades in the Dark you get XP for struggling with your Vice or any Traumas you've accrued through play (Reckless, etc.). You're incentivized to get yourself in trouble—to say "I'm getting drunk during the party, before we hit the safe." That's very different from something like Savage Worlds or Shadowrun, where you get a negative trait of some kind (in exchange for points at character creation), and that become a GM-triggered hazard hanging over your head, that you're incentivized to minimize or avoid.

Neither is better or worse, necessarily, but it's more than just a matter of taste. The mechanical approaches and incentives (or disincentives) are different, and they directly drive different kinds of play.

 

[pointofyou]

I think this gets at a core difference between trad and non-trad games (storygames, story now, narrative, etc.), which is that in trad games PCs are typically trying to minimize negative consequences basically all the time. Story games often not only encourage inviting and leaning into those consequences, but have mechanical incentives to do so. For example, in Blades in the Dark you get XP for struggling with your Vice or any Traumas you've accrued through play (Reckless, etc.). You're incentivized to get yourself in trouble—to say "I'm getting drunk during the party, before we hit the safe." That's very different from something like Savage Worlds or Shadowrun, where you get a negative trait of some kind (in exchange for points at character creation), and that become a GM-triggered hazard hanging over your head, that you're incentivized to minimize or avoid.

Neither is better or worse, necessarily, but it's more than just a matter of taste. The mechanical approaches and incentives (or disincentives) are different, and they directly drive different kinds of play.

Indeed. It's the difference between considering a character trait as a mostly-consequence-free descriptor or as a disadvantage to be worked around or as a story-engine to be leaned into. Someone who prefers one of those but is playing a game that is written for another is likely to have or be a problem.

 

[soviet]

Indeed. It's the difference between considering a character trait as a mostly-consequence-free descriptor or as a disadvantage to be worked around or as a story-engine to be leaned into. Someone who prefers one of those but is playing a game that is written for another is likely to have or be a problem.

I think it's worth adding that in a lot of these games (my own Other Worlds included) there's a stated expectation that player and GM will have a chat about which traits are there to be challenged and which traits are there more to be exhibited, to use niklinna's terms. Not every trait is necessarily a ticking time bomb as long as some of them are.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And yet in Stonetop all this is coming from Setting first. Or rather, a template of Setting...and templates of Character. We are asked to define our characters' positions in town, and a few key relationships with other PCs and with NPCs. So there is some muddiness here about what comes first. Again it's a matter of degrees, but I know I didn't start character creation by thinking about personal goals or ideals: I looked over the available playbooks and picked one first, and then it presented prompts for what my character is supposed to be concerned with, and that's all in relation to the setting. And all we have on the playbook in a single Instinct, which might come into conflict with...something. But there's no formalized other character attribute for it to come into conflict with.

In other words, I am finding it hard to be relentlessly positive about Stonetop, from the perspective of Character => Situation => Setting. But at least it means I'll be able to understand it! (And I am looking forward to it; I just wanted to point out this seeming discrepancy.)

Sure, though I kinda think of the town of Stonetop as a sort of a character, or extension of the characters in a sense. Like, there's not a concept of exploring the town. It is setting but it is also situation and even character. A lot of it is also made up by the players. Each of our PCs is a fairly important inhabitant and we defined the other major town figures, at least some of them, ourselves.

 

[pemerton]

And yet in Stonetop all this is coming from Setting first. Or rather, a template of Setting...and templates of Character. We are asked to define our characters' positions in town, and a few key relationships with other PCs and with NPCs. So there is some muddiness here about what comes first.

Ron Edwards wrote a good essay about how this works, but I don't think it's online anymore. This might work: Wayback Machine

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it's worth adding that in a lot of these games (my own Other Worlds included) there's a stated expectation that player and GM will have a chat about which traits are there to be challenged and which traits are there more to be exhibited, to use niklinna's terms. Not every trait is necessarily a ticking time bomb as long as some of them are.

Yeah, it could be simple mechanics too, they're simply different types of attribute or the ones you simply exhibit aren't represented by mechanics at all.