Playing "storygames": Mobile Frame Zero - Firebrands; and Showdown

[pemerton]

Yes, it does. I'm open to the idea it's wrong about that, and to the idea the categories overlap. My experience of it was very authorial, all the way, which might have been different from yours, and might go some way toward our thinking as to which category or categories it belongs in (or at least whether it's a "story game" or a story game.)

I tend to regard "storygame" as a bit of a scare quote category by default - it's like Greg Stafford calling Prince Valiant a "storytelling" game because he wants to make it clear it's not a technical resource-management type game of the classic D&D sort. Or even, for me, like calling the Apocalypse World GM the MC (and before that, Christopher Kubasik calling the GM of a "story entertainment" the "fifth business": The Interactive Toolkit: Part Four: Running Story Entertainments).

Showdown has a tight structure, I agree. But within that structure I did declare actions for my character, both in the duel and in the flashback. The "after the event" narration reminds me a bit of Agon 2e. The inexorability of it reminded me a bit of my experience with Wuthering Heights: very different in its techniques, but crescendo-oriented in its mechanics.

I felt that this, from the Afterword of the rulebook, rang true at least for me:

I want you to respect your opponent when you play by playing generously. But that’s not the same thing as collaborating. Showdown isn’t about collaborating. I want you to play Showdown hard. I want you to tear your opponent’s character
to shreds. I want you to find those emotionally tender places in your opponent and poke at them.​

@thefutilist did that!

The one point where I was invited to step outside my character, and my character's fictional position, was right at the end: I had the "upper hand", and so got to narrate the outcome of the duel, and the rules say that

Just because you’re out of Attack Cards doesn’t mean it’s your character who has to die. That’s likely the case, but anything can still happen in those final moments. Sometimes a noble death can redeem an otherwise irredeemable character. Or, maybe, it can just purge the world of a vile monster, even if that monster is you. Consider who really should die, even if it’s the person who
fared best in the duel overall.​

@thefutilist drew my attention to this passage, before I exercised my narration rights. I called it his "writers' room gambit" - an attempt to draw me out of my character as Bertrand, and to consider the bigger picture. But I declined, and clung on to Bertrand to the bitter end.

@thefutilist then got his revenge in the final flashback scene. But I don't think he had to step outside his character, or his character's fictional position, to do it. It skewered Bertrand, but was a perfect realisation of the path the two characters had been on. (And who ended up being the bloodthirsty brute?)

I don't know if we just got lucky - but to me it seems like a well-designed game that it produces pathos, twists and irony without anyone having to make decisions beyond choosing what their character wants and does, and then working out the upshot of that in accordance with the game rules.

 

[Piperken]

...Showdown isn’t about collaborating. I want you to play Showdown hard. I want you to tear your opponent’s character
to shreds. I want you to find those emotionally tender places in your opponent and poke at them...

Both of these were great reads. I have to say from this Afterword, that on a surface level there isn't collaboration, but collaboration absolutely occurred between you both!

It was a sad irony to read the author exhorts participants to "...respect your opponent...by playing generously," yet duels and the culture this game was partially based in, was anything but. It's better that all that was moved on from, and that games like this exist to highlight what was problematic. :3

 

[prabe]

I tend to regard "storygame" as a bit of a scare quote category by default - it's like Greg Stafford calling Prince Valiant a "storytelling" game because he wants to make it clear it's not a technical resource-management type game of the classic D&D sort. Or even, for me, like calling the Apocalypse World GM the MC (and before that, Christopher Kubasik calling the GM of a "story entertainment" the "fifth business": The Interactive Toolkit: Part Four: Running Story Entertainments).

Showdown has a tight structure, I agree. But within that structure I did declare actions for my character, both in the duel and in the flashback. The "after the event" narration reminds me a bit of Agon 2e. The inexorability of it reminded me a bit of my experience with Wuthering Heights: very different in its techniques, but crescendo-oriented in its mechanics.

I felt that this, from the Afterword of the rulebook, rang true at least for me:

I want you to respect your opponent when you play by playing generously. But that’s not the same thing as collaborating. Showdown isn’t about collaborating. I want you to play Showdown hard. I want you to tear your opponent’s character​

to shreds. I want you to find those emotionally tender places in your opponent and poke at them.​

@thefutilist did that!

The one point where I was invited to step outside my character, and my character's fictional position, was right at the end: I had the "upper hand", and so got to narrate the outcome of the duel, and the rules say that

Just because you’re out of Attack Cards doesn’t mean it’s your character who has to die. That’s likely the case, but anything can still happen in those final moments. Sometimes a noble death can redeem an otherwise irredeemable character. Or, maybe, it can just purge the world of a vile monster, even if that monster is you. Consider who really should die, even if it’s the person who​

fared best in the duel overall.​

@thefutilist drew my attention to this passage, before I exercised my narration rights. I called it his "writers' room gambit" - an attempt to draw me out of my character as Bertrand, and to consider the bigger picture. But I declined, and clung on to Bertrand to the bitter end.

@thefutilist then got his revenge in the final flashback scene. But I don't think he had to step outside his character, or his character's fictional position, to do it. It skewered Bertrand, but was a perfect realisation of the path the two characters had been on. (And who ended up being the bloodthirsty brute?)

I don't know if we just got lucky - but to me it seems like a well-designed game that it produces pathos, twists and irony without anyone having to make decisions beyond choosing what their character wants and does, and then working out the upshot of that in accordance with the game rules.

When @thefutilist and I played Showdown, it seemed as though there was tons of respect for each other and for the rules of the game, and for the story we were setting out to generate by playing it. On the other hand, though, I never felt as though I was really playing as my character so much as I was writing from their point of view (and even that was very moderated by the game structure, even playing a story game is not the same thing as writing fiction). Some of that, of course, might have been that my dice persisted in cacking, as they do.

I do not think you "got lucky." I think Showdown is an excellent game, and I think @thefutilist teaches and plays it superbly. The fact that I did not experience it basically at all as a TRPG does not change either of those things.

 

[Enaknomolos]

Thanks for these (excellent) write-ups. I'd not heard of Showdown, but it's very much on my radar now.