I made this post on a thread in the industry forum, but was curious to see what a more general response might be. As well as storytelling, it also relates to the current thread about wizards vs warriors.
(Rob Heinsoo comes into it via this reference to indie design in relation to 4e.)
4e is a great game for collaborative story telling, in which the players resolve the situations the GM establishes. Features like skill challenges, the combat rules and so on are all designed to this end. (As per the quotes in my earlier post.) In Edward's terms, they give the players a degree of authority over plot and narration (not full authority, because the GM gets to decide to some extent what NPCs do, and how they do it).
4e is also a game that, like many indie games (eg HeroWars/Quest, The Dying Earth, Maelstrom Storytelling) gives the GM control over framing the situations that the players have to resolve. This is what makes the mechanics that give the players authority over plot and narration work! (What makes 4e combat fun, for example, is that the GM establishes a situation and the players have to fight their way out of it. 4e doesn't support, for example, a teleport-and-ambush style of play, where the PCs always fight with an overwhelming tactical and logistical advantage from the start - those sorts of combats will be boring in 4e. Similar remarks apply to skill challenges.)
And Heinsoo's point is that a game like 3E makes it hard for the GM to exercise this sort of control, because there are too many variables and powers (particularly at higher levels). The game is therefore, to a degree, incoherent - it has all these guidelines on encounter design, adventure design, running a campaign, etc - all of which presuppose that the GM has primary authority over framing the situations - and at the same time it gives the players (mostly via the higher-level spells granted to wizard PCs) the power to compete with the GM over who will exercise this authority. 4e resolves this incoherence in favour of the GM. To borrow Edwards's phrase, it assumes that the GM will establish situations that are worth anyone's time, and that the players will use the abilities of their PCs to resolve those situations, and thereby drive the plot of the game.
If you think that the only way for players to affect the story is to exercise authority over the framing of situations, then I tend to assume that you don't have a lot of familiarity with those indie games I am mentioning. Because these games makes the sorts of distinctions Edwards is drawing - between situational or scene-framing authority, on the one hand, and plot authority, on the other - pretty clear at the level of practice and not just theory.
Also, in case anyone is tempted to equate a GM's situational authority with railroading, then as well as the games I've mentioned I'll finish with this favourite quote of mine from Paul Czege:
(Rob Heinsoo comes into it via this reference to indie design in relation to 4e.)
I don't really agree with your description of what is going on here. What Heinsoo says isn't that the players shouldn't be able to affect the story. What he says is that the GM should have control over the framing of the situation. These are two very different things, as explained by Ron Edwards:
Content authority - over what we're calling back-story, e.g. whether Sam is a KGB mole, or which NPC is boinking whom
Plot authority - over crux-points in the knowledge base at the table - now is the time for a revelation! - typically, revealing content . . .
Situational authority - over who's there, what's going on - scene framing would be the most relevant and obvious technique-example, or phrases like "That's when I show up!" from a player
Narrational authority - how it happens, what happens - I'm suggesting here that this is best understood as a feature of resolution (including the entirety of IIEE), and not to mistake it for describing what the castle looks like, for instance; I also suggest it's far more shared in application than most role-players realize . . .
There is no overlap between those four types of authority. They are four distinct phenomena. . .
I was working with a relationship map, not with a plot in mind. I had a bunch of NPCs. Whatever happened, I'd play them, which is to say, I'd decide what they did and said. You should see that I simply gave up the reins of "how the story will go" (plot authority) entirely. . . [but] I scene-framed like a mother-f*****. That's the middle level: situational authority. That's my job as GM . . . players can narrate outcomes to conflict rolls, but they can't start new scenes. But I totally gave up authority over the "top" level, plot authority. I let that become an emergent property of the other two levels: again, me with full authority over situation (scene framing), and the players and I sharing authority over narrational authority, which provided me with cues, in the sense of no-nonsense instructions, regarding later scene framing.
And similarly, like situational authority, content authority was left entirely to my seat at the table. There was no way for a player's narration to clash with the back-story. All of the player narrations concerned plot authority, like the guy's mask coming off in my hypothetical example [of a dramatic revelation] above . . .
I think [good gaming in this style of play] has nothing at all to do with distributed authority, but rather with the group members' shared trust that situational authority is going to get exerted for maximal enjoyment among everyone. If, for example, we are playing a game in which I, alone, have full situational authority, and if everyone is confident that I will use that authority to get to stuff they want (for example, taking suggestions), then all is well. . . It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the S[hared]I[maginary]S[pace] are worth anyone's time.
Plot authority - over crux-points in the knowledge base at the table - now is the time for a revelation! - typically, revealing content . . .
Situational authority - over who's there, what's going on - scene framing would be the most relevant and obvious technique-example, or phrases like "That's when I show up!" from a player
Narrational authority - how it happens, what happens - I'm suggesting here that this is best understood as a feature of resolution (including the entirety of IIEE), and not to mistake it for describing what the castle looks like, for instance; I also suggest it's far more shared in application than most role-players realize . . .
There is no overlap between those four types of authority. They are four distinct phenomena. . .
I was working with a relationship map, not with a plot in mind. I had a bunch of NPCs. Whatever happened, I'd play them, which is to say, I'd decide what they did and said. You should see that I simply gave up the reins of "how the story will go" (plot authority) entirely. . . [but] I scene-framed like a mother-f*****. That's the middle level: situational authority. That's my job as GM . . . players can narrate outcomes to conflict rolls, but they can't start new scenes. But I totally gave up authority over the "top" level, plot authority. I let that become an emergent property of the other two levels: again, me with full authority over situation (scene framing), and the players and I sharing authority over narrational authority, which provided me with cues, in the sense of no-nonsense instructions, regarding later scene framing.
And similarly, like situational authority, content authority was left entirely to my seat at the table. There was no way for a player's narration to clash with the back-story. All of the player narrations concerned plot authority, like the guy's mask coming off in my hypothetical example [of a dramatic revelation] above . . .
I think [good gaming in this style of play] has nothing at all to do with distributed authority, but rather with the group members' shared trust that situational authority is going to get exerted for maximal enjoyment among everyone. If, for example, we are playing a game in which I, alone, have full situational authority, and if everyone is confident that I will use that authority to get to stuff they want (for example, taking suggestions), then all is well. . . It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the S[hared]I[maginary]S[pace] are worth anyone's time.
4e is a great game for collaborative story telling, in which the players resolve the situations the GM establishes. Features like skill challenges, the combat rules and so on are all designed to this end. (As per the quotes in my earlier post.) In Edward's terms, they give the players a degree of authority over plot and narration (not full authority, because the GM gets to decide to some extent what NPCs do, and how they do it).
4e is also a game that, like many indie games (eg HeroWars/Quest, The Dying Earth, Maelstrom Storytelling) gives the GM control over framing the situations that the players have to resolve. This is what makes the mechanics that give the players authority over plot and narration work! (What makes 4e combat fun, for example, is that the GM establishes a situation and the players have to fight their way out of it. 4e doesn't support, for example, a teleport-and-ambush style of play, where the PCs always fight with an overwhelming tactical and logistical advantage from the start - those sorts of combats will be boring in 4e. Similar remarks apply to skill challenges.)
And Heinsoo's point is that a game like 3E makes it hard for the GM to exercise this sort of control, because there are too many variables and powers (particularly at higher levels). The game is therefore, to a degree, incoherent - it has all these guidelines on encounter design, adventure design, running a campaign, etc - all of which presuppose that the GM has primary authority over framing the situations - and at the same time it gives the players (mostly via the higher-level spells granted to wizard PCs) the power to compete with the GM over who will exercise this authority. 4e resolves this incoherence in favour of the GM. To borrow Edwards's phrase, it assumes that the GM will establish situations that are worth anyone's time, and that the players will use the abilities of their PCs to resolve those situations, and thereby drive the plot of the game.
If you think that the only way for players to affect the story is to exercise authority over the framing of situations, then I tend to assume that you don't have a lot of familiarity with those indie games I am mentioning. Because these games makes the sorts of distinctions Edwards is drawing - between situational or scene-framing authority, on the one hand, and plot authority, on the other - pretty clear at the level of practice and not just theory.
Also, in case anyone is tempted to equate a GM's situational authority with railroading, then as well as the games I've mentioned I'll finish with this favourite quote of mine from Paul Czege:
I think your "Point A to Point B" way of thinking about scene framing is pretty damn incisive. . .
I think it very effectively exposes, as Ron points out above, that although roleplaying games typically feature scene transition, by "scene framing" we're talking about a subset of scene transition that features a different kind of intentionality. My personal inclination is to call the traditional method "scene extrapolation," because the details of the Point A of scenes initiated using the method are typically arrived at primarily by considering the physics of the game world, what has happened prior to the scene, and the unrevealed actions and aspirations of characters that only the GM knows about.
"Scene framing" is a very different mental process for me. Tim asked if scene transitions were delicate. They aren't. Delicacy is a trait I'd attach to "scene extrapolation," the idea being to make scene initiation seem an outgrowth of prior events, objective, unintentional, non-threatening, but not to the way I've come to frame scenes in games I've run recently. More often than not, the PC's have been geographically separate from each other in the game world. So I go around the room, taking a turn with each player, framing a scene and playing it out. I'm having trouble capturing in dispassionate words what it's like, so I'm going to have to dispense with dispassionate words. By god, when I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. We've had a group character session, during which it was my job to find out what the player finds interesting about the character. And I know what I find interesting. I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. And like Scott's "Point A to Point B" model says, the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.
How does it feel? I suspect it feels like being a guest on a fast-paced political roundtable television program. I think the players probably love it for the adrenaline, but sometimes can't help but breathe a calming sigh when I say "cut."
There are two points to a scene - Point A, where the PCs start the scene, and Point B, where they end up. Most games let the players control some aspect of Point A, and then railroad the PCs to point B. Good narrativism will reverse that by letting the GM create a compelling Point A, and let the players dictate what Point B is (ie, there is no Point B prior to the scene beginning).
I think it very effectively exposes, as Ron points out above, that although roleplaying games typically feature scene transition, by "scene framing" we're talking about a subset of scene transition that features a different kind of intentionality. My personal inclination is to call the traditional method "scene extrapolation," because the details of the Point A of scenes initiated using the method are typically arrived at primarily by considering the physics of the game world, what has happened prior to the scene, and the unrevealed actions and aspirations of characters that only the GM knows about.
"Scene framing" is a very different mental process for me. Tim asked if scene transitions were delicate. They aren't. Delicacy is a trait I'd attach to "scene extrapolation," the idea being to make scene initiation seem an outgrowth of prior events, objective, unintentional, non-threatening, but not to the way I've come to frame scenes in games I've run recently. More often than not, the PC's have been geographically separate from each other in the game world. So I go around the room, taking a turn with each player, framing a scene and playing it out. I'm having trouble capturing in dispassionate words what it's like, so I'm going to have to dispense with dispassionate words. By god, when I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. We've had a group character session, during which it was my job to find out what the player finds interesting about the character. And I know what I find interesting. I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. And like Scott's "Point A to Point B" model says, the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.
How does it feel? I suspect it feels like being a guest on a fast-paced political roundtable television program. I think the players probably love it for the adrenaline, but sometimes can't help but breathe a calming sigh when I say "cut."
