Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8151248" data-attributes="member: 42582">In general I think that part of the skill of GMing is this: when the system requires that you establish and evince the fiction, you should so so in a way that encourages uptake by the players.<a href="http://mightyatom.blogspot.com/2011/05/apocalypse-world-guide-to-hard-moves.html" target="_blank">Here's</a> an (imagined) example of GM failure, from John Harper's blog:I've seen people struggle with hard moves in the moment. Like, when the dice miss, the MC stares at it like, "Crap! Now I have to invent something! Better make it dangerous and cool! Uh... some ninja... drop out of the ceiling... with poison knives! Grah!"He goes on to offer the following advice:Don't do that. Instead, when it's time for a hard move, look back at the setup move(s) you made. What was threatened? What was about to happen, before the PC took action? Follow through on that. Bring the effects on screen. Bring the consequences to fruition.This is what we might call "following the fiction".Vincent Baker gives another example and brief discussion <a href="http://www.lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">here</a>:Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. . . . So you're sitting at the table and one player says, "[let's imagine that] an orc jumps out of the underbrush!" What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps out of the underbrush? . . . 1. Sometimes, not much at all. The right participant said it, at an appropriate moment, and everybody else just incorporates it smoothly into their imaginary picture of the situation. "An orc! Yikes! Battlestations!" This is how it usually is for participants with high ownership of whatever they're talking about: GMs describing the weather or the noncombat actions of NPCs, players saying what their characters are wearing or thinking. 2. Sometimes, a little bit more. "Really? An orc?" "Yeppers." "Huh, an orc. Well, okay." Sometimes the suggesting participant has to defend the suggestion: "Really, an orc this far into Elfland?" "Yeah, cuz this thing about her tribe..." "Okay, I guess that makes sense." . . .This is just as relevant to the GM narrating PC mental states as it is to Orc jumping from the underbrush or ninjas dropping from the ceiling. If the GM's narration doesn't follow from the fiction it will fall flat or generate feelings of dissonance.(It's deliberate that I'm running together examples of "external" and "internal" GM-narrated fiction. As Baker's example of "this far into Elfland" shows, either can evoke doubts or dissonance.)Genre is important here.Classic Traveller has morale rules that apply to PCs just the same as NPCs. So players can find that their PCs break and run in combat without the players having made that choice. This both follows from, and helps reinforce a sense of, sci-fi genre closer to Alien than to Star Wars or even Star Trek.A rule whereby the GM can dictate that a PC falls in love with Guinevere fits better in a game of knightly romance than in (say) a mid-level D&D game centred on Tomb of Horrors or the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.GM framing will also help here - both in itself, and because it is more likely to produce player responses that build up towards buy-in. Here's an actual play report on the use by me as GM of an Incite Lust effect in Prince Valiant play:Sir Morgath's infatuation for Lorette flowed from the fiction. He had tried to steel himself, and encourage her to back off, by declaring his married status, but holding her in his arms was too much for him!As this played out and was experienced at the table, it did not resemble a ninja dropping without explanation from the ceiling, or a random Orc jumping out of the underbrush in Elfland.</blockquote>

Verification