Advice for new "story now" GMs

[AbdulAlhazred]

I read it that way, too, albeit with the possible framing of

setting [decided by player]
situation [decided by GM]
trapped cake [GM soft move]
explodes [GM hard move]

I think you see that differently, right? Is it possible to say more about the how and why?

(I don't think that the above sequence is necessarily yielding story now. And the reasons why might underpin your answer.)

OK, but I want to know what those moves were in response to and who really supplied the various pieces of fiction, and in response to what. So, a more detailed analysis of @FrozenNorth's post:

Player established family structure and wedding as an event. (This is 5e, we don't know what that looked like procedurally, but it is player directed/authored situation).

GM 'sets his adventure at the wedding', so there's SOME kind of GM story line that is established as part of the situation/framing. It sounds like the upshot of that is that an assassination attempt is established as a threat, and the PC is charged with acting, and this plot is the GM's.

After some extensive action which appears to have resulted in the capture of the assassin it is revealed that there's still danger. The PC's fail to thwart the danger, a cake explodes and lots of people are killed.

Now, we can see that the plot itself is GM formulated, though on the basis of a setting devised by one of the players. It seems like the stakes are apparent, but the outcome, the player is upset at the death of many of the PC's family, indicates that there's a mismatch of agendas. Clearly in Story Now/Narrativist sense there is probably less plot, BUT actually I don't think the GM introducing a plot which addresses PCs backstory and issues is necessarily out of line with narrativist play. Clearly the stakes were not adequately resolved before the cake blew up, which is something of an issue, but probably stems more from a lack of clear agreement when the game was started, or lack of existence within the process of play, of stakes setting processes.

You've talked about soft and hard moves above, but I don't think we can really discern specifically from the narrative presented here a sequence of moves that could be posited. I think a similar narrative could arise in a PbtA like DW or AW. There would be more definite constraints on the GM in terms of how they would frame things, but none of the framing seems to obviously violate, say, DW's principles. I think what is problematic is the degree of transparency and stakes negotiation present. That can be done in very explicit or more subtle ways, but I would think there would be opportunities, for example, to use Discern Realities in order to make choices. Those might involve things like whom to save, whether to disperse the targets and insure small losses vs crowd them all together and have a lower risk of a catastrophic outcome, etc. etc. etc. Certainly I think there aught to be that moment when one or more of the PCs sees the cake coming, literally, and those final split-second choices happen.

Maybe the stance of the GM running the game, not being really narrativist, is a bit too literal and some possible dramatic and thematic opportunities were maybe lost? This is one of the ways where simulationist/trad can diverge strongly from narrativist/SN. I don't want to rehash all the contrasts made in other places on that score though. I would just say that in the final 'cakesplosion' a narrativist approach would probably allow for some more dramatic 'moves'; ones that might be rejected as unrealistic or contrived in many sim/trad commentator's opinions (if I can venture to voice them here).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Exactly this! The game was explicitly not a Story Now game, it was a 5e game. It was used as an example to illustrate my question.

“Given that drama in a Story Now game is generated by putting in peril things that matter to the characters (and the players), how do you identify when putting something in peril goes beyond what the player is comfortable with?”

I think, to address this point directly, if you veer too much on the side of giving in to player comfort you may find yourself in 'neo-trad land' at some point; where the action is mostly dictated by the players and is used to express the nature of their character(s) but not really to TEST it, except in specific ways that form part of the player's ideas of how the character will evolve. This is exemplified in 'OC' play. While play of that sort need not be low myth, it will otherwise need a mechanism or table agreement as to how the players establish the plot and exactly what the GM's role is.

In any case, OC/Neo-trad would be one answer to 'what is the player comfortable with' and I think @TheMagicSword had a pretty good thread on that topic. In SN/narrativist play? Its no different from old school Classic D&D, you plays your character and you takes your chances! If you can't do the time, don't do the crime! It's not really an ANSWER, but beyond that, be very up front about what the stakes are. If a PC uses DR and asks what is about to happen, don't be shy! "Your family is about to get blown up by an explosive cake!" OK, now the player can set stakes, lets get people out of the room, jump on the cake, whatever. The choices will be tough, but there's at least one path that says "all but <some tragic figure> is saved" or "your death is glorious, you saved your family" or whatever.

 

[chaochou]

It's context for a question: "What if something that the player doesn't want to happen happens and now they are upset?". And it is a good question! This can happen in a Story Now game!

Possibly, but it should be far, far less likely than in trad play.

So firstly, the only reason to be assassinating a characters’s family in Story Now is if the player has made that a central premise for their PC. So they’re not going to cry about it, because they put it on the table. Unlike trad railroad play. This should be obvious to anyone claiming to understand the difference.

Second, the stakes of rolls - certainly something as defining as the assassination of family - should be known by the participants, even if the characters are unaware. The idea that the players emotional state should match the character is tedious trad bs which certainly doesn’t carry over into Story Now.

So ‘boom, your family are dead’ being a surprise and upset for a player is, in practical terms, not a viable scenario for anything but utterly incompetent Story Now Gming, and doesn‘t even make sense as a hypothetical.

 

[pemerton]

This post is really just a footnote to @chaochou's and @AbdulAlhazred 's.

drama in a Story Now game is generated by putting in peril things that matter to the characters (and the players)

Who puts it into peril, and how?

In Story Now, the players bring the protagonism.

 

[clearstream]

Who puts it into peril, and how?

The who is reasonably straightforward, right? GM brings adversity. Which can even be from initial situation. The how is more complicated.

In Story Now, the players bring the protagonism.

One way things get more complicated is how GM and players together develop conflicts. Players decide what they care about. They clearly get to choose which side they're on, and what they do. In a strong sense they decide escalation, but their escalation can produce escalation in adversity in response. (For example, when things go off-track from pushing or missteps that cascade into disastrous rolls.) I feel like there might be open questions as to the why of assassin #2 here.

You could be implying that it is also only players who get to put what they care about into peril, which goes against what I've experienced so I wonder if you mean something else? It's not that I think they couldn't session 0 some issues off the table, but in the absence of that... ?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The who is reasonably straightforward, right? GM brings adversity. Which can even be from initial situation. The how is more complicated.

GMs describe the actual fiction and thus situation which embodies the conflict, yes. They may generally do something like decide which conflicts to bring into the spotlight at any given moment, etc. GM is not the author of the conflict overall though, in many cases. Honestly, its a mix of GM, player, and setting/genre factors that may decide that. Basically every game has its themes, some drawn from the genre, some from player interest, some from GM interest as well. There will also be common modes of expression. Super hero genre has specific ways of expressing conflict, as does post apocalypse, and various flavors of fantasy, etc.

What is common in narrativist play is player character protagonism. PCs take the role of protagonists in some sense. They make decisions which set the stakes and parameters of conflict, and actively resolve it. 'Pro' meaning 'towards', 'agon' conflict, as you know. In effect this means "where the PCs go, there is conflict" because the game is ALWAYS ABOUT THAT. This is why setting and external plots and such are not the focus of narrativist play. There may be some overriding thematic story arc built into the premise of play, but in that case it will still be secondary to the drama surrounding the PCs, either as a driver or mere backdrop.

 

[loverdrive]

“Creating the family as a counterpoint” was the player’s term, though from their reaction, I think it was clearly something more to them.

I understand it came from the player. What I mean is, anyone, including players, having narrative "plans" isn't really in the spirit of Story Now.

“Given that drama in a Story Now game is generated by putting in peril things that matter to the characters (and the players), how do you identify when putting something in peril goes beyond what the player is comfortable with?”

I think there are two ways to define "comfortable" (or, rather, not comfortable):

• A) Frustrating, producing anger at the outcome: "I wanted my character to have a healthy family life, and now I'm mad the story didn't go the way I wanted it to."
  
  In this case, well, happens. Sometimes plans just don't work and the story develops in a way you didn't intend it to. It's a part of the game. It's called Story Now, not Story Before, after all.
  
  Git gud (or stop being too attached, either works). To use a vidyagame example: I'm not particularly elated to see GAME OVER screen, but I just accept that it's part of the fun.
  
  
• B) Distressing, producing unpleasant emotions that are separate from the game itself: "My character having a healthy family life is important to me because otherwise it would cut wounds I'd rather not touch"
  
  In this case, the answer to the question "how you identify it" is: you can't. The only person who can judge is the person being distressed!
  
  That's what safety tools are for. Lines and veils for calm and prepared groundwork for things you already know, and revising them if your state changes; X-Card as a last-resort option when you are overwhelmed by something you never even considered.

When safety tools are invoked, it's not GM's place to judge whether it's A or B. If they are invoked, you honour it, very simple.

But, outside of safety tools, you can, like, just talk. "Hey, I kinda had narrative plans for my family, how about instead of blowing them up, [X] happens?", but if MC disagrees, well, too bad. The same goes the other way round: "Hey, I think this NPC can be interesting to keep in the picture, is it really that big of a deal for you that you kill him here?" is a request that the players can deny.

 

[Anon Adderlan]

By a strange artifact of providence the game I'm currently designing models this depiction almost one for one, even going so far as to call character traits 'concerns'. I find many #StoryNow games take indirect steps to achieve these results, and I'm curious as to how directly this can be achieved.

I've pretty much never encountered newbies who didn't grok AW instantly. Have seen stables of "veterans" who can't wrap their heads around it, though.

Culture of Play > Rules as Written.

I think Stonetop playbooks, at least a couple of them, could still use another design pass. I think some of the moves verge more on being 'powers' vs being moves that get triggered. And its rather ambiguous in my book exactly what they're attempting to do, at least in the case of the Seeker's 'Work With What You've Got', which has a trigger of "wield your environment against your foe(s)" which is FAR less TRIGGER in my book, and far more "what I want to do." I mean, is chucking a rock at someone triggering this move? What is the advantage over Let Fly?

Discerning between intentions and triggers is a surprising common problem in games like this.

I see a tendency for story now advocates to promote rapid escalation of consequences to life-or-death as ideal, and yeah they're great on occasion, but I find a continual series of them to be emotionally exhausting.

This is often because the mechanics are specifically designed to escalate conflicts, and pressing the button too often naturally leads to the ultimate consequence. On the other hand D&D combat is nothing but a series of life-or-death consequences.

I'm still figuring out how to tune into my own wants with regard to intensity, and with how to convey my desires ("let's floor it!") and limits ("I do not want to see that character come to that kind of harm") during moment-by-moment play—which is often when I realize what my (ever-changing) desires and limits are, and part of why I play story now (session zero talk does not help you discover your limits). I think this is a skill that needs quite deliberate fostering, and short of saying, "I want to go this far tonight", or "I do not want to push this any further right now", I'm not sure how. And to be clear, I think it's totally legit to speak that bluntly about what I want in a gaming experience as it unfolds, but there's a heck of a lot of inertia and momentum making that difficult for me. The main tool I've used in moment-by-moment play is to not pick the option that leaves an opening for danger, but that is a switch rather than a dial, and I know I'm not here for uniformly anodyne play—I want to be challenged, but maybe only so much, right now, I've had a day, thanks.

Sadly no amount of design can compensate for playing with a group you don't feel comfortable enough to express your limits and desires clearly and honestly too. None. Which is why 'safety tools' are at best redundant, and at worst obscure and enable existing dysfunction. So I think you're on the right track with simply speaking bluntly.

Kukami Noritaka wants access to my duelists and the martial prowess my school unlocks.

So this Bond is definitely in play here. Will the farmer fall prey to his inclination to teach and show off the prowess of his school to the Samurai Knight in such a way that does a runaround on what is supposed to be an act of correction and serious punishment for the boy? The interesting thing about this game is they have inverted the normal paradigm when you Resist the Temptation to Indulge Your Attachment; On a 6- you mark xp and act as normal...but on a 10+...you indulge your Attachment but you get a boon (if it applies to the fiction...didn't in this situation)...on a 7-9 you act as normal but you increase your Attachment by 1.

Reminds me of things like Aspect Invocations and GM Intrusions. So is this something the player chooses to roll, or a mandatory response to the fiction? And how is this resolved when the temptation is constant? Is it once per scene?

So the idea of setting a story now game against a backdrop of a rapidly-escalating ice age with an underlying but constantly-increasing challenge of finding long-term ways to stay warm and grow food (or migrate) would be off the table, then?

That's a situation, not a setting.

I think players overcoming challenges (which is an important part of trad play, one way or another) is fundamentally incompatible with storytelling. The two just cannot coexist, as enabling one automatically undermines the other.

Interesting take worthy of further analysis. Can you explain more as to why?

The main thing that allows Story Now to function properly and enable PC protagonism is that it kinda doesn't matter what the characters are doing, and that aspect is just plain missing from trad systems.

How is any kind of protagonism possible if it doesn't matter what the characters do?

So, spoilers all the way, then. The characters (and by extension the players) know the future of their world as well as its history.

You're not presenting absolutes, but possibilities, and such 'spoilers' are no different than what you'd get from a successful Perception check.

I most certainly don't agree that pre-scheduling some events to happen in the setting on particular dates is a bad call, provided such pre-scheduling is done in complete neutrality and without knowledge of how or even if any PCs will be affected.

This is why things like 'clocks' and 'fronts' exist.

You're right in that I largely do disagree with that stance, mostly because when I look at an RPG system my first (and maybe only) thought is whether I can kitbash it into doing what I'd want it to do. Big-tent systems have an advantage here as they're already intended to be somewhat flexible, but I've found - mostly through converting adventures from other systems to run in my own game - even there some are much more flexible than others.

I would far rather just learn one system really well and then make it work for whatever I need than learn a multitude of systems bespoke to each play style.

If you're not a kitbasher and instead just want to pretty much use games as written, then System Matters clearly makes sense.

Doesn't matter how well you know a system, because by the time you finish kitbashing it you'll have a completely new one only you (ostensibly) understand. And it will likely take more effort and be more complicated than just using one specifically designed for the task.

Because that's how I interpret the phrase System Matters when used in these discussions - that one is expected and encouraged to buy and learn a whole new system for each different style or type or milieu of game one wants to play even while staying in the medieval-fantasy realm. That's what I push back against, that and the concept of RPG rule systems being so tightly designed that they don't allow for uses other than exactly that for which they were intended.

It simply means the experience at the table is a product of the systems you implement. No more, no less. And the fact you have to kitbash at all demonstrates its validity.

As a "story now" GM, be wary of aspects of the RPG you're playing which mean that the only way to resolve a situation you've set up is for you, as GM, to make up an outcome. This is an obstacle to player protagonism, because it tends to put you - the GM - in charge of obstacles, and stakes, and consequences, and so basically you're just telling the players a story.

I feel more precise language is required here, as the GM should be in charge of these elements, only basing them on the characters rather than the setting.

You don't need to revamp a single thing to avoid gamism/or gamist dungeoncrawling. And my anecdotal experience is far different from yours. Perhaps it's geographical. I'm in Los Angeles and many of my D&D groups have involved player/DM's who are writers, directors, actors, voice actors, MOCAP performers, stunt men and others in the Hollywood industry.

Again, Culture of Play > Rules as Written. So this isn't surprising.

If anything, when the rules and the fiction are in conflict in PbtA, the rules always win (in contrast with games like D&D or Vampire or GURPS, where if the rules "don't make sense" they are just ignored). Ditto for Forged in the Dark, Fate, or any other nar game I can think of.

True! And it's a play culture discrepancy I constantly fight against, usually unsuccessfully.

My question is this: by its nature, story now encourages the DM to stake things that matter to the PCs, including friends and family. The conventional safety tools I am aware of are good for phobias or other elements that bother the player in any context, but it seems unlikely that it would have caught the fact that the player wanted his family’s death to be off-limits.

I'm honestly surprise at the responses here as both #StoryNow and #LinesAndVeils were codified by the same person and anything but incompatible. It should be as simple as declaring the line is drawn at family death and off limits during play. But again, this only works if players are willing and able to clearly and honestly convey their boundaries and desires.

 

[Maxperson]

That's a situation, not a setting.

It's both. It's a situation in that the changes as escalating rapidly and you have to adjust. It's a setting in that the campaign is set during this rapidly escalating ice age, which means glaciers forming. Crops failing. Fairly primitive(I assume) peoples. Ice age animals to be encountered.

I'm also curious what "escalating rapidly" means. For an ice age that could mean over the course of 20 or even 200 years instead of thousands. Taking even 20 years to escalate the changes would move it entirely into a setting.

How is any kind of protagonism possible if it doesn't matter what the characters do?

Good point.

Again, Culture of Play > Rules as Written. So this isn't surprising.

Sure. Absolutely. My point, though, was that the culture out here didn't need to change or ignore any existing rules in order to avoid gamism. Nothing was house ruled or ignored.

Rules are tools and like any tool, you can use them for a variety of things. The person trying to say that the rules needed to be revamped in order to avoid gamism was incorrect.

 

[loverdrive]

Interesting take worthy of further analysis. Can you explain more as to why?

A game about players overcoming challenges demands that outcomes are only contingent on how well (or poorly) the actions taken are suited for the challenge at hand, so the players can express their skill.

In a game about creating satisfying stories, on the other hand, the exact same action in the exact same fictional situation would have different results depending on the broader context of the story, and no amount of smart planning will ever help you to weasel out of putting things you care about at stake.

How is any kind of protagonism possible if it doesn't matter what the characters do?

"Doesn't matter" as in "whatever you do it will be interesting" and not "actions don't have consequences".