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Approaches to prep in RPGing - GMs, players, and what play is *about*
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<blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 8978900" data-attributes="member: 6801252"><p>I've had a conversation about this with one of my players, they don't really like that kind of conflict in their stories and it def came up when we played Masks, and their playbook pushed them into conflict with the previous generations of their legacy. They like their characters to be uncompromising in their ideals and to have that be backed up by the tilt of the story, similarly, they don't like conflict within the group, they prefer everyone be doing their best. It's kind of interesting though, because the need to make it something that <em>will </em>be challenged, from a literary perspective, imposes the idea of situational compromises on the kind of story it is. </p><p></p><p>It kind of dovetails with my impression of "play your character like a stolen car" where play in Masks, which features moves that always point back to modifying the character's self-image, feels like it reminds me of <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Legacies" target="_blank">certain kinds of fiction</a>, but not <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Supernatural" target="_blank">others</a> and demand a kind of movement every session. In the first of the two linked series, character drama plays a constant role where the protagonists are confronted <em>constantly </em>with the dramatic questions produced by their backstories, personalities, and beliefs, and they often act recklessly in response to those things which produces constant cliffhangers and status quo changes in their relationships-- but in the second linked series the characters 'turn' (in the sense of ships) more slowly, and they spend a lot of time inhabiting their status quo while the attention is on the situation itself that they find themselves in, but then their private worlds eventually do explode in particular arcs or events.</p><p></p><p>What I've noticed comparing the two, is that Supernatural's character development is a lot more reflective because the monster-of-the-week narratives introduced by the setting and premise frequently lets their internal conflicts breathe over the course of a season, it spends more time examining who the characters are, and less time changing them-- in other words, it <em>develops the characters </em>rather than <em>the characters develop. </em>They let a lot of things happen where Dean just gets to be Dean without challenging the things that make him Dean, and the monster of the week story carries the need for dramatic conflict because it's a self-contained story nested within the grander narrative. I found myself preferring Supernatural for that reason, separately I also realized that I deeply preferred its more fully realized exploration of it's setting rules as set up for things that happen. </p><p></p><p>I think it's just something that games don't tend to be designed around though, and while I seem to get that more in the higher prep, traddier games I can recognize it's more because of the things they don't do (point the consequences back to the character's sense of self immediately, like Vices and Stress in BITD or Mask's labels, which both pull your character's inner self directly into the gameplay loop) rather than what they do.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The-Magic-Sword, post: 8978900, member: 6801252"] I've had a conversation about this with one of my players, they don't really like that kind of conflict in their stories and it def came up when we played Masks, and their playbook pushed them into conflict with the previous generations of their legacy. They like their characters to be uncompromising in their ideals and to have that be backed up by the tilt of the story, similarly, they don't like conflict within the group, they prefer everyone be doing their best. It's kind of interesting though, because the need to make it something that [I]will [/I]be challenged, from a literary perspective, imposes the idea of situational compromises on the kind of story it is. It kind of dovetails with my impression of "play your character like a stolen car" where play in Masks, which features moves that always point back to modifying the character's self-image, feels like it reminds me of [URL='https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Legacies']certain kinds of fiction[/URL], but not [URL='https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Supernatural']others[/URL] and demand a kind of movement every session. In the first of the two linked series, character drama plays a constant role where the protagonists are confronted [I]constantly [/I]with the dramatic questions produced by their backstories, personalities, and beliefs, and they often act recklessly in response to those things which produces constant cliffhangers and status quo changes in their relationships-- but in the second linked series the characters 'turn' (in the sense of ships) more slowly, and they spend a lot of time inhabiting their status quo while the attention is on the situation itself that they find themselves in, but then their private worlds eventually do explode in particular arcs or events. What I've noticed comparing the two, is that Supernatural's character development is a lot more reflective because the monster-of-the-week narratives introduced by the setting and premise frequently lets their internal conflicts breathe over the course of a season, it spends more time examining who the characters are, and less time changing them-- in other words, it [I]develops the characters [/I]rather than [I]the characters develop. [/I]They let a lot of things happen where Dean just gets to be Dean without challenging the things that make him Dean, and the monster of the week story carries the need for dramatic conflict because it's a self-contained story nested within the grander narrative. I found myself preferring Supernatural for that reason, separately I also realized that I deeply preferred its more fully realized exploration of it's setting rules as set up for things that happen. I think it's just something that games don't tend to be designed around though, and while I seem to get that more in the higher prep, traddier games I can recognize it's more because of the things they don't do (point the consequences back to the character's sense of self immediately, like Vices and Stress in BITD or Mask's labels, which both pull your character's inner self directly into the gameplay loop) rather than what they do. [/QUOTE]
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