At the Intersection of Skilled Play, System Intricacy, Prep, and Story Now

[Yora]

No.

Could we have this conversation in simple English, using terms that are commonly used by GMs and players?

Abdul's point about the rules not giving the players agency was one of the few things in this thread I actually understood.

 

[Manbearcat]

No.

Could we have this conversation in simple English, using terms that are commonly used by GMs and players?

Abdul's point about the rules not giving the players agency was one of the few things in this thread I actually understood.

You're playing a game about gun-toting paladins who are meting out justice, rooting out Sin, and upholding the Faith in a wild west that never was.

The Faith is real. Sin is real. Sorcery/demonic possession is real. The King of Life (the deity) is real.

The point of play is to do the thing in that first bolded sentence and find out what happens when your characters collide with all that stuff. You've got all the agency in the world within the constraints of the above two bolded sentences.

You don't get to play an anti-paladin who opposes the Dogs and wants to expose The King of Life as a sham. You have a huge amount of freedom, but your freedom ends when you want to go outside of the above two bolded sentences. So we accept the premise of the first two bolded sentences (which limit our freedom to do whatever the eff we want) and its "game on."

 

[Ovinomancer]

D&D's problem fundamentally is weak guarantees towards the player's ability to really contribute meaningfully. Its process typically makes the fiction all belong to the GM by default, though in practice there can be a fairly wide range of divisions.

This doesn't address my point, which was that regardless of GM storytelling the D&D player can just direct their character into fitting your expansive definition. I can craft an internal narrative of character regardless of external narrative and achieve your bullet points. At no point is the D&D character being discovered or tested in play, they are just being authored. Your test allows for this pure authorship to be included.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't get what incentives you are speaking of. All @pemerton stated was that he felt it was likely that some people had attempted to play the game while holding a different agenda, in this case a Gamist one in GNS-speak. While I'm not super up on MLWM, Pemerton's description jibes with what I remember. Its basically a story arc, you play a certain sort of character (minion to an evil master) and do genre-appropriate things. Each player kind of just decides for themselves what sort of story they would like to get out of the play of their minion, that is what epilogue they wish. I guess you might also aspire to save your love and kill master perhaps as independent personal goals, though these things have definite impact on your attributes, and thus ultimate fate too (I don't recall all the details of the various effects and whatnot). In the end Master dies, and maybe you get the ending you wanted, or maybe not, depending on luck and how the various players wangle their calls for certain scenes. Really there isn't any strong reason for the PCs not to work together and plot out how to all save themselves, which seems like one of the more likely sorts of directions things can go, but as a Minion, you also have to contend with what Master wants, and how that plays out! So, things can go topside down, etc. Overall my impression of the game is you're all creating the story of the downfall of a great villain, from the perspective of the little guys, and acting it out in the process.

You start by saying you don't see the incentives and then provide an escape of such. The game rewards play towards Gamist ends by delivering the desired outcomes of played towards them. That you can lose doesn't remove incentives. I can, with my play, increase the chances of getting a desired outcome and the game enables this by having narrowed outcome space and tools available to game towards desired outcomes.

 

[chaochou]

My two core points remain:

1. Consensus resolution requires compromise with protagonism.

They don't remain, because they were never established. To recap:

1. What you are calling 'consensus resolution' in Fiasco is - in GNS terms - called 'drama resolution.' And drama resolution is, like karma and fortune, just as good for Story Now play as anything else. Well, according to everyone else.

2. If you believe that consensus 'resolution' requires compromise with protagonism, you must also believe that the social contract - which is a pure form of consensus resolution - also compromises protagonism. And then you have a problem. Because if you believe that, then you are proposing a douchebags charter, a Story Now version of 'this is what my character would do'. Yet if you don't believe it, then the social construct must be compatible with Story Now play. At which point, I can say 'Story concerns are part of our social contract' and we play, fully protagonised Story Now play.

3. Even without that, you haven't begun to demonstrate - or even attempted to - that good story and good protaganism must force a compromise in a player's mind. Pure empty assertion. I've never compromised my conception of my character in a game of Fiasco, and we've ended up with great story. You claim this can't happen, but done nothing but assert it. Since I've done it, the only one of us that can be wrong is you. Rpg theory has to be descriptive of experience. But go ahead, demonstrate that I must run into such a conflict of interest in play.

As an 'argument' it fails on all counts. Definitionally, logically, experientially.

 

[Ovinomancer]

They don't remain, because they were never established. To recap:

1. What you are calling 'consensus resolution' in Fiasco is - in GNS terms - called 'drama resolution.' And drama resolution is, like karma and fortune, just as good for Story Now play as anything else. Well, according to everyone else.

Firstly, I started this complaint with the consensus resolution for Montsegur 1244, not Fiasco. Fiasco was an example of a different system with similar but not levitation the same problem. Fiasco outright encourages choosing story over protagonism.

On point, fom Edwards:

• Drama resolution relies on asserted statements without reference to listed attributes or quantitative elements.
• Karma resolution relies on referring to listed attributes or quantitative elements without a random element.
• Fortune resolution relies on utilizing a random device of some kind, usually delimited by quantitative scores of some kind.

Each one of Drama, Karma, and Fortune deserves massive dissection. My on-line discussion of Fortune-in-the-Middle as a facilitator of Narrativist play is a good example; so is my comparison of flat/linear curves with separate/incorporate effects.

These three types of resolution may be combined in a near-infinite variety across the various elements of RPG design; few or no RPGs fail to make use of at least two of them. I also claim that they may be combined in near-infinite variety across the various GNS goals. No particular one of them corresponds to any (entire) one of the GNS goals. Most importantly, I do not think that Drama methods necessarily facilitate Narrativist play. However, I do suggest that a game system may be organized such that a GNS subset and developed Premise are more understandable; this topic is developed further in the next chapter"

Emphasis mine.

2. If you believe that consensus 'resolution' requires compromise with protagonism, you must also believe that the social contract - which is a pure form of consensus resolution - also compromises protagonism. And then you have a problem. Because if you believe that, then you are proposing a douchebags charter, a Story Now version of 'this is what my character would do'. Yet if you don't believe it, then the social construct must be compatible with Story Now play. At which point, I can say 'Story concerns are part of our social contract' and we play, fully protagonised Story Now play.

The social contract does do this, but it does it once, at the beginning, whereas consensus resolution does it every single resolution. Clearly the social contract constrains available play! It also enables play because you can hash out of themes are available or not and everyone is on the same page.

For example, when I played The Between, the system has a heavy dose of sexuality baked in. We agreed to avoid this and so built characters that did not feature over sexuality as part of their protagonism. This is clearly an additional constraint and impacted play, but did so at a high level. It still did so. With consensus resolution you have to balance consensus against social contract agreed protagonism because you cannot have everyone win at protagonism if there is a conflict. You are now pressured to choose for the story.

3. Even without that, you haven't begun to demonstrate - or even attempted to - that good story and good protaganism must force a compromise in a player's mind. Pure empty assertion. I've never compromised my conception of my character in a game of Fiasco, and we've ended up with great story. You claim this can't happen, but done nothing but assert it. Since I've done it, the only one of us that can be wrong is you. Rpg theory has to be descriptive of experience. But go ahead, demonstrate that I must run into such a conflict of interest in play.

As an 'argument' it fails on all counts. Definitionally, logically, experientially.

I believe you believe that. That you cannot see that having to come to a consensus agreement with another player over a conflict means that one or both of you is choosing to no longer engage in full throated protagonism for their PC so that a compromise solution can be achieved is a bit of a blind spot.

Like how in the Fiasco game I referenced before, I chose to resolve a scene with my guitarist character in a bad way (he took possession of a load of coke knowing the cops were on the way and got busted) because it made for good story, especially since it allow another PC to advance her plans. That it was in character was not really that important -- Fiasco allows for lots of post-choice rationalization of acts as in character and never really acts to put pressure on what aPC cares about. Also it meant everyone would give me a delicious black die to go on my accumulating pile of them.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Fir Fiasci,in a given round of play, it works like this -- one participant frames the scene, the other resolves it. In between it's improv theater -- 100% consensus free-form play. At resolution, the understanding is that it should follow from that free-form play, but there's a huge area here where the resolving player can narrate an outcome. There's very little that actually puts pressure on who PCs are -- in large part you have total PC ownership much like in D&D.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Necessary does not mean sufficient.

Except that's not what's happening. I have no problems with consensus resolution. I'm not arguing this from a position of disliking consensus resolution. I'm pointing out that consensus resolution requires compromise and that means that a player cannot fully advocate for their character. That consensus resolution also strongly pushed towards choosing for better story rather than character dramatic needs. It's that simple. You cannot both push for your character's dramatic needs and compromise those for another players.

I don't agree with this view of the world that is so 'zero sum' where you are either serving your own interest OR compromising with someone else. Cooperation has value, at the VERY LEAST if the choice is between half a pie and none, holding out for the entire pie is just stupid, it can hardly be called 'advocacy'. I surely won't try to project this little lesson out onto the sad state of today's world, but 'my way or the highway' sure ain't got a good look nowadays.

I'm not defining my preferences. I don't think games are good or bad because they enable a given kind of play. I'm not at all a purist for any kind of play. No effort on that here, you've badly mistaken where I'm coming from and chosen to attack my character rather than engage my arguments. If you pitched me Montsegur 1244 as Story Now and then explained consensus resolution and randomized prompt driven scene framing, I'd absolutely be thinking this isn't Story Now but I wouldn't dislike the game because of the mistake in categorization. That would be silly.

Well, in light of what I said about the first part of your comment, will you come around to the view that it is at least POSSIBLE, maybe even pretty cool, to find out what happens when all the players strike a bargain? IMHO you reject the possibilities here too easily.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Ah, another ad hom. I made clear points. I'be explained, in detail, my reasoning. You've apoealed to authority, insulted me, and now are committing a generic galaxy on top of an ad hom. Which is funny because you've liked plenty of my posts where you agreed with me despite however recent my experience was.

My two core points remain:

1. Consensus resolution requires compromise with protagonism.

2. Forced end states put pressure on protagonism and pacing by introducing Gamist incentives.

Never played Fiasco, but I would think that the constraints imposed by interacting with the other players largely takes the place of 'the fiction' in terms of shaping how your PC's action is constrained. I mean, it isn't really SCENE FRAMING, as you have pretty great control over how that goes! I mean, genre and such certainly define the overall realm of what is possible, but beyond that ANYTHING can happen! So, yes, its a differently structured game in which some things take on roles different from what they would in a PbtA type game or FitD kinds of games, most likely. Yet the same core model exists, you address the premise (which is partly built in and I am guessing also partly supplied by the player) and SOMETHING constrains your options and 'pushes back', generating conflict and thus drama. I think that overall these games all share a LOT in common. I mean, sometimes you all hair-split things to a degree that I barely comprehend, but in some general sense, all of these games are far more similar than they are like, say, 5e D&D!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I have no idea what The Dying Earth is, and cannot respond to those points.

You are hereby commanded to read ALL OF JACK VANCE, do not skip any! I think starting with The Dying Earth is probably drinking the cream off the top of the cup, but the guy never wrote anything subpar. Certainly Cudgel the Clever is very fine and silly character.... and makes an excellent model for a PC in an RPG. I've not actually played the game, though I have read it.