Psion
Adventurer
I often shake my head and occassionally raise my voice when people have this insistence on making games fall in lock step with other forms of entertainment, because often what works for movies and books does not work well for games.
But I think it's well to consider what we CAN use from books an movie.
To this end, I was thinking about moving towards a more episodic feel. Though I do appreciate giving characters a deep backstory, I feel like often, game set-up time is wasted, as they spend an hour or two "getting to the fun stuff." The result: that classic "20 minutes of fun packed into four hours."
However, many movies and TV shows begin things in media res, such as Indy getting smacked in the chops on a ship tossing in a stormy sea. The martial arts game Feng Shui goes so far as to start the first session in media res as a matter of course.
For game purposes, what I am thinking here is that perhaps I can dispense with some of the "playing out all the PC decisions" and jump them in with a summary of how they got where they are and begin the action.
The problem I see here is that some players used to traditional modes of play will feel as if they are being railroaded or having the DM take control of those characters.
Some possible solutions to try to head this problem off:
So to add a poll to this, how would you feel about this? (Wait for it...)
But I think it's well to consider what we CAN use from books an movie.
To this end, I was thinking about moving towards a more episodic feel. Though I do appreciate giving characters a deep backstory, I feel like often, game set-up time is wasted, as they spend an hour or two "getting to the fun stuff." The result: that classic "20 minutes of fun packed into four hours."
However, many movies and TV shows begin things in media res, such as Indy getting smacked in the chops on a ship tossing in a stormy sea. The martial arts game Feng Shui goes so far as to start the first session in media res as a matter of course.
For game purposes, what I am thinking here is that perhaps I can dispense with some of the "playing out all the PC decisions" and jump them in with a summary of how they got where they are and begin the action.
The problem I see here is that some players used to traditional modes of play will feel as if they are being railroaded or having the DM take control of those characters.
Some possible solutions to try to head this problem off:
- As discussed in this excellent article on flag framing, give each player the responsibility of listing several motivations for their character. Then base their PCs actions during the summarized beginning on what they said their characters do.
- Again taking a page from Feng Shui, tell the players where they are, and then assign them some storytelling responsibility, having them insert the necessary backstory tidbits that would get their characters to the point the DM describes.
So to add a poll to this, how would you feel about this? (Wait for it...)
