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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2427994" data-attributes="member: 7240">My Players Stay OutMy players, if you don't want any spoilers, stay out.In order to explain how story comes into being in my games, I sort of have to explain what the player-GM relationship is in my games. My roles is essentially as a puzzle designer. The worlds I make, in many respects, are experienced like mystery novels: the reader gradually figures out what is going on; sometimes ahead of him, sometimes behind him, so does the detective. The reader, equipped with a slightly different data set than the detective enjoys the process of solving the mystery, semi-independently of the protagonist. When my games work well, this is how they work. Essentially the entire world, campaign, etc. is a puzzle that both the players and characters ultimately decipher and solve, rectifying whatever flaw or evil act I have built into the system. As a result, at the macro-level, my campaigns are formulaic. Every game involves the players and their characters discovering the true nature of their universe, discovering the thing disrupting it and then thwarting whatever that thing is. But below that top-level formula, there is near-limitless free will; yet, certain things inevitably happen because of the structure of the game world itself. In one sense, the players have complete control over what events take place but in another, they can only control the terms on which predestined events unfold. One of the other fairly unique things about how my games interact with this thing called story is that they often can be read referentially and symbollically as well as at a more literal level. My worlds tend to be situated on alternate earths and often signify to the players by invoking certain common tropes and cross-cultural myths because these things are actually part of the structure of the world itself. For instance, in my current campaign, the characters will inevitably progres through seven cities which correspond to the seven forts of the original grail quest Spoils of Annwfn in the Book of Taliesin, the seven levels of sufic consciousness, the Seven Cities of Cibola and the Seven Cities of Antilla. This resonance is a cue to the players as to what is taking place in the game that the characters can never comprehend in quite the same way. The characters can do whatever they want and go wherever they want but, unless the campaign ends inconclusively, they will end up at the City of Glass. In what way will the City of Glass be the City of Glass? Where will it be? What will happen there? That's up for grabs. But it's certain that that is the end point. There are various other ways that the game is operating on this half-thematic, half-cryptographic level by tapping into allied symbol systems and cross-cultural myths that are just as predictive and less deterministic. (I'll save an example for any requests for clarification.)The advantage of running games with a navigable and discoverable metatext is that there is an alternative predictive model available to the players in addition to the rules. This allows the players to guess at future events and, if they can arrive at in-game justifications for doing so, thwart or reshape events that they see looming in their future.All for now.</blockquote>

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