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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8302846" data-attributes="member: 42582">I can't contribute anything on BitD/FitD techniques. But I can comment on the below:This is confused.As far as I'm aware, Ron Edwards coined the term "bang" in the context of RPGing. <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">Here's one account he's offered</a>:So let's talk about Narrativist [= "story now"] protagonism and how it's established, starting with the adversity. . . . Bangs are those moments when the characters realize they have a problem right now and have to get moving to deal with it. It can be as simple as a hellacious demon crashing through the skylight and attacking the characters or as subtle as the voice of the long-dead murder victim answering when they call the number they found in the new murder victim's pockets. . . . It is the GM's job to present and, for lack of a better word, drive Bangs, in the sense of driving a nail or driving something home. . . . Bangs are not represented by many of the fight scenes or clues in traditional role-playing. Throwing mad hyenas at the player-characters is not a Bang if the only result of the fight is to wander into the next room. Nor is a clue a Bang at all if all it does is show where the next clue may be found. A real Bang gives the player options and requires his or her decision about how to handle it, which in turn reveals and develops the player-character as a hero. . . . Bangs [means] Introducing events into the game which make a thematically-significant or at least evocative choice necessary for a player. The term is taken from the rules of Sorcerer.There is nothing distinctive to a Bang that it be authored by the players; Edwards calls a particular sort of player-authored Bang a Kicker (see the same essay I've just quoted from - in short, a Kicker is a Bang authored by the player as part of character creation, which the GM is obliged to incorporate into the opening situation and which propels the character into the action), but [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] is using a more generalised technique - with its basis in the PbtA technique of ask provocative questions and build on the answers.But whether a Bang is established by players or GM or by both in some structured fashion (see eg [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER]'s suggestions to Manbearcat on revising the methods they used), it is certainly not about keeping the players (or PCs) on track nor about answering questions in advance of play. The whole idea of a Bang is to oblige the players to make a significant choice that will (i) reveal something about their characters, and maybe lead or provoke them into change, and (ii) will establish what happens next. Part of establishing what happens next might include fleshing out the details of some weird faith or obligation.That notion of what happens next, and the attendant fictional details, being up for grabs is sometimes foreign to RPGers who are used to play which basically consists of the players working through a sequence of events that the GM has already made up. But it's pretty fundamental to the sort of game [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] is talking about.</blockquote>

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