Out with the old (Game design traditions we should let go)

[pemerton]

I'm talking about PCs whose paths cross and whose "stories" interact without having to be part of the same team.

I don't know what that means.

Edit: i.e. What does that look like in game play?

Is it "not being on the same team" or "not being in the same scenes" that is the big difference?

For my part, I'm talking about not being on the same team: ie PCs who engage the fictional elements that the GM is presenting with different goals and concerns, and who are not making a coordinated effort to achieve some particular outcome. In play, this means that there is no adventure that all the PCs are taking part in. They're not collectively trying to solve a mystery, or explore an outpost, or find (or get rid of) an artefact, etc.

A particularly strong case of this is PCs who are opposed to one another, but you don't have to go to the strongest instance to have the general phenomenon. The weakest case I can think of is where the PCs travel together (in my Classic Traveller game, they're the crew of a starship plus some hangers-on) but are pursuing different goals among themselves and with the NPCs they interact with.

Whether or not PCs are in the same scenes is a different thing. If they're not, I personally think it's desirable to have consequences from one scene ramify into other scenes. I think this makes for more interesting play, both because (i) just like in a comic or TV show or whatever, it's fun to see the results of what happened then and there manifest here and now, and (ii) it allows players to at least indirectly respond to one another's play.

There are different ways to set this sort of thing up; Apocalypse World has one account of how to do it. In my experience, it needs PCs with relatively clearly-articulated goals, and preferably also relationships to the immediate setting. These give the GM material to use in framing scenes that will provoke the players to respond. The fall-out from one scene gets used to build the next. As a GM, you look for ways to link together the elements that emerge from different PCs' contexts and consequences; if the players are proactive they might help with this too. Whether this leads to moments of cooperation, or moments of opposition (or both), is part of the fun of play.

This would seem to require players to be pretty constantly changing up the characters they play. We would be hard pressed to have every session the same characters have their paths cross without them effectively being a team.

I don't think this has to be so at all.

Just to give one example: if the PCs are a manager, a worker in the managed facility, and someone who rents a workshop next door to the facility, their paths might cross quite a bit - they're hanging out in the same place with the same people - without them being a team. This is roughly the AW model.

@Reynard gave a different example: three vigilantes each of whom patrols the same neighbourhood. We can easily imagine both (i) consequences from a scene involving one of them feeding into a scene involving another of them, plus (ii) framing scenes in which more than one of them is present, and part of what is at stake in the scene is whether they cooperate or conflict with one another.

A different example again - which might be done using HeroWars Glorantha, or maybe Stonetop (? I only have a general sense of it) - would be a village where one PC is the head of the village, another is the weird oracle/shaman type, and a third is the trapper who lives in the surrounding woods but supplies furs to the villagers and also the occasional herb to the oracle.

 

[pemerton]

But, to be clear - when taking turns in combat, you have shared context. If running social scenes in this manner, you might not. Flipping through, say, five unconnected scenes means a lot of context switching for the GM, and the results are likely not going to be as good as if the GM can focus on one context.

Are you saying that you tried this and it didn't work? Or are you conjecturing?

I've done it, in various ways and using a few systems: In A Wicked Age, Cthulhu Dark, Wuthering Heights, Burning Wheel and (as per my post just upthread, as a weak case) Classic Traveller. I'm not saying it's the only way to RPG, or that it's the best way to RPG. But I know from experience that it's a perfectly viable way to RPG.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

But, to be clear - when taking turns in combat, you have shared context. If running social scenes in this manner, you might not. Flipping through, say, five unconnected scenes means a lot of context switching for the GM, and the results are likely not going to be as good as if the GM can focus on one context.

The last two sessions I ran were Brindlewood Bay, and I did just this, and it worked great. In fact PbtA vets pretty commonly suggest doing this exact thing—when a player rolls a consequence, cut back over to another scene to give your brain a chance to cook up an interesting result, then come back. It’s literally soap opera-style pacing. It’s fun and good.

 

[pemerton]

The last two sessions I ran were Brindlewood Bay, and I did just this, and it worked great. In fact PbtA vets pretty commonly suggest doing this exact thing—when a player rolls a consequence, cut back over to another scene to give your brain a chance to cook up an interesting result, then come back. It’s literally soap opera-style pacing. It’s fun and good.

It sounds like you've probably got more experience with this sort of thing than I do!

How much effort do you make to have the consequences of one PC's actions ramify through to the framing and/or resolution of another's?

 

[overgeeked]

But that usually requires you to brief each of the uninvolved players on their characters, which takes additional time.

It could. But there are two easy solutions. Only let the players take over extras, NPCs who are involved but not central to the scene. Or to have a 3x5 card with a name, character synopsis, and a goal. That’s how I do my prep anyway. Just handing them the card is simple. I don’t make a habit of writing secret info on them, so it’s easy enough to do. The only brief they’d need is “don’t try to take the spotlight or intentional screw up the scene.” Go.

 

[MGibster]

For my part, I'm talking about not being on the same team: ie PCs who engage the fictional elements that the GM is presenting with different goals and concerns, and who are not making a coordinated effort to achieve some particular outcome. In play, this means that there is no adventure that all the PCs are taking part in. They're not collectively trying to solve a mystery, or explore an outpost, or find (or get rid of) an artefact, etc.

And the bolded part is where I'm having trouble envisioning how this works. I've run games where the PCs had different goals and concerns, but I've never even heard of a game where there was no "adventure" with all the PCs participating in it. In the Alien starter adventure Chariot of Fire, each of the PCs has their own set of goals that are sometimes at odds with one another, but they're all crewmembers of the same ship and presumeably want to get out of the situation with their lives intact.

It just seems like an odd and difficult way to run a campaign. Why are we even playing together as a group?

 

[Umbran]

The last two sessions I ran were Brindlewood Bay, and I did just this, and it worked great. In fact PbtA vets pretty commonly suggest doing this exact thing—when a player rolls a consequence, cut back over to another scene to give your brain a chance to cook up an interesting result, then come back. It’s literally soap opera-style pacing. It’s fun and good.

If your target players are PbtA veterans, that's great!

But, have you considered that using veterans as the source of design, you are apt to be putting in things or expecting techniques that new hands will find challenging? If you don't care about that, cool, but it you do care, you have to think for a moment.

A lot of elements of game design are there for good reason. They accomplish some goals, or the like. Removing them may have gameplay impact.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

If your target players are PbtA veterans, that's great!

But, have you considered that using veterans as the source of design, you are apt to be putting in things or expecting techniques that new hands will find challenging? If you don't care about that, cool, but it you do care, you have to think for a moment.

A lot of elements of game design are there for good reason. They accomplish some goals, or the like. Removing them may have gameplay impact.

The fact that veteran GMs of a given system suggest a tip, and it works, is not evidence of a problem or hurdle with that system. Just means it’s something to try.

And it worked for me, someone who was running running PbtA for the first time. My point is that PbtA is basically made to have PCs split up—Apocalypse World practically demands it—and there are techniques within that approach that can make it even better.

None of this is about learning curves or having to be a vet. I’m certainly not, with PbtA.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

It could. But there are two easy solutions. Only let the players take over extras, NPCs who are involved but not central to the scene. Or to have a 3x5 card with a name, character synopsis, and a goal. That’s how I do my prep anyway. Just handing them the card is simple. I don’t make a habit of writing secret info on them, so it’s easy enough to do. The only brief they’d need is “don’t try to take the spotlight or intentional screw up the scene.” Go.

I did this once for a PC whose character died midway through a one-shot. With the right approach and premise it can definitely work.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

How much effort do you make to have the consequences of one PC's actions ramify through to the framing and/or resolution of another's?

One of my players pointed out that Brindlewood’s focus on the mystery makes everyone lean in a little extra during cross-cut scenes, because you want to catch details you could use to later come up with a solution. So in a sense every consequence matters to everyone.

But I’m still getting my sea legs with PbtA’s rapid-fire GMing improv. What you’re describing is exactly what I want to pull off more and more, and once we move into more PbtA and FitD—I need to get more practice in!