Players establishing facts about the world impromptu during play

[pemerton]

@pemerton @kenada

A fair deal of the sort of trindie games my core group plays a decent amount of (Exalted 3e, Legend of the Five Rings, Infinity, and our Vampire hack) basically plays out as Story Now in the streets and Right To Dream in the sheets. World building and scenario design is often built with character dramatic needs in mind, but in the course of the session both the GM and other players mostly just play their characters and the setting out with integrity.

This reminds me of my RM play, and to some extent even my current Classic Traveller and Prince Valiant play. "With integrity" can be a bit loaded, of course. In the case of RM that means applying all the relevant subsystems (don't make me itemise them!); CT has subsystems too but they're fewer and often a bit "looser" and more open to interpretation which allows the "story now" priorities to be injected in the moment of play; Prince Valiant is almost subsystem free (mass combat is the only real one) and "integrity" means Would I believe this in a Robin Hood or King Arthur pastiche?

 

[Campbell]

I mostly mean attempting to embody characters (both PC and NPC) as much as possible. Basically be a curious explorer of the fiction is pretty much our defining agenda during play. We have a very LARP/theater influenced play culture.

Our Blades and Apocalypse World games are much more overt Story Now, but I'm probably somewhat more aggressive in my framing than our other GM.

 

[AnotherGuy]

If my character is Conan - as authored by REH - then wading into the enemy is the best way to be my character!

But if I always have to think in wargaming terms yet am trying to play Conan, then I'm constantly being forced out of character.

Out of interest, which of the games you play facilitate that style of play? i.e. where the mechanics/wargaming aspect do not fight your Conanesque character.

This is an open question not solely directed to pemerton alone.

EDIT: It would suggest to me that monster stats have less value in such games, right?

 

[S'mon]

If my character is Conan - as authored by REH - then wading into the enemy is the best way to be my character!

Conan in the REH stories is pretty tactical, actually. Queen of the Black Coast - he doesn't wade into the enemy pirates; he uses the mast to protect his back, which along with wearing good armour is how he doesn't die & kills a bunch of them, impressing Belit.

 

[pemerton]

Conan in the REH stories is pretty tactical, actually. Queen of the Black Coast - he doesn't wade into the enemy pirates; he uses the mast to protect his back, which along with wearing good armour is how he doesn't die & kills a bunch of them, impressing Belit.

Using the mast (or similar) is also a standard tactic in 4e to reduce the risk of flanking and/or forced movement.

But in one of the stories - maybe the same one - his solution to defeating the were-hyenas is to let them come and punch them in the head!

EDIT: In other words, he is about as tactical as seems necessary to suit the story - eg impressing Belit, or exciting the reader with the fight with the were-hyenas. The REH stories do not read like a session of Advanced Squad Leader!

 

[Emerikol]

Update: I also want to add that I’d like to know that what I do is a thing. I can’t imagine that it’s particularly unique. There’s overlap with OSR, but I feel like there’s also some divergence.

I think people want different things out of their roleplaying games. Some people just want to shine as their characters without necessarily putting in a lot of effort in terms of playing skill. I'm not against any of it. I am only defending my one style as a legitimate choice that is fun for a lot of people. I see a lot of incorrect assumptions based, I'm assuming on bad experiences trying to play my style, that I want to point out as untrue in general. I have no desire to end or stamp out anyone's fun.

What I find interesting about all of this is that due to the language twisters, I can't even make a point on here most of the time. I go an look at a game being played and they seem to be having fun and that is a good thing. It though has the characteristics exactly as I imagined they would be yet for some reason my descriptions from my perspective are always challenged.

One thing is clear. There is something missing from a Story Now game that people like me want. Call it what you like but I find it disingenuous when so many want to twist and redefine terms every time I use one. I feel like I shouldn't comment merely to protect the English language from further deformation.

4e players sometimes play well, and sometimes succeed because of that! Sometimes this means falling back to a defensible position. Sometimes it doesn't. That depends very much on context and characters.

Well the the rules of the game encourage tactical behavior. More on this further down.

If my character is Conan - as authored by REH - then wading into the enemy is the best way to be my character!

Yes if you are Conan and you are playing a 1st level character then you've already missed the boat in my mind. That is the problem. People don't start out in D&D as Conan. They start out as pretty much a nobody. They have to become Conan. When they are 10th or 12th level, then they can act like Conan and it likely works.

But if I always have to think in wargaming terms yet am trying to play Conan, then I'm constantly being forced out of character.

The game rules do create an implicit assumed world. D&D's assumptions are vastly different from GURPS for example. So yes, when I am playing D&D, I want the experience to be sort of like this....

Suppose you and your party were suddenly zapped into the bodies of your characters with their abilities and knowledge. A godlike voice tells you that you must complete XYZ mission (just assume the mission is the one the party decided to go on prior to the zap) or you cannot return to your own bodies. Also assume that your original body dies in a few months and in turn you die as well. If you die as your character and are not raised within time limits you die for real.

Now how would that group behave? That is exactly how I want my gamers behaving. I want them to be motivated adventurers. Will they carefully collect the resources they need to complete the mission? You better believe it they will. Will they master the "rules" of the game and play tactically and strategically at all times? You bet they will. They want to live and they want to complete the mission.

So it is not a perfect analogy but it's close. Obviously the characters don't have to go on any particular mission but when they choose to go on one they'd have the sorts of motivations mentioned. Think mountain climbers or artic explorers or even 17th century explorers to the new world. Those are the sorts who'd become adventurers.

 

[darkbard]

I think people want different things out of their roleplaying games. Some people just want to shine as their characters without necessarily putting in a lot of effort in terms of playing skill. I'm not against any of it. I am only defending my one style as a legitimate choice that is fun for a lot of people. I see a lot of incorrect assumptions based, I'm assuming on bad experiences trying to play my style, that I want to point out as untrue in general. I have no desire to end or stamp out anyone's fun.

Do you not see how the two sentences I bolded above are in opposition? In the first you posit that players of a style differing from yours lack and are unconcerned with skilled play, that they want to shine without doing the work. That is criticism of such players. Then in the second, you say you are merely defending your own gamestyle. You are not; you are explicitly criticizing other gamestyles.

[...]

Suppose you and your party were suddenly zapped into the bodies of your characters with their abilities and knowledge. A godlike voice tells you that you must complete XYZ mission (just assume the mission is the one the party decided to go on prior to the zap) or you cannot return to your own bodies. Also assume that your original body dies in a few months and in turn you die as well. If you die as your character and are not raised within time limits you die for real.

Now how would that group behave? That is exactly how I want my gamers behaving.

How does this square with your desire for realism, verisimilitude, natural developments from a playstyle, and other such of your espoused desiderata of gameplay? What you describe here is a bizarre superimposition of two consciousnesses in a single imagined body, something quite the opposite of what many people would consider real, verisimilitudinous, natural, and so on.

 

[kenada]

My own view is that Edwards is right to draw the distinction. He does so, in a slightly negative way, in his gamism essay where he mentions "the person who wants to see full-blown Narrativist values 'just appear' from a Simulationist-play foundation. It's possible, but not as easy and intuitive as it would seem."

The more that the focus is on "exploration" per se - be that the players just enjoying the characters they've come up with, or the GM and/or players enjoying the setting, or some interaction of these (eg seeing how the GM riffs off the players riffing of the GM's initial situation) - then I think the less likely it is that story will emerge. Of course there will be a series of events, and they may be engaging, charming, even thrilling - but will they be dramatic in a story-telling sense?

I’d call the kinds of stories produced by the Right to Dream “war stories”. Not everything that happens will rise to the level of such a form, but interesting and memorable events will. I don’t think those are in themselves less valuable than a dramatic story created by Story Now, but they’re different. If you’re expecting a dramatic story to emerge out of an agenda that puts no consideration on the dramatic needs of the characters, then you’re misguided and/or playing with the wrong agenda. The thing you want probably won’t manifest at the table, and you’ll probably end up screwing things up by forcing them to go the way you actually want (‘Oh, so you want to spend your time in the caves to the west? Let me introduce you to my friend here, Mr Plot.’).

My play of Rolemaster, over nearly two decades, shifted in a non-self-conscious way from simulationism towards story now, but as I posted upthread this did lead to a lot of bumping into the minutiae of the system. I would also say that the "now" in our "story now" RM play was often "story next session" - there is such a lot of system/mechanical overhead in RM that often that would soak up the bulk of a session which would become, in effect, a lead-up to the enusing pay-off. These days I wouldn't have the patience for that. I want things to move along at a speedier clip!

That sounds like where I was with Pathfinder 2e. I was always behind generating content, and creating new things in the system (monsters, traps, etc) was a tedious and fiddly process. The time I tried to improvise a creature on the spot (based on other creatures), it ended up hilariously broken. The latter was one of the things that burnt me out on PF2.

I’m not necessarily wedded to the idea of a setting-centric Story Now. Looking at our Scum and Villainy game, it seems like generating some good war stories would be enough for my group (I’m the only player really trying to advance the dramatic needs of my character, for good and ill*). That also aligns with my own tendencies, so if I could find a system that supported that style, I’d be delighted. That system could be WWN (it seems designed for my group). If the one-shot goes well (and we do switch), I plan to post an update to my OSE thread.

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* I say for good and ill because while it’s making for an interesting story, it’s also resulted in one that is mostly about my character. This occasionally makes my GM sense tingle, so I purposefully delegate to one of the other players to see what they’re interested in doing. Otherwise, our game would just be about my grudge against the Church of the Stellar Flame (they want our Snarf!) and how I’m building xeno orphanages to train orphans as assassins to target members of the Church.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I’d call the kinds of stories produced by the Right to Dream “war stories”. Not everything that happens will rise to the level of such a form, but interesting and memorable events will. I don’t think those are in themselves less valuable than a dramatic story created by Story Now, but they’re different. If you’re expecting a dramatic story to emerge out of an agenda that puts no consideration on the dramatic needs of the characters, then you’re misguided and/or playing with the wrong agenda. The thing you want probably won’t manifest at the table, and you’ll probably end up screwing things up by forcing them to go the way you actually want (‘Oh, so you want to spend your time in the caves to the west? Let me introduce you to my friend here, Mr Plot.’).


That sounds like where I was with Pathfinder 2e. I was always behind generating content, and creating new things in the system (monsters, traps, etc) was a tedious and fiddly process. The time I tried to improvise a creature on the spot (based on other creatures), it ended up hilariously broken. The latter was one of the things that burnt me out on PF2.

I’m not necessarily wedded to the idea of a setting-centric Story Now. Looking at our Scum and Villainy game, it seems like generating some good war stories would be enough for my group (I’m the only player really trying to advance the dramatic needs of my character, for good and ill*). That also aligns with my own tendencies, so if I could find a system that supported that style, I’d be delighted. That system could be WWN (it seems designed for my group). If the one-shot goes well (and we do switch), I plan to post an update to my OSE thread.

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* I say for good and ill because while it’s making for an interesting story, it’s also resulted in one that is mostly about my character. This occasionally makes my GM sense tingle, so I purposefully delegate to one of the other players to see what they’re interested in doing. Otherwise, our game would just be about my grudge against the Church of the Stellar Flame (they want our Snarf!) and how I’m building xeno orphanages to train orphans as assassins to target members of the Church.

Yeah, FitD games require that the players all drive hard. If they aren't, then they don't work well because there's a vacuum that many GM will step in to fill. This leads to deployment of For e, just to fet a game moving, and play starts to drift towards trad gaming, which is ill supported by the mechanics. If the players are all stepping up, it just doesn't work well.

This is a key point in finding a good fit for a table. PbtA or FitD or BW don't work if players aren't keaning into them. Nothing wrong with that -- it's an entertainment option, so what ypu want out of it is very personalized, and not wanting to put the level of effort in is not, at all, a bad thing. Else, we'd have to criticize watching a movie over building a model, which is silly.

 

[kenada]

How does this square with your desire for realism, verisimilitude, natural developments from a playstyle, and other such of your espoused desiderata of gameplay? What you describe here is a bizarre superimposition of two consciousnesses in a single imagined body, something quite the opposite of what many people would consider real, verisimilitudinous, natural, and so on.

Maybe everyone in that setting is someone else transported into their bodies.