Players establishing facts about the world impromptu during play

[The-Magic-Sword]

I'll have more later, but the way Masks is being characterized would require extremely unhygienic play. Basically you would have to throw out all the instructions the game provides for how to run it. I have seen it often, but it represents an OC play agenda. Not a Story Now one.

We are running it by the book pretty exactly, I'd love to know which instructions I'm throwing out.

Also, "OC" ?

Edit: Nevermind, its another term for Neo-Trad.

 

[Mallus]

In general, I'm all for players establishing facts about the game world during play. With the caveat that in traditional modes of play the DM/GM should have the right of final edit over fictional details added by players (outside of what'd added through their PCs actions).

Worlds are big. They sound more real with facts contributed by more than one puny human brain.

In a heavily-hacked 3e campaign I joined somewhat recently, I established that some hobgoblins "from the North" have Russian names (and a vaguely anarcho-Communist vibe) through my character, Kropotkin.

 

[Emerikol]

Worlds are big. They sound more real with facts contributed by more than one puny human brain.

I am certain this is not true in general. I can't argue with you anecdotally because you may have incredibly talented players with uncanny ability to fuse fiction. But in general, I am sure it is a false statement.

 

[Fenris-77]

I am certain this is not true in general. I can't argue with you anecdotally because you may have incredibly talented players with uncanny ability to fuse fiction. But in general, I am sure it is a false statement.

The other option is that it's using one person's uncanny ability to fuse fiction. I don't think you get to a false statement using your logic there.

 

[prabe]

Worlds are big. They sound more real with facts contributed by more than one puny human brain.

In my experience, this is absolutely true. I prefer to limit direct player setting-authorship to character backstory, because since I'm the one running the world I want to be able to negotiate with the player/s if there's some sort of sticking-point for me--I'd rather not bring a session to a crashing halt for that.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

"Design by Committee" has some serious flaws, speaking as GM for whom world building is a primary strength-- while the ability to create something really cool is a skill, and therefore not a given, collaboratively fusing fiction is its own skillset in a way that solo worldbuilding isn't. You need to manage not just the validity of the fiction, but work out who can say no, why, and how others feel about it, and if no one can say no, its a dice roll at best as everyone pulls the story apart.

 

[prabe]

"Design by Committee" has some serious flaws, speaking as GM for whom world building is a primary strength-- while the ability to create something really cool is a skill, and therefore not a given, collaboratively fusing fiction is its own skillset in a way that solo worldbuilding isn't. You need to manage not just the validity of the fiction, but work out who can say no, why, and how others feel about it, and if no one can say no, its a dice roll at best as everyone pulls the story apart.

Agreed. Presenting the players with the setting I want to run as something of a fait accompli seems to go some way toward establishing that I'm the one who can say no to things they want to add to it.

 

[uzirath]

Worlds are big. They sound more real with facts contributed by more than one puny human brain.

This has matched my experience, too. Sure, sometimes things need to be edited to fit pre-existing fiction that the player may have forgotten, but it also adds diversity to the game reality which is usually a good thing. Sometimes a carefully crafted setting is too consistent... it's more consistent than the real world where unexpected and unlikely things happen all the time. Even in a game where the GM retains final authority, I enjoy the challenge of weaving new features into the existing world.

 

[pemerton]

I really enjoy environmental storytelling where elements of the environment, can be missed, but if paid attention to can hint at secret narrative truths the players themselves can deduce.

<snip>

I like the sense of 'uncovering'

This sounds like an approach to play in which the GM says things about the (imagined) world, which the players are expected to use as the basis for inferring further "true" things about that world - the first quoted para from the GM point of view and the second from the player point of view. Call of Cthulhu modules feature a lot of this sort of thing. So do a number of D&D modules, though in those the inferential connections are often weaker and so the players' dependence upon revelations from the GM often greater.

I really enjoy strong cause and effect dynamics in my worldbuilding, it is both in line with the themes of the world and a result of a carefully thought up history. The lore elements as suggested by players at the table don't tend to respect the same standards

Personally I don't feel the force of this. Partly for reasons given by @Mallus and @uzirath in posts not far upthread; partly because in my own experience there has never been a problem incorporating player-introduced elements into the shared fiction. JRRT was doing this with his own work all the time, and he was holding himself to a much stricter standard than is necessary for fun and successful RPGing.

because setting and situation orbit around the players and are defined by their dramatic needs, it renders the material that I would typically enjoy exploring subordinate to those dramatic needs. Because the world is defined around the dramatic needs of the characters, the character's stories can't be defined in the same way by their emergent interactions with the world.

<snip>

Similarly, I like to be able to discover themes baked into the text of the game world, and then have the emergent choices of the characters in the actual narrative of the game sessions, be inter-textual with those themes, with the world itself defining the dramatic needs of the characters by confronting them with those themes, allowing them to explore, react, reject, and comment on them.

I don't know enough about the agenda and principles for Masks to comment; though I do note @Campbell's suggestion that the approach you describe here does not fit with them.

In my own experience of "story now" play - using systems like 4e D&D, Classic Traveller, Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel, Cortex+ Heroic, Cthulhu Dark and Wuthering Heights - the only one which I might say that the characters' stories are not defined by their emergent interactions with the world is Cortex+ Heroic, because the character Milestones to some extent pre-define character arcs. Even then, however, there are moments of surprise. The two occasions I can think of at the moment where Milestones were completed were both quite unexpected - Nightcrawler completed his Romantic milestone by teleporting his date, who was also a supervillain, to the top of the Capitol Dome to propose to her (she said yes) only to jilt her the next day at the altar; Dwalin completed his Dwaren Halls milestone by returning to Moria with the rest of his companions in order to hide from the crebain out of Dunland who were spying on them.

I don't want to lean too heavily on the nitty-gritty of your phrasing, but in my experience the world of story now play is not defined by characters' dramatic needs. It is narrated in response to them, which is different (perhaps that counts as being defined around those needs; but that's not the same thing). In my Prince Valiant game the PCs were able to rescue an abbot and return him to his monastery - but it wasn't until one of the PCs spent time there tending to the sick (successful Healing check) that the idea of religious devotion, and the founding of a Holy Military Order, the Knights of St Sigobert, became a part of the game. I would say that that was precisely a case of a character's story emerging from interactions with the world, and of constituting an exploration of the themes presented. I think this is very typical of story now RPGing. It is what @Manbearcat is trying to get at in his contrast with characters who don't change, or who have pre-given "through lines" of dramatic arcs (the DL modules are paradigms of this).

I like for the world to be not under my control because i want to 'explore it' as something other to myself and my choices. I also want to preserve a sense of intentionality and cohesiveness in that other, because I want the patterns themselves.

I play to try and understand the game world as an external construct rife with meaning, themes, secrets and such. Player Establishment freely generates the things I want to earn by crowdsourcing them from the same people who are attempting to earn them. It also makes me party to creation process, I can see not only HOW the elements are produced in general (which isn't a problem, I'm normally a GM anyway) but im watching the elements i want to discover, be created. I learn them as we make them, I'm not finding them.

In that last sentence - which contrasts learning as we make them with finding I can't tell if the complaint is about who does the authoring, or when it is done, or both.

In my Prince Valiant game the PCs were talking to an undead spirit which would let only some of them pass through the Dacian forest it was haunting. The players (and their characters) formed the view that there must be an "anchor" or "focus" of its haunting; and one of them spent a player-side resource (a Storyteller Certificate) to Find Something Hidden - ie the focus of the haunting. As GM I duly narrated something that that character's PC, who was one of those allowed to pass, found. I'm not sure if the players could tell that I was making it up on the spot; I'm also not sure if they cared. It was under their control that their PC found something; it was not under their control what exactly it was.

In the Burning Wheel game where I am a player my PC and his sidekick were travelling through the wilds of eastern Ulek/the western Pomarj in the World of Greyhawk. My sidekick has trained as a sorcerer and is learned in the lore of the Great Masters (ie has Great Masters-wise skill). I declared, as her action, that she seemed to recall that Evard's tower was located in our vicinity. A check on Great Masters-wise was successful, and we found the tower. I don't know if this counts as "freely generating" or not - it required engaging the action resolution mechanics like any other action declaration, and hence had the same risk of failure and adverse consequence as any other declared action. To me there was definitely the feeling of finding out - the focus of that feeling was watching the dice come up a success rather than a failure.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

This sounds like an approach to play in which the GM says things about the (imagined) world, which the players are expected to use as the basis for inferring further "true" things about that world - the first quoted para from the GM point of view and the second from the player point of view. Call of Cthulhu modules feature a lot of this sort of thing. So do a number of D&D modules, though in those the inferential connections are often weaker and so the players' dependence upon revelations from the GM often greater.

Personally I don't feel the force of this. Partly for reasons given by @Mallus and @uzirath in posts not far upthread; partly because in my own experience there has never been a problem incorporating player-introduced elements into the shared fiction. JRRT was doing this with his own work all the time, and he was holding himself to a much stricter standard than is necessary for fun and successful RPGing.

I don't know enough about the agenda and principles for Masks to comment; though I do note @Campbell's suggestion that the approach you describe here does not fit with them.

In my own experience of "story now" play - using systems like 4e D&D, Classic Traveller, Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel, Cortex+ Heroic, Cthulhu Dark and Wuthering Heights - the only one which I might say that the characters' stories are not defined by their emergent interactions with the world is Cortex+ Heroic, because the character Milestones to some extent pre-define character arcs. Even then, however, there are moments of surprise. The two occasions I can think of at the moment where Milestones were completed were both quite unexpected - Nightcrawler completed his Romantic milestone by teleporting his date, who was also a supervillain, to the top of the Capitol Dome to propose to her (she said yes) only to jilt her the next day at the altar; Dwalin completed his Dwaren Halls milestone by returning to Moria with the rest of his companions in order to hide from the crebain out of Dunland who were spying on them.

I don't want to lean too heavily on the nitty-gritty of your phrasing, but in my experience the world of story now play is not defined by characters' dramatic needs. It is narrated in response to them, which is different (perhaps that counts as being defined around those needs; but that's not the same thing). In my Prince Valiant game the PCs were able to rescue an abbot and return him to his monastery - but it wasn't until one of the PCs spent time there tending to the sick (successful Healing check) that the idea of religious devotion, and the founding of a Holy Military Order, the Knights of St Sigobert, became a part of the game. I would say that that was precisely a case of a character's story emerging from interactions with the world, and of constituting an exploration of the themes presented. I think this is very typical of story now RPGing. It is what @Manbearcat is trying to get at in his contrast with characters who don't change, or who have pre-given "through lines" of dramatic arcs (the DL modules are paradigms of this).

In that last sentence - which contrasts learning as we make them with finding I can't tell if the complaint is about who does the authoring, or when it is done, or both.

In my Prince Valiant game the PCs were talking to an undead spirit which would let only some of them pass through the Dacian forest it was haunting. The players (and their characters) formed the view that there must be an "anchor" or "focus" of its haunting; and one of them spent a player-side resource (a Storyteller Certificate) to Find Something Hidden - ie the focus of the haunting. As GM I duly narrated something that that character's PC, who was one of those allowed to pass, found. I'm not sure if the players could tell that I was making it up on the spot; I'm also not sure if they cared. It was under their control that their PC found something; it was not under their control what exactly it was.

In the Burning Wheel game where I am a player my PC and his sidekick were travelling through the wilds of eastern Ulek/the western Pomarj in the World of Greyhawk. My sidekick has trained as a sorcerer and is learned in the lore of the Great Masters (ie has Great Masters-wise skill). I declared, as her action, that she seemed to recall that Evard's tower was located in our vicinity. A check on Great Masters-wise was successful, and we found the tower. I don't know if this counts as "freely generating" or not - it required engaging the action resolution mechanics like any other action declaration, and hence had the same risk of failure and adverse consequence as any other declared action. To me there was definitely the feeling of finding out - the focus of that feeling was watching the dice come up a success rather than a failure.

Most of those things were analysis of my preferred playstyle in contrast with Masks intended mode of play.