Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9881041" data-attributes="member: 42582">I tend to regard "storygame" as a bit of a scare quote category by default - it's like Greg Stafford calling Prince Valiant a "storytelling" game because he wants to make it clear it's not a technical resource-management type game of the classic D&D sort. Or even, for me, like calling the Apocalypse World GM the MC (and before that, Christopher Kubasik calling the GM of a "story entertainment" the "fifth business": <a href="https://playsorcerer.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/the-interactive-toolkit-part-four-running-story-entertainments/" target="_blank">The Interactive Toolkit: Part Four: Running Story Entertainments</a>).Showdown has a tight structure, I agree. But within that structure I did declare actions for my character, both in the duel and in the flashback. The "after the event" narration reminds me a bit of Agon 2e. The inexorability of it reminded me a bit of my experience with Wuthering Heights: very different in its techniques, but crescendo-oriented in its mechanics.I felt that this, from the Afterword of the rulebook, rang true at least for me:I want you to respect your opponent when you play by playing generously. But that’s not the same thing as collaborating. Showdown isn’t about collaborating. I want you to play Showdown hard. I want you to tear your opponent’s character to shreds. I want you to find those emotionally tender places in your opponent and poke at them.[USER=7044566]@thefutilist[/USER] did that!The one point where I was invited to step outside my character, and my character's fictional position, was right at the end: I had the "upper hand", and so got to narrate the outcome of the duel, and the rules say thatJust because you’re out of Attack Cards doesn’t mean it’s your character who has to die. That’s likely the case, but anything can still happen in those final moments. Sometimes a noble death can redeem an otherwise irredeemable character. Or, maybe, it can just purge the world of a vile monster, even if that monster is you. Consider who really should die, even if it’s the person who fared best in the duel overall.[USER=7044566]@thefutilist[/USER] drew my attention to this passage, before I exercised my narration rights. I called it his "writers' room gambit" - an attempt to draw me out of my character as Bertrand, and to consider the bigger picture. But I declined, and clung on to Bertrand to the bitter end.[USER=7044566]@thefutilist[/USER] then got his revenge in the final flashback scene. But I don't think he had to step outside his character, or his character's fictional position, to do it. It skewered Bertrand, but was a perfect realisation of the path the two characters had been on. (And who ended up being the bloodthirsty brute?)I don't know if we just got lucky - but to me it seems like a well-designed game that it produces pathos, twists and irony without anyone having to make decisions beyond choosing what their character wants and does, and then working out the upshot of that in accordance with the game rules.</blockquote>

Verification