Scene Framing and "Surprising the GM" -- An Innerdudian Case Study

[I'm A Banana]

It's entirely likely that the players were basically just being polite to the other player, because the players didn't have any particular stake in the dangling plot threads (even though the characters would have).

If I was going to get all scene-framey, I'd probably have used the in-character conversation between the characters as a scene in which they were somewhat opposed to each other, and deciding on a course of action. Because there's interesting conflict there. Sort of a "We'll decide where to go over breakfast tomorrow," (fade to black, then fade up on the scene), and then a challenge between the party members about what they want to do (with the option for a player at any time to decide that their character opts out of fighting for their storyline's primacy). The formal challenge format would give the players each time to present their cases, and then could flow naturally as a consequence of their characters' personalities, stats, and traits, allowing them to make actual active choices about those character traits you feel are implied here.

It would have had the additional trait of making them think a little closer to their characters' thoughts, and consider things that they just might not have considered, as players.

And then you could visit calamity on the characters that didn't "win" the challenge to decide where to go next without worrying too much that you're just whipping them for something they don't feel like they're doing.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I dislike the term "bully" here. Remember, some players - especially new ones - simply have not learned that the GM may have consequences for their decisions, especially if this is not laid out for them. The more passive players may simply have assumed that this was "tonight's adventure" and gone with it. Now, from your playing style, you don't want them to act this way - but you have to teach them how your game works, and sometimes that means telling them outright. There's no reason not to tell the player - "you do realize, this proposal of his will take you many weeks away from town, and that might complicate your assignment?" It's sort of like the old GM standby "Are you SURE you want to do that?"

I do find myself surprised by the one suggestion to reframe the adventure to include the other players' story hooks. I suppose if you really want to make sure the players' decisions don't really matter, that's the way to go about it. But I'm probably just not used to running that kind of game.

 

[timASW]

We're coming up on the sixth full session for my recently started Savage Worlds fantasy campaign. And interestingly, something happened in the last session that seems to relate directly to the whole "scene framing" and "surprising the GM" discussions currently happening............

To me if the players all agreed on a desired course theres nothing wrong with just focusing on that. Sure it would be nice if you could invest them all in the mission but thats not always gonna happen. Just dont let one player dominate session after session in a row and its fine.

 

[Quickleaf]

I dislike the term "bully" here. Remember, some players - especially new ones - simply have not learned that the GM may have consequences for their decisions, especially if this is not laid out for them. The more passive players may simply have assumed that this was "tonight's adventure" and gone with it. Now, from your playing style, you don't want them to act this way - but you have to teach them how your game works, and sometimes that means telling them outright. There's no reason not to tell the player - "you do realize, this proposal of his will take you many weeks away from town, and that might complicate your assignment?" It's sort of like the old GM standby "Are you SURE you want to do that?"

I do find myself surprised by the one suggestion to reframe the adventure to include the other players' story hooks. I suppose if you really want to make sure the players' decisions don't really matter, that's the way to go about it. But I'm probably just not used to running that kind of game.

It's about getting them more invested / interested, not about negating choice. I mean, you don't need to move an entire plot hook line and sinker, but incorporating elements/themes of or hinting at are more what I had in mind. After all, the DM's job description has "improvisation" in it.

 

[pemerton]

I do find myself surprised by the one suggestion to reframe the adventure to include the other players' story hooks. I suppose if you really want to make sure the players' decisions don't really matter, that's the way to go about it.

I guess that's one way to look at it, but not the one I would choose.

It makes the players' decision to play a guild thief pretty important, if the GM puts guild-thief issues in front of the player such that the player has to engage them (via his/her PC).

It's about getting them more invested / interested, not about negating choice.

Yes. They chose to play a guild thief - now you're making them deal with it. As opposed to having that choice be irrelevant for X weeks of play.

 

[innerdude]

Quick update ----

Had a VEEERY interesting thing happen at the end of our last session (Thurs. April 11).

During our post-game wrap up, all of the players and I had a semi-serious though open and friendly discussion about the direction of the game, their characters, etc., as it related to their "place in the fiction."

Interestingly, ALL OF THEM agreed that they needed to do some more "in-character" interactions about the events happening in the game. Part of the problem, it seems, is that all of them were playing in a largely meta-game mode, and as such weren't exploring actions from their PC's viewpoint. This was making it hard for all of them to really "know" how to act, because their in-game relationships hadn't been fully defined. As a result, they weren't comfortable playing those relationships out in game.

I talked to the player who had requested "moving ahead to the dig site," and he mentioned, "I'm really just playing this as my character saw it---if there's no other complications relevant enough to get in the way, he'd undoubtedly push, and push HARD for going to the dig site." Fair enough!

Thus, it wasn't that he was trying to "get to the action," so to speak; if the other characters had presented relevant "points of engagement," he'd have been all over those too. It's just that as presented in-game to his character, none of the other characters had given him reason to change motivation.

Interestingly, I think to a degree, this is relevant to the "Surprising the GM" thread as well. For example, would Hussar have been willing to "skip the desert," if another character (not player) had a relevant reason not to? Would the in-game compulsion to play out a viable in-game character complication have been more important than skipping to the action?

 

[pemerton]

I talked to the player who had requested "moving ahead to the dig site," and he mentioned, "I'm really just playing this as my character saw it---if there's no other complications relevant enough to get in the way, he'd undoubtedly push, and push HARD for going to the dig site." Fair enough!

Thus, it wasn't that he was trying to "get to the action," so to speak; if the other characters had presented relevant "points of engagement," he'd have been all over those too. It's just that as presented in-game to his character, none of the other characters had given him reason to change motivation.

Interestingly, I think to a degree, this is relevant to the "Surprising the GM" thread as well. For example, would Hussar have been willing to "skip the desert," if another character (not player) had a relevant reason not to? Would the in-game compulsion to play out a viable in-game character complication have been more important than skipping to the action?

One endpoint of incharacter setting of goal etc can be something like this:

* Players 1 to 4: it's late, we're tired, we need powers/spells/hp back, so we go to sleep;

* Player 5: Ha, now I take advantage of their sleep to slit all their throats, thus gaining revenge for XYZ blah blah blah:

* Players 1 to 4: What the hell?

* Player 5: Well, I was just playing out my PCs secret backstory, and no one gave me an ingame reason to change my motivation.​

I'm not saying that your player is like player 5. Just that choosing your PC's motivations, persuadability etc is also a choice with metagame implications, and I'm not sure you can hide from those implications with the "I was just playing my PC" line.

I have a couple of players who, every now and then, come close to dropping the "I'm just playing my character" bomb, but it's never got to the point where I've had to step in as GM and take things to an out-of-game discussion. And the players as a whole have their own techniques for dealing with these things, eg by putting decisions ("Do we pursue goal X first, or goal Y?" ) to a vote. And I also have my own techniques, like trying to make sure goal X rather than goal Y still has elements associated with it that speak to all the PCs (and, thereby, all the players).

 

[JustinAlexander]

The lack of incident on the trip is in itself not a bad thing unless this type of trip is normally fraught with difficulty.

And even if the trip is fraught with difficulty, if that difficulty wouldn't be interesting or meaningful to play through then you might still skip over it.

I do find myself surprised by the one suggestion to reframe the adventure to include the other players' story hooks. I suppose if you really want to make sure the players' decisions don't really matter, that's the way to go about it. But I'm probably just not used to running that kind of game.

It's a simulationist vs. narrativist thing. A common simulationist technique is to look at the game world and say, "What's logically happening there?" A common narrativist technique is to look at the hooks provided by their players and say, "How can I grab those hooks and pull?"

To put this another way: From the simulationist perspective, the most meaningful decision was, "I left town and went some place else." Exploring that "some place else" is the consequence of that decision. From the narrativist perspective, the most meaningful decision was, "My character is pursued by the thieves' guild." Exploring the consequences of that (by finding places to include the hook) is the consequence of that decision.

(Context also matters, of course. If the player specifically had his PC leave town in order to escape the thieves' guild, from the narrativist perspective that's a different decision than deciding to leave town for some reason completely unrelated to the thieves' guild.)

 

[Hussar]

First off, just let me say [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION], you can be my DM any day of the week. Even if I'm player 2, 3 or 4, I'd still love this approach.

But,

Interestingly, I think to a degree, this is relevant to the "Surprising the GM" thread as well. For example, would Hussar have been willing to "skip the desert," if another character (not player) had a relevant reason not to? Would the in-game compulsion to play out a viable in-game character complication have been more important than skipping to the action?

Possibly. In the examples in that thread, none of the other players or character had any particular reason for interacting with the desert. We didn't have a "desert druid" or something to that effect with us. So, it wasn't like I wanted to skip over something that was established at the table as being important.

Thinking about it, I would like to think that if it was established at the table, even out of character, by another player, I'd probably not advocate skipping it. I think it's kinda telling in all my examples, it's me wanting to skip something the DM has introduced that has pretty much no attachment to any of the characters or players at the table. Whether it's hiring mooks or skipping the desert, the DM is bombing in complications that are not related to what we are doing, nor are they related to any of the established character goals. That's generally where I start trying to skip over stuff and tend to get a bit ... erm... stubborn when I'm forced to play out stuff that isn't really related to anything that we're doing.

 

[innerdude]

And here's the thing @Hussar , I fully understand your desire to skip that scene, the same way I understood Player 1's desire to skip ahead to the dig. I think if there was a problem in my group, it was 75% my fault, maybe more, for not successfully framing the alternative scenes in such a way that players 2, 3, and 4 could completely grasp the consequences.

Truthfully too, I might have been frustrated in your shoes too if the GM kept insisting on having the PCs interact with irrelevant material. I also agree with N'raac to a degree too though, where he asserts that the relevance of a given scene isn't always fully understood by the players at the moment, but can become clearer as the GM develops things down the line. But on the whole, in my mind, when in doubt, give the players as much freedom as you can. Empowered players are engaged players, and engaged players are generally invested in what's happening at the table.