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Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, off to a good start
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7610160" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>It doesn't work that way in practice. Different implies the possibility of uninteresting. You cannot guarantee that if different outcomes are possible, that they are all equally interesting. And if you can't guarantee that they are all equally interesting, you can't guarantee that they are interesting at all. But more to the point, if the different choices are all interesting, then the choice is not as meaningful in the sense that either the player cannot own the choice, or the choice was always going to lead somewhere anyway so it didn't really matter. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, that settles it then. All I have to do is forbid something by rule and it can never happen.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, at least I'm sort of getting through to you. Now at least I've gotten you to consider the possibility, since we seem to have reached the point in the debate where to avoid considering the idea you just insult the participants. But let's imagine now that the players really don't have more creativity than a lump of lead, though in point of fact I don't think that is a prerequisite to this at all. It doesn't matter if you are preparing first or playing no myth, some choices are going to be more interesting than other choices and some choices are not going to be interesting at all.</p><p></p><p>I think if we go one step less abstract than the level you are, there is a simple proof.</p><p></p><p>I think only two proposition are necessary to prove the point.</p><p></p><p>a) The players must have agency to create their own story. If they can't, then there choices don't matter and so are uninteresting.</p><p>b) Not all stories are good stories. Some stories are much less interesting than other stories, and are less enjoyable to experience.</p><p></p><p>Consider a good story, say, "Shawshank Redemption." It's widely regarded as a classic movie, and it features a very well told story with the sort of features that make for good story telling.</p><p></p><p>But now imagine that this is an RPG, and the players are characters but they don't know what the story is. They are just creating it through play. They have no template for this story to follow, and if they did they would have no agency. The GM wants to tell an exciting story, but has only a loose notion of what that story is. If he had a complete understanding of the story to create, the players would have no agency and the choices wouldn't be interesting. So the players begin to play. We could easily replay this sort of story a hundred times, making different choices. But it's highly unlikely that in any of those 100 retellings that we'd tell a story as good as "The Shawshank Redeption" Certainly some of the time we'd make choices where little happens. Perhaps the players make choices that amount to, as in the words of the original story, getting busy dying rather than getting busy living. No one tries to escape or imagines an escape plan that can succeed. Perhaps they do try to escape but make choices that make it obvious that plan is going to fail. If the plans can't fail, then no interesting decisions really went into them. Maybe a redemption occurs, but it isn't as complete or poetic. Telling a good story is difficult. Perhaps most groups fail, but it should be obvious that at least some groups can fail. Could be the GMs fault, but it can equally be the player's fault - afterall we are assuming they have real agency. Real agency requires that you be allowed to create a bad story. Maybe you thought it was the best story you could create, but then in hindsight you realize that it wasn't that great of a story and that it is altogether in hindsight boring - however much the rules forbid this from happening.</p><p></p><p>Or consider, suppose as part of a story compromise some character is imprisoned as a result of the choices of the player. They tried to rob a jewelry store and were caught. They broke the law and they decided to avoid dying in a glorious shootout, and to "fail forward". But then, after that one PC is imprisoned, the other players think about it and they are like, "Yeah, I don't think we're going to risk breaking him out of prison." Now the problem here is the interesting story of the guy in prison doesn't line up with the interesting story for the other players. The escape attempt from prison could be as interesting as the story from "Shawshank Redemption", but that story might play out over the course of years or decades. Perhaps the interesting story here is something like that of Jean Val Jean from "Les Miserables". But while those choices could lead to interesting stories, meanwhile the other group is having a dense series of near daily adventures and hijinks, while the slow plodding story of life in prison plays out. Sooner or latter, the now isolated PC's player is going to decide, "This sucks. This is boring. Sure, I might be telling "Shawshank Redemption" in here, but this story is boring and I can't think of way to make getting out interesting. Sure, the GM could just decide its interesting to let me escape now, but that would mean that my choice really didn't matter. I could get back to the interesting stuff, but my agency will be invalidated both now and in the past, because of the GM's "Get out of Jail Free" card being used to get me back in play. Either I must now abandon this PC's story, or concede that it's too boring to continue and so use fiat to reboot it." Whatever choice is made in that situation, the choice happened in the metagame precisely because the in game choices weren't leading to interesting play. </p><p></p><p>And there is no guarantee either new choice would lead to interesting play or interesting decisions either. The freedom to tell your own story always implies the freedom to have a bad story. No amount of fiat force by the GM to make the choice become interesting can prevent that, and in fact the truth is the application of excessive GM force to get the story back to where it could be interesting itself means that the choices weren't interesting, because in a different context we'd recognize that application of GM fiat to move agency from the player, dice, or setting to himself is what is commonly called "railroading".</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7610160, member: 4937"] It doesn't work that way in practice. Different implies the possibility of uninteresting. You cannot guarantee that if different outcomes are possible, that they are all equally interesting. And if you can't guarantee that they are all equally interesting, you can't guarantee that they are interesting at all. But more to the point, if the different choices are all interesting, then the choice is not as meaningful in the sense that either the player cannot own the choice, or the choice was always going to lead somewhere anyway so it didn't really matter. Well, that settles it then. All I have to do is forbid something by rule and it can never happen. Well, at least I'm sort of getting through to you. Now at least I've gotten you to consider the possibility, since we seem to have reached the point in the debate where to avoid considering the idea you just insult the participants. But let's imagine now that the players really don't have more creativity than a lump of lead, though in point of fact I don't think that is a prerequisite to this at all. It doesn't matter if you are preparing first or playing no myth, some choices are going to be more interesting than other choices and some choices are not going to be interesting at all. I think if we go one step less abstract than the level you are, there is a simple proof. I think only two proposition are necessary to prove the point. a) The players must have agency to create their own story. If they can't, then there choices don't matter and so are uninteresting. b) Not all stories are good stories. Some stories are much less interesting than other stories, and are less enjoyable to experience. Consider a good story, say, "Shawshank Redemption." It's widely regarded as a classic movie, and it features a very well told story with the sort of features that make for good story telling. But now imagine that this is an RPG, and the players are characters but they don't know what the story is. They are just creating it through play. They have no template for this story to follow, and if they did they would have no agency. The GM wants to tell an exciting story, but has only a loose notion of what that story is. If he had a complete understanding of the story to create, the players would have no agency and the choices wouldn't be interesting. So the players begin to play. We could easily replay this sort of story a hundred times, making different choices. But it's highly unlikely that in any of those 100 retellings that we'd tell a story as good as "The Shawshank Redeption" Certainly some of the time we'd make choices where little happens. Perhaps the players make choices that amount to, as in the words of the original story, getting busy dying rather than getting busy living. No one tries to escape or imagines an escape plan that can succeed. Perhaps they do try to escape but make choices that make it obvious that plan is going to fail. If the plans can't fail, then no interesting decisions really went into them. Maybe a redemption occurs, but it isn't as complete or poetic. Telling a good story is difficult. Perhaps most groups fail, but it should be obvious that at least some groups can fail. Could be the GMs fault, but it can equally be the player's fault - afterall we are assuming they have real agency. Real agency requires that you be allowed to create a bad story. Maybe you thought it was the best story you could create, but then in hindsight you realize that it wasn't that great of a story and that it is altogether in hindsight boring - however much the rules forbid this from happening. Or consider, suppose as part of a story compromise some character is imprisoned as a result of the choices of the player. They tried to rob a jewelry store and were caught. They broke the law and they decided to avoid dying in a glorious shootout, and to "fail forward". But then, after that one PC is imprisoned, the other players think about it and they are like, "Yeah, I don't think we're going to risk breaking him out of prison." Now the problem here is the interesting story of the guy in prison doesn't line up with the interesting story for the other players. The escape attempt from prison could be as interesting as the story from "Shawshank Redemption", but that story might play out over the course of years or decades. Perhaps the interesting story here is something like that of Jean Val Jean from "Les Miserables". But while those choices could lead to interesting stories, meanwhile the other group is having a dense series of near daily adventures and hijinks, while the slow plodding story of life in prison plays out. Sooner or latter, the now isolated PC's player is going to decide, "This sucks. This is boring. Sure, I might be telling "Shawshank Redemption" in here, but this story is boring and I can't think of way to make getting out interesting. Sure, the GM could just decide its interesting to let me escape now, but that would mean that my choice really didn't matter. I could get back to the interesting stuff, but my agency will be invalidated both now and in the past, because of the GM's "Get out of Jail Free" card being used to get me back in play. Either I must now abandon this PC's story, or concede that it's too boring to continue and so use fiat to reboot it." Whatever choice is made in that situation, the choice happened in the metagame precisely because the in game choices weren't leading to interesting play. And there is no guarantee either new choice would lead to interesting play or interesting decisions either. The freedom to tell your own story always implies the freedom to have a bad story. No amount of fiat force by the GM to make the choice become interesting can prevent that, and in fact the truth is the application of excessive GM force to get the story back to where it could be interesting itself means that the choices weren't interesting, because in a different context we'd recognize that application of GM fiat to move agency from the player, dice, or setting to himself is what is commonly called "railroading". [/QUOTE]
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