Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8652426" data-attributes="member: 42582"><a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=1361" target="_blank">Here's Paul Czege</a> 20 years ago:although roleplaying games typically feature scene transition, by "scene framing" we're talking about a subset of scene transition that features a different kind of intentionality. My personal inclination is to call the traditional method "scene extrapolation," because the details of the Point A of scenes initiated using the method are typically arrived at primarily by considering the physics of the game world, what has happened prior to the scene, and the unrevealed actions and aspirations of characters that only the GM knows about. "Scene framing" is a very different mental process for me. Tim asked if scene transitions were delicate. They aren't. Delicacy is a trait I'd attach to "scene extrapolation," the idea being to make scene initiation seem an outgrowth of prior events, objective, unintentional, non-threatening, but not to the way I've come to frame scenes in games I've run recently. More often than not, the PC's have been geographically separate from each other in the game world. So I go around the room, taking a turn with each player, framing a scene and playing it out.I can't link to Ron Edwards's "setting dissection" essay, but this is from it:• Not all types of characters described in the character creation options are OK. They need to be characters who would definitely be at that location, not just someone who could be there. They have something they ordinarily do there, and are engaged in doing it. • All characters, player-characters too, have lives, jobs, families, acquaintances, homes, and everything of that sort. Even if not native to that location, they have equivalents there. • Player-characters do not comprise a “team.” They are who they are, individually. Each of them carries a few NPCs along, implied by various details, and those NPCs should be identified. It is helpful for at least one, preferably more of them to be small walking soap operas. . . . • Note that sometimes the player-characters wind up in the same culturally-acknowledged “group” and sometimes they don’t. Either way is fine. . . . • Simply utilize screen time for everyone, switching around, using events from scenes as consequence and visual effects for later scenes. Don’t try to force characters together for no reason; remember, they don’t have to “team up.”<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/cthulhu-dark-another-session.658931/" target="_blank">The last time I ran a session of Cthulhu Dark</a>, the two PCs crossed paths a handful of times but barely interacted. The "glue" was some shared events and adversaries.</blockquote>

Verification