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The importance to "story" of contrivance
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6961520" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Do we?</p><p></p><p>In Queen of the Black Coast, Conan (i) boards the ship bound for Kush, and then (ii) recounts a series of events that bring it about that he needs toleave town in a hurry (TLDR he murdered a number of public officials), and then (iii) sees a coastal village ravaged by pirates, prompting the captain to remark that (iv) the ship's crew could probably beat off pirates unless it was Belit, and then (v) Belit and her pirates attach the ship, and then, after a bloody fight, (vi) Belit falls in love with Conan.</p><p></p><p>Think about how this might unfold in a game of more-or-less procedural, Gygax or RQ-style FRPG session:</p><p></p><p>TO begin we have the PC kill the public officials and hence flee to the docks; then we roll dice to see if a ship is there, and where it is going (suppose a 50% chance for a sea-going vessel to be departing, and a 10% chance that it is bound for Kush); suppose it turns out that it is heading to Kush, we then have encounter checks to (a) give us the ravaged coastal village, and then (b) the pirate attack (let's say a 5% chance of both). We might need another check to identify who is the captain of the pirates (say, a 10% chance any pirate ship in these waters is Belit's ship the Tigress). And then we need a reaction roll to see how Belit responds to Conan, with major penatlies for the fact that he's slaughtered half her crew. (Though perhaps also a bonus if the GM has a note: Belit admires powerful warriors, and has something of a masochistic streak.)</p><p></p><p>I think the odds of that sequence of events in classic procedural FPRGing is less than 1 in 1000, in procedural play. Of course some of what happens the rest of the time will also be dramatic, but probably little will be as dramatic as what REH has given us. (We might instead get a fight on the docks, rather than a jumping from the horse onto the departing ship; or a ship that has no encounters, or that meets pirates but not a pirate who falls in love with one of the PCs; etc.)</p><p></p><p>I think we <em>expect</em> contrivances in fiction, especially genre fiction (be it romance, or action-adventure), in order to make the story work.</p><p></p><p>I think the challenge for FRPGing is how to incorporate contrivance in the context of multiple authors and a fair bit of random generation of outcomes.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6961520, member: 42582"] Do we? In Queen of the Black Coast, Conan (i) boards the ship bound for Kush, and then (ii) recounts a series of events that bring it about that he needs toleave town in a hurry (TLDR he murdered a number of public officials), and then (iii) sees a coastal village ravaged by pirates, prompting the captain to remark that (iv) the ship's crew could probably beat off pirates unless it was Belit, and then (v) Belit and her pirates attach the ship, and then, after a bloody fight, (vi) Belit falls in love with Conan. Think about how this might unfold in a game of more-or-less procedural, Gygax or RQ-style FRPG session: TO begin we have the PC kill the public officials and hence flee to the docks; then we roll dice to see if a ship is there, and where it is going (suppose a 50% chance for a sea-going vessel to be departing, and a 10% chance that it is bound for Kush); suppose it turns out that it is heading to Kush, we then have encounter checks to (a) give us the ravaged coastal village, and then (b) the pirate attack (let's say a 5% chance of both). We might need another check to identify who is the captain of the pirates (say, a 10% chance any pirate ship in these waters is Belit's ship the Tigress). And then we need a reaction roll to see how Belit responds to Conan, with major penatlies for the fact that he's slaughtered half her crew. (Though perhaps also a bonus if the GM has a note: Belit admires powerful warriors, and has something of a masochistic streak.) I think the odds of that sequence of events in classic procedural FPRGing is less than 1 in 1000, in procedural play. Of course some of what happens the rest of the time will also be dramatic, but probably little will be as dramatic as what REH has given us. (We might instead get a fight on the docks, rather than a jumping from the horse onto the departing ship; or a ship that has no encounters, or that meets pirates but not a pirate who falls in love with one of the PCs; etc.) I think we [I]expect[/I] contrivances in fiction, especially genre fiction (be it romance, or action-adventure), in order to make the story work. I think the challenge for FRPGing is how to incorporate contrivance in the context of multiple authors and a fair bit of random generation of outcomes. [/QUOTE]
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