The Story Now Discussion

[darkbard]

What is Story Now? Maybe add a basic definition in the OP for those who have no idea what it means. Might turn out I'm doing it intuitively. ;-)

I'm not Arilyn, but I offer that Story Now games seek to minimize or eliminate the priority of fiction prior to the action of the game itself, be that GM-authored plot, setting details, or deeply-detailed character backstory. It's playing to find out: what is this world, who are these characters, what are their dramatic needs, how will they interface with challenges? The participants (including GM) may have some ideas about these things prior to play, but nothing is set until it becomes part of the shared fiction via gameplay. (Hence the admonishment to "hang on loosely" to any prep or ideas and to "draw maps but leave blanks.")

Further, Story Now gaming seeks to equalize the roles of its participants, including GM, by distributing judgment authority across the table rather than vesting it largely or solely with the GM.

 

[Campbell]

The basic conceit is that players create characters with compelling dramatic needs - something they will fight for. As a GM it becomes your job to design scenarios or frame scenes that speak to those dramatic needs. The idea is that players just have to play their characters with vigor and the game will result in a compelling story that we all get to see as it unfolds. GM sets it up. Players just play their characters. We all get to see the fallout together. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

 

[Marc_C]

I'm not Arilyn, but I offer that Story Now games seek to minimize or eliminate the priority of fiction prior to the action of the game itself, be that GM-authored plot, setting details, or deeply-detailed character backstory. It's playing to find out: what is this world, who are these characters, what are their dramatic needs, how will they interface with challenges? The participants (including GM) may have some ideas about these things prior to play, but nothing is set until it becomes part of the shared fiction via gameplay. (Hence the admonishment to "hang on loosely" to any prep or ideas and to "draw maps but leave blanks.")

Further, Story Now gaming seeks to equalize the roles of its participants, including GM, by distributing judgment authority across the table rather than vesting it largely or solely with the GM.

Sound like what I do when I play solitary random games with 3-4 characters. Nothing is scripted. I discover as I go along. Character reaction is based on a few behavioural lines (+keywords) I put down on each sheet. Authority is equalized because I play both the GM and the Characters. But, of course, there is no actual role-play happening (I'm only half insane). Which is a major difference.

 

[Campbell]

Probably the easiest form of Story Now play for someone who is familiar with more traditional gaming to experiment with is starting play with a Kicker, an inciting event. Something that upsets an existing status quo. When I last did this in Exalted it was the death of a crown prince whose skill at diplomacy had been keeping the region from erupting into war.

Just draft a skeleton. You do not want to many details before players create their characters. Then work with players to create characters that fit what John Harper calls the 3 C's of Character : Capable, Connected, Conflicted. Capable of enacting change in the setting related to the scenario. Connected to the scenario in some personal way. Conflicted about what they want to have happen or who they are.

A great example of this sort of scenario design and what characters should look like is Lady Blackbird.

This sort of approach is also fully compatible with more mainstream systems.

 

[Marc_C]

Probably the easiest form of Story Now play for someone who is familiar with more traditional gaming to experiment with is stating play with a Kicker, an inciting event. Something that upsets an existing status quo. When I last did this in Exalted it was the death of a crown prince whose skill at diplomacy had been keeping the region from erupting into war.

Just draft a skeleton. You do not want to many details before players create their characters. Then work with players to create characters that fit what John Harper calls the 3 C's of Character : Capable, Connected, Conflicted. Capable of enacting change in the setting related to the scenario. Connected to the scenario in some personal way. Conflicted about what they want to have happen or who they are.

A great example of this sort of scenario design and what characters should look like is Lady Blackbird.

This sort of approach is also fully compatible with more mainstream systems.

My current 5e game, on hiatus, is just that. The PCs (started level 3) are the children of a baron who was assassinated the night before the campaign started. I didn't who did it or why. I told them other barons might invade if they didn't show a firm hand in managing the barony with their surviving mother (regent). I just let the payers give me clues with their actions (and paranoia) and build the campaign as I went along.

 

[hawkeyefan]

@Arilyn I recently finished up a pretty long series of a super hero game using the Blades in the Dark system.

So much superhero fiction has the heroes being very reactive (threat then response), but Story Now requiring proactive players, it can seem like a bit of a mismatch. But, you just have to shift your thinking a bit.

For me, I leaned on how Blades in the Dark functions quite a bit, and then used that to help in how I approached the fiction.

So I established some villainous factions and then gave each one a goal of some sort. Based on the scope/scale of the goal, I created a clock, the greater the scope, the larger the clock. Then I thought about what each step in that clock might be. I didn't commit to all this, just kind of kept it in mind as an approach.

So for example, I had a villain called Volt (blatantly ripped off of Spider-Man’s Electro) and I gave him the goal of “Absorbing All the Electricity in the City”. This seems to me like a pretty straightforward goal for him, without a lot of complexity, but I want to give it some space to develop and for the PCs to potentially get involved at different points, so I’ll make it an 8 segment clock.

So looking at that as a comic book arc with some rough stages, I can see it something like this:
1 - Volt realizes he can absorb electricity
2-4 - There are localized brown-outs as Volt hits power plants to drain their power
5-7 - Volt’s power level becomes dangerous- his scale/potency have now increased and his powers are amplified. I increase his Tier to 2.
8- The city loses all power as Volt drains it dry; his scale/potency increases again and he is now dangerously out of control

Again, this is very loose and is kind of a vague notion of how things will go unless the PCs get involved. I don’t introduce the clock until it makes sense to do so. I then present some chances for them to get involved in this in some way. In between sessions, active clocks get advanced by a roll based on faction tier.

Some clocks are more involved. Sometimes completing one clock leads to another, so Factions can have one goal that leads to another, and so on.

All of this also depends on the PCs’ involvement and what they choose to do. So if the PCs never really focus on Volt, I don’t want the advancing clock to mean that I attempt to force this story upon them. Instead, it could just be background details. The brownouts and maybe eventual power-outage could just be flavor.

Again, this is just one example. Ideally you intoduce a few factions and their clocks to give the PCs a choice of different kinds of things to get involved with. Keeping all these things kind of fluid until established in play is key, as well.

 

[Arilyn]

What is Story Now? Maybe add a basic definition in the OP for those who have no idea what it means. Might turn out I'm doing it intuitively. ;-)

Sorry, should have explained it, but others have done so better than me, so that lets me off the hook.

I find that having the GM playing to find out what happens gives players a deeper sense of danger or mystery. Initially, I had concerns Story Now could end up with sessions that feel surreal or unfocused, but the opposite happens. Everyone at the table has to be fully engaged, and as a player, knowing that not even the GM has an answer key, or full knowledge made things feel really dangerous in Dungeon World. A sense of, "Oh God, we are really on our own." I dont think I'm explaining this very well, but my character had a strong sense of vulnerability, that I haven't felt since my very first RPG.

 

[Arilyn]

Sound like what I do when I play solitary random games with 3-4 characters. Nothing is scripted. I discover as I go along. Character reaction is based on a few behavioural lines (+keywords) I put down on each sheet. Authority is equalized because I play both the GM and the Characters. But, of course, there is no actual role-play happening (I'm only half insane). Which is a major difference.

You might as well dive right in and talk to yourself. This sounds awesome actually.

 

[Arilyn]

Thanks everyone for the comments and advice. I feel like I have a better grasp on how to start with Story Now in a non - fantasy, especially super heroes.

 

[Ovinomancer]

What is Story Now? Maybe add a basic definition in the OP for those who have no idea what it means. Might turn out I'm doing it intuitively. ;-)

Others have taken a crack at this, but here's how I put it: Story Now rose from the idea of Story Before. If you imagine a dungeon, that's story before -- the nature, paths, obstacles, events of that dungeon exist before play. This is obviously a great way to play, because it's the most common way to play and people love it (I'm one of those people). Story Now, though, is about making all of that work at the table, in the moment, and not prepping it before hand. This isn't the same as "winging it," which it's often confused with, because even with "winging it" the GM is the one driving the story. Instead, in Story Now, the story is driven by play -- the GM usually tightly constrained as to what they're allowed to introduce and when.

Largely, Story Now, for me, is driven (mostly) by the following:

1) Be a Fan of the PCs
2) Play to find out what happens
3) No Force

1) Be a Fan of the PCs. This seems like it's obvious, but there's a really key things here -- we enjoy watching the things we're fans of overcome. I'm a 007 fan, for instance, but I don't want to watch 007 enjoy a relaxing vacation (if that's possible). I want to see 007 get beat up, put in impossible situations, and then how he comes out of those! Being a Fan of the PCs doesn't mean go soft, or be nice, it means that you, as GM, really want to see how these PCs deal with the firehose of adversity you're going to point at them. It means creating situations that try these PCs, that go right for their soft spots, and then loving what happens next. It absolutely means no blocking, though -- you cannot predict what's going to happen and drive for that, instead you have to let the PCs be the PCs.

2) Play to find out what happens. This also seems obvious, but it's, again, not. We're not talking about seeing how the PCs overcome these trolls the GM put in the dungeon (or whatever), but instead we're going to play to see if a dungeon even exists, much less trolls. Every action in a Story Now game has the capability to go off in a completely new direction, and usually does. Prep is nearly impossible in these games, because it will be challenged and renders useless very quickly. You must hold onto prep very lightly, as it's likely to go out the window very quickly.

3) No Force. This is critical in Story Now games -- the GM cannot push any outcome or result at all, ever. This goes with 2) above in that the GM can't use the usual tools of GMing to run a Story Now game. You can't have quantum ogres, and you can't have detailed prep down to the cobblestones of a town. These force outcomes. The only thing that's constricting in a Story Now game is what's already in play -- ie, what's been shared at the table, for everyone. Everything else is a possibility.

Now, these things do not work very well with a lot of mainstream games, D&D being one of them. This is because the mechanics of these games do not reinforce this mode of play, and sometimes actively fight against them. D&D's core concept of "the GM decides" is a challenge to Story Now play. Other games build these concepts into the very fabric of the system, and so the system reinforces play in a way that's utterly absent in a game of D&D -- to do Story Now in D&D the GM is going to need to push it hard, and that's kinda not in-line with the concept. You can do it, but it would take a big hack of the system or just outright ignoring it, and if you're ignoring the system, you're going to lose a lot of the ways that system aids Story Now play. Specifically, systems tuned for Story Now have robust mechanics that create complication as they work. This aids in driving play in unexpected ways, and creating a solid, consistent play that isn't at all what most people consider "winging it" to look like. Story Now games work very well, but are a hard shift in perspective from traditional D&D style, GM centered games.