The Story Now Discussion

[Campbell]

I think this is one of those areas where we are mixing up No Myth and Story Now. A lot of games are both, but No Myth is not required for Story Now. In Sorcerer games I have had murders where I knew who committed crime when players did not, but it still was nothing like a whodunit because the players addressed the murder with regard to their own agendas. No one particularly cared who actually was responsible. Even if they did I would not have put purposeful red herrings in because the point of the scenes I was framing were based on the personal impact to the player characters.

As a player in a Story Now game the expectation is that you are primarily going to be oriented towards your character's struggles. It's not a problem solving exercise primarily. We're going for fairly clear emotional stakes and really engaging the current moment of play. We care a lot more about moral choices than strategic ones. In a Story Now game the interesting bit happens when you know who committed the murder.

I do think you can have for example a Story Now game that would handle characters like Sherlock Holmes, but like solving the mysteries would not be the interesting part. The choices you make once you know what's going on would be. So a lot like Sherlock on BBC.

I'm running a game right now which should test this pretty well. Apocalypse Keys is a Medium Myth game about playing monsters who investigate other monsters so as to avert the Apocalypse. So there is some secret backstory in terms of NPCs who have relationships to the victims, clues, and what happens if the mysteries go unresolved. However it leaves the exact details more open. The point is not really solving the mysteries though. It's player characters dealing with the fallout of using their dark powers, their relationships to each other, the temptation to give into darkness, and how the characters interact with a world that is afraid of them.

 

[Umbran]

I mean the prefabricated endstate is 100 % independent of player input (eg a player cannot make a move at any point during play to affect that endstate...the endstate is always going to be something like "Colonel Mustard in the Kitchen with the Knife")

But that isn't the endstate. That's the starting condition! The cards defining that are set and hidden before play begins!

What happens as the PCs explore this situation in which this event has happened? If they figure it out, what are the PCs going to do about the fact that Colonel Mustard did it in the Kitchen with the Knife?

In RPGs, the mystery of "Person X killed Y, and then X goes to jail," is pretty boring. Having some moral or ethical or political complexity arise that are grounds for PC actions is important.

 

[Manbearcat]

But that isn't the endstate. That's the starting condition! The cards defining that are set and hidden before play begins!

What happens as the PCs explore this situation in which this event has happened? If they figure it out, what are the PCs going to do about the fact that Colonel Mustard did it in the Kitchen with the Knife?

In RPGs, the mystery of "Person X killed Y, and then X goes to jail," is pretty boring. Having some moral or ethical or political complexity arise that are grounds for PC actions is important.

You’re referring to something different than what I am.

Remove everything except the revealed event (which is why I want to excise the distracting TTRPG particulars).

In both Clue and Sherlock Holmes, the following are true:

* The revealed event is decided before play begins.

* The details of the revealed event are independent of player input (player input here meaning “I think/hope a knife was the murder weapon”...their thoughts won’t change whether the Clue envelope or the back of the SHCD book says “the murder weapon was a knife”).

* The revealed event is the endstate of the game/mystery portion of play.

EDIT FOR CONTEXT - I’m trying to have the conversation exclusively be about how a mystery and a reveal are (a) operationalized and what that says about (b) Skilled Play, (c) and how people are cognitively oriented about that a and b (including visceral response).

That is where the nuts and bolts of the conversation around x, y, z prep Story Now play are. The other stuff won’t tell us about a - c.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I should clarify. I didn't mean that the GM would just arbitrarily decide that. I meant that whatever system you were using would have a baked-in "nope, not this time" chance. The GM would just roll with it, like everyone else.

Then this would be system force, and I'm not sure I can think of a concrete example of this.

As for your earlier example, I'm sorry if it seemed like I was ignoring it, because I certainly wasn't. It clearly illustrated the Story Now end of things, so thanks for that. But it didn't strike me as an actual whodunnit, which revolves around a mystery that has been deliberately created by the actions of another person, who, in fact, wants very much for it to remain a mystery. Not quite what you described.

Really, though, you've just said what I'm beginning to think, i.e. that Story Now is as suited to any other approach when it comes to delving into mysterious circumstances but, by its very nature, is poorly suited to elaborate whodunnits.

By "other person" you mean another player, namely the one wearing the GM's badge? Again, this kind of thing is the opposite of what Story Now espouses, so, yes, it doesn't do this. I find this a curiously narrow definition, seemingly intentionally drawn as to try to highlight a failure rather than engage the concepts. To put a less fine point on it, you're asking if Story Now can be a way to have players attempt to find out what the GM thinks a clever mystery is and the answer to that question is no, it doesn't do that. Intentionally.

 

[hawkeyefan]

@JonM

I don’t think running a “whodunit” style mystery would be the best fit for a Story Now game. At least, not if the participants were looking for the experience of “solving” the GM’s prefabbed scenario.

If that’s the experience they want, then no, I’d run it in a more traditional method.

But I’ve recently actually given some thought to how Blades in the Dark would handle a whodunit. And I think it absolutely can be done, and could potentially be a lot of fun...but the actual specifics would have to emerge in play rather than being decided ahead of time.

 

[JonM]

I think this is one of those areas where we are mixing up No Myth and Story Now. A lot of games are both, but No Myth is not required for Story Now. In Sorcerer games I have had murders where I knew who committed crime when players did not, but it still was nothing like a whodunit because the players addressed the murder with regard to their own agendas. No one particularly cared who actually was responsible. Even if they did I would not have put purposeful red herrings in because the point of the scenes I was framing were based on the personal impact to the player characters.

As a player in a Story Now game the expectation is that you are primarily going to be oriented towards your character's struggles. It's not a problem solving exercise primarily. We're going for fairly clear emotional stakes and really engaging the current moment of play. We care a lot more about moral choices than strategic ones. In a Story Now game the interesting bit happens when you know who committed the murder.

I do think you can have for example a Story Now game that would handle characters like Sherlock Holmes, but like solving the mysteries would not be the interesting part. The choices you make once you know what's going on would be. So a lot like Sherlock on BBC.

I'm running a game right now which should test this pretty well. Apocalypse Keys is a Medium Myth game about playing monsters who investigate other monsters so as to avert the Apocalypse. So there is some secret backstory in terms of NPCs who have relationships to the victims, clues, and what happens if the mysteries go unresolved. However it leaves the exact details more open. The point is not really solving the mysteries though. It's player characters dealing with the fallout of using their dark powers, their relationships to each other, the temptation to give into darkness, and how the characters interact with a world that is afraid of them.

That does seem like a good test, although, as you said, the focus is slightly different. I'd be quite curious to know how it works out, if you would like to post about it, later.

 

[JonM]

@JonM

I don’t think running a “whodunit” style mystery would be the best fit for a Story Now game. At least, not if the participants were looking for the experience of “solving” the GM’s prefabbed scenario.

If that’s the experience they want, then no, I’d run it in a more traditional method.

But I’ve recently actually given some thought to how Blades in the Dark would handle a whodunit. And I think it absolutely can be done, and could potentially be a lot of fun...but the actual specifics would have to emerge in play rather than being decided ahead of time.

Yes, that's the feeling I'm getting, at this point. Really, in that sense, the answer is obvious and applies to any approach: you will generally be happiest if you play to an approach's strengths.

Having said that, maybe I will try, again, to run some sort of Story Now investigation, if not an actual whodunnit.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yes, that's the feeling I'm getting, at this point. Really, in that sense, the answer is obvious and applies to any approach: you will generally be happiest if you play to an approach's strengths.

Having said that, maybe I will try, again, to run some sort of Story Now investigation, if not an actual whodunnit.

What system are you planning to use?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yes, that's the feeling I'm getting, at this point. Really, in that sense, the answer is obvious and applies to any approach: you will generally be happiest if you play to an approach's strengths.

Having said that, maybe I will try, again, to run some sort of Story Now investigation, if not an actual whodunnit.

Investigation was a huge part of one Blades in the Dark series I ran because the PCs were cops. So that’s why I was kind of wondering about a whodunit and how it would work.

Investigations fit quite well. I’d expect tjat in other games with a similar approach.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm going to take one more crack at this.

Why does the type of Skilled Play of Moldvay Basic dungeoneering require a pre-prepped (mapped, keyed, stocked) dungeon while the type of Skilled Play of a mystery does not require a pre-prepped whodunnit matrix (who/where/with what/why)?

Its because of the multi-dimensional nature of dungeoneering vs the investigation + inference-exclusive nature of whodunnit-ing.

Consider the dimensional requirements of Skilled Play in a Moldvay Dungeon Crawl:

1) Exploration Turns are tightly encoded and unit based on multiple axes and they all matter (time, space, and how these integrate with the rest of the system).

2) The engine of Wandering Monsters every x Turns + Required Rest every y Turns means that Turns have to be tightly kept and players are making decision-points based on the integration of this stuff along with the integration of all of the other encoded bits of the system.

3) Loadout (which has multiple dimensions itself; HPs, Spells, Gear) has to be tightly kept.

4) Resource management has multiple dimensions to consider in both this moment, the next moment, and in the Crawl at large (including the question of "can we locate and fortify a location so we can make camp and recharge?").

5) Encumbrance + Hireling considerations (Porters have costs and they have to be protected) and this integrating with Gold for xp and the strategic decision to push-on vs withdrawal.

6) Decisions at the encounter level (parley, fight, evade, etc) are all integrated with everything above.


Simply put...if you're eliding, fudging, failing in your book-keeping/accounting, it impacts the actual signal of the Skilled Play of the delve. A person may not care about the "purity" of that signal of Skilled Play...but that doesn't mean that its not impacted by any of (a) not prepping, (b) eliding essential aspects of play which feeds back into the delve as a whole, (c) failing to book-keep all of the various moving (and integrated) parts, or (d) fudging rolls (either the GM or a player). Something as simple as removing Encumbrance (5) has a huge impact on play. Remove the Wandering Monster machinery (1) and Encumbrance? You're suddenly playing a different game.

Now you may like that game better, but the fact its fundamentally a different game cannot be questioned.

---

Now conversely, what is happening in a "whodunnit?"

* You're investigating framed scenes.

* You're putting together pieces of a puzzle.

* Finally, you're drawing an inference.

Those things do not require the acutely tracked, multi-dimensional, and deeply integrated operationalizing of play (including all of the mechanical resolution requirements) that is required in a Moldvay Delve. Those things require (a) a GM who can effectively frame provocative scenes that address the premise of the whodunnit, (b) players who can investigate/collate information, (c) and an inference that draws upon the coherence of the continual play loop of (a) + (b) until the puzzle is solved by a player.

I mean, you can do multiple continuous loops of Framed Scene > Investigate > Collate > Rinse/Repeat until Inference-based Conclusion and derive the same sort of Skilled Play in whodunnit-ing entirely in Unstructured Freeform without any mechanics and without a single prefabricated piece of the who, what, why, how puzzle (that stuff can be stitched together on the fly). Or you could have the who and why and have to stitch together the what and how. Or any 2 or 3 of that matrix and figure out/allow to emerge the last 1-2 pieces during the continuous loops.

Conversely, you fundamentally cannot do that in a Moldvay Dungeon Crawl. Its impossible. No human can keep all of deeply acute spatial/temporal information in their head and all of those multivariate interactions that occur in the course of a singular delve. The kind of Skilled Play that Moldvay Dungeon Crawls distills would be entirely lost.

The fact that a person might feel differently about the operationalizing of that whodunnit play doesn't mean that the litmus test for Skilled Play in that sort of play loop is lost. It just means they feel a certain way about it (its less real...its less substantial...less grounded perhaps). The fact that a GM/table might suck at operationalizing it, doesn't mean it cannot be done...because it trivially can.

But the other one. Its not feel. Its a binary of on/off. Are my individual delving decisions interfacing with all of the multi-dimensional and integrated properties outlined above such that the entirety of the delve was the product of Skilled Play? Yes, then Skilled Play. No? Something else.

EDIT - So what can No Myth Story Now fundamentally not do? It CANNOT operationalize the sort of high resolution dungeon delve in the vein of Moldvay Basic. Torchbearer, which is a Story Now game more akin to Blades in the Dark (but waaaaaaaay south of Blades in terms of resolution of setting), can do it (and do it awesomely), but it is certainly not No Myth. Its north of Dogs in the Vineyard Prep (which isn't quite No Myth but its not terribly north of it where you're preparing Towns which = pivotal NPCs and provocative, entangled situations which orbits around one or more Sins/PC Relationship and requires Paladin-ey intervention).