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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9343744" data-attributes="member: 82106">First of all because that's not how we use that term, a "writer's room" as ordinarily defined is a room in which the writers of a TV show or similar develop the plot, narrative, and dialog of a story by discussing motives, possible scenarios, etc. with an eye to producing a certain specific outcome, right? Sure, you may use it differently, but then we're into the whole 'jargon debate' where we all get bashed continuously up 'side the head (forgive my Vermonterisms) for using words in way that is not quite plain English. Worse, it invokes all the plain English implications and smuggles them into the discussion when they are not at all appropriate.As [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] said, there is a drastic difference, almost the opposite, between what is happening in a PbtA or FitD game and a writers' room. In the writers' room almost everything is sorted out and determined BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE HAPPENS. This is the essence of Story Before. In Story Now play there's no predetermining anything that is going to happen. There may sometimes be questions from one player/GM to another about how the character perceives something, or what they believe, etc. but NOTHING IS DECIDED ABOUT THE NARRATIVE THIS WAY, PERIOD. Story Now narrative is invented BY PLAYING and nothing else.Furthermore, many Story Now games actually have processes and even mechanics which actively work against any sort of predefinition or 'locker room talk' kind of procedure. In Dungeon World the GM CANNOT TALK DIRECTLY TO THE PLAYER, they are constrained, as long as they follow the rules, to refer only to the characters and situations within the fiction, and to address the PCs directly, not the players. There's a reason for this, it keeps the game moving along as a narrative entity. Even when the GM asks questions, which is a non-diegetic thing to a degree, the GM addresses those questions AT THE CHARACTER. While not all Story Now games insist on this technique, the spirit of play it represents is always present.FINALLY, if the examples you give are "writers' room" then all of D&D and pretty much every other RPG is RIFE with this horrible sin. I guarantee if you actually recorded all the table talk at ANY GAME you will find that much, probably even most, of it involves players and GMs discussing all sorts of stuff, non-diegetically. So, is that what you are proposing? If so, why are you then singling out one type of play, which doesn't do this or at worst cannot be said to do it more than others, and bashing it for this? I'm mystified, well and truly.</blockquote>

Verification