Why we like plot: Our Job as DMs

[Raven Crowking]

Good scenario. I replied in the other thread.

Thank you. So did I.

RC

 

[Gizmoduck5000]

This is smug, arrogant and insulting. This might come as a huge shock to you, but my and my friends play games centered around stories and dealing with themes because we think its fun!

Yes...I am smug, arrogant and insulting.

I'm also completely right.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Yes...I am smug, arrogant and insulting.

I'm also completely right.

Gizmoduck5000, have you met Umbran yet? I have a sneaking suspicion that you are about to!


RC

 

[Desdichado]

Yes...I am smug, arrogant and insulting.

I'm also completely right.

Not really. In order for your argument to have merit, you have to assume that artistic expression and fun are mutually exclusive terms.

Instead of the perfectly viable idea that maybe artistic expression is fun to some players.

 

[Ariosto]

That's absurd. He offered up an opinion (the "I think" qualifier) to basic dungeoncrawling had gotten boring.

As a matter of fact, he offered:

Having random encounters is like original D&D in dungeons, it gets boring like that I think.

I do not think my observation, concerning the part in bold here, and the historical use of such equations, was absurd. In any case, it certainly had nothing whatsoever to do with anyone's strictly personal opinion that "dungeoncrawling is boring"!

Hobo is correct.

Yes, but not relevant to what he was addressing. It is correct not to beat one's wife, but that does not make it correct to throw out, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet? Answer yes or no!"

I did not take issue with -- or refer to at all, for that matter -- ID's preference. I did not claim that ID was slandering anything or anyone. I merely pointed out that the phrasing was reminiscent of certain invidious stereotypes, and how those are in fact misleading.

 

[Umbran]

Alright, folks, the behavior in here has already yielded one temporary ban. Let us have no more.

A guideline - if you are here to prove you are right, you are probably in the wrong place, and the attempt isn't likely to be constructive for anyone. I'd strongly advise against continuing. If you are here to discuss and exchange information, and to learn about how others do things, and why, then by all means continue.

 

[Ariosto]

I don't think quibbles over whether "plot" or "game" or "railroad" is the right word for something are likely to carry us forward.

I do not regard my job as DM to be "telling a story to" or "fulfilling the wishes of" the other participants. No doubt determined nit-picking could score the rhetorical point of "Aha! You're wrong about that!" -- but wouldn't it be silly? The meaning would probably be clear enough in contrast with the approach of a DM who does describe his or her view in such terms.

That said, the very confusion over the different meanings of plot suggests that there is some overlap in practical techniques. They all have to do with planning of one sort or another!

 

[Desdichado]

Right; if anything the discussion has suggested that despite the appearance of great rhetorical divides, good GMs probably really don't do things all that differently, practically speaking.

 

[IvanDragonov]

All we have to say without the negativity is that DMs DM in different ways. Nothing is better or worse, it's ALL PERSONAL TASTE. Like I am more of a plot and role-playing DM than hack and slash and random encounters. But as a PC I love doing either or. My saying I felt hack and slash was old school D&D was in no way insulting or negative, but my personal thought. My buddy also DMed and he did it sooooo different than I did, but we loved PCing in each others campaign for different reasons and borrowed techniques from each other. That's what this should be, not some arguement over what is or is not plot or an RPG. Let's be friends!

 

[Hussar]

/snip

You're equivocating. Ever played Monopoly?

Are you playing a game? Yup.
Am I assuming a role witin the fictional universe of that game? Yup. I'm an aspiring hotel monopolist.

I'm playing a role playing game!

Once again, there is a problem presented by your assertion you are allowed to define terms however you want.

Sorry, no. There is no role assumption in Monopoly. Nothing in the rules suggests that you would change your style of play based on whether you are the shoe or the battleship or the car. There are no mechanics in place whatsoever that changes the game depending on whatever role you choose.

That being said, you could certainly change Monopoly INTO a role playing game if you so chose. However, the game, as it is written is most certainly not because there are no roles within the game. Or rather, everyone is playing the exact identical role, which amounts to the same thing.

Although I agree that Hussar is crouching the argument in these terms, I find nothing in SA that contradicts "let story emerge from (in being told about) events driven by players playing their roles pretty much as real people in a real world".

And, contrary to his assertation SA uses dice.

Buh what? When did I assert that SA doesn't use dice?

And, contrary to his implied assertation, dice (or any other random number generator) are not needed to provide uncertainty of outcome. Witness chess, checkers, and go.

The only conclusion I can draw here is that Hussar has not actually paid close attention to the structure of the activity he is participating in, and has not been honest with himself or with us about his level of understanding of the same.

(And that's not a poke; I've been guilty of the same in the past, and will no doubt be guilty of the same in the future. AFAICT, we all have.)



RC

I think that your cursory reading of the rules has possibly been less than exhaustive.

In SA, at any point in time, the player can declare the scenario over. He can use his twists to resolve the scenario to a satisfactory conclusion. Any time.

Now, the game does include task resolution mechanics (and kinda neat ones at that) for the times when the player doesn't want to end the scenario.

The goal of the game is to see how long you can keep the scenario in play. So long as everyone is enjoying the scenario, no one has any reason to spend a twist to resolve the action. However, if someone decides that he or she doesn't like what's happening right now, he can decide to change the scenario or simply declare the scenario or even resolved.

Going back to the Batman vs Joker example as it might be played out in SA. You have the scenario of Batman hunting for the Joker. The players play it out as per the mechanics, doing all sorts of Batmanny things. So long as everyone at the table is enjoying the scenario, everything's groovy and it plays out pretty much like a standard RPG. However, a few hours into the scenario, the player hits a brick wall. He's painted himself into a corner and the Joker is going to escape.

The player spends a twist, narrates the effects, and the Joker is caught. Now, there might be negative consequences here, because likely that will take a pretty large number of twists to accomplish and the only way to gain more twists is to take negative consequences for yourself.

And, now we get back into the idea of exploring the moral implications and whatnot of Batman's activities as his negative consequences result in the death of Jim Gordon (a very real possibilty in this system).

Or, take another example, taking the ring to Mount Doom. The entire Lord of the Rings could be played out as an extended conflict. In SA, conflicts are defined by rounds, same as most RPG's, but the length of a round varies depending on the conflict. A round can easily be a month or even a year, depending on the nature of the conflict. As you go back and forth, the participants lose reserve in each lost contest (the amount can vary from various sources) and when a participant runs out of reserve, they lose the conflict and the winner dictates the victory conditions.

It is also possible to regain reserve by switching into a faster time slice to resolve a separate, but related conflict. Thus Mines of Moria would be a faster conflict possibly to gain resource. So one and so forth.

However, since Frodo is a PC and Sauran is not, at any point in time, Frodo's player can simply declare the ring goes into the volcano. Depending on how many twists he had to spend there, the negative consequences could easily be the loss of a finger and the Harrowing of the Shire.

As I said, the goal of the game isn't to determine the resolution of the event. The event will be resolved. It can't not be resolved. Any player at any time can declare it so. The goal of the game is to keep it interesting enough to the participants that no one does that. So long as everyone is engaged in the scenario and no one wants to pull the rip cord, the scenario continues in a fairly traditional way.

Now, all that being said, in actual play, it rarely goes that way. For one thing, it's a pretty rare player who will just declare that he hates the scenario and chucks it. Most players are willing to try to make the scenario enjoyable for everyone. The Frodo player just nixing the entire LotR is fairly unlikely. But, it is entirely possible.

Probably the most telling example of what I'm talking about comes from the DM's advice section in the back:

For GMs:
Sufficiently Advanced is a game that eats plot.
Compared to other games, a few well placed Twists
and the intelligent application of godlike abilities can
let the players chew through two or three sessions
worth of plot in about five hours. Moreover, with
Twists, players can change the plot, excising whole
chapters of the story and replacing them with new,
different chapters.
Whatever you do, don’t fall in love with your
plot. Some GMs like mystery-heavy games, some
combat-heavy, some politics-heavy, and so on. If the
players don’t want to play that game, they’ll spend
a Twist or two, and the untenable mystery is solved,
the impossible combat resolved, and the convoluted
politics untangled. You’re going to be playing the kind
of game the players are interested in for 90% of the
time. Roll with it. Make new plots and new stories.
And hold onto the ideas of the old ones, since even
a Twist used without Complications creates some
plot.

Sorry for the wall of text. I was away from the boards for a couple of days, and this has been churning around in my brain.