Portrait Play, a subset of The Dream?

[Mike Holmes]

Well, that's a heck of a lot of director stance, Brand. Meaning that you're actually making it easier for me. That is, I have less and less to make up.

Now if your point is that director stance like this interferes with a pre-plotted game, well, that's a problem of player power division, and has nothing to do with the issue at hand. You're creating a new problem for the player. Simply tell the player no, if you want to do participationism. They'll have plenty to do posing with "just the character."

But as far as freeform plotting goes, you and I can narrate back and forth like this all day. You're providing more than enough elements for me to make a plot out of them with my part of the narration.

Mike

[Brand_Robins]

Well, that's a heck of a lot of director stance, Brand. Meaning that you're actually making it easier for me. That is, I have less and less to make up.

Hey, I'm just going with what I've seen.

Now if your point is that director stance like this interferes with a pre-plotted game, well, that's a problem of player power division, and has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

Except that it did back before the Forge, when I'd play with players like this and didn't have nice terms like "director stance." And when I did say things along the lines of "don't power pose" the reaction would often be a blank stare, as the player didn't realize that they were assuming things they could not do. Their goal was to get out the image, and in so doing felt allowed to do many things. Which isn't to say your adivce isn't solid, its just that it would take some degree of negotiation about power in the game.

Of course, if we want to look at making a "poser" game where the goal is to make the great pose and then have the GM move it along, you might want to specifically allow for a defined amount of director stance in posing. That might be one way to get something to happen that isn't fully GM directed.

But as far as freeform plotting goes, you and I can narrate back and forth like this all day. You're providing more than enough elements for me to make a plot out of them with my part of the narration.

True, though it still feels flat to me. Of course I'm not the target audience, so....

[Callan S.]

This thread seems to be going really well, by showing rather than dry theory.

From Brands demonstration of what he's seen, it looks like taking turns at participationism. First the player was in the participationist seat. But with what Brand demonstrated from his play experience, it basically puts the GM in that seat. As Mike noted, he has a lot less to describe...unless HE starts describing poses now.

An observation...thoughts?

[John Kim]

From Brands demonstration of what he's seen, it looks like taking turns at participationism. First the player was in the participationist seat. But with what Brand demonstrated from his play experience, it basically puts the GM in that seat. As Mike noted, he has a lot less to describe...unless HE starts describing poses now.

Is it really participationism if the narrative power is being passed back and forth?  My impression of participationism was that it was by definition following a single person's lead.  

As a possible example of this phenomenon, I'm thinking of "The Upgrade!" -- a freeform larp of sorts that I played in Norway.  (I describe it in some detail in my http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/cons/knutepunkt2005.html">Knutepunkt 2005 Convention Report.)  There, the scene was frequently shifting and jumping around in time.  Anyone could propose a scene.  They'd then declare a scene, jump in to play it out, and other people would stand around and watch it.  At any point during the scene, someone else could cut and declare another scene -- often a flashback or flashforward.  

Scenes were typically very short.  So I think there's a fair case that what happens in these scenes is just showing a vignette or pose.  There was very little linear resolution of conflict.  Instead the primary mechanism was just people coming up with cool vignette ideas and throwing them in.

[Mike Holmes]

Is it really participationism if the narrative power is being passed back and forth?  My impression of participationism was that it was by definition following a single person's lead.

Well, you're correct, John. Basically we now have two cases that I can see, and which I think are distinctly different. The first method to satisfy this player is participationism. In that case, no, you don't allow the player director stance. But I don't think it'll matter, because they'll still be able to play their character into these poses. I don't see any particular conflict neccessarily there, other than the player may want director stance power.

In which case we get the second case where what you have is just your bog standard collaborative storytelling freeform sort of game where the player is mostly responsible for, well, posing the character and the stuff that revolves around that, and the "GM" is responsible for making a story out of what the player throws at him.

Mike