Riddle of Steel Actual Play: Week 2.

[Bob McNamee]

Maybe in between sessions the player of Brigitte? should consider if this character is going to be as fun and interesting as they originallty thhought.

If not, they should create a new character....enlightented by what they can have seen going on in the game...

bob mcnamee

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Lance,

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

Just so I'm clear.... The example I laid out for Bridget wasn't to make her the "main" character.  It was an example of how to tie her into a story.  You had stated she had no investment in the session because of her SAs.  I wanted to point out that the SAs *are* the investment.

I completely understand you're not interested in re-working your style of GMing without a pre-planned plot, so please understand the following notes are for our viewing audience, who might be looking for new points of view on actual play:

* When you say, "although it wasn't quite the action I was hoping for" this is exactly where many of us on this board find a disconnect in joyful play at the table.  When the GM is expecting a certain result from the players actions for their characters, it seems to me they're either expecting to a) be able to read the future, b) be able to mentally manipulate the player's will to their own design during play, c) are just wildly hoping for the best -- because in all three case the GM kind of offers unlimited choices to the players, but is hoping that the player will act from a very finite set of options.  Why would we GMs do this?  Do we actually think this makes sense?   I have no idea anymore.  Why set up infinite options, but only expect two or three actual choices?  It seems a recipe for frustration ("Why did he do that" from the GM; "She keeps pushing me in these directions I don't want to go," from the Player.  It seems, to me, doomed from the get go.

The other option, of course, is to offer the characters Bangs, and let them choose, really simply choose, what happens, next until the bang is solved,  and then hit them with another Bang.

* And I just want to make clear, I was not invoking a "plotline" of any kind in the in example I offered above.  Eveyone note: I offered threats and opportunities for the PC's SAs, and I offered NPCs who had hooks into those SAs and were tied emotionally (in stress lines of family or romance).  After that, it was up to the Players to make the story by their actions.

Again, these are very non-traditional tactics.  I think they cure the symptoms most people post on chat boards when they're having trouble with their RPGs, but the entail really jettisoning the basic framework of how we GMs build sessions.  Essentially, standard scenarior design is the players being told, "You control the protagonists in the story; figure out what I want you to do."  It just seems like bait for trouble.

******

Lance, two things:

If I just overstated the case of pre-plotting in your game, I apologize.  I can only go on what's here.

Second, I really hope the game goes well this week.  I'll be particullary interested in hearin about how the two more "active" characters tie into the "plot".  Obviously my guess is the players will still be scooting around under every shady rock they can find as you try to shine your storyline on them -- but I really hope I'm wrong and look forward to hearing it went great.  If it does, I'd love to hear what you or the players did to keep things running smoothly.

Take care,
Christopher

[Lance D. Allen]

If I just overstated the case of pre-plotting in your game, I apologize. I can only go on what's here.

You did, a bit. No problem, though. I'm avoiding dropping whole meteors of details as much as I can, so some amount of misunderstanding is expected.

Fact is, though, I won't even come up with a story until I know who the characters are, or at least *think* I know who they are. That's where the disconnect is, I think.. Misinterpretation of what the SAs meant to the players. Once I get a vague outline, I don't even attempt to script anything. I'm a hugely improvisational GM because of the many times my players have left my plotline hanging in past ventures, and the even more numerous times they've left plothooks to dangle without a second thought, or else ripped them down and discarding them. (the second is a bigger shock, methinks, than the former..) I try to keep a general idea of story in my head so that things will eventually go somewhere rather than simply wander aimlessly, but other than that, I don't try to force much of anything.

The scene given with Brid is an example of a plothook left dangling. As I've said, I won't run two disconnected stories, so I'll give opportunities to get the character involved..

I expect, having run more games than I've played in, that most of my hooks will be left dangling or get ripped down. I hope that they will bite, though. Sometimes they will because I have managed to bait the hook enticingly, and others because they see what I'm trying to do, and throw me a bone. Most times, they don't though.. And I expect that.

As for the others.. Gailen has a man he wants to kill, and Roland has a man he's been paid to kill. I really doubt they'll be hiding under rocks, especially considering that, beyond that, I don't have many pre-conceived notions as to how things should go. I know that Roland is planning to set Gailen up as a patsy, though. Other than that.. I'm as much spectator as participant in this story.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Oops, one more thing.  (And Lance, this isn't addressed in any way as a rebutal or any kind of challenge to you, so please forgive me for putting it on this thread... but again, this is all public stuff for people dealing with actual play...  [edit] In fact, I posted this while you were posting, and it's not a response at all to what you just posted.)

Judging from statements I've seen other people make about the above tactics there seems to be this idea that the tactics are strange, pretentious, or not for "meat and potatoes" kinds of players.

I would offer just the opposite.  Given my belief that standard scenario design ("guess what I want you to do till you get it close enough") seems, in my view, difficult to run, it seems to me games run so that the players 1) state what they want to be engaged by in the session, 2) the GM offers them threats and opportunities involving the elements, 3) the players respond by pursuing what they want their characters to without trying mind-read the GM's intentions of the "plot" and 4), the GM, having set up a host of interelated NPCs and Bangs involving the PC's concerns, simply keep tossing new threats and opportunities -- are actually easier to run in some respects than the standard scenario methods.  The mind reading is gone, there's no frustration the players aren't doing the "right" things, the players aren't frustrated their not "getting" the plot, the players are involved in stories they themselves are committted to, and the GM just has to throw more problems at the players instead of leading them subtley with clues.

This isn't about being artsy.  These are tactics that engage and hook people at the most blunt level.  They're new... so there's the learning curve.  But the tools themselves are designed to make things easier... and in most cases do.

Take care,
Christopher

[contracycle]

my  usggestion: make them give you a short biographical monologue.  Then you write the SA's based on what you think is really motivating those characters.  Players might be writing them from IC perspective.

[Mike Holmes]

I still like what Chris came up with. And I don't see why it has to be so hard to get in even from a standard Sim sort of view. Horses are her thing? Then the guy that player #1 wants to kill is associated with Chris's horseflesh robbers. There, an interesting plot twist. He want's to kill the guy, and she wants information from him. It'll be interesting when they finally get to the guy to see what heappens. If it takes it, Give her a Bang straight from her god. If that doesn't motivate her, then there's a problem.

Nobody is suggesting that you privelige her story. Just that you motivate her character as well. Which isn't that hard.

OTOH, from your description, it sounds like she, and possibly the other player, might have "My Guy" syndrome. As evinced by their hesitancy to select SAs, and the one player selecting non-humans to care about. Seeing that the SAs are ways of hooking the characters in, they retreat from these mechanics as do all My Guy players. If this is the case, then you've got a bigger problem, as this is a serious dysfunction. You'll have to discuss this with them, and ask them to play slightly differently. Players must like the fact that their characters have SAs, and play to them. If not, then play will likely be dull (though I suspect that there is a particular subset of My Guy players who actually play to see the GM suffer as they try in vain to reel the characters in; for them such play is a delight).

Mike

[Jaif]

One thing I haven't seen addressed: passions are supposed to be (by the rules) for a single person or entity.  "Horses" doesn't fit this.

I'm not simply being a rules-lawyer here.  I think the reason the rules limit passions is for story-telling purposes.  In particular, a person or entity can make demands of the player, and a player who ignores those demands can lose points.

Assuming you're going to stick with the passion as-is, though, I think your only choice is to (pardon) beat that player with dead and mistreated horses at every opportunity.  A whole herd destroyed, with the mares & stallions dragged off, and the foals left to die.  Get nasty, and if your player still doesn't respond, you really have a different problem.

Btw, I have a player who I think is similar at the core.  He's told me that he dislikes the SA's - his words: 'The situation with "drives" when one is used to playing neutral characters is a challenge.'  I, too, am having difficulty engaging this player.

-Jeff

[Walt Freitag]

Accidental double post deleted. (Anyone else ever seen a "could not insert new word" error message before? Is our vocabulary becoming so abstruse that even the computers can't keep up?)

- Walt

[Walt Freitag]

That's the beauty of SAs. The solutions to engaging and focusing the players are right there on the characters sheet.

I think this has become a very important thread. I've been immersed in these concepts for weeks now, but it wasn't until Christopher pointed this out, after he and I had just simultanously posted the same story direction recommendation, that the power of this simple mechanism really hit home. Over decades I've become used to thinking of "the player-characters are the story" as being a principle one puts into effect using Clever Advanced Counterintuitive And Highly Difficult GM Techniques. I still have a hard time seeing it as Just Doing What The System Tells You To Do, even when such a system is right in front of me and what it's telling me to do is what I've wanted to do (and been doing anyway) all along.

Moving past all that (about time, Walt!) I can see that Lance's problem does go a bit deeper. I'm wondering if what we're seeing here is an instance of genre incoherence, a concept that's recently popped up here after being described here. The SA system might be pointing players in the right direction by defining protagonizing passions, drives, etc., but leaving it up to the vague genre expectations created by the system (which, for various reasons, some players might not perceive) to get them to choose compatible ones. Is a participant whose idea of gritty fantasy is Mercedes Lackey, rather than George R.R. Martin or Alexandre Dumas, being left to flounder? -- Or perhaps, is the system not adequately equipping the GM to handle such a participant's preferences?

- Walt

[Jake Norwood]

Walt-

Good post, and I really enjoyed read the Genre links you posted. I got a lot out of it.

One thing that was overlooked here in Lance's game, and most ROS games--despite the rules and the book--is an element of group character creation and GM/Player cooperation in choosing and defining SAs. It's all over the book, especially in Chapter 8 (about Seneschaling/GMing).

Basically, any concerns about Genre expectations (a very valid issue if I understand it right...which I rarely seem to, I admit) are moot if the Player and the GM pow-wow on the SA's to build a mutally agreeable storyline. From the looks of it Lance is really struggling to engage his players into his story line via their SAs, because the two (or 4 or 5, as there are many participants) goals and ideals don't mesh at all. Choosing SAs, much like defining Humanity as a group in Sorcerer, defines the premise of each individual game/campaign/adventure. TROS, like many older fantasy games, isn't very Genre specific--maybe more so than D&D, but still leaves tons of room for interperetation. I think it's one of TROS's strengths (not too much Genre over-specialization, limiting appeal and market), but without a group consensus via the SAs, thing just aren't going to be properly focused, and aren't going to work out.

I agree, this has become a very important thread, for me and most of us.

Jake