Not Really "No Myth", But "Yes, But"

[Bruce Baugh]

(This is reposted from rpg.net.)

First off, some comments about how it is I came to be trying this particular experiment. I am on record as flat-out failing to understand much of the theorizing that goes at the Forge under the general rubric of "GNS" and find essentially I do understand uninteresting. So it's worth noting that I think there's a lot of value at the Forge, both fascinating fresh thought about perennial issues and the enthusiastic willingness to go ahead and try things that might be neat and new. It's been good for shedding light on some of my problems, certainly.

I run several online games. They are, most of the time, light in mechanics, and heavy on just plain good roleplaying. I've been weaning myself off the urge to over-prepare, since I find that kills a lot of my enjoyment of the actual games - I burn out my own interest in the subject too rapidly, whereas if I prepare very minimally, the game remains fresh and engaging for me. I am blessed with amazingly good players who take whatever comes their way and run with it. In one extreme case, during the Mage Revised playtest, I couldn't make and they had the session anyway. The characters went out for dinner and had a conversation which included significant revelations and set the next act's worth of game into motion rather dramatically.

One of my current games is D20 Modern in a setting the players don't know much about. They're members of the US Customs Service's Art Recovery Team. Their first case turned into a weird tangled mess involving apparently supernatural activity, complete with a 200-year-old elf after his lost book. (It's not what it looks like, of course.) I realized a bit late that the adventure I was drawing on for the second part of this was going to be very problematic to run for reasons I won't go into since several of them read here. :) The point is that I wanted to get away from that one and onto something else.

So this session began with their boss' boss giving them a stress-sounding call saying that the Defense Intelligence Agency was taking over the case and that a courier would be by at 8 am for all their records and evidence. It was then 10 pm. The clock started ticking. They quickly established that the transfer order was genuine, and indeed backed by the National Security Council. So they had ten hours...the characters set about hiding such evidence as they could, altering things they'd need to pass on, and burying it all in a lot of cruft. The hardcase guy with the mysterious past planted some of it in the drop ceiling of a nearby convenience store while the tech whizzes tampered records of various sorts. They finally went to bed in an exhausted state, but feeling like they'd done what they could.

After reading discussion on the Forge of what folks sometimes call "No Myth" - that is, "No Myth of Reality" - play, where the GM continuously improvises and adjusts in response to player actions, I thought I'd like to try it out, at least in part. I adopted a simple rule for this session, which I didn't tell players about until later: every time a player asked a question of the "Can I...?" or "Is there...?" sort, I answered "Yes." Sometimes "Yes, but..." and often "Yes, and...", to throw in some fresh complications. But the characters could make plans and carry them out. There was a single roll all evening, to establish whether the art historian had any paper larger than legal pad size (to use in wrapping up a bundle). The roll was mediocre, so I decided that she had just the last few pages of a sketch pad. They worked out how to use it so it'd be enough. Everything else we resolved on the basis of the Take 10 and Take 20 rules (one of the real improvements in the state of the art in gmaing, I think) and roleplaying and my sense of what would be fun.

It was great! The players had a fine time. So did I. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in a session where they do know that the "Yes" rule is in effect. So I am very appreciative of the folks whose prior discussions helped me see my way through to doing something I usually do more haphazardly and less deliberately.

Along the way, I also realized something about the pacing of these games. (Mine, that is, lest anyone worry about the antedecedents.) I miss the element of big epic questing and the like, but they're hard to make work when time is short. Something about the characters' struggles this time brought a positive aspect into focus, however: this kind of tight character focus is very compatible with big events. The TV series 24 does this. So does film noir and conspiracy storytelling - this approach would make for a great Three Days Of The Condor remake, for instance. I've been toying with the idea of an Oriental Adventures game at some point, and realized that I should shift focus from something like "this is the sage of our pursuit of the fleeing wizard across the unknown lands" to something more like "this is the story of what happened when a demon murdered our lord and our enemies began to march on us". It looks like if I define the scene and put a deadline on it, the players I've got will do the rest of the work.

And I like that.

[Mike Holmes]

Bruce,

As terms wonk, that would be called either End-loaded Illusionism, or possible Intuitive Continuity (GMS's term AKA IntCon). End-loaded meaning that you create cool stuff out of the players decisions as opposed to having it thought up in advance. Illusionism because they think that there's an objective world that they're responding to when there's not.

When you reveal this to the players it will then become "No Myth". Assuming that they don't kill you.

:-)

I have an entire RPG that works off of nearly the exact same method you list above (yes, but, etc) as the entire system.

Sounds like fun. And it is much easier with good players, IME.

Mike

[Jason Lee]

I wouldn't necessarily recommend encouraging this behavior right away, but...

Players can learn to make 'Yes, but...' statements without asking - making things run real seamless-like.  This is done by adding minor narration to their actions.  There is a very thin line between doing this right and overstepping your authority (in the traditional GM/player split).

For example:
GM:  There's a dead man in this room, he appears to have been shot.
Player:  I walk over to him, kneel in the pool of blood, and flip him over to examine the exit wound.

The GM never said the man was face down, that he was shot with a gun big enough to create an exit wound, or that there was even blood.  None of these could easily be true.  This runs on the GM veto.  If you say something wrong you get called on it, otherwise the GM just takes what you've said and uses it for No Myth-esque ideas.  Those tiny extra bits of setting give him more to improv from.

I do this all the frickin' time - just to add more color and take some of the color burden off the GM.  Seems to work pretty well, and encourages the more open, less 20 questions, play I prefer.  Like I said, you can really screw this up if you misjudge where to halt narration...especially if the GM has no No Myth-esque inclinations

[GreatWolf]

Just a small, random contribution.  In Nobilis, the "Yes, But" principle is encoded into the rules as the Monarda Law.  Basically, it says, "Never say no to the players."

Bruce, I believe that you might be slightly familiar with Nobilis....  ;-)

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

[Bruce Baugh]

Yeah, I heard something about it. :)