Your thoughts on fatalistic roleplaying?

[Ferry Bazelmans]

In the "scene resolution in lieu of task resolution" thread, I proposed a system in which players are fully aware of the outcome of a given situation and then play their character to match that ending.

Now, I realize that some people might find this reduces the fun they can have in any game, but I would personally be very interested in how knowing the ending to a scene, changes how you handle it.

Any thoughts?

Crayne

[unheilig]

this actually can happen quite a bit in Primeval, depending on the individual Oracle's style.

It's sort of neat, really. It can be a bit "Tarqantion-esque"... showing the ending first, and then finding out how you got there.

Its only a negative thing if player aren't willing to try new things, which is something we need to change in this hobby.

It would be a great way to run a whodunnit.

unheilig.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Ferry,

The mechanics of The Pool provide conflict resolution, rather than task resolution, and during play you're consistently in the situation where the outcome is known before the details are described. Whether it's a player giving a Monologue O'Victory, or the GM describing a failure or a victory when the player has chosen to add to the pool rather than take a MoV, everyone knows the outcome before they get the description.

Still, for some reason, there's a great deal of suspense surrounding the description. Perhaps this will go away as the mechanic is less new to people. It may be a dickhead GM or idiot player artifact from other games.

In the last session of The Pool that I ran, one character and his NPC son were surprised during a jail escape by the fierce, wizardly, undead Kriedetempek badass who'd imprisoned the character in the first place. The son had come under cover of darkness to effect the escape. The player stated an intent of yelling for the son to flee as her character made an unarmed rushing attack on the antagonist, and rolled the dice. She was successful, but decided to add to the pool rather than narrate the victory. So I narrated the resolution. I described how her character was disoriented by magic during the rush, and ended up on the ground with the Kriedetempek straddling her and his long black fingernails gouging into her neck and throat. One of the other players commented at this point, "This doesn't sound like a victory." Another player shushed him, "Wait." And I finished by describing the character seeing the blade of a sword punch through the Kriedetempek's chest and the son standing above them.

You can get a lot of suspense mileage by playing up the dickhead GM thing. I wonder if it becomes gone as players get used to Fortune-in-the-Middle mechanics.

Paul

[Laurel]

One thing that Paul brought up that really seemed relevant to me is the idea of being very creative with "how" events resolve themselves even if the players know what the final effect will be.  That's a sure way to keep things intense and interesting.  

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'd like to add that a great deal of the available systems that permit scene resolution also permit a certain amount of editing.

In other words, we start with the problem and basic intentions at hand, then the "scene outcome" is rolled, and everyone sets to work explaining how it could have worked out that way.

Well, in Hero Wars, for example, there is plenty of room to mess with the actual dice outcome as well. You might choose to "bump a success level" by spending a Hero Point, for instance. I have seen many instances in which the player carries out a complex (but fast) decision-making process in order to determine whether the rolled failure for this scene is tolerable, or whether that Hero Point ought to be spent.

Or, if one is in an Extended Contest, a friend might donate some Action Points during the interval in which we're determining the causal effects of the roll.

In either case, the dice have spoken, and we are now determining in-game effects, but the dice are NOT the Cubes of Doom, and certain rules-details do permit messing either with their actual results (Bumping) or with other elements of play that change their effects (Action Points).

In conclusion, the title of this thread is misleading. It ain't quite as fatalistic as it seems.

Best,
Ron

[Zak Arntson]

... I proposed a system in which players are fully aware of the outcome of a given situation and then play their character to match that ending.

Now, I realize that some people might find this reduces the fun they can have in any game, but I would personally be very interested in how knowing the ending to a scene, changes how you handle it.

I don't think it reduces the fun in any way (and I By declaring where fortune lies in task-resolution, the game designer is having even more of an effect on how her game is played.

To encourage cooperation and improvisation towards a known goal, stick fortune at the beginning.  If everyone knows the eventual outcome, they may loosen up and give themselves little failures/successes that somehow lead up to the final decided result.

Middle Fortune allows for intent, fortune and outcome.  For games that want a level of suspense mixed with narration, I'd suggest this one. My D&D games always wind up heading towards Middle Fortune, because the intent "I swing my rapier with panache..." and the roll and the result "... and cut off a swathe of his cloak!" offers the most excitement for me.

End Fortune seems best applied to games where tight control is needed.  Tabletop wargaming an extreme ... where you state your action and it succeeds or fails.  But any designer that wants to encourage an all-or-nothing approach should consider End Fortune.

Of course, as a designer, you can always discuss the different Fortunes for the same game.

You could offer player/gm control of Fortune, discussing the benefits of each. For example, Beginning Fortune in D&D could be applied to a single combat.  Each round of combat could have ALL the rolls up front, and the narration afterwards.  That could lead to highly cinematic combat.  I may try this next time I play D&D.

Or you could require placement of Fortune during certain situations.  In a magic-centered campaign, perhaps Beginning Fortune applies to all non-magical tasks (allowing for one quick roll to resolve entire scenes) and End Fortune to all magic (so that magicians must take care in how they present their conjuring ... there's no backtracking after the roll is made).

Oops, this turned into a placement of Fortune rant.  But hopefully it offered some answers to your question!

[Gordon C. Landis]

On 2001-11-02 05:14, Crayne wrote:
. . . I would personally be very interested in how knowing the ending to a scene, changes how you handle it.

Any thoughts?

My first thought here is to find and re-read Wyrd  . . . but that's "fatalism" at a wider scale than "scene", it's fatalism in the overall character destiny.  And Jareds' Schism plug-in has "doomed" charcaters as well.

But you're talking about the "scene" level.  I suppose that needs a bit more definition - are we talking a particualr limit to the play time?  If it's a short time, that would tend to keep most of the action focused on "realizing" the known ending - and perhaps losing some people's interest.  If the time of the "scene" is more open-ended, that leaves room for folks to go off on paths that don't APPEAR to work towards the known end - and maybe knowing you need to eventually work to the "decided" end will help to pull things back, in inventive and interesting ways.  Or not, as the known end keeps you from developing interesting things you discover in the side-paths.

ASIDE: I bet this is a well-establish phenomena in improvisational acting.  I wonder what the consensus there is abouat a "known end" to a scene - good or overly constraining?

My session last week had a bit of this - we roleplayed a scene (for a game that, with luck, starts tomorrow) in which my character was "arrested" by 2 of the other PC's (as part of explainig how he ended up in their country - he's a foriegner, you see).  Now, we obviously knew these characters were going to end up going off together on the "adventure" in the next session . . . I actually think it made for a very interesting bit of roleplaying, with a far more coherent "story" of "how we became friends/associates" than I usually see happening.  You might say that knowing the ending (and being commited to making it happen) forced us all into Author stance at times.

Hope that answers a bit of the "changing how you handle it" part.  When considered at the various "levels" of resolution (action/scene/story/etc.), I think this is a very interesting and fundamental issue, especially for Narrativism.  Thanks.

Gordon

[Ferry Bazelmans]

On 2001-11-02 14:07, Laurel wrote:
One thing that Paul brought up that really seemed relevant to me is the idea of being very creative with "how" events resolve themselves even if the players know what the final effect will be.  That's a sure way to keep things intense and interesting.  

That's exactly what I mean. Instead of focussing on what the outcome is, players should focus on the actual events and how they affect their characters. Sometimes players will get this, but it's all too easy for them to become embroiled in a "Did I get him?" contest, when all I as the GM want to know is "How did you try to get him?".

Feng Shui did this wonderfully of course, but I feel it could be taken even further, although Ron stated that several other games (most of them by the hand of Robin D. Laws *smile*) already explored this idea.

Crayne

[Ferry Bazelmans]

On 2001-11-02 14:25, Ron Edwards wrote:
In conclusion, the title of this thread is misleading. It ain't quite as fatalistic as it seems.

I know, it's just a term that was used in the scene resolution thread. Don't actually remember who used it (did I say that in the original post in this topic?)...

Fer

[Ferry Bazelmans]

But you're talking about the "scene" level.  I suppose that needs a bit more definition - are we talking a particualr limit to the play time?  If it's a short time, that would tend to keep most of the action focused on "realizing" the known ending - and perhaps losing some people's interest.  If the time of the "scene" is more open-ended, that leaves room for folks to go off on paths that don't APPEAR to work towards the known end - and maybe knowing you need to eventually work to the "decided" end will help to pull things back, in inventive and interesting ways.  Or not, as the known end keeps you from developing interesting things you discover in the side-paths.

Scenes as in: movie-scenes. Most of them can be planned beforehand by the GM by using a web-type structure to plot causal events and situations. Think of a scene as one locale, one setting or situation the characters are in. Once they leave the locale, or the situation ends, they are in another scene.

For example, if the players are in a bar, drinking together, this is one scene. If they leave, they leave the scene to do something else (if they just stand around outside the bar, you could argue it is still the same scene, but if something like a drive-by happens, it is another situation - they were drinking, now they're being shot at - and thus another scene). If one of the players went to the toilet in the bar, this would not be a scene change, unless he got assaulted in the toilet, which would make for a new situation.

It requires some forethought by the GM...

Fer

[Matt Gwinn]

In the "scene resolution in lieu of task resolution" thread, I proposed a system in which players are fully aware of the outcome of a given situation and then play their character to match that ending.

Now, I realize that some people might find this reduces the fun they can have in any game, but I would personally be very interested in how knowing the ending to a scene, changes how you handle it.

Any thoughts?

My game Kayfabe (or Lords of the Ring or Shoot) bases entire campaigns on this idea.  The end result of every match from the begining of the game to the end of the campaign is predetermined.  Part of the fun of the game is trying to match up the wrestler's actions with the eventual outcome.

At least in my game (and probably in others) knowing the outcome ahead of time allows players to concentrate more on their character's actions than the outcome of that action.  There's a level of stress that is lifted when you don't have to worry so much about "winning" or "losing".

,Matt G.