The inevitable appropriateness of your character

[Sydney Freedberg]

So the cure would be scene-framing PLUS mechanical incentives to do warm-up/integration bits? Capes does this somewhat, as a Debt-management tactic; My Life With Master does this explicitly and massively -- you're desperate for those Overture scenes with your connections and will fight and claw to get them.

[Frank T]

Tony, full ack on the part about aggressive scene-framing. What you describe is exactly what happened in my PtA game last weekend. We were pressing toward the action all the time and forgot about the characters.

One more thought: Could it be that part of the value of the scenes we talk about lies in the fact that they come unexpectedly? I mean, can you really plan a scene like that? I would suggest that the merit of those scenes is the momentum they develope all by themselves. They might even work best using actor stance and just seeing where they take you.

[Bankuei]

Hi Tony,

Right, that's why stuff like Universalis, Trollbabe, or anything where players are allowed to input on the scene framing allows those warm up/down bits to happen...

"So you guys end up at the warehouse..."
"Hold on, I want to do a prep scene, is that cool?"
"Ok, sure."

Chris

[TonyLB]

Sydney:  Yes, but both reward subtly wrong things.  Capes rewards peak after peak of action (yes, even in the "calm" debt-management scenes) with no warm-up or integration.  MLwM rewards the warm-up and integration, but also rewards disconnecting it as much as possible from the action scenes.  In short, when your Overture shows why a later high-tension scene is important to you, that's because you've gotten screwed.  Which, yeah, is how the game works but doesn't encourage the players to drive things in that direction.

Anyway, my thoughts on systematic application of this idea are in my newest Misery Bubblegum thread.

Frank:  Actually, I'd prefer that the scenes not happen unexpectedly, by accident.  I'd sort of like to be able to have them reliably crop up where they're useful and needed.  So I hope that their random appearance is just a result of nobody yet having techniques to control this, rather than a fundamental feature.

Chris:  Yes, but... in Universalis (as in Capes) your ability to define a scene is a rare opportunity.  You can spend it on something minor, or you can do something big that will earn you coins.  I haven't played enough to speak with any certainty, but doesn't that dynamic discourage people from doing these sort of scenes, and encourage them to do the high-payout scenes instead?

[Bankuei]

Hi Tony,

In Universalis, it's really a matter of what CA the group is trying to run with it.  For most of my play, I had pretty co-operative groups with challenges being pretty rare and a high focus on Nar play.  One thing that slow scenes are really good for is setting up extra traits for a character.  We usually play out a scene first and add traits at the end, with suggestions around the table.  By the time a conflict kicks in, you've got a good feel for the parties involved.

But if you have a Gamist lean in there, yeah, people are just going to go for the wahoo conflicts to grab coins.  Even still, if you win the conflict you get a chance to narrate how it all comes out and spend those coins- allowing you to provide follow-up scenes.  J's narration was a close-out of the fight conflict.

Chris

[Gordon C. Landis]

I hope this is on-topic . . .

I heard an interview with the writers?/producers? of the TV show House a week or so back.  Dr. House, for those of you unfamiliar with the show (I'm enjoyin' the hell out of it, but maybe that's just me), is a sharp-tounged, sarcastic, cynical, people-hatin', medical-diagnosis genius.  Interestingly, the folks in the interview mentioned that the most important (and sometimes the most difficult) thing they do when writing an episode is to NOT write any of his (numerous and excellent) jokes, cutting remarks, or etc. until they are sure they've got the dramatic elements of the ep in place.  First get happy with the pacing, the emotional impact, the conflicts - make that work.  Then add the "personality."  The moments outside of conflict that are in some ways more amusing, revelatory and/or touching than the conflicts themselves.

So what I'm thinking is - those moments Tony is talking about about are only possible when the context in which they are set already "works."  That the key to having that moment with Harper was knowing just where that scene fit, in terms of both the character's personality and the current overall progression of the story (or, I guess, game, situation, - whatever's key to the CA at hand).

I would point to the PTA (damn, what's the proper term?  Must . . . find . . . book . . . ) character screen-time progression as a key enabling mechanic for that.  At the risk of over-using a game example, I think I both experienced and saw this occur in the Moose in the City game.  With my character, it was realizing that issue was building but not nearing resolution that led me to interact with the Mooses' conflict the way I did - which told me more about my character than it did about that conflict.  

Anything that provides meaningful context would seem to be a big help here, be it mechanics or just good communication.  At least, that's the most sophisticated (ha!) analysis I've got so far,

Gordon

[TonyLB]

Gordon:  Absolutely.  It's a structure that requires both elements, and not simply in the right proportions but in the right relations with each other.  Too much action and you lose much of the opportunity to see the situation as unique to these characters.  Too much character contemplation and you lose the ability to see these characters as important to a meaningful situation.  When the whole thing comes together in the right structure, it rocks.

The thing to bear in mind (at least from my point of view) is that you don't have to plan in advance for everything to follow a plan in play.

Say you want three conflicts (A, B and C) in a session, two of which are just side-lines, one of which is the big thing.  Do you need to decide which one is the Big Thing in advance?  Certainly not.  You run all three conflicts, in a system that guarantees that two of them will be resolved quickly, while one of them naturally (perhaps because of the side-effects of the other two resolving) grows and takes on greater significance before it resolves.  Then the players, in every action they take, create and choose the structure of the story.

I'm pretty sure that the same thing can be done with scene choice... given the right structure, players will create an arc of story importance for themselves, without having to know it in advance.  Which is fun, of course, because it means you don't have to plan it... which in turn means that the same mechanism can apply at every level of the game, to all the innumerable sub-plots and story-threads that people barely register consciously.

[beingfrank]

I'm not sure you can make it work perfectly all the time.  Sometimes you don't know you're going to want build up until too late.

I've got an example from my own experience, a time when it didn't work.  I've got examples from when was all great, but a failure might be an interesting contrast.

My PC had a mystical experience that involved her making a choice between a number of symbolised options.  She didn't make up her mind until too late, a choice in herself.  As a direct result she got sicced with a demon hunting her as an embodiment of her indecision.

Later on in the campaign, after some growth of the character, she had the opportunity to go through the same mystical experience which was pretty certain to end in a confrontation with this demon.  I was so excited.  I wanted to go through the same symbolised range of choices and react very differently this time.  Have the lead up and the moment of seeing these choices between various dichotomies within herself, and of it all being really neat because of what had gone before and what we all knew was to come.   Instead, boom "ok, you come face to face with the demon, it's the same one as before, you attack, you swing your sword, you kill it, yay you've succeeded in your goal."  It really felt like a lost opportunity.

[TonyLB]

Why not just say that if you haven't built up the issue to the extent you want it then it can't be time to resolve it yet?  That seems to be the answer to your second, disappointing encounter with the mystic symbols in a nutshell, doesn't it?

[beingfrank]

Why not just say that if you haven't built up the issue to the extent you want it then it can't be time to resolve it yet?  That seems to be the answer to your second, disappointing encounter with the mystic symbols in a nutshell, doesn't it?

Oh yes.  I guess I'm wondering how you support that.

[Callan S.]

Heya Tony,

It sounds like your using the straightforwardness of a cliche, so you can disengage from the first person and instead watch your character from first person.

Since it's a cliche, the character is just going to run down a very straightforward track. This doesn't require your mind to really be thinking at all...you can roleplay him without thinking here, like you can walk on flat ground without thinking about it.

This leaves you to just watch him being played out. Me thinks that's enjoying simulationism, but that's a side point. Basically instead of the normal rough ground of roleplaying where you have to think, you've engaged a cliche, a smooth bit of ground. Probably what happens normally is you think 'Oh, smooth ground, boring! Lets race on to the interesting rough ground!'.

Or not?