Drifting toward Narativism (AP)

[John Adams]

For background about our group, our system and what we're doing, see this thread.

As promised, here's a report of last night's session.

Overall, things went really well and everyone had more fun than usual. As planned, I didn't try to introduce the specific Nar techniques mentioned in the other thread but we got our feet wet with several other "supporting" techniques which helped a lot. If I had to take one lesson away from the experience so far, it would be this: Our Sim-by-habit group previously went to great lengths to avoid any metagame discussion. (Everything was driven by in-game causality.) Opening up frank metagame discussion with the players before, during and after play has dramatically improved our enjoyment of the game.

HIGH LEVEL GOALS: (as discussed with the group)

* Get more done.
* More focus on the game and less general fooling around during play.
* Eliminate minutia. Focus on what's important.
* Stronger emphasis on Character

TECHNIQUES: (new to us as of last night)

1) Round-robin narration. Each player narrated a scene in turn, with the GM handling transitions and some scene framing.
2) Player narration of results following TR. (FitM -- no teeth)
3) Set explict stakes for each challenge.


Let me share the email I sent to set this up.

============================

... First, we eliminate minutia. Call me on it. Is this really important? Is this challenge meaningful or just filler? Get on with the good stuff.

Another the major point that I took out of our discussion was that everyone expected and assumed that the GM is 99% responsible for the "Story". It's up to me to put you in situations that make your characters look cool, it's up to me to drive the plot, it's up to me to provide interesting, meaningful challenges.

That's typically how we play, whoever is behind the GM screen, and it works; but ...

1) I realized that on average, a given player only has the podium (actually speaking in character or narrating your actions) for about 5-10 minutes per 3-4 hour game session. Should we be surprised that it's hard to keep everyone involved and focused?

2) There are five very creative people at the table, not just one. We're missing out on a lot of fun, creative opportunities.

3) Good communication among the GM and players is critical, but no matter how well we communicate I can't be inside your head all the time. YOU know best what is fun for you, what is cool for your character, and what makes an interesting story.

So let's shake up our traditional roles a bit. We've had great success collaborating on your backstories, so the idea of a player adding content to the game isn't new. Paul and I fleshed out the Solari, he created the Magus Misteriorum, the Brotherhood of the Fallen and Blackbane were all Mark, and most of the main plot comes straight out of Vendal's background. Much of Fate's personality and cool comes from Ando.

Feel free *outside* of play to suggest any story idea, any plot device ... not just those which relate to your character. You and I will collaborate as we have been and I'll make sure the idea "fits" with the Big Picture. *During* play, I'd like you to suggest new challenges when an idea strikes you, driving the plot not just through your character's choices but also creating Situations which set up those choices. I also want all of you to take over a large part of the narration. It may take practice to work out the details, but here's a rough cut:

The narration role passes around the table so that everyone has the podium once per session. I will probably remind everyone of where we are in the story, then pass it off to Andy for example.

Andy: "OK, it's almost midnight on the night we rescued Leela and Kenlei is on watch. I'm standing at the edge of the camp looking out. Between the campfire and moonlight it's easy to see. I hear a noise in the camp and turn around as Leela walks up to me, still wrapped in her blanket. 'Can't sleep?' ... "

... and the scene continues from there. It's OK to create not only color (campfire, moonlight, noises) and props ("there is a big, flat rock we can sit on ...") but you can direct important NPCs in a general way and have them show up when you want to talk to them. You can create bit-part NPCs on the fly. My job will be to contradict you if you step on something critical to the plot or move an NPC in a way that defies his personality. If you declare that Corolan comes riding up on a horse I'll let you know that in fact, Tellarians don't ride horses and even so Corolan is 100's of miles away and rather busy at the moment. I don't expect to need to edit your descriptions often enough to be intrusive.

When narration involves a Challenge, we'll re-order things a bit. 1) realize this is, in fact a Challenge 2) set the stakes: win, lose or draw 3) roll the dice 4) the GM clarifies the results if needed 5) the player picks up the narration and describes the results.

Mark: "When you wake up in the morning you find Tusk has been awake for hours. I'm fully dressed and armored and the Sea Serpent's head is sitting in my lap while I clean it out."

Me: "OK, I can't wait to hear how you got that to the top of the cliff. Give me a Climb check, straight up. If you fail you still get to the top, but you had to find an easy, round-about path up the cliff face."

Mark: "Sure. A special success! I scaled that cliff like it was nothing, hundred-pound skull in one hand, climbed with the other. Didn't even need a rope."

Thus Mark gets to define Tusk's cool the way he sees it (which is certainly nothing like the example above) and the game mechanics keep everything in line. Notice he sets up a challenge for himself, something which highlights Tusk's cool.

So what shouldn't be OK? Well, for now, anything that pumps your character's Effectiveness or moves your story forward in a significant way is off limits. Eventually, I want you to be able to do both but you will need to spend something like Hero Points to do it. Finding a broken sword on a battlefield is fine if it's a prop. Finding a greatsword you can sell is not, nor is finding a quiver of arrows when you happen to be out. If Andy started his description with Kenlei and Leela all tangled up and naked, my objection would be that we missed out on the really interesting part, which is how they went from "thanks for saving me, Stranger!" to tangled up and naked. Likewise, you're not going to create a book that contains everything you need to know about the Unmade Beast. When you want to drive the plot in that direction, you CAN create a rumor that tells you where the Beast was last seen.

See the distinctions? Instead of saying "Tusk keeps looking suspiciously over his shoulder" and hoping I will take the hint and setup the Blackbane ambush, Mark could just tell me "When we get to Akyr it would be cool if Blackbane ambushed us." (Between sessions please, so I have a chance to prepare their stats.) Then I would make sure Mark was narrating when you got to Akyr and he would describe the when, where and how of the ambush.

This may be a little awkward at first and it will take practice but I think it will be a huge boon in the long run.

============================

Next post ... how all that really worked out in play.

[Valamir]

Looking forward to your next post.

Opening up frank metagame discussion with the players before, during and after play has dramatically improved our enjoyment of the game.

This, particularly the "during" part, is a topic of particular interest to me.  I'd love to hear more on how your previously Meta-adverse players took to it.

[John Adams]

(Hopefully) quick plot sysopsis:

The PC's are on a remote island a thousand miles from nowhere. After a long, difficult journey they finally found the island, slew the Sea Serpent and rescued the Girl. Five years ago the Girl was kidnapped and imprisoned on this island; shortly afterward blackmail instructions were delivered to the girl's mother. Mom is a wealthy and powerful politico back home who offered big bucks if the party can find her daughter and bring her home safely.

Bang #1: Who gets the girl, if anyone? Handed narration off to Andy, who punts. "We make small-talk." was the gist of it. He did a good job with color describing everyone making camp for the night, gathering food and wood, etc.

Transition: What's the plan? Paul's char (winged human race) needs to fly to where the ship is beeached on the other side of the island and tell them everyone is alive and well. How and when do they load the Serpent's corpus on the ship? How do they sneak a naive 19 year old beauty aboard ship without incident? Let Paul narrate flying and the meeting with the Captain. More good color but players are interrupting and interjecting ideas and suggestions, cracking jokes. Rather rude and breaks up the flow of the story. We'll work on it.

So far no one really went out on a limb to create Situation, but the party is up to its ears in GM-presented Situation already so that's not surprising. The players are catching on.

Bang #2: Do we loot the abandoned Chaotic Good Shrine? The party splits with the mages and ranger heading to the island's summit to see what that big source of magic might be. Turns out to be a Shrine to the God of Air. A huge stone Arc (as it Raiders of the Lost ...) catches their attention. The lid of the arc weighs a ton or more but there are poles and pull-rings. Alas the strong fighters are below at camp so the mages leave the Shrine alone for now and go back to camp.

Example of meta-game, during the game: During the fight with the serpent, one fighter's hand was crippled. The mage has a neat spell that puts one person in a cocoon of accelerated time, allowing very fast but natural healing. He cast it on the fighter in the morning an I let him know it would take 8 hours in the cocoon to heal the fighter's hand. Now it's clear the party will need to wait around for hours, so in the interest of getting things moving (metagame concern) the mage's player asks if we can agree that he cast the spell last night instead. This doesn't disrupt continuity much so I said sure and the mage released the fully-healed fighter as soon as he got back to camp.

Setup: Load up the carcass, sneak the girl on board. Gave narration to Mark and he really seemed to "get it." He wasn't bashful about directing where and how the NPC's acted and he played up how impressed the sailors were with the fighter's prowess. (Something I hadn't thought to do, if I had narrated the scene. Even if I had, it was much more effective coming from a player's perspective.) They sail back to the safe, sandy side of the island.

At this point I made some strong suggestions, bordering on Force. Andy later said they were "buffaloed." The impression in this case is what counts, so I'll leave it at that. I pressed these points: Do you want to go back to the Shrine? Do you want to stop for a day or half a day to forage more supplies for the long trip back? (Part of my plan, you see.) The players agreed to both.

Bang #2a: OK, NOW we loot the Shrine! This was a great bit of Premise I didn't expect. Andy and Paul strongly objected to raiding the Shrine. refused to go and swore off their share of any loot from it. The rest of the group went for it. This generated some great dialog.

Bang #3: Choose your Curse. Mark did another good narration of his super-strong fighter lifting the heavy stone lid. FitM worked really well here and his description meant more and did more for his character's cool than I ever could. Unfortunately for the PC's, the Shrine was guarded by a powerful servant of the Air God. They had no doubt it could smite them so they quickly put back the relics and agreed to accept a Penance.

This was my way of injecting a challenge with some Premise to it. The Air God values Free Will, so you get to choose:

A) whenever someone addresses you you must bow or kneel so that your head is lower than theirs
B) whenever you speak, it must be in the form of a question

So which would YOU choose? Which hurts your character's ego less? Bowing and scraping or sounding like a fool? The players liked this and got into the spirit of it immediately.

More metagame: rather than waste time experimenting, I flat out told them that each time they screwed up and forgot their Penance, they would get 5 points of damage (not much) to remind them. Knowing this up front helped the players accept the whole idea and get excited about it.

Bang #4: Where the #*$*$* is the ship?!?!? Returning to the beach, they find the ship long gone and Andy (who stayed behind) lying on the beach under a sleep spell. They revive Andy and Paul flies out to find the ship.

Cliffhanger: Paul confronts the villain alone aboard the ship. It's the First Mate, who explains he is Mom's Agent and his orders all along were to make sure the Girl came home safely and the PC's didn't come home at all. Mom doesn't want mercenaries running around who know all about her little blackmail scandal. Moreover, the First Mate gloats, Paul's mage is going to go back to the island without a fight because any other course of action makes it LESS likely the girl will get home. The First Mate is the ship's navigator and they are a thousand miles from nowhere. If the crew finds out there's a girl hiding aboard, things could get ugly. So just suck it up, turn around and be marooned.

Will Paul make a noble sacrifice to ensure the girl's safety or is it time for some payback? Tune in next week.

More Metagame: Today it was nice to offer a very open choice to the players: let the ship go and be marooned. Obviously you will get off the island and according to plan go to the next piece of the Big Picture OR take over the ship and drive the story any way you want, you can always catch up with the Big Picture later. I also laid out in a "set the stakes" way just what it would take to gain control of the ship. (Not easy.) In the past this situation could have led to all kinds of misunderstanding and arguments, now the players can make an informed choice about what is fun for them.

[Alan]

Hi John,

I gotta say it sounds like you manipulated the players into the most important plot event of session--the ship taking off while they raided the temple. That's not cricket if you want narratism.

It might have worked better if you had given various NPCs agendas that lead them to want the PCs to participate in their own plans. Rather than giving the PCs the (in my opinion) tepid opportunity to roleplay angst over looting a good temple, what if the ship's cleric wants them to help him relocate it while the captain wants to leave immediately? And  the Mate wants to recruit the PCs to dispose of the captain and go sell the girl to the family's rivals. The Captain wants the PCs to protect the girl's virginity so she can be married off in an arranged married. The girl wants out of the marriage, perhaps seducing a PC so she's no longer "worthy."

Play the NPCs, set the scenes, let the players actions and the die rolls determine how the plot unfolds.

[John Adams]

Alan, those are all cool ideas but they aren't the same kind of situation I wanted to create. Can you describe some techniques which would set up a "trusted NPC stabs you in the back" situation without manipulating the players?

It's worth mentioning that none of the players were very upset about the railroading, and they loved the twist. I'd like to keep that kind of situation in my toolbox. As long as they can make some meaningful choices every session, it should be OK to hit the PCs with something beyond their control right? In my experience the key is making it clear to the players that it's beyond their control so they don't waste time flailing at a no-win situation.

[Danny_K]

Speaking from my experience, I don't think one can have it both ways.  As long as you keep those Illusionist GM's tools in the game, it will send a powerful message to the players that the GM is ultimately running things.  There's nothing wrong with that, of course, you can have a lot of fun with that kind of play and spice it up with all the techniques you mentioned, but you can't get to full-bore Narr gaming that way. 

[Alan]

Alan, those are all cool ideas but they aren't the same kind of situation I wanted to create. Can you describe some techniques which would set up a "trusted NPC stabs you in the back" situation without manipulating the players?

Three ideas spring to mind:

1) Put the players in the position of choosing whether to backstab someone instead of the NPCs.

2) Hold the betrayal as something that can happen, if player-driven events produce the opportunity. Ron talks about preparing a "bandolier of bangs" as ammunition to give the players something to respond to. The key concept is that the GM does not create the opportunity. Instead, he or she lets play careen ahead however the player
s choose and holds the betrayal as one possible item to throw out. Of course, this means the event may never happen, but that's the nature of bangs.

3) Use it as a Kicker. With the player's agreement start the session with the character's marooned.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I'll have to agree with Alan, although I think he's trying to be too straightforward with quick off-the-shelf solutions. Your material here was mostly fine and similar to how I'd do it myself (although I find your penances aesthetically ridiculous, I'd put in something with moral weight; mileages vary). Let me give you a run-down of how I'd have handled the marooning thing:
- When the situation was established as "player characters have a ship with deceptive crew" through play, I'd get the idea: "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if they were marooned on some island?" I'd write it down for later use. I'd also think up other ways for the betrayal to come by: perhaps the crew could mutiny on the open sea in some clever manner, preferably over some real grievance?
- Later on, the characters are on this island and most of the group goes to the temple. While the rest are gone, put out the bang: the lone guard-PC is assaulted by the crew. Or perhaps the crew try to bribe him into joining them. Continue from there: if the PC manages to keep the ship from departing, well and good, as the game continues into judgement of the failed mutiny. If the PC fails, all the better, as he is now at least partially responsible.
The other option, by the way, is that I wouldn't have had the betraying First Mate specified beforehand: I could just decide during the session that having one could be cool. This latter technique is only OK, however, if no focus has been turned upon the crew previously. It's like unmapped territory: as long as the campaign hasn't touched on some particular place you can change it around as you wish, but when it is described, you should stick to what is said. It's the same way with the First Mate.

As you can see, I'd play it almost like you did, except I never go through the plot-affirmation phase in my planning, where I decide that this is what must happen. Instead, I'd just keep the Situation of  "unreliable crew" in mind, and throw it on the table when the opportunity presents itself. I also consider "Returning to the beach, they find the ship long gone and Andy (who stayed behind) lying on the beach under a sleep spell." to be the most open and cruel example of Force in your description: how come Andy was spelled to sleep, just like that? Extremely deprotagonizing, and rather useless, as far as I see: what's the point of taking the confrontation scene away from Andy and giving it to Paul, especially as the latter already was involved in a scene at the temple?

Well, that's that little bit. Not really game-breaking any way, we're just bitching about it for hygienic purposes: GMing is much, much easier if you don't try to mix certain techniques, like bangs and plot-control. Either do one or the other, unless you really know what you're doing. Speaking of which, could we get a bit more background: what kind of plans do you have for the overall plot of the campaign? Was it important to get the girl away from the PCs? Do you have any firm idea about the forces arrayed against the PCs and their motivations? Where do you see the moral failures in the backstory? What is the backstory, actually?

[John Adams]

Thank you all for the great feedback.

There seem to be at least two different approaches to Narativism at the Forge: this ...

A central idea to realize is that while we describe narrativism as "creating story cooperatively" this needs not have anything to do with a no-holds-barred storytelling fest. It is quite possible to "create story cooperatively" with players only controlling their characters and not having a whit of say over the NPCs, Setting or anything else. The narrativism comes from allowing player protagonism through the actions of their characters, not from some vaguely egalitarian freeform idea of "respecting other players' input" or whatever pussyfooting might be on the table.

and this ...

Speaking from my experience, I don't think one can have it both ways.  As long as you keep those Illusionist GM's tools in the game, it will send a powerful message to the players that the GM is ultimately running things.  There's nothing wrong with that, of course, you can have a lot of fun with that kind of play and spice it up with all the techniques you mentioned, but you can't get to full-bore Narr gaming that way. 

I think I lean toward the former.

Alan, your #1 and #3 don't allow for the players to be surprised, which was part of the payoff for that situation. Your #2 is very close to what actually happened. I had the betrayal floating around for the entire trip and looked for the best opportunity to spring it. Had the players emphatically wished to leave the island I would have let it drop, I just had the NPC make one last attempt to set them up and they took the bait.

- Later on, the characters are on this island and most of the group goes to the temple. While the rest are gone, put out the bang: the lone guard-PC is assaulted by the crew. Or perhaps the crew try to bribe him into joining them. Continue from there: if the PC manages to keep the ship from departing, well and good, as the game continues into judgement of the failed mutiny. If the PC fails, all the better, as he is now at least partially responsible ...

I also consider "Returning to the beach, they find the ship long gone and Andy (who stayed behind) lying on the beach under a sleep spell." to be the most open and cruel example of Force in your description: how come Andy was spelled to sleep, just like that? Extremely deprotagonizing, and rather useless, as far as I see: what's the point of taking the confrontation scene away from Andy and giving it to Paul, especially as the latter already was involved in a scene at the temple?

In hindsight this might have been an excellent solution, but it would have required different kinds of setup well in advance.

For reasons I won't print just yet the First Mate needs to match a certain profile (both abilities and personality) and that profile and the basics of the combat and magic system drive the way things went down. There is no way he could engage Andy's fighter directly and as he knows Andy is very vulnerable to magic, a sleep spell was the way to go. I agree it was deprotagonizing for Andy, but not for Paul. I like to keep the whole party is involved most of the time, but occasionally I want to spotlight one PC. Andy had a big role killing the Sea Serpent the previous week and Paul is often on the sidelines, so part of this is to get Paul more involved. Andy had the spotlight at the beginning of the session but he punted. In any case Andy accepted the sleep spell readily (he set his character up with a miserable saving throw, so he wasn't surprised when he failed); his objection was to being steered off the ship in the first place.

Speaking of which, could we get a bit more background: what kind of plans do you have for the overall plot of the campaign? Was it important to get the girl away from the PCs? Do you have any firm idea about the forces arrayed against the PCs and their motivations? Where do you see the moral failures in the backstory? What is the backstory, actually?

Whooo ... the backstory would fill more pages than I can type right now. I know exactly who is opposing the PC's and why. I know what the PCs have been working toward. The players do not know any of this yet. They are working as mercenaries doing jobs for one or more powerful patrons, some of whom have competing interests. The PCs have their own goals which weave in with the goals of certain patrons and run counter to others.

The girl's mother is one of those patrons. She wanted her daughter back, but she doesn't trust a bunch of mercs to keep her blackmail secret, so she sent the First Mate to make sure the PCs didn't come back from this trip. They had the info needed to save the girl, so the plan was to follow them to the island, let them defeat the Sea Serpent then dispose of them out in the middle of nowhere. Hence the girl needed to be on the ship and ideally the PCs needed to get off. Otherwise it was just the First Mate vs. five very dangerous adventurers and he didn't like those odds.

At least that's the way the First Mate presented it.

As for the PCs' goals, John wants to destroy the monster that killed his father, Paul wants the magical artifact the beast supposedly guards, Mark is out for loot and Andy mainly wants glory. All compatible enough. Defeating the beast and getting the artifact ties into the motivations of several patrons who will help or hinder the PCs along the way.

Fate plays a strong role in the story, which gets tricky with lots of PC freedom but it can be done. Ultimately, the players will decide how things go and how they end. I'm shooting for the feeling that a series of rather unlikely events leads the PCs where they need to be as the story unfolds. Getting marooned is one of those events and leads directly to one of the major pieces of the puzzle, but if they don't get marooned they can come back that piece later.

The main Premise of the campaign is Power. Can it be used for good or is it a necessary evil? is it even necessary? What moral obligation do the soldiers at the tip of the spear (the PCs) have, relative to the people directing or manipulating them? The Empire is based on the Premise that power should be used to protect the weak. Is that practical? desirable? where does it break down? Will that dream survive the death of the first Emperor?

The backstory is full of moral failures and questions. John is motivated by revenge. What won't he be willing to do to get it? Andy thinks he is the perfect killing machine, but who will he kill and why? Mark's character is just morally bankrupt, hooked on hedonism, drugs and loose women. Where is his conscience? Will he take a stand on anything? Paul is after knowledge which is a pure enough motive. One of the patrons is motivated by revenge and wants to destroy [censored]. Several patrons are motivated by a lust for power in various forms, others, like the girl's mother, by fear. Even the most selfless patrons may end up doing great harm with their good intentions.

Gotta run, but I'm thoroughly enjoying this exercise. It's so good to get a fresh perspective so I thank you all for your time and input. We're playing tonight so I'll let you know how Paul's confrontation played out soon.

[Eero Tuovinen]

There seem to be at least two different approaches to Narativism at the Forge: this ...

Very astute of you, John. What you're seeing is not a difference in Creative Agenda, theoretically speaking, but a difference in techniques and over-all setup. Just like we see huge differences in games catering to a simulationistic agenda (say, Call of Cthulhu versus Harn), there is plenty of leeway in setting up rules and practices that work efficiently for narrativistic purposes. In this case the difference in what we're advocating is largely between two technique sets called backstory setup and No Myth play. I'll define both a bit, because based on the other thread it seems you're kind of teetering between these, and it's good to recognize both as separate techniques before trying to combine them.

Backstory preparation: a narrativist game can have a strong GM and a backstory; games like Sorcerer, Dust Devils, Dogs in the Vineyard and The Shadow of Yesterday, to name a few, all either assume or advice backstory preparation. The idea is that there is a GM role, and the GM has responsibility for creating an in-game situation where the characters end up (in various ways; in some games it works best to create characters inside the situation, in others they come in as outsiders). During the game the GM is a neutral judge, but also plays any NPCs with passion and integrity towards any goals those NPCs might have, utilizing the full range of techniques allowed by the particular rules-set. The GM also makes sure that the backstory he created comes in play without undue delay.

The idea in backstory-type play is that the situation created by the GM is, in some manner, a moral void, requiring action by the PCs. The purpose is not for the GM to try to hide the backstory or try to keep mysteries from the players, but rather to unfurl the whole sordid sequence of sin and human weakness. The players, in their turn, symphasize and take sides as they will, ending up as moral actors and possible stakeholders in the situation. Ultimately the premise (which is what the moral void in the original backstory amounts to) will be addressed by the actions of the PCs.

Good backstory-type GMing is pretty simple, but there are some things to keep in mind:
- Create a good backstory: it should have a premise, in other words, and plenty of leeway for players to make choices. Without premise the backstory has no narrativistic relevance.
- During play, do not play story: your backstory should be just events that have already transpired, that are past and done. During play you should utilize bangs, play NPCs according to their nature and frame scenes where the players find out the backstory, to allow them to properly act. If you mess in with your own plot, you interfere with players making weighty decisions.
- Do not hold back the backstory: throw the backstory out in a pleasant, movie-like manner. This is not mystery play, where the main character spends 80% of the movie out of it, while side characters mutter mysterious references. You should not wait until the last scene to show and tell the players what it was all about. This is deprotagonizing, because without information, there cannot be informed action. Without informed action, there cannot be protagonism. Therefore, give them the backstory and let them be the judges.

No Myth: a narrativist game can be played without a backstory and a strong GM, as well: games like InSpectres, Under the Bed, My Life with Master and Polaris all begin with a very simple precept: ultimately only things that have been established at the table, among the group, are true of the fiction. The GM might have preparation or ideas, if there even is a GM, but ultimately what is true and what is false is all up to the rules system and the players. InSpectres, for example, has players solve a supernatural mystery: the GM gives the initial situation (ghosts at the mall, or something like that), but the players will via play define what is actually happening, while their characters find out this player-created backstory (the mall is built on an indian burial ground, or whatever). In this manner, nothing is true until it is established in play.

The idea here, narr-wise, is to harness the whole group into creating premise-laden situations. Because players often have a unique viewpoint into their characters, they can be complicit in setting up situations where the characters become very powerful thematic entities. Likewise, No Myth play can respond very quickly to shifts in group mood, as backstory preparation can be thrown out and replaced as necessary.

Now, I'm explaining all this in detail because some of the advice you've been given have been very No Myth in kind. Also, some of the ideas you've tinkered with yourself (like those vague "players should be able to define setting" thougths) are of this type, so I thought it useful to make the distinction clear. It's not like you can't use both types of techniques in one game, they're not incompatible (withing common sense, of course); however, they are independent in the sense that you can play in a completely narrativistic manner utilizing only backstory or only No Myth, you don't need to have both. In other words, you don't have to let go of backstory and primarily GM-defined setting just because you want narrativism.

Alan, your #1 and #3 don't allow for the players to be surprised, which was part of the payoff for that situation. Your #2 is very close to what actually happened. I had the betrayal floating around for the entire trip and looked for the best opportunity to spring it. Had the players emphatically wished to leave the island I would have let it drop, I just had the NPC make one last attempt to set them up and they took the bait.

Did you hint about the betrayal to the players? Did you frame the suggestion to go to the temple through the First Mate, or did you suggest it as the GM?

Again, for pedagogical purposes, let's see how I'd have handled a traitorous first mate: whenever it would have seemed interesting and relevant, I would have had the first mate do something traitorous. Possibly a character could overhear him explaining his plot to somebody else, or simply, the first hint would be when he suggested the temple-raid. Either case, I would declare to the players that the first mate is planning betrayal, and called for system-appropriate conflict over whether the characters figure/find it out. (It very much depends on system whether characters have good or bad chances, or chances at all, for figuring something like this out.) If they fail, I have a free hand to set up a most brutal betrayal, because we have established that the characters trust in the first mate. If they succeed, we can frame a situation where they catch him, or the succeeding character can simply realize the situation and refuse to walk into the trap.

For reasons I won't print just yet the First Mate needs to match a certain profile (both abilities and personality) and that profile and the basics of the combat and magic system drive the way things went down. There is no way he could engage Andy's fighter directly and as he knows Andy is very vulnerable to magic, a sleep spell was the way to go. I agree it was deprotagonizing for Andy, but not for Paul.

Deprotagonization = bad, generally speaking; also, it's not necessarily the GM's job to make sure everybody gets equal amounts of protagonism. This is especially problematic from a narrativistic perspective, because by setting up "heroic" situations for characters without letting them earn it, you're actually taking away a part of the protagonism. But that's a side-note.

More relevantly, the above description makes me wonder: is your fighty system somehow more interesting and protagonizing than your magicky system? Because it seems like spelling Andy to sleep was somehow a foregone conclusion, while a fight would have actually been a real conflict. Did you use the rules-system for spelling Andy to sleep, or did you just skip over it and declare it as part of scene framing when the others came back?

Again, my reflection: if Andy plays a character that is vulnerable to magic, and the first mate has been established as a mage, then there is no deprotagonization in the latter overcoming the former via fair rules utilization. As a GM I would have no compuction about overcoming a character ruthlessly in this manner, assuming that I trusted the rules to be fair and reasonable. A good narrativistic rules system allows the GM to just play all NPCs to their potential, not worrying about whether he is being fair to a given player.

Whooo ... the backstory would fill more pages than I can type right now. I know exactly who is opposing the PC's and why. I know what the PCs have been working toward. The players do not know any of this yet. They are working as mercenaries doing jobs for one or more powerful patrons, some of whom have competing interests. The PCs have their own goals which weave in with the goals of certain patrons and run counter to others.

Do the PCs know what they are working toward? No? How disappointing, from a player's perspective. Speaking only for myself, I know that I as a player would flat-out ignore the overarching "big plot", preferring immediate small-scale events, if the former was kept away from me. It is all completely irrelevant to my play-experience as a player as long as the GM opts to keep me in the dark.

Then again, that is not a problem if you don't mind the small-scale stuff taking center stage. Many GMs seem to enjoy the idea that there is big stuff happening in the background, even if it has nothing to do with the current session, or the next one, or even the one after that one. As long as it all stays in the GMs head, it has nothing to do with the actual practice of play.

However, in this case it seems that your big plot is leaking into the everyday events, as you feel it necessary to make the First Mate into a certain kind of character and want to force certain plot events to go through (like the characters getting stranded, say). In my experience this is a prime signal that, psychologically speaking, you should let yourself out of the mousetrap and reveal your big plot to the players via some well-chosen bangs. Then you could start actually playing with your players concerning the events of the big plot, instead of playing temple lootings and forcing the big plot forward on the side. That's my idea, anyway.

The girl's mother is one of those patrons. She wanted her daughter back, but she doesn't trust a bunch of mercs to keep her blackmail secret, so she sent the First Mate to make sure the PCs didn't come back from this trip. They had the info needed to save the girl, so the plan was to follow them to the island, let them defeat the Sea Serpent then dispose of them out in the middle of nowhere. Hence the girl needed to be on the ship and ideally the PCs needed to get off. Otherwise it was just the First Mate vs. five very dangerous adventurers and he didn't like those odds.

Huh, that sounds completely innocuous to me! Why the secrecy and railroading? That kind of backstory seems ripe for all kinds of exciting turns if you just allowed them to happen. I'd imagine that the players would enjoy the events in a much more visceral manner if they had the same background knowledge that us in the audience possess: getting stranded out on an island because a cunning lieutenant of a powerful patron doublecrossed you sounds fine to me, but only if I knew why.

Speaking of which: to make the above backstory interesting narr-wise, I suggest adding some real motivation to the mother. "Not trusting the PCs" is lame IMO. If she knew one of the PCs from before, then perhaps, but otherwise that seems like the kind of psycho-acting that rpg characters are usually prone to when a GM is trying to force a plot. The problem is that psychoing is not good for thematically poweful stories, because there is nothing interesting in a character that acts "just because". For example, if the mother loved her daughter very much, but had some outré political reason to hide the sea serpent episode from her rivals (I don't know, perhaps she sacrificed the daughter to the serpent in some bizarro cult proceedings in the first place), then it would be reasonable to murder the PCs on the side. Or if she used to be a scorned lover of one of the PCs, then she could decide to get two flies with one strike, or something like that. Anything but vague "suspicion".

At least that's the way the First Mate presented it.

Ah hah, secret stories, mysteries within mysteries, all waiting in the GM's head for the eventual big reveal... doobledum.

Fate plays a strong role in the story, which gets tricky with lots of PC freedom but it can be done. Ultimately, the players will decide how things go and how they end. I'm shooting for the feeling that a series of rather unlikely events leads the PCs where they need to be as the story unfolds. Getting marooned is one of those events and leads directly to one of the major pieces of the puzzle, but if they don't get marooned they can come back that piece later.

Are you really saying that Fate as a in-fiction force is involved? Because I've played a couple of nar-games that were so, and they've always had a major theme along the lines of "Fate cannot be resisted." or "Everybody makes his own fate." Conflicts directly against fate have also been par for the course, as well as characters agonizing or trying to change their fate after finding out what it is.

What I mean by this is that Fate seems like a cop-out to me, there is no reason to call GM Force that, unless you're willing to let characters know about Fate and interact with it.

The backstory is full of moral failures and questions. John is motivated by revenge. What won't he be willing to do to get it? Andy thinks he is the perfect killing machine, but who will he kill and why? Mark's character is just morally bankrupt, hooked on hedonism, drugs and loose women. Where is his conscience? Will he take a stand on anything? Paul is after knowledge which is a pure enough motive. One of the patrons is motivated by revenge and wants to destroy [censored]. Several patrons are motivated by a lust for power in various forms, others, like the girl's mother, by fear. Even the most selfless patrons may end up doing great harm with their good intentions.

Oh, noticed a question from before:

It's worth mentioning that none of the players were very upset about the railroading, and they loved the twist. I'd like to keep that kind of situation in my toolbox. As long as they can make some meaningful choices every session, it should be OK to hit the PCs with something beyond their control right? In my experience the key is making it clear to the players that it's beyond their control so they don't waste time flailing at a no-win situation.

Of course group harmony is the first requirement of good play, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee it: in my experience it is very common for players to get "shell-shocked" by "bad" play practices, leading them into all manners of less-fun expectations. Players schooled in this manner might be quite pliable for anything the GM thinks up, but that doesn't mean that the GM should do anything those other players allow. I'm not saying anything about your group here (they seem rather skilled, in fact), just noting that group concensus does not justify GM abuse.

As for the actual question, yes, things outside PC control are rather fine in narrativistic mode. However, there are ways of doing it:
- If a circumstance is in-genre or simply too cool, you can just frame into it. In this case the other players should have the choice of demanding re-do, though, if they disagree with you. But in principle, if the players find it obvious that the next scene has to be about a PC in captivity or whatever, then just jump directly there.
- If a circumstance is genuinely out of PC control, go ahead and do it. For example, in most systems with a GM the GM can frame in a big storm whenever he finds it appropriate, with little the players can do to stop him. So if you wanted to throw in a storm and let the players struggle with it, that's completely kosher.
- If a circumstance could be controlled by the PCs, like getting marooned or some such, the trick is to first have a conflict over whether the PCs in actual fact can control it. You can have this conflict happen far in advance of the actual situation, too, like in my example of rolling about figuring out the first mate's betrayal earlier in the journey: as the first mate is behind the marooning, figuring out his dishonesty will, by extension, also resolve whether PCs are marooned or not.

You'll note that the above parameters have nothing to do with "how much" you use "circumstances outside PC control". The proper gauge is to simply divide any ideas you have into "stuff the players should have a say in" and "stuff the players can't reasonably affect" and "stuff the players could prevent, but have no reason to". Actually, that's a good formal technique: sit down and break your plot into those three categories; use the first category for interesting conflicts, second category for scene framing and the third for bangs. In my experience there is no pre-prepared plot that can't be made more exciting by breaking it down and inserting it as interactive situations instead of GM-narration.

I have a feeling that I'm being too pushy about advicing you, so hopefully I'm not annoying here. Keep in mind that I'm just lecturing about "established Forge wisdom concerning narrativistic play", not about how you should run your own game. The way you handled the marooning incident smacks of GM Force, but if you don't mind using Force as a component of your play, feel free. You're the man on the ground, after all.

[Alan]

That's a great post, Eero!

John, one thing I want to draw attention to is that narrativist play requires a different distribution of authority that you seem to be used to. Don't mistake freeform for a narrativist-supporting environment. Narrativist play of either approach (backstory or no myth) requires a strong set of rules and a distribution of authority for putting facts into play. Specificially, narrativism requires a mechanism which gives players strong influence over the revelation of plot events. In many game designs, the dice roll (or card draw) actually determines whether a plot event is revealed to the characters, and both the GM and the players must use that system. You can see this in some of Eero's examples.

Ron wrote some great posts a while back on the different varieties of authority and how they can be distributed. I found it very enlightening and I urge you to read Ron's posts in this thread:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=20791.0"

[John Adams]

I ran across the "Silent Railroading" thread but I hadn't read the whole thing, nor did I realize just how relevent it was to my current situation. Thank you Alan!

My thesis, essentially, is that the desire to see a predetermined outcome in the future makes a player withdraw from making meaningful contributions to the game.

This sums up what I was feeling before I came to the Forge. Players weren't engaged in the "Big Plot". I wanted to get them more involved ... I guess I have my answer!

And Eero, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to write such long and thoughtful responses. It's great to have an "outside" perspective on my game. Our group has been very insulated for decades, new ideas are exactly what we need.

Obviously, I've done a lot of backstory prep already so that's the way we're headed. We've never tried No Myth so I can't say if any of us would prefer it. I am encouraging the players to contribute to the Setting, but in a way that is very integrated with the existing backstory, not in a "create as you go" sense.

The bit I'm still hung up on is mystery. I like surprising my players, my players seem to like it too; but I agree that it disengages players from the backstory if they don't know what it is. There's also the standard author's dilemma: large blocks of exposition are just plain dull. How do you work them into the story without grinding the story to a halt? So the key point here is how soon is "soon" when it comes to introducing important plot elements? My players need to see more of the Big Picture now.

As you wrote:

In my experience this is a prime signal that, psychologically speaking, you should let yourself out of the mousetrap and reveal your big plot to the players via some well-chosen bangs. Then you could start actually playing with your players concerning the events of the big plot, instead of playing temple lootings and forcing the big plot forward on the side.

I came to that same conclusion without thinking of it in precisely those terms. Just before I read your response, I sent a major reveal to my players via email. (Details below.)

Did you hint about the betrayal to the players? Did you frame the suggestion to go to the temple through the First Mate, or did you suggest it as the GM?

The Mate all but insisted the ship land and take on supplies for the journey home. The PCs gave in to that. As Andy pointed out last night he didn't think it was an important decision, his attitude was "let's just sail and get on with it." As long as taking on supplies took very little real time he didn't object. That was the source of his confusion and where he felt GM-force.

Once they were ashore, as the GM I asked if anyone was going back to the temple and if anyone was helping the crew forage. I
would do this in any case, just to dispel confusion about the players intentions and remind them that the temple was up there and if they wanted to go, NOW was the time to tell me, not 15 minutes from now when we get ready to sail again.

Andy was OK with the Sleep spell, though he felt it was too powerful an effect for a not-very-powerful-mage like Kagen (the First Mate). This is the first time anyone has been hit with a Sleep effect. The magic system and combat system are both well defined, interesting and protagonizing. Paul is a pure mage and he nuked the bejeezus out of Kagen in mage vs fighter combat, all handled by the rules. The important thing to realize is that all powerful magic effects require 1-2 rounds of combat to cast and are easily interruptable, so a mage in melee isn't getting off a powerful spell. At range though ... whoo boy. Hence the First Mate needed surprise to spring the Sleep spell on Andy. Andy got a saving throw (20%?) and failed. If he had succeeded I would have told him Kagen cast a spell on him and it would have been clobberin time.

Likewise Paul had a chance to notice the ship preparing to depart. He was about a mile away gathering food. He also bombed, so no reaction from him. The others were 5 miles away at the temple and had no chance to know what was happening.

... setting up "heroic" situations for characters without letting them earn it, you're actually taking away a part of the protagonism.

I'm intrigued. What do you mean by "letting them earn" "heroic situations"? How was presenting Paul with the classic "catch the villain or save the girl" dilamma deprotagonizing? or do I mistake your meaning?

... whenever it would have seemed interesting and relevant, I would have had the first mate do something traitorous. Possibly a character could overhear him explaining his plot to somebody else, or simply, the first hint would be when he suggested the temple-raid. Either case, I would declare to the players that the first mate is planning betrayal, and called for system-appropriate conflict over whether the characters figure/find it out. (It very much depends on system whether characters have good or bad chances, or chances at all, for figuring something like this out.) If they fail, I have a free hand to set up a most brutal betrayal, because we have established that the characters trust in the first mate. If they succeed, we can frame a situation where they catch him, or the succeeding character can simply realize the situation and refuse to walk into the trap.

Spooky. Andy suggested exactly this last night. My only objection is that surprising the players provided a nice payoff for all of us. I'm not sure it was worth the cost though. Certainly the players would be more engaged in the story doing it this way.

What I mean by this is that Fate seems like a cop-out to me, there is no reason to call GM Force that, unless you're willing to let characters know about Fate and interact with it.

Fate is definitely a force in the fiction, more on the "make your own Fate" side of things. Fate may be guiding them, but the choices are theirs.

Of course group harmony is the first requirement of good play, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee it: in my experience it is very common for players to get "shell-shocked" by "bad" play practices, leading them into all manners of less-fun expectations. Players schooled in this manner might be quite pliable for anything the GM thinks up, but that doesn't mean that the GM should do anything those other players allow. I'm not saying anything about your group here (they seem rather skilled, in fact), just noting that group concensus does not justify GM abuse.

Precisely why Andy, who has the least experience playing with me, is the one who raised an objection. Touche!

Ah hah, secret stories, mysteries within mysteries, all waiting in the GM's head for the eventual big reveal... doobledum.

Queue a synopsis of last night.

Paul decided to save the girl AND catch the villain and was willing to risk sailing home without a navigator. (I laid out the exact stakes prior to the game so he knew exactly what he faced either way.)

Kagen had told the crew the PCs were planning to mutiny, which was how he convinced the crew to maroon them. He had 6 crew members loyal only to him. Paul starts to cast, Kagen breaks LOS by running into the captain's cabin. At this point, the crew is confused but the 6 loyal to Kagen ready crossbows. Paul takes cover and talks to the Chief of the Boat. He convinces him that Kagen lied and the PCs mean them no harm. The Chief guarantees Paul's safety until they can sort this out with the Captain. Unfortunately, Kagen just killed the Captin in his cabin. (Read on, hopefully this will all make sense later ...) While the Chief is aloft talking to Paul Kagen heads below deck and starts sabotaging the ship. The Chief and Paul head toward the captain's cabin, the Chief discovers the captain's body and the 6 crossbowmen open fire. Paul is badly hurt and a general melee  breaks out between the rest of the crew and the 6 with crossbows. Kagen hears the row and comes up to help his boys take control of the ship. He doesn't see Paul behind him and 1 round later, ZOT! Kagen goes down badly injured. The fight ends quickly after that and the Chief gets control of the boat.

They sail back to the island, explain the situation and turn Kagen over to Mark, who is more than happy to practice his Torture skill. (See the results below.)

Acting captain Andy sets sail for home, aided by the Chief. Per the stakes I set out before hand they must pass 2 or 3 tests.

1) Seamanship. Fail and you wreck on the shoals.
2) Navigation. Fail and you reach the mainland but far from any civilization ...
3) If you fail #2, make a Leadership test. Fail and the crew deserts, leaving you stuck far from home.

Well, they failed the first roll and wrecked the ship on a shoal 100's of miles from any appreciable land. Now they're stuck on an atol. Time for Plan B. The set a signal fire and are rescued by a ship from a rival nation, just as they would have been had they been marooned in the first place. Now they are headed to that ship's home port in the rival nation which they know is near where John's monster was seen, and possibly near the artifact Paul wants.

Here's the email I sent them with the "big reveal". This is about 1/3 of what's going on. This would have been much better had we played it out last night. I gave them about 1/4 of this during play, none of the best stuff. After thinking about it overnight, I decided the players had handed me a golden opportunity to give them a big slice of the backstory.

CAST:

John = Vendal, Thief/Mage
Mark = Tusk, Brigand
Paul = Endymion, Mage
Andy = Kenlei, Warrior

Kagen = the treacherous First Mate
Bonham = Captain of their ship
Leela = the girl they rescued
Veronica = Lady of Vale, Leela's mother
Ruulshan = another mage, died of a heart attack

Great job with the torture scene, Mark. Tusk has me a little creeped out and that's a good thing. =)

We should have set the stakes before making the torture roll. You caught me a bit off guard and I didn't want to give away too much. The stakes should have been something like ... Lose: he won't talk, Draw: He gives up some information, Win: he sings like a bird.

You won the test, so here ya go:


* Kagen was a member of the Ghostknives, the same group that set you up in Vale and wanted you to deliver the blank blackmail note. They were trying to recruit Vendal, but he didn't play along. Naturally before they recruited him they wanted to get his hands dirty.

* The Ghostknives all serve one man: a powerful human mage named Malbolge. (Hence the "M" signet on the letters.) Kagen couldn't tell you much about him; he's a shadowy figure with a powerful presence. No one knows about his past, where he's from or what he wants. Kagen suspected Malbolge is very powerful and utterly ruthless. He feared him greatly.

* Kagen became a Ghostknife to learn magic and the ancient Way of Kur Tai, the dual dagger technique he used to flay Captain Bonham.

* They do not worship Sith, the Skull and Crescent is the symbol of the Ghostknives ... it's just a coincidence that it's similar to some holy symbols of Sith.

* Malbolge engineered the whole blackmail plot. The Ghostknives kidnapped Leela and delivered her to Ruulshan who created the cage and flew her to the island. Ruulshan kept an eye on her for 5 years hoping she would agree to marry him and had no idea who the Ghostknives were or that they blackmailing Lady Veronica. If anyone found out about the blackmail, Ruulshan would take the fall. Unfortunately, the old man died, which means the blackmail had to end.

* Thanks in large part to you, Veronica believes she was being blackmailed by Ruulshan. Somehow Malbolge knows this. He has Ghostknife spies in many important places or maybe he learned it using magic.

* Malbolge wants the whole blackmail incident to go away quietly. He doesn't want to tangle directly with Veronica or the Lords of Vale, at least not yet. He's happy to let Veronica think Ruulshan was behind the blackmail and figures she will just cover it up. No sense taking revenge on a dead man.

* Veronica did NOT order your death. Malbolge wanted you dead because you know about the blackmail and you might talk. That's why Kagen killed the captain: if he could get Leela home, great, it makes it more likely Veronica will cover up the whole thing. If not, at least make sure all of you die. Without a captain or navigator there was little chance of you getting home.

* Kagen told you Veronica ordered your death so that if you somehow escaped from the island and returned to Galadon you would seek revenge against Veronica. Either you kill her and run from the Law or she kills you and covers it up. Either way, the blackmail issue is buried.

* Kagen started working for Veronica 4 years ago in order to spy on her and make sure she carried out her blackmail instructions. He was the mole in her household that you suspected. She trusted him as one of her best agents. Veronica did order Kagen to sail with you and make sure Leela got home safely.

* You have a detailed description of the blackmail itself: who Veronica influenced, how and why. In a nutshell she influenced the Lords of Vale to limit the power of the Temple of Terra in Vale and work against the Noble Orders in general. In particular she organized a coalition to oppose the Edict of Succession which requires that the next Emperor be a member of the Noble Orders.

* You get the impression that Kagen didn't give a damn about these political maneuvers, he was just following orders. Malbolge on the other hand *loaths* the Noble Orders for some reason.

[Eero Tuovinen]

The bit I'm still hung up on is mystery. I like surprising my players, my players seem to like it too; but I agree that it disengages players from the backstory if they don't know what it is. There's also the standard author's dilemma: large blocks of exposition are just plain dull. How do you work them into the story without grinding the story to a halt? So the key point here is how soon is "soon" when it comes to introducing important plot elements? My players need to see more of the Big Picture now.

Ah hah, now here's a question with far from obvious answers. In effect, we're progressing out of "I'm just telling you what we've figured out" here, as there are several viewpoints, active development and unsolved theoretical mysteries around the whole mystery thing. (Mystery, you see, is really just a codeword that signifies some heavy shit over such disparate subject sets as narration pacing, player control, backstory preparation and so on.) Yeah, this is a long-winded way of saying that you should take me with even larger grains of salt about this.

Now, a rather widespread viewpoint is that while mystery is fun and narrativism is fun, those are two great flavors that are not so great together. The reason for this viewpoint is pretty simple to explain, and I did touch on it before: players need information, simply put, to make any kind of informed decisions. And informed decisions are all but mandatory to create stories with strong theme, because the only theme you can establish as a non-informed player is that "my character X, presenting the memes of x1, x2 and so on, proves completely inadequate in dealing with the situation at hand." To clarify with an example, pretty much the best narrativistic play you can make as the player of Frodo who knows nothing about the secret plot is to let your character break down and go seek Gandalf in the hopes of getting him to guide you to what is right and just. That way you have just answered the premise of "What can the humble people of earth do against the forces of darkness?" with the theme of "Let the smart and the powerful lead the way." Of course, at that point it is unclear whether it is narrativism at all, because you have very little choice as the player about it. More fundamentally, when the above choice repeats again and again, you're just replaying the same circle of looking for info and getting blocked by the GM who is often operating on an entirely different time-scale! In my experience it is extremely common that players expect and seek rewarding play on a per-session basis while GMs are quite content to let their large-scale plots concoct slowly, over weeks, months and even years of real time. Often this results in less-fun play as the GM and the players are expecting different rewards. (I imagine this is because the GM is not the one who has to sit without knowing what's going on.)

OK, so where's the unsolved unclarity here? It is in the definition of Mystery: if we understand Mystery as "backstory I the GM haven't divulged yet", then it would be far, far too strongly put to claim that the best narrativistic play would be gained by as little mystery as possible. I think we can all agree that it wouldn't be a particularly efficient GMing tactic to write down your whole backstory into a couple of sheets and making the players read it before you begin play. Sure, this is very close to how some No Myth games operate (Alyria springs to mind, as well as Polaris), but it's not an universal panacea of narrativism: delivering the backstory in one clump is one-way fiat (you're sitting down to play and first start by memorizing something one of the players wrote, what's up with that?) that lacks dramatic interest (I know that I tend to doze off when reading ready-made adventure scenarios, and I always fail to remember the details later), often resulting in great difficulty in connecting characters into the situation; the characters rarely know everything in the backstory even if players do, so the character viewpoint suffers easily as well.

The logical conclusion from the above is that Mystery is useful for narrativism as a pacing device: at least in a traditional roleplaying context with traditional players it seems to be much more interesting to provide the backstory and overall situation via the age-old techniques of narration, pacing the output and making it interactive for the players. So instead of telling the player flat out that the wife of his character is having an affair, you frame a scene where the character finds his wife at it with the neighbor's son. Instead of telling the players that there is a pirate treasure buried somewhere, you frame a scene where an old pirate tells them. Couching your backstory into immediately current play activity gives the players lots of context and unpredictable material that is specifically the thing that makes creativity go. This context for backstory-delivery is so important that I'm going to use a capital C in it from now on. It is the Context where you present the backstory, along with how you Pace it, that ultimately creates the drama: if my character finds the wife in a compromising situation, he might be willing to listen to explanations, depending on the exact Context. If my character hears about the pirate treasure from an old pirate, it is a different thing than getting the same info from the crown official. It's all in the Context. Likewise, Pacing: if I at first get a suspicion that the wife might be cheating, then get proof, then find out that she's doing it out of compassion, the story will be completely different from the story where there is no Pacing at all. Many great stories are all about Pacing, I doubt you'd get much anything out of the Situations in most Shakespeare plays if the first scene had all the characters present and knowledgeable of all the context that goes into the tragedy between them.

(I'm going to completely skip the In-Character, Out-of-Character thing for now. It seems that you don't have any particular problems or hang-ups with that.)

So, my call for the immediate present is that you should forget the whole concept of "mystery" for a bit and start thinking in terms of Pacing and Context, instead; do not think about what you need to keep from the players to ensure that the game is not too fast, but rather start thinking about stylish and fun ways of making reveals. Traditional GMs are often very accomplished in stonewalling and keeping Mysteries from the players, while their skills in Pacing and Context are rather rusty: if you focus more on separating your backstory into suitable Bangs (which is what Pacing and Context boils down to!), you'll soon find that there are actually very natural, established ways of delivering backstory in our cultural story heritage. Much of what we're used to thinking as "drama" is actually just a protagonist finding some new bit of crucial info on the backstory. I'm reminded of what's that movie, Minority Report, where the protagonist after some investigation finds out that actually, one of the three psychics controlling crime investigation in the city has been having different visions from the other two, implying that future is not fixed after all. Drama: he finds out he's been lied to. Context: the people who tell him are rebels, so he as a cop might find them suspicious. Pacing: instead of telling this stuff right off, the movie takes half its time in defining milieu and characters. Theme: it is possible that he, the cop, has been complicant in convicting innocent people for years.

(I should also note that Mystery can have other meanings and uses in roleplaying, including narrativism. We currently actually have several games that are specifically mystery games, their granddaddy being InSpectres. You might want to check out some of those for some ways of structuring play specifically on information revelation. It is an ultimately different genre from fantasy adventure, but instructive all the same.)

Also, one addition: when you stop doing Mystery and start doing Pacing and Context, you might find that play speeds up. This is natural, not because of these tools, but because most roleplaying is traditionally done on a very slow and uncomfortable gear (gear suitable for the GM, as I intimate above). What you will inevitably face is the phenomenon of conclusion, which seems to be rather the rare beast in many long-running campaigns. My slightly off-topic advice: embrace conclusion, do not run away from it. When players have all the backstory in their paws and they have made firm resolutions over any conflicts present (between characters or between a character and the rest of the setting), do not hesitate to go forth into a couple of climatic scenes where you resolve the final fate of the storyline. You can always continue on to new stories with the same characters, if the characters still hold interest after resolving the current story. There is no reason to hold the players from resolving when they are ready.

(The above paragraph is there mainly because pretty many old-timers seem to have trouble with the idea of a short or at least limited-length game. In contrast, from my own experience it seems that well over half of the roleplaying games I play nowadays are 1-2 sessions long. This year I've played, what, two campaigns of The Shadow of Yesterday and one campaign of Primetime Adventures, everything else has been short-term. Nothing to fear in that, as long as it happens because that's where you're most comfortable.)

The Mate all but insisted the ship land and take on supplies for the journey home. The PCs gave in to that. As Andy pointed out last night he didn't think it was an important decision, his attitude was "let's just sail and get on with it." As long as taking on supplies took very little real time he didn't object. That was the source of his confusion and where he felt GM-force.

Yeah, this is most likely where the Force is. You can see yourself how difficult it is for an accomplished GM to even think of it as Force, but misleading your players about the significance of a given decision is a very common illusionistic technique. You're effectively giving yourself a smoke screen that justifies stranding the players later with the dubious logic of "it was their own decision to go to resupply, it was their own decision to go to the temple, of course I can strand them". Of course, if they trust their crew, the players are going to do whatever you say they need to, to keep from some stupid starvation problems later.

Again, to reflect how I'd handle similar content:
- Starvation on the open seas: if I wanted such a thing to even be a consideration, it would be a pretty routine skill check for whoever is responsible of supplies. Alternatively, somebody could sabotage the supplies, giving a very concrete and dramatic reason for why something as stupid as starving is happening in the first place. And, of course, there is the possibility of getting stranded/lost on the seas for some reason, in which case normal supplies are going to run out anyway.
- Supplying: you know, as the GM I wouldn't even ask the players whether they're going to resupply. Either they have enough supplies or they don't, and if they don't, they're obviously going to get some. This is a prime example of the aggressive scene framing I've mentioned a couple of times: there is nothing stopping you as the GM from just saying that "OK, next you go back to the island to resupply for the trip home. While you're here and the crew is loading water caskets, anything in particular you'd want to do?" Or I could get even more aggressive: "OK, you go to resupply for the trip home. While you're at the island, the first mate betrays you all and leaves without you. Want a conflict? Oh, OK, it's his Cunning against your combined Perceptiveness!"
- Setting up the treachery: well, I've touched on this several times. The main principle is that in my play there would at some point or another have to be a conflict resolution sequence of some kind between the first mate and the characters. One would be enough, and it would define who has the upper hand in setting the other party up. Something like leaving the characters stranded could be a matter of announcement after it has been established that the first mate managed to get the characters to trust himself: "OK, as you all trust first mate, there's no reason to not leave the ship. While you're on the island he leaves, stranding you there."

Anyway, we've probably twiddled with this one bit enough. I'm sure you get it why we're concentrating on it like a pack of rapid wolverines.

Andy was OK with the Sleep spell, though he felt it was too powerful an effect for a not-very-powerful-mage like Kagen (the First Mate). This is the first time anyone has been hit with a Sleep effect. The magic system and combat system are both well defined, interesting and protagonizing. Paul is a pure mage and he nuked the bejeezus out of Kagen in mage vs fighter combat, all handled by the rules. The important thing to realize is that all powerful magic effects require 1-2 rounds of combat to cast and are easily interruptable, so a mage in melee isn't getting off a powerful spell. At range though ... whoo boy. Hence the First Mate needed surprise to spring the Sleep spell on Andy. Andy got a saving throw (20%?) and failed. If he had succeeded I would have told him Kagen cast a spell on him and it would have been clobberin time.

Yeah, this part seems to be Force-free to me. The Force has been supplied earlier, allowing you to set up the situation.

... setting up "heroic" situations for characters without letting them earn it, you're actually taking away a part of the protagonism.

I'm intrigued. What do you mean by "letting them earn" "heroic situations"? How was presenting Paul with the classic "catch the villain or save the girl" dilamma deprotagonizing? or do I mistake your meaning?

Well, I might be mistaken, but the notion is that in certain kinds of narrativist games (namely, the ones with heavy emphasis on textured Exploration of fictional space-time) a part of protagonism is the mettle and initiative the characters show in getting into situations of leverage (leverage = a fictional position where you can call for conflicts with significant stakes). I have no idea if your game is such, or if Paul showed the mettle of his character, but my understanding from your description was that you just flat-out decided before the session in your preparation that this time it would be Paul's turn to shine, and set up a situation accordingly. Perhaps that is a good idea with a quiet player, depending on system and all that, but some players would think that their protagonism was trampled upon when the GM elevated himself into the chooser of heroes.

Ultimately it's all up to the details of how your group views the Exploration of the fiction. In some games it is obvious that Frodo will never be late from throwing the ring into Mount Doom, as long as the player doesn't flat out decide that Frodo's not doing it. In some different games the player of Frodo has to both decide to do it and earn the right to do so as per the rules, whatever they require from a trek over the blasted landscapes of Mordor. In the latter kind of game the players would feel that the statement of Frodo's heroism would not be so pointed if the GM just fiated the opportunity.

Anyway, I have to get running (literally). Good of you to post a session description, and I like how you decided to come clean with some substantial stuff from the torture session. Hopefully your players will be as excited by the backgrounds as you are.

[Ron Edwards]

Wow.

Um, what Eero said. I mean, that post is really dense, but that's the answer, and all of it.

Best, Ron