[Lacuna] I Learn About GMing

[henshaw]

On reflection, I thought it would be more useful to the thread if I asked two questions.

1. Bret, do you have examples from other systems where you ask "He's coming at you with a knife, what do you do?".
1a. What did you do when the written rules made this hard to do?

2. Everyone else, is there anywhere where the big model (or the whole blob of theoretical thought) touches on this issue, aside from IIEE and stake-setting?

I also thought I may be missing the point a little. So,

3. From the first post "Situations where characters and players interact with the mechanics in this way are opportunities for players to make statements about their characters.". I get this. But are other ways to provide this opportunity in different situations, such as the middle of a combat (rather than the start of a conflict)?

[FredGarber]

In a different system the actual stakes might end up being :  "OK, the petty thief is attacking me.  But I've sworn not to draw my sword except in defense of the Princess.    If I win, I manage to defeat him without compromising my vow.  If I lose, I need to draw my sword to defend myself."  Stating that someone is attacking with a knife might not be the start of the actual conflict.  DITV just has that as a raising or lowering of the stakes, right? (He attacks me with a knife: I draw my gun.  He Gives )

I think an important part of using the "never call for a specific roll" Technique touches on the amount of Force that a GM is using.  In games (and systems) that encourage the use of Force, "Using Less Force" as a Technique for allowing exploration of setting (or color, character, etc.) is a Technique.  In a system where the GM's abilities aer less centralized, a player using less Force than necessary doesn't do anything for the exploration, and might even harm it, by allowing their fellow players to make easier choices.

[Mike Holmes]

That's pretty well said, Fred.

I'm glad that Brett brought this up in regards to HQ, as that nails down a really important issue in RPGs. On the HQ rules boards, and even in the old HQ board here on the Forge, a subject would come up perennially. Basically it comes down to this question for HQ, which will hopefully be illustrative of the problem:

Does HQ intend that a contest imply the use of a particular ability to address it?

Implications aside, the text is decidedly (and perhaps intentionally) neutral on the subject. On the one hand, it's pretty clear that it's possible to use a wide range of abilities to address a situation. On the other hand, the Narrator is given the power of putting "improvisation penalties" on to the use of an ability. This, along with examples of it's use, imply that the Narrator will have a pretty clear idea of the sort of contest that he's molding, and will use the improvisational penalties to address that.

I think that this is, probably, the closest to what Laws and Stafford intend. But I also think that it's left vague so that people can tailor it to their own needs.

I've often commented on the subject that what ends up being functional is for the Narrator to use the improv penalty ability to establish a community standard for just how much one can stretch abilities to cover a particular circumstance.

For my part, when I play, I'm relatively lenient, compared to more traditional players who pick up HQ, and see the Narrator's job as doing something like what Ralph mentions in terms of providing niche protection. That is, they want to ensure that the abilities taken have unique measures of effectiveness in particular situations. Often this is done, I think, out of a worry that, otherwise, the player will always just use his highest ability.

Indeed, I'd have to agree that if you're playing HQ with any sort of traditional gam/sim bent, that players might play this way, and that you might have to resort to traditional presentation of contests such that you're basically selecting the primary ability.

It's interesting that HQ doesn't have any standard sorts of contests (combat is almost special through example, but not really). As such, any hard line enforcement of what the primary ability happens to be is pretty much arbitrary. Note the examples:

"The warrior comes at you with his axe twirling... you have only seconds to act, what's your sword ability!"

Is no more valid a priori than

"The warrior comes at you from a distance twirling his axe... you have a few seconds in which to act, do you want to talk him down?"


There's really two things going on here. The Narrator, in setting up a contest is first pitching an arena for the conflict. Arena here is a near-jargon term that I frequently use to mean the nature of the contest such that it informs what's likely to be a reasonable way to respond to the contest.

Nobody is suggesting that one be allowed to leap a chasm using their Fast Talk skill. By proposing the chasm leap, the GM is proposing a physical contest. But then the player responds, in what comes down to a negotiation regarding the nature of the contest. The player may say, "I try to call out to the people I'm chasing, and get them to come back, instead of leaping the chasm." This is a rather extreme example, but the player is essentially proposing an entire change of arena. They're not interested in the leap, they're interested in an interpersonal conflict.

Usually a proposal of slightly less audacity comes down to the player negotiating smaller measures of change. Maybe he doesn't want to leap the chasm, but wants to use his mountaineering to negotiate it with ropes. The arena still involves the chasm obstacle this way, but the method of dealing with the obstacle has changed, if it's accepted.

Very interestingly (at least to me) is that HQ's extended contest mechanic specifically allows for the player to change goals. This, very often, entails a change in arena. If you're losing a fight, where the arena is armed combat, you can attempt to flee, which changes the arena to a foot race.

In fact this is somewhat vague in the rules as well (I wrote an essay on this subject, I can't recall where). If I change my goal, or if my goal is perpendicular to that of my opponent, can I force him into another arena? And, if so, how often? It seems pretty dramatically appropriate to allow a character to throw jibes at an opponent with a goal of making him leave, ashamed, even while he throws blows at you. It may not even be realistic, but it's certainly a genre convention to allow swashbucklers to do just this sort of thing.

But if you allow this... is the contest permanently shifted to the verbal arena?

What I typically do is say that on the player's round, he dictates the arena, and on the opponent's round, we select an arena that plays into their strengths. So on my round as narrator, the beligerent swordsman gets to fight, forcing you to use some sort of appropriate physical ability to resist. On your round, you're free to throw barbs, forcing him to use some appropriate verbal talent to respond.

The book doesn't indicate that this is the standard way to play, but it seems to work for me, an doesn't contradict the book that I can think of. It's a pretty effective technique.

But you'll note that I'm not letting the player entirely off the hook. I'm not allowing him to negotiate the contest to become entirely verbal in this case. What's interesting, too, is that I never have to do so.

It's an odd fact that a way to stop a player from trying to win is to just allow them to win.

That Zen moment I put out there, because the mode of play that I use with people means that players are not out to figure out how to win contests. We don't challenge them to do so, and so they don't try. Instead the players are looking at each contest as a way to explore the character.

This is, I think, the optimal outcome for the technique that you're using. If, as Ralph says, the game is about players building character effectiveness, and each character having specialized versions of effectiveness, then allowing players free reign in negotiating arenas doesn't work well. Because, as we've said, they'll always try to negotiate every contest into their strong suit. Because they want to win, not to explore their character.

If, on the other hand, the style of play becomes about character exploration, then negotiation subtextually says to the player, "Let's talk about what's interesting to explore with your character, since it would be all too easy for you to play optimally."

So it's important to note that it's more precise to say of how I use this technique that it's part of an overall raft of techniques that support character explorative play. This play tends to be on the narrativism side (people are using "narrative" here incorrectly again), but often smells pretty simmy.

As such, players tend to simply accept my proffered arenas to explore. We haven't done a fight for this character... cool, time to do the fight.

Note that this is even if the character is bad at something. In fact, perhaps especially. Players seem to love looking at their character sheet and announce, "My character seems singularly unable to address this contest... let's go with Default 6."

Now that's learning something about a character... what they really do not know how to do.

I'll also frequently drop in what I think of as "Mundane" contests, to explore the character that way. The classic example I recall is having characters do a "grooming contest" before a party to get a variable augment to use in social contests there. It's fascinating to learn that most fantasy characters don't have any understanding of grooming. Which made the party take on a whole new feel, once they arrived with their typically dishevelled, or mangled attempt to groom, appearances.

That's pretty simmy stuff right there... it may be Nar on some very subtle level, but hard to discern. I typically use that stuff as build-up to more important contests that have more thematic impact, to color those events and randomize them up a bit.

The point being that the players don't seem to care if their characters are well suited to a contest, but in fact are invested in discovering just how well suited their characters are to a particular contest.

So, interestingly, when I use the technique that allows players to alter the arena (heck, I allow them to alter it to "I just win" if they like), players tend to respond by just accepting the offered arena. Not always... occasionally a player will change things up... but in those cases, it's because they want to explore some other feature of the character. Yes, sometimes they do shift to an arena that's more likely to produce a positive outcome for their character... but if they're doing that, it's to show off the character's strengths (perhaps because they see an opportunity to showcase one that's been neglected by the Narrator). Or sometimes it's because they don't want the potential negative stakes of the contest in question.

It may even be that they want to see what it's like for the character to win in this sort of situation, or that it would be dramatic for that to happen now.

But it's never because they're looking just to win the contest as a player. Not in my game. I know some people play HQ that way, but I think it's pretty ill-suited to this. That's not to say that hard determination of the arena by the Narrator can't be functional... it's just that where it is, it's more of a simmy thing.

I can be pretty heavy-handed at times in implying that I want to investigate X arena or Y. Because, well, it's my game too. It's just not because I don't want the players to "get away" with using the same ability over and over.

In conclusion, HQ is ambiguous on this subject, in terms of the mechanics, and what the text says. But there are various functional ways that you can approach the mechanics, one of which is to use the technique of allowing players lattitude in negotiation on defining arenas, as part of an overall set of techniques used with the HQ rules that encourages exploration of character. Another method is to use lots of improv modifiers (including automatic failure), to establish a tighter standard, which tends to promote exploration of setting and/or system, and may even be a feature of a set of techniques that make HQ into a more gamism supporting game.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

P.S. One technique that I use in this raft of techniques, that goes along well with allowing characters to negotiate arenas (or even just outright determine them), is to avoid "party play." Party play neccessitates more that abilities have the chance to work differently in different situations, else you run into the problem where nobody ever gets a chance to stand out in any way. Or, worse, you get player arguments about arena negotiation.

"You can't talk him out of that, I'm already attacking him!"

If you let characters have their own contests, then this problem goes away.