d20 to Heroquest: introducing narrativism?

[Brand_Robins]

This is truely, to me, the key to narrativism. That is, the GM presenting situations that don't have a tactical solution, no win condition. Often, but not always, actual "no win" situations for the character.

First let me say that Mike is cool and I someday hope to be as cool as he is.

Then let me add a bit to this -- I've often found that the flip-side of this proposition is to give the character a no-loose situation in the sense that whatever they chose will be something good, something they want, something empowering. The trick is they have to chose one or the other.

Get the girl or the money? The High Priest position or Captain of the King's Guard? You can't do both, so what do you choose?

I'm sure Mike was including choices like this when he said "no-win" as there isn't a "better" or "victory" condition involved, either choice actually requires choice for something other than practical/reward purpouses. I just felt compelled to point out that this "no-win" can be between two very good things, as many GMs heading down the narrativist road fall into the trap of thinking the only way to create drama is to hammer the characters with losing choice after losing choice.

[Mike Holmes]

First let me say that Mike is cool and I someday hope to be as cool as he is.

But I'm hoping to be as cool as you...

Enough of the mutual admiration society bullshit, however, you make a good point. I don't mean that one needs to hose players, though that's an option. You have it precisely, Brand, the thing to do is present a situation in which there's no option that's a priori (whether visibly so or not), better than another. Just choices that say something about the character.

In fact, that reminds me of something else that I wanted to mention. The best bangs are ones in which there is no dichotomy, but rather in which the options are wide open. If you can look at a situation and know that the player can't have their character walk away from it without saying something about the character, but yet you have no idea what sort of action he might take in response - those are the best bangs.

They are, however, hard to come by. Creating dichotomies is really, really easy, and not a bad way to go. You simply find two things that the character values, and put them in opposition somehow. The problem with these is that they seem to play out quickly and then aren't as fun to return to.

Note that sometimes people miss the really basic values of a character looking for those that are quite specific. That is, implicit in any homeland are a ton of mores. For example, nowhere in a HQ homeland will it say, "Against Murder" as a personality trait. But it's there, just the same for the vast majority of homelands. From another perspective it is on the sheet - the player should be thinking, "What would my family and friends and village think?" And the character's god (the "worship" relationship). That is, the standard homeland relationships are what forms the basic moral backing of any character. Dissaproval of these people is what prevents a character from acting immorally (according to their code). Indeed, the psychopath is the one who has no relationship stats at all ("He was a quiet type, kept to himself."), or only ones that are about manipulating people (Stringing Along Elders 5W).

So any issue that's basic to the community automatically becomes fair game. Which means that you don't always have to pit "Love of Elaine" against "Duty to Teacher," or other abilities that are explicitly listed, but instead things like "Killing somebody in cold blood" vs. "Protecting the innocent." Or even more down to earth, like "stealing to make a living" vs. "taking from a good man."

Conflict is everywhere and in everything, and HQ covers it all pretty damn well.

Mike

[CCW]

Just a brief note to thank you for your generous replies.

It was really good for me to see how premise is something that just emerges once players are given situations where they must make significant decisions for their characters.  I've been looking at the links scripty posted, as well as some others, such as the Well of Souls, trying to get ideas of how to form bangs.  I think at this point it's a matter of trying out the techniques and seeing if I can make them work.  

I don't think, now, that I'll get the players to produce kickers as such, though this depends somewhat on what they say they want to do next.  I'd rather give the characters some down time, and discuss with the players what they want to go on during that time, who their characters interact with etc.  In other words, flesh out the character's relationships and establish a sense of what normal life looks like for them.

I'd also like to spend some time completing a relationship map (which I've been using in one form or another since well before we switched to Heroquest).  Fortunately most of my players have been good at relationships right from the beginning, tying themselves into existing NPCs and creating new ones on the fly, so making the r-map explicit shouldn't be that hard.  I have a pile of pictures of people which the players can use to represent NPCs they have relationships with--I imagine us sticking them to a sheet of poster paper then drawing lines between them.

Finally, if we have time to do some actual playing, there are a couple of bangs I can throw at them to get things going.  I drew these from relationships they already have, though I'll probably want to adapt them after our discussion.

All this to commence tomorrow night over Ethiopian takeout. I can't wait.

Charles

[Mike Holmes]

It was really good for me to see how premise is something that just emerges once players are given situations where they must make significant decisions for their characters.

Just tp be pedantic here, the question asked by the situation is the premise. The answer that the player selects creates theme. Acoording to the Edwardsian model of narrativism.

The point being that premise arises from "set up" play that creates a certain sort of situation, and theme is the result of playing through those situations.

I don't think, now, that I'll get the players to produce kickers as such, though this depends somewhat on what they say they want to do next.  I'd rather give the characters some down time, and discuss with the players what they want to go on during that time, who their characters interact with etc.  In other words, flesh out the character's relationships and establish a sense of what normal life looks like for them.

What do you expect to get out of this part of play? I'm curious. Personally, I find that just looking at the character sheet gives me a really good idea of what day to day life is like for a character.

Ragnar says goodbye to his *family*, and goes off to join the other *warriors* to defend the *clan*. They travel today to the *Temple* of *Destor*, where he and the other *initiates* seek the counsel of the *priest* there. They then head over to the territory of the neighboring *enemy clan* to raid. Later Ragnar heads to the tavern to meet up with his ally *Vogmar*.

And this is just looking at the relationships and personality traits that stick out. I could speculate that since the character's warrior keyword gives him Running ability, he probably does a lot of running to and from the raid. His homeland has farming as an ability, so the clansmen he defends are farmers, and occasionally he's asked to help with things like harvesting. Yadda, yadda.

I'd also like to spend some time completing a relationship map (which I've been using in one form or another since well before we switched to Heroquest).  Fortunately most of my players have been good at relationships right from the beginning, tying themselves into existing NPCs and creating new ones on the fly, so making the r-map explicit shouldn't be that hard.  I have a pile of pictures of people which the players can use to represent NPCs they have relationships with--I imagine us sticking them to a sheet of poster paper then drawing lines between them.

Cool. Actually, in terms of shifting from a traditional perspective on how to play, making the actual map is the easy part. Like you said, you've done this before, and people do things like it all the time. The real challenge is then making the R-Map your only source of action.

That is, traditionally, you'd have this map, and then there'd be a raid from another village (to continue with the Ragnar example), and the elder would send the heroes off to exact revenge, but while there, they'd discover that Broo had overrun that clan, and then they'd end up tracking the Broo back to their lair to discover that they were using the captured villagers as sacrifices to summon a powerful chaos demon, etc, etc.

This does not support narrativism very well. The R-Map concept means simply that the people on the map have their own motives and agendas, and they happen to impact the heroes directly or tangentially. Not in a way that forces the action one way or another, but instead in a way that allows the player to deccide where the story goes in terms of their character's responses. Basically you drop all of the "PCs have to be here so that X can happen to send them to Y" sorts of planning.

Bangs, therefore are important, because that's how you instigate action in such situations. Character A who's jeallous of character B asks PC X to help teach him a lesson. Yes or no, play proceeds logically sans planning.

I'm going to guess that you probably get this, but it's worth repeating. R-Maps are not something that's added to the traditional method of GM plotting, but instead are the source of the action themselves in a very non-directed way in terms of pre-planning.

Finally, if we have time to do some actual playing, there are a couple of bangs I can throw at them to get things going.  I drew these from relationships they already have, though I'll probably want to adapt them after our discussion.

Maybe. OTOH, I find that it's usually safe to make assumptions. Even if you're wrong, that revelation is often significant. For example, let's say that your bang is that the character's girlfriend is sleeping with the character's best friend (a classic). For most people, this is a no-brainer bang, because it seems to set up an obvious dilemma. A particular player might, OTOH, not see it as a dilemma, "Big deal, Ragnar likes her, but they weren't exclusive or anything. Well, cool, the character doesn't have to take sides or anything, but now we've had revealed something important about the nature of the character's relationship.

Next bang, then is the GF saying to Ragnar that she's interested in being monogamous - she's very dissapointed that he didn't protest about her being with the other guy. See how the one flows into another?

As often as possible, have bangs evolve from the current situation, instead of from prepared stuff. Often these flow better, and one gets a better sense of continuity. You'll find that opportunities present themselves all the time to do this, if you're watching for it.

One technique is to do like I did above, and have an NPC do something unexpected, perhaps even against character. Be careful not to ruin a character concept, or do something really implausible, but if the player says that a relationship so far has been about X, suddenly change it and make it about Y. This forces a "Do I accept my friend as they are now, or reject the changed version?" question that can be quite powerful.

Lots of ways to discover conflict in play arising from tweaking the current situation ever so slightly. Note that when you really get rolling in this mode, players will be setting stuff like this up just as much as you are with their decisions. That is, ask "What scene should we do now?" to get their input. If/when such does not present itself, that's when you reach for a pre-prepared bang.

This all matching your understanding, or am I going off the deep end? :-)

Mike

[lightcastle]

Hey Mike, I love this one.

Maybe. OTOH, I find that it's usually safe to make assumptions. Even if you're wrong, that revelation is often significant. For example, let's say that your bang is that the character's girlfriend is sleeping with the character's best friend (a classic). For most people, this is a no-brainer bang, because it seems to set up an obvious dilemma. A particular player might, OTOH, not see it as a dilemma, "Big deal, Ragnar likes her, but they weren't exclusive or anything. Well, cool, the character doesn't have to take sides or anything, but now we've had revealed something important about the nature of the character's relationship.

Next bang, then is the GF saying to Ragnar that she's interested in being monogamous - she's very dissapointed that he didn't protest about her being with the other guy. See how the one flows into another?

I just think that one's great.

Anyway, all this talk has gotten me back to thinking about relationship maps. Now that I've got my characters made, I want to sketch out the relationship map. Some people seem obvious because they have been mentioned by my players as they set up their characters. I obviously want to tie them sufficiently together that pulling on one thread sends tremors throught the rest of the web.  any suggestions on size of, how tightly intertwined to make them, etc?

[Mike Holmes]

Well, drifting a tad to the off topic, but I really don't have much of a response. First, more is better than less in terms of overall characters because you can always just not use the less useful ones. In terms of how intertwined? The tanglier the web, the better. It's possible to get implausibly tangled (you only get one co-incidence, for example, any more breaks suspension of disbelief quickly), so avoid that, but stop just short of it. As long as you can come up with a plausible connection, put it in.

Mike

[CCW]

I don't mean to spend a long time talking about their daily lives, but I think it might help us to identify who the characters have relationships with--give the players more things to write on their character sheets.  It's relatively easy to imagine yourself a self-sufficient adventurer when you're off fighting demons (or what-have-you) but much harder when you have to think about daily life: "you mean you just spent six months sitting silently in a tavern, waiting for the faceless king's messenger to turn up with a mission?"

Mostly I see it as a warmer for building the r-map.

I do see what you mean about keeping the action inside the r-map.  This was a problem I made a while back in my game.  The characters went off on a quest and initially I wondered why things felt so much less satisfying; then I realized that they were, for lack of a better term, out of context.  I was, indeed, trying to affix a more traditional D&D type quest to what had been becoming much more relationship based.

I'm not too worried about making assumptions, it's just that some of the details may change, not the broad strokes.  I do like your advice about changing the nature of a relationship, I might just make use of it tonight (though maybe not your specific example—I still have 3 hours to think about it...).  "What scene should we do now" is definitely something I want to make more use of.

That's a good question, Lightcastle, though I must confess it hadn't occurred to me.  I figure it should be as convoluted as you can make it, as long as you, as GM, can easily keep track of it all.

Charles

[Scripty]

I'm back. Sorry it's been so long. Mike covered a lot of important stuff already and quite well. He is the greatest. If only I were as cool as him, then I would be one step closer to being as cool as Brand. (heehee; just an oblique reference to the earlier love-fest, they are both equally cool individuals).

Now, on with it!

I differ from most people here at the Forge on the issue of size of relationship maps. I think that size does matter as regards an R-Map. The larger the R-Map the more NPCs the players have to keep straight, the wider the horizon of connections, the more connections that must be made plausible, etc. I tend to feel, as regards R-Maps, that less is more. Here are some guidelines that I use.

If you are doing a short adventure, the smaller the R-Map the better. If I'm doing a 3 session adventure, I like to keep R-Maps to 7 NPCs or less. Things are tighter, more entangled and more focused.

If you are doing a longer series of adventures, more is okay. I've seen R-Maps with upwards of 10 or 11 NPCs. IMO, that's fine but recognize that there may be more "drift" as players work their way around the R-Map. Further, I think that if you have more than 7 NPCs then the R-Map should definitely be kept on a chart for all to see and updated regularly as new connections are discovered between the NPCs. Again, this is all to help the players "keep up" with what's going on.

A last caveat with R-Maps is that no matter how big you make your R-Map, understand that it's going to become much bigger during play. Your players are going to have NPC connections that will (and should) tie into the R-Map. There are going to be incidental NPCs associated with individuals already on the R-Map, though they may not play as great a role they're still there. So, no matter how big you *think* your R-Map should be, I would advise to shoot lower. If you want 11 people in your R-Map, detail 7 of them and leave four blanks to fill in (either with the players' NPCs or incidental supporting characters). If you want 7, detail 5 of them. Your R-Map will fill out, believe me.

The R-Map, however, as presented by Ron in Sorcerer's Soul is presumably going to be based on a work of fiction. In the Art Deco Melodrama threads, there are some enlightening examples of tying both players' NPCs (and players) into the R-Map as well as paring down the R-Map to eliminate unnecessary NPCs. We see Ron substitute NPCs on the R-Map for NPCs listed on the players' sheets and we also see Ron combine NPCs from the fiction into one person on the R-Map as well as remove some NPCs on the R-Map that no longer made sense or were cumbersome.

This is an important skill, IMO, when dealing with R-Maps as I think they can easily get out of hand. Mike himself commented in our last ShadowWorld HQ campaign that his list of NPCs had grown upwards of 45. NPC creep is not your friend!

A final bit of text about kickers, bangs, etc. I think Brand and Mike are spot on with their advice. But there is something within there that I think is really important that might be overlooked.

Lots of ways to discover conflict in play arising from tweaking the current situation ever so slightly. Note that when you really get rolling in this mode, players will be setting stuff like this up just as much as you are with their decisions.

Tweaking. Tweaking. Tweaking. I tend to call it "spiking" after how Ron refers to "spiking the Kicker". As I understand it, it's pushing the tension in a situation or scene. Upping the excitement level just that bit.

IMO, it's the way to make a dull Kicker something really, really good. It's a way to think of Bangs ("What would be really good right about now?"). It also unconsciously ties into theme/premise. If it's not a really good setup, then it likely isn't asking questions that the players want answered.

For example, lame Kicker #1267280. A player says "I woke up and my car was gone." Mkay. Here's the horse, there's the water... Ask questions that you think might add "spike" to the kicker.

Me: "What if there was a note on the kitchen counter? Something like your wife saying that she's left to go off somewhere and is never coming back?"

P: "No, that would suck..."

(Notice how we've already eliminated Romantic premises from the player's story...)

Me: "Okay. Well, what if you went out to investigate and realized that your house was at a different address? Looks the same (except for your car missing), has all the same/similar stuff in it? But it's definitely not your address."

P: "That's just weird."

Me: "But would you be interested in that?"

P: "Um. No. Not really..."

(Player's obviously not into Burroughs...)

Me: "What if there was a note from cultists who had kidnapped your wife and took her somewhere? But they wanted this ancient tome you have on your character sheet in exchange...."

P: "Ooo. That sounds cool. And I have to go to some far away location to get her..."

Me: "Sure. How about Prague?"

P: "No. Tiajuana..."

(Note: About this point in the conversation you will see a noticeable (even at times maniacal) gleem in the players' eye. Don't be scared. The player is now engaged in play (which is essential to Narr play, IMO). Your job just became a whole lot easier...)

Me: "Sounds good to me."

P: "So we start with me finding the note?"

(Note: Gleam gone. Player is used to weeks of build-up to get to the "good stuff".)

Me: "Screw that. You're getting off the plane in Tiajuana, with a name and a phone number."

(Note: Gleam comes back.)

P: "No. I want to make them talk first."

Me: "Cool. You're headed to an art gallery where you've found out a couple of the cult members work. You've got a shotgun in one hand and..."

P: "No. All I want to take is my ceremonial knife..."

(The gleam may seem creepy at times but it's important to know that your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make sure that gleam never fades until, at last, the player takes ownership of it and will never settle to play in a game where he doesn't feel it. I've been in some games where players not only pushed the envelope, but mailed it COD using a big fat "F.U." for postage. The point, I guess, is that this is their story, not yours. You're there to facilitate whatever dark closets of the subconscious they want to air out that day. It's a shift in focus from the usual RPing, but a vital one. IMO, anything less is not Narr play.)

The "Yes, but..." is important. Spiking, after all, is nothing more than "Yes but..." on a meta-level.

In play, "How...?" "Yes, and...." and "Yes but..." are the biggies. As are "Good", "Sure", and a heartfelt "Cool...". I suppose something to look at is the shift in determinism in Narr play. In traditional RPGs, it's up to the GM to say "No" and players look for, and expect, that. But in Narr play, IME, the onus of negation is often shifted to the players. Notice above, I offered suggestions/directions only to have them vetoed by the player. Then I honored those vetoes. It took a while, but the player realized that this was going to be very different from what his was used to. He realized he was behind the wheel. I was just his OnStar system.

That doesn't mean that I'm not going to offer up elements of my own from time to time. But it does help to ensure that what I do offer is in keeping with what the player wants to experience. His "theme" if you will. The player wants to go into Tiajuana and leave a line of dead cultists in his wake. My job is to offer dilemmas towards that objective (and maybe some obstacles) that make him answer "how important is it for him to kill every last m*****f*****g one of them?" In the end, he'll likely have to choose between his book, his powers, even his wife but what will remain is a true metamorphosis, a story and a player with the psychodramatic experience of exactly how far he'd go if any cultists ever messed with his girl...

I think I've rambled long enough. Besides, my lunch break is now officially over...

Hope this helped... If not, I hope it was at least fun to read. I'd hate to be off topic and boring!

:)

Scott

[Mike Holmes]

If you are doing a longer series of adventures, more is okay. I've seen R-Maps with upwards of 10 or 11 NPCs. IMO, that's fine but recognize that there may be more "drift" as players work their way around the R-Map. Further, I think that if you have more than 7 NPCs then the R-Map should definitely be kept on a chart for all to see and updated regularly as new connections are discovered between the NPCs. Again, this is all to help the players "keep up" with what's going on.

You've seen an R-Map with about 30 NPCs, actually. Playing in my game, that is.

OTOH, this isn't the traditional Ron Edwards "Relationship Map" per se, instead one designed to be played indefinitely in a soap opera-esque manner. So...

A last caveat with R-Maps is that no matter how big you make your R-Map, understand that it's going to become much bigger during play. Your players are going to have NPC connections that will (and should) tie into the R-Map.

Hmmm. The way I see it, you should incorporate these folks into the map from the start. In fact with HQ, you almost don't need to put together a R-Map, you just fill in the blanks from the character sheet. For example from Brand's character, Thomas, in addition to his three followers who I don't count because they're player controlled, I count one lover (Alitia), a brother (Andric), brother's portly driver (Nezzik), a sorcerer (Porcaru), and a buddy from his order (Rej). That's five NPCs right there without bringing in anybody from outside the character's personal map. Note that Alitia was also on Chris's character Fahja's sheet (as a flaw), and that Porcaru ended getting messed up with Nathan's character, Aysha. And lots of folks bumped into Andric and Nezzik.

The point is that if you have four characters with three NPCs each, you're already at a map of 12 characters before even coming up with any "external R-Map". As I said, with the original characters and R-Map I had about 30 characters to start with.

By the time the series of sessions was over, I had more than 50 NPCs going. So, yeah, it'll fill out. But the point is that what really matters is if the players have long enough to get to know the NPCs. No matter how many there are, the players can absorb more if they have the "time." Meaning the dramatic opportunities to do so.

The R-Map, however, as presented by Ron in Sorcerer's Soul is presumably going to be based on a work of fiction.

Yep, I'm thinking of reading War and Peace so I can put together a 500 character map. Sounds good to me. Not every character has to get a lot of screen time - they just have to have a purpose in the larger scheme of things.

This is an important skill, IMO, when dealing with R-Maps as I think they can easily get out of hand. Mike himself commented in our last ShadowWorld HQ campaign that his list of NPCs had grown upwards of 45. NPC creep is not your friend!

As I said, more than that by the time we were done. But I think NPC creep was my friend. I loved having that many characters to draw upon.

What happens is that, instead of each character having to have tightly built in relevance to the PCs issues, instead what happens is that you select the right character from your arsenal at the right time. With enough characters, any bang you can imagine can be done, because there's always the right NPC waiting off stage to stroll onto the scene.

I think that's what I'll call it. Instead of a Relationship map, I have an NPC arsenal. Different concept entirely. In fact, the arsenal technically encompasses several inter-related R-Maps. For example, there were all of the different families that got involved (Thomas', Rharohi's, the Lurid Eye tribe itself as an extended family), etc.

Tweaking. Tweaking. Tweaking. I tend to call it "spiking" after how Ron refers to "spiking the Kicker". As I understand it, it's pushing the tension in a situation or scene. Upping the excitement level just that bit.

IMO, it's the way to make a dull Kicker something really, really good. It's a way to think of Bangs ("What would be really good right about now?"). It also unconsciously ties into theme/premise. If it's not a really good setup, then it likely isn't asking questions that the players want answered.

Two separate concepts here. The tweaking I'm talking about is taking the current situation and changing it so that it becomes "premise charged" if you will. Whereas "spiking" is taking what's already supposed to be charged so, and making it jump.

For example, lame Kicker #1267280. A player says "I woke up and my car was gone." Mkay. Here's the horse, there's the water... Ask questions that you think might add "spike" to the kicker.

See, there's no kicker there (unless the game in question is meant to be something really low-key). So, in this case, I think you're trying to tweak the situation into having some premise.

Me: "What if there was a note from cultists who had kidnapped your wife and took her somewhere? But they wanted this ancient tome you have on your character sheet in exchange...."

More than a tweak in this case, this is a wholesale change of idea. "Tweaking" (I'm accidentally making this into a term here), is taking already established fact, and turning it a few degrees by revealing something related.

No spiking yet, there's been nothing to spike so far. Only now do we have a premise.

Me: "Screw that. You're getting off the plane in Tiajuana, with a name and a phone number."

OK, this is arguing for the best framing so far...

Me: "Cool. You're headed to an art gallery where you've found out a couple of the cult members work. You've got a shotgun in one hand and..."

P: "No. All I want to take is my ceremonial knife..."

Ok, now, yeah, there's the spiking, the player doing it in this case.

I'd have to read the Sorcerer text in question, but that's been my reading of the term. I may well be way off.

In any case, these are both good tools. Change the situation into premise, and then make the premise even more exciting.

Mike

[lightcastle]

Firstly, let me point out that Scripty, Mike, and Brand are all so cool I could keep a side of beef in them for a week. :-)

The Gleam thing is a nice description, Scripty.  I was always that player, throwing out all kinds of things for the GM to work with, often ignored as he went about his merry way of his own plot.

I'm trying to avoid that.

As for the R-map, the idea is for an 8-10 game run for this thing. My idea was that I'd start with all the NPCs people put on their character sheets (explicit and/or implicit) and then work at linking them to each other and to a some core NPCs I've got for the city.  

This seems a reasonable approach.

Mind you, I'm aware that this will not be a Sorcerer-esque R-map, since it isn't just sex and blood ties involved here. I also am not basing it too much on a work of fiction.

[Brand_Robins]

I fall somewhere between Mike and Scripty, not as a matter of theory but as a matter of dealing with the PCs that I have. I often do have a large NPC arsenal, but I'm very careful about where the NPCs come from and how they relate to the PCs. I try not to introduce more than 7 or 8 "external" NPCs per session, or my players lose track of who is who no matter how hard I individualize and act. However once an NPC is stuck in their heads I'll add more, because at that point the confusion is minimal.

To build from this example:

For example from Brand's character, Thomas, in addition to his three followers who I don't count because they're player controlled, I count one lover (Alitia), a brother (Andric), brother's portly driver (Nezzik), a sorcerer (Porcaru), and a buddy from his order (Rej). That's five NPCs right there without bringing in anybody from outside the character's personal map. Note that Alitia was also on Chris's character Fahja's sheet (as a flaw), and that Porcaru ended getting messed up with Nathan's character, Aysha. And lots of folks bumped into Andric and Nezzik.

Alitia, Andric, Nezzik, Porcaru, and Rej were all internal NPCs -- that is they came out of a PC's background. I wouldn't count them towards my "at a time" limit because you can be damn sure the PC who they relate to will make sure everyone knows who they are, and won't have a problem keeping them straight. We never had a problem with the tribes, daughters, demons, and sorcerers that came out of other's backgrounds either -- it was already embeded in what was going on with the PC group.

However, when new and external NPCs start showing up it can get overwhelming if too many pop up at once. If in one session you'd suddenly injected 10 new NPCs I know that I, at least, would have started getting cross-eyed trying to keep them all in place. If you'd done 5 or so, waited till they made an impression, then done another 5, I wouldn't have had a problem keeping em straight.

I used to tell it to my players this way, "Just wait till he bleeds you, then you'll never forget who he is. And until he bleeds you, you don't need to worry about any more folks coming along with knives."

[lightcastle]

I used to tell it to my players this way, "Just wait till he bleeds you, then you'll never forget who he is. And until he bleeds you, you don't need to worry about any more folks coming along with knives."

Love this quote. Will probably use. Have abandoned proper grammar. :)

OK, so this strikes me as fairly easy. I'll set up the main map using their NPCs as lynchpins. From there I can put in a few I know I will want to introduce over time. Then it becomes a matter of letting not having too many thrown at them at once.

I can manage that. (I'm gonna need a good large piece of construction paper...)

[Scripty]

I try not to introduce more than 7 or 8 "external" NPCs per session, or my players lose track of who is who no matter how hard I individualize and act. However once an NPC is stuck in their heads I'll add more, because at that point the confusion is minimal.

I think this is a good middle way between what I'm talking about and what Mike is talking about. But I don't really agree with the external/internal distinction so much. Phone numbers are seven digits long for a reason. And I think going much beyond that with external or internal PCs is self-defeating to a point.

Note also that this is my take on R-Maps. I stated early on that I differ dramatically in my use/interpretation of R-Maps from many people here on the Forge. I even differ from Ron on it. I think that's okay. But my differences come from my experiences first as a player and second as a GM. It's a difference in practical application.

I do think that what Mike is talking about is an NPC arsenal approach. I've used that approach in almost all the D&D games I've run over the last 20 years. I've generally created a roster of NPCs, each with their own thing (bang/kicker) going on. It is an effective and handy method to use,IME.

What I'm trying to address, however, is using what we know of human cognition to our benefit. That's why I limit the number of NPCs in an R-Map. I believe it to be more effective in co-creating efficient, tight storylines. A well-known Eugene O'Neill quote is that if you show a gun on the wall in the 1st Act it should be used to kill somebody in the 3rd. To me, this is efficiency. To Ron/Mike, it's interconnection. Having storylines tie into each other. If I need a merchant in a scene with Player B, why not use the one that just screwed over Player A. Why create an entirely new NPC just for that one scene? Again, this is just my take on this. As Mike has pointed out, my advice/observations are my own and are not representative of what the majority of Forge users talk about when they address these topics.

But my advice/observations come from very real, in play experience and, I think, they lend some insight into using some of these theoretical approaches at the table. To me, it's the difference between reading that the Law of Inertia is "an object in motion will remain in motion  and an object at rest will remain at rest until acted upon by an equal and opposite force..." and getting run down by a bus. One is the theoretical reading of the Law of Inertia and the other is a practical application that you'll likely never forget.

The most difficult part of all this Narr stuff, in my opinion, is to convey this practical knowledge through language and not practical application. I have to tell you. I can't show you. Very few people are capable of learning exclusively through the filter of the written word. Very, very few. I'm not one of them. So, I try to take all this back to the experiential realm.

That's how I "figured out" Narrativism, at least as I read it through all the Sorcerer books, Ron's essay, and then taking what I read and analyzing it through the filter of my experience. What I've come up with is my take on this whole thing. It has to be.

If I were in your position, I would take what I can apply from all this "advice" and use what you can make sense of. Your application of Narr play, of HQ play, may look a lot more like Mike's than mine or vice versa. But it's only through the practical application of these techniques that you'll figure it out for yourself, on your own terms.

A lot of what Mike's last post said seemed to debunk or contradict my own understanding of Narr play. With all due respect, I don't think that's nearly as helpful as him just stating how he would have approached the same situation in his own way. Sure, "my car's gone" isn't a Kicker. Taken in context, I think it's rather clear that it wasn't meant to be. How I arrived, with the player in the example, at the resultant "Kicker" is how I would do it. It's likely Mike would do it differently. Yet now all I know is that Mike thinks I do this "wrong" and that I'm in a position to "defend" my experience with using these techniques.

The path you take towards Narr/HQ/Sorcerer is not important, IMO, it's the end result that is relevant. If me or Mike or Brand, etc., have the terminology of what is and isn't tweaking or spiking down is really just semantics. It's like saying one color is mint and the other is jungle mist. What's important is that you get the right color of green, at least to my thinking. If Raven has a great way to come up with perfect Kickers everytime using Tarot cards, but it differs from Ron's theory, guess which one I'm going with... (I'm a heathen though, as I'm sure Ron would let you know)

I would recommend some serious consideration of all the advice you've received here and taking it back to what you know, bringing it into your own experiential frame of reference. I sound a pretty loud alarm at R-Maps that are too large for the term of play being proposed. I do that because I think it's a mistake. I think it's a mistake because I've done it in games that I GM'd and found that it was not an efficient approach.

My experience with NPC creep as both a GM and a player is that it's just not a great thing. For instance, in Mike's last ShadowWorld campaign (which I did enjoy, BTW) I didn't know there was an NPC named Rej. I never knew Alitia's name, although I knew Thomas loved her. I did not know Fahja had a relationship with her. And there were several NPCs, including a monk that made just a brief appearance, that I either wanted to see more about or missed entirely. I didn't know that Porcaro had a relationship with anyone other than Aysha. Although the story was fun, enjoyable, and all those things that I want a game to be (I'm still in it, BTW), to hear all this other stuff about the NPCs as a player after the fact, I can't help but feel I missed out on a whole lot.

It corresponds with my experience with large rosters of NPCs as a GM as well. Invariably, players wouldn't know who so-and-so was and would need to be reminded. Or they would miss out on somethings entirely (as in my missing out on the connection between Thomas and Porcaro). I think when you have players who don't have ownership of the knowledge of the interactions between NPCs that play will be inefficient. There is more drama, IMO, in knowing that this NPC is doing X and Y behind the scene than just having the NPC be yet another element of an endless supporting
cast. This is just a difference in practical application, neither of which is right or wrong as long as they both result in the desired outcome (a fun game).

Still, I would caution against really large rosters of NPCs, large R-Maps, etc. I think Brand gives great advice on how to handle large groups of NPCs (introducing 7-8 per game) should you choose to go that route. I also think that Ron's use of charts representing the NPCs and their evolving relationships is a good idea as well. But I do think that NPC creep is something to be guarded against, if not avoided entirely.

That's my take on it though, correct or not. If given a choice between something that is in-line with traditional theory or concepts and something that I know works, I'll always choose the latter. The catch is that what works for me, may not work for you, and may not work for Mike or Brand. That's a reason, I think, why we often fall into these debates about who's misinterpreting kickers or spikes or tweaking or R-Maps. The advice I give is my own take on this. It can be nothing more.

There is no gospel, only results. Make it work for you. My gift is only the record of mistakes and successes, my hits and misses. They won't be yours but maybe you can get something out of them. IMO, the important thing isn't whether you can discuss R-Maps with Ron and Jesse. It's whether you can make them happen for you...

Best of luck. Keep us posted on how it goes...

Scott
(who's not at work today. :)

[Brand_Robins]

A well-known Eugene O'Neill quote is that if you show a gun on the wall in the 1st Act it should be used to kill somebody in the 3rd. To me, this is efficiency. To Ron/Mike, it's interconnection.

A fuller version of the principle (usually known as Chekhov's Gun), goes like this:

"Everything that has no relation to the story must be ruthlessly thrown away. If in the first chapter you say that a gun hung on the wall, in the second or third chapter it must without fail be discharged."

I would point to this as another issue in which many RPers run into trouble around Nar issues -- especially ones like scene framing and premise: they put too much in that doesn't relate or contribute to the story. In Sim games you put in everything that has to do with the world, the genre, the virtuality or whatever you're simming. In a Nar game, however, you tend to want to stay focused fairly tightly on the things that make the story, not random things hanging on the wall. Knowing what to include and what to leave out is a vital skill in story building and one that has received almost no attention in RPGs.

So far as this goes with NPCs, I think it can only be used to say thus: "Only introduce NPCs that are important to the game." If that's a limit of 7 like your central cast, or a huge number like Mike's NPC arsenal, is only going to matter if the NPCs end up mattering or not to the story.

The most difficult part of all this Narr stuff, in my opinion, is to convey this practical knowledge through language and not practical application.

Indeed. I think I learned more from Mike's HQ game than from reading Sorcerer three times. And that isn't because Sorcerer is bad in any way, or because Mike is a genius (though he is) -- it's simply because actually seeing it happen in play is a vastly different experience than reading about it.  

That's how I "figured out" Narrativism, at least as I read it through all the Sorcerer books, Ron's essay, and then taking what I read and analyzing it through the filter of my experience. What I've come up with is my take on this whole thing. It has to be.

I'd agree with that. In fact it's one of the reasons why I get enraged when I'm talking about Nar play only to have someone tell me "That's not how Ron does it, so you're doing it wrong." (Interestingly Ron has never told me this.) Nar play has certain features that are pretty solidly built into it, but much of how it hits the table is going to be an individual thing, especially for those of us who've never played with Ron.

Which is something else I've noticed on the Forge -- people who've had a chance to play together at cons and the like have a much easier time communicating about play styles, forms, and focus even when they disagree about theory. Those of use who only know each other from forum boards, otoh, have a hell of a time even getting through the basics.

I would recommend some serious consideration of all the advice you've received here and taking it back to what you know, bringing it into your own experiential frame of reference.

Absolutely. In the end what this is all about is finding a way to make things work at your table. However, that doesn't mean that words and definitions are simply semiotics. If we're going to overcome that internet-fora communications hurdle I was just talking about, we need pretty specific terms to do it. How these terms get used at the table is one thing, but it can be important to have some idea of what they mean in a communal context, else we won't ever be able to communicate. So if Mike has one definition of tweaking, and you another, it may be that you're talking about different things – in which case someone should change their terminology so that the two different methods being discussed can be referred to clearly. (This is why I liked Mike's new "NPC arsenal" term.) That way when we have specific terms for specific methods and implementations we can discuss things like this more clearly and give weight to what we're trying to say. For example, if Mike says "NPC arsenal" and you say "recurring central cast" instead of both of you saying "R-Map" then confusions will be cleared up with great rapidity and we can move on to a discussion of which techniques work in which situations and why.

As far as number of NPCs goes, I live in Toronto, and we have 10 digit phone numbers, so maybe I've been ruined. ;)

[Mike Holmes]

Several unrelated points.

First, Scott, I never said you did anything wrong - I liked your example. That's precisely how I would have done it too (on a good day). I was just correcting a point of jargon - what "spiking" means in Ron's text.

As for "debunking", there's a real problem that some people have with getting into narrativism in that they're doing a lot more work than they have to do. That is, they're taking the description of this sort of play and making it into a flowchart for how to play. It's just incorrect. As soon as I see somebody in play saying, "Hmm, know what would be a good premise? If I had the character get into a situation where he had to shoose between X and Y." That's where I tell the player to stop verbalizing, and, like Nike would advise, just do it.

No analysis during play allowed. I slip into it all the time (go figure), and it's just a distraction. Better to do it "wrong" and quickly, than to take a long time figuring out the right way to do it.

As for the difficulty with getting to know the many NPCs - well, that's in part a problem of the medium in question, and the way I handled it. In IRC, there's a tendency to focus only on the action that's happening to you. I know that I do this in other games on IRC. Also, given that I played without players on many occasions, simply substituting some players for others when neccessary, made this sorta inevitable, too. Especially for people who came in "late" to action. Given the time restrictions, I rarely had any chance to take time to give any backstory for any characters.

So, instead, I relied on the old "What the character knows" as the basis for updating the player. Now, of course, that tends to not be the best for narrativism. But, again, I had little choice. I could have limited things to a smaller group, but I don't think that I could have gotten 19 sessions out of a smaller group.

Looking back, I realized that I should have taken some steps to ensure that players had more access to something that could refresh their memory. At some point I started distributing lists of characters (as you suggest above), but that was too little, too inconsitently, and too late.

In the current iteration, I intend to make information much more accessible, and thank the heavens for the Wiki. This takes the place of physical lists that I'd have in a FTF game (in the Lankan Empire FTF, I've got Visios showing the who's who in politics). Like you suggest above. So, I'm hoping that this will take the place, perhaps even do a better job, than paper would.


Here's the thing. If you look at any Soap Opera, the cast includes over 50 characters easy. Any fewer, and things really become incestuous to the point of unbelievability. That, or characters die off, and the map becomes so small that there's really very little left to resolve with the combinations that are left. Heck, even Soap Operas are implausibly tight - as my game was, too. There were times when I was really worried that I had broken suspension of disbelief. It was actually to my advantage that not everyone had a perfect understanding of every character, so that I could get away with this.

The soap style is actually somewhat more Simulationis, oriented than other games. In general, my style has some definite simmy moments. Not to be pedantic (I hate when people quote this at me), but RPGs are not books or movies. So the dramatic rules that apply there, the shotgun rule, for instance, don't always apply to RPGs. In my game, I don't put a weapon in the game only if it's going to see use - I describe whatever makes sense at the moment that it's encountered. The drama comes from using narrativism to make of that interesting situations. Not the reverse, where I create everything only to support a dramatic situation.

For a long term game like I'm running, I think this is very important. Short term games can ignore stuff like this, because everyone is focused on getting to resolutions of the overall story. In the long term game, the premises are undiscovered until you find them in the material presented. As such, I have to just chuck out a lot of material and see what sticks. That means the some of the material doesn't get used.

I find it interesting that you liked the monk (I can't even remember who this is). Because if you liked him and wanted to see more of him, then why didn't you say so? I work off of the player's cues.  I find it particularly interesting in the light of the power grab you made in play a session ago, where you director stanced in a bit of evidence pointing to Elle's lost sister (Alitia as it happens). You seemed to have no problem making your desires known through narration - so why can't you tell me in the OOC box what you want to see? Take too much time in IRC? :-)


Anyhow, really important here, we've all said quite a lot, and we need to hear if any of this is helping Charles - it's his thread after all. Keep that in mind.

Mike