Situation and Tension

[contracycle]

I've been looking for a structural model of the RPG game again.  Note, the actual game played at the table, not the rules text or anything else.  So I mean something much more like "scenario" or "module" etc.  I want to ask what people think of this way of looking at such a game.

It's unremarkable that we establish a Situation which is mostly "dramatically promising".  It contains some sort of crisis or horror or problem with which we expect the player characters to engage.

I propose that the situation should be considered to possess, quite apart from the specific detail of which it is comprised, a number of Tensions.  I'm not sure there's a pre-existing dramatic term for what I am going to describe, though.  Anyway, these Tensions are roughly speaking the general case of which the specific conditions are expressions.

So for example, we have a fairly stock story of a bad king on the throne and a good king who has been disposessed.  Normally the players will be aides to the good king running about in the woods and conspiring to restore him to the throne, or something along those lines.  Our Tensions would be something like: might makes right, legal inheritance, symbolic/mystic authority of kingship.

I suggest a "story" (in the most vulgar sense of the term) is a number of scenes that 'address'/discuss/examine these Tensions.  The ACTION of the game then moves from Tension-issue to Tension-issue heading towards the climax.

digression: I came to this though while considering "virtuality" play and its associated problems.    It seems to me that one of the problems with this sort of play is ithe frequency with which it becomes trapped in strict continuous time, a problem I have commented on before.  Now I have come to think that this occurs because the characters are in a scene, whether they know it or not, and they cannot "move on" from this scene because nobody knows what its there for and thus how to bring it to closure.  Continuous time is a sort of RPG limbo.  This idea hopes to provide some context for the scene and its purpose and thus to allow it to be resolved.

I further propose that a given scene can only deal with one Tension at a time.  I'm not sure that this is a hard rule but I'm going to assume it is for the present.  The purpose of a scene then is to ARTICULATE the situation in terms of one of the Tensions, and to allow the characters to make some decision about these issues.

So in our deposed king scenario, we might have a stock scene in which the good guys ambush some of the bad kings men.  This would be a scene based on the Tension: might makes right.  It is an opportunity for the players to discuss/exemplify their opinion on this tension, and simultaneously to pursue character-based agendas.

Now at this point I would like to respond to a possible counterpoint: isn;t this a rfeturn to the domination of Plot?  Well yes and no - yes inasmuch as this is an attempt toward a kind of  'structured plotting', but no becuase we are NO mandating outcomes or results, only opportunities.

Are they not Bangs then?  Well no - because Bangs are based on character issues and concerns, are designed to hook the players, while these Tensions arise from Setting and are actually designed to hook the characters.  Bangs and the Tension-incidents can co-exist or occur simultaneously; what the tension-incidents aim to provide is the substrate of which the Action of the piece is comprised.

In the 3-act play model, the Action serves to raise tension towards the climax.  I propose that these Tension-incidents should be seen as and termed Provocations.  They are moments of play in which the GM presents exposition of setting and situation such that both the detail and the significance of these events is shown.  And once this job is done, the scene is resolved, and play can move on to the next scene.  These, then, are purposeful scenes, and hopefully resolve the neverending scene problem that I see occurring in continuous time play.

Having proposed both Tensions and Provocations, it should be possible to organise them structurally.  Tensions have a dynamic that corresponds to the dynamic of rising action.  Only one scene can be executed at the table at once, and therefore Provocations must occur in sequence one after the other.  In which case, a GAME can be displayed as matrix of Tensions against Time enumerated through the incidence of Provocations.

I made a crude diagram to display this but cannot show it.  I hope this should be somewhat clear but if it is not I can go further in describing what this matrix would look like.  Lets imagine Tensions appearing as columns, containing directional arrows pointing downwards.  Scenes comprise the rows, with the first scene (scene 0) at the top and the last (scene n) at the bottom.  There can only be a single Provocation in a given line, and it must fall in a column indicating a Tension.

With such a structured design, deliberate planning becomes possible, I hope.  Potentially we can determine: a specific number of scenes, a specific sequence of scenes, a correlation of scenes with issues/tensions, and even the ability to allocate scenes to acts.  Also, this kind of stylised and explicit structure would go a long way toward the idea proposed elsewhere that all players might benefit from some overview of "what we are here to do" and "where we are going".  Rather like a play, in which you might be told up front "what the story is about", you would likely start such a game by discussing/choosing the climax to which you wish to work toward through the resolution of Provocations.  Some sort of system might be developed to allow/require players to select what provocations and what tensions they wish to deal with in what order.

This model does not require that the content of Provocation scenes be actually established ahead of time.  It only mandates what is topical in the scene.

Any comments appreciated.

[TonyLB]

Does predicting the climax and progression of conflicts require that you know (at the beginning of the story) which Tensions will catch fire in the players imaginations and which will be duds?  Or do you envision a way that this method can provide the flexibility for people to discover that through play?

[contracycle]

Does predicting the climax and progression of conflicts require that you know (at the beginning of the story) which Tensions will catch fire in the players imaginations and which will be duds?  Or do you envision a way that this method can provide the flexibility for people to discover that through play?

I have several thoughts about that; its tricky to separate the theory from the implementation.

My proposition then draws on other influences such as those discussed in 'rapid deployment RGS'.  I envision a negotiation process at the start of the game (which is aided by knowing what the climax is, topically anyway) in which the Tensions the players are interested in are decided.

Frankly, if equipped with understanding of whats going on here, they could just nominate one or several.

Another method that has occurred to me is to have a single page graphic that is exemplary of the Tension.  I'm thinking of a piece of art that is rather like a CCG card graphic; you lay 4 or 5 of them out and ask the players what floats their boat, thus what tensions they want to engage with.  And that should also contribute to character design.

I have a slightly more develop concept as well in which the selection of provocations and the order in which they arrive is done as start-of-play preparation.

[TonyLB]

Ah, you're talking about how to discover the player's opinions on what interests them at the beginning of the session, yes?  If so then I didn't quite emphasize the particular question I'm asking.

Does this require that somebody at the table (GM or players) know which Tensions will catch fire in the players imaginations and which will be duds?  Or do you envision a way that this method can provide the flexibility for a Tension to become important when the players only discover that it's important to them half-way through a session, and nobody knew it was going to catch their interest?

[contracycle]

Ah, you're talking about how to discover the player's opinions on what interests them at the beginning of the session, yes?

Not the session, but the game/module/scenario.

Does this require that somebody at the table (GM or players) know which Tensions will catch fire in the players imaginations and which will be duds?

Not really.  That is, you could do it by having the players and GM's just decide what the tensions of a given scenario should be, according to what interests them.  Or you could do it by GM fiat; or by the fiat of a remote author.

The Tensions, as I said, hook characters not players.  They are expressions of setting, not premise.  Its not important that the Tensions be significant or meaningful to the players, what motivates is that these are the items that the world is deciding.

Ideally though, they should be interesting to explore in their own right, because they are determining the content of the rising action.  We are talking about sets, props, whatnot.

  Or do you envision a way that this method can provide the flexibility for a Tension to become important when the players only discover that it's important to them half-way through a session, and nobody knew it was going to catch their interest?

Well, if we ended up with the visual matrix described abvove, then I'd guess you could say that you could change these decisions mid play.  I have no problem with that; that would come down to specific systematic design.

[Marco]

I have a question about this model: is it for the description of a game that's already been run (i.e. a way of analyzing a game's structure) or is it a way of constructing an adventure to run?

From the language used (the tensions hook the characters), I'd assume the latter.

My question: since no outcome is specified to the assault of the king's men, are there several rows of scenes that might or might not happen? (I.e. a dungeon and trial scene if the PC's lose the fight).

If the situation mutates enough that you don't have a scene prepared is it possible that you'll get scenes that don't address the Tension?

-Marco

[contracycle]

I have a question about this model: is it for the description of a game that's already been run (i.e. a way of analyzing a game's structure) or is it a way of constructing an adventure to run?

Constructing/negotiating a game to be run.

My question: since no outcome is specified to the assault of the king's men, are there several rows of scenes that might or might not happen? (I.e. a dungeon and trial scene if the PC's lose the fight).

The way I'm looking at it, the scenes are mandated.  So even if an event occurred in the action that invalidated what might have been planned for a later scene, that does not alter the need for that later scene.  Thats why this is not just establishing a scene and its content that must be run; the idea is to establish the TYPE of scene that must be run.

If the situation mutates enough that you don't have a scene prepared is it possible that you'll get scenes that don't address the Tension?

The idea is, you don't let it.  You already (hopefully) know that your players are interested in these Tensions.  The idea is that instead of following the action "wherever it leads", we are focussing action into these nominated issues.

Lets say, I see the overall situation becoming more and more defined and consolidated as time and play goes on.  But the idea is to stick to the tensions in order to stay focussed, and to come to an actual climax.  And becuase you already have an idea of what kind of scenes are going to appear, and when, you can be more deliberate in what action to describe in the present.

[Marco]

The way I'm looking at it, the scenes are mandated.  So even if an event occurred in the action that invalidated what might have been planned for a later scene, that does not alter the need for that later scene.  Thats why this is not just establishing a scene and its content that must be run; the idea is to establish the TYPE of scene that must be run.

I'm still a little foggy. I'm getting that this is about the "Type" of scene (so we have a "make speech to people scene to try to get popular support"--yes?) But if the charismatic guy is killed in Scene A, then he's not there for the speech and it's more likely to fail--but could there be a Scene D which is defined as "The PC's and villagers storm the keep?"

(which, if the speech failed to win public support would be hard to explain)

Actually, I'm just curious--it seems as valid as any other way to handle roleplaying. I'd find it less Immersionist than normal play and it I do find agreement with the view that it's pretty heavily "pre-created" plot--but maybe I don't understand it all that well.

-Marco

[contracycle]

I'm still a little foggy. I'm getting that this is about the "Type" of scene (so we have a "make speech to people scene to try to get popular support"--yes?)

No.  Making a speech and gaining popular support is one of many things that escalate the Tension.  What we have scheduled is a provocation; the speech is just a method of carrying out that provocation.

But if the charismatic guy is killed in Scene A, then he's not there for the speech and it's more likely to fail--but could there be a Scene D which is defined as "The PC's and villagers storm the keep?"

Yes mostly; that is, working up toward (something like) storming the keep is the point, and that is managed/justified by the series of Provocations organised by Tension.  So scene B - which would have been the speech - is not prevented by the speakers death in scene A.  Some other scene would then be called for, the only requirement being that it serve to Provoke the same Tension.

[contracycle]

Addendum:

Another way of looking at the speech scene is something like this:
the purpose of the speech scene is to show the setting heading towards its crisis point - or at least that setting that is local to the characters.

The point of these provocations is to drive the action in escalating toward the climax; the scenes themselves are a means to an end.

Thus, the assasination of the would-be speaker may serve just as well to escalate these tensions as the inflammatory speech would itself have done.  What it makes abundantly clear is that the respective factions are getting themselves into a bate.  

And this raises one of the central aims of this proposed model: even if you had scheduled the speech as a scene, and then the characters come along and whack the speaker, you have some direction with which to improvise the remainder.

That is, you (the GM) would be aware of which tension the now-frustrated speech was to inflame, and can improvise a suitable response that also escalates that tension, so that the overall direction of the piece stays on track.  Hopefully a rather similar but perhaps less overt influence will affect player decisions too.

IOW, by approaching the performance/delivery level organisation of RPG-in-practice, rather than trying to mandate plot content, I hope to enable the production games that are designable experiences without requiring railroading to be confident that the time and effort invested in preparation is not wasted.

[contracycle]

Addendum 2:
The above is mostly a discussion of the rationale behind this matrix style visualisation.  If that works for you (anyone), then I would hope that some applied insights can be drawn from this re-appraisal of the flow of action in RPG:

- timing becomes less nebulous and can be constructed in terms of provocations, allowing more deliberate "session sculpting"
- Tensions may likely be tied directly to character protagonism, and character design structured around expressing/personifying Tensions in the game
- potentially serve to coordinate split party play because of the greater clarity of the nature and purposes of scenes
- control character developement in terms of the characters relationships to said tensions, rather than merely as increasing ability, because now these Tensions are visible and enumerated components of play
- Establish a framework less conducive to habitual task resolution by bringing scene structure front and centre

Scenes could very well be a mechanism by which magic is carried out.  Magic has traditionally been task-based because IMO the continuous time model requires inputs like range and area of effect in order to produce outputs.  But a scene based system does not need anything like that at all - rather than having magic-as-tool, the exercise of magic may call for a particular scene, which can be exploited much more widely for dramatic effect than the necessarily mechanistic operation of System.

Rather than having a Charm Person spell that works for X duration, or a poewr that works for "the length of a scene" without clear direction of what constitutres a scene and how you know its ended, you would rather construct a scene in which the character was charming as hell, and it would not go on any longer than necessary, nor would an artifact of system mandate that the spell breaks mid conversation.

[M. J. Young]

That is, you (the GM) would be aware of which tension the now-frustrated speech was to inflame, and can improvise a suitable response that also escalates that tension, so that the overall direction of the piece stays on track.

It strikes me that this is illusionist technique. There's nothing wrong with that in my book, but this is rather heavy-handed, from a certain point of view.

Let us suppose that the scene is intended to have a certain NPC adversary make a speech that inflames the people against the leaders whom the characters are supporting.

Assuming the players don't actually know this (although if they did know it this would be intensified), they recognize that their adversaries have an eloquent speaker on their side who just might tip the balance in their opponents' favor. They note that he's scheduled to make a major address at a certain public gathering, and that with the way things are going this is going to be a turning point in the conflict. After attempting to have his partipation in the program scuttled, they decide there's only one thing left to do: they must assassinate him.

Of course, one form of illusionist technique would be to prevent the assassination from being effective. You don't want to do that; that would be railroading. Fine.

What you want to do instead is to allow them to assassinate the speaker before the speech, but then create another event (the Marc Antony speech?) which has the same impact, causing the same shift in opinion leading to the same problem.

What you've done is allow the action but strip it of the intended effect. That's an illusionist technique used to prevent the players from derailing the plot. It is perhaps a more insidious use of such a technique, precisely because it eliminates not the actions themselves but the anticipated consequences. If the players let the man speak, it creates trouble for them; if they kill the man before he speaks, it creates the same trouble for them. If they do nothing or anything, the same future awaits.

How is this not so in your design?

Let me restate that I approve of illusionist techniques in design when they enhance player opportunities. If you can show how this enhances player input to the game, that's as good an answer to my mind as showing that it does not eliminate the effects of player choice.

--M. J. Young

[John Kim]

OK,

Let me take a stab at the diagram thing here, in an effort to understand.  In your example, there is a bad king on the throne and a good king who has been disposessed.  The PCs are aides to the good king running about in the woods and conspiring to restore him to the throne.  The Tensions are:
1. might makes right
2. legal inheritance
3. symbolic/mystic authority of kingship

So we would then make a diagram of the scenes.  With each scene, we would indicate which Tension it was Provocation for.  (And you suggest it should be for only one Tension.)  So at the start of the game, I might have a diagram like this:

                                  TENSION
         +-------------------+-------------------+-------------------+
         | might makes right | legal inheritance | authority of king |
         +-------------------+-------------------+-------------------+
Scene 1  |         |         |                   |                   |
         |         v         |                   |                   |
         +-------------------+-------------------+-------------------+
Scene 2  |                   |         |         |                   |
         |                   |         v         |                   |
         +-------------------+-------------------+-------------------+
Scene 3  |                   |                   |         |         |
         |                   |                   |         v         |
         +-------------------+-------------------+-------------------+
Scene 4  |         |         |                   |                   |
         |         v         |                   |                   |
         +-------------------+-------------------+-------------------+
Scene 5  |                   |                   |         |         |
         |                   |                   |         v         |
         +-------------------+-------------------+-------------------+

So when I start the game, I know that I want Scene 1 to be a Provocation for "might makes right".  No content or outcome is mandated, just what Tension should be topical in that scene.  If this is the case, then I think that M.J.'s suggestion that this is Illusionist isn't really correct.  On the other hand, it is still fairly restrictive.  i.e. You know going into a scene that it has to provoke a particular Tension.  

A question for contracycle:  Is this matrix intended to be for the GM's eyes only, or is it something which the group knows about?  

If this is what you are talking about, there is a creative difficulty, IMO.  The group has to be able to, on command, come up with a scene that illustrates the Tension of "legal inheritance".  That seems tough to me.  I suspect that in practice a GM will have something more than just "provoke Legal Inheritance" prepared, because coming up with such a scene spontaneously is liable to stall play.  On the other hand, the more you prepare particulars, the more this does become Illusionist (IMO).  

digression: I came to this though while considering "virtuality" play and its associated problems.    It seems to me that one of the problems with this sort of play is the frequency with which it becomes trapped in strict continuous time, a problem I have commented on before.  Now I have come to think that this occurs because the characters are in a scene, whether they know it or not, and they cannot "move on" from this scene because nobody knows what its there for and thus how to bring it to closure.  Continuous time is a sort of RPG limbo.  This idea hopes to provide some context for the scene and its purpose and thus to allow it to be resolved.

Well, this is probably a digression, but I'm not sure I see the problem to be resolved.  Yes, Virtuality will not generally have 'jumps' in game-time where you have no idea what happened in between.  But the equivalent in Virtuality is abstracted resolution.  i.e. "You spend a week travelling and arrive at your destination".  If the players aren't interested in the current action, they can resolve it at a higher level of abstraction.

[contracycle]

So we would then make a diagram of the scenes.  With each scene, we would indicate which Tension it was Provocation for.  (And you suggest it should be for only one Tension.)  So at the start of the game, I might have a diagram like this:

Yes

So when I start the game, I know that I want Scene 1 to be a Provocation for "might makes right".  No content or outcome is mandated, just what Tension should be topical in that scene.  If this is the case, then I think that M.J.'s suggestion that this is Illusionist isn't really correct.  On the other hand, it is still fairly restrictive.  i.e. You know going into a scene that it has to provoke a particular Tension.  

Yes thats how I see it.  MJ, the idea is not that do option X and they get into trouble or option Y and they get into trouble; its is rather that the events are bigger than the people.  If they benefit  from the escalation of one tension, that does not imply that another must be set against them to counter-balance that benefit.

A question for contracycle:  Is this matrix intended to be for the GM's eyes only, or is it something which the group knows about?  

I could see several ways to use such a presentation:
- players and GM nominate provocations and their order
- external author writes tensions and provocations
- same game is played more than once with a different allocation
- same game is played again with a different order

Mostly this is intended as a GM's organising tool.  But I can imagine many implementations, as this is only a desrciptive device.  You could use a strong authors role to establish a fixed scene order, which would be rather railroady, and use this just as a mnemonic.  Or, the players all together could cast votes or similar as to how many provocations there are, and how many allotted to each tension.  Or, it could be totally public (because it does not specify content) and used as a guide for negotiation of SIS-affecting statements.

I think that a game comprised of 9 provocations across three tensions in order AAABBBCCC would probably be different from a game that went CABABABCC, or one that went AAAAAAABC.  I think a game with 4 provocations would probably be different to a game of 20 provocations.  It designed to frame questions: how many tensions work?  How many is too many? Does it (the number) vary by number of players?  

If this is what you are talking about, there is a creative difficulty, IMO.  The group has to be able to, on command, come up with a scene that illustrates the Tension of "legal inheritance".  That seems tough to me.  I suspect that in practice a GM will have something more than just "provoke Legal Inheritance" prepared, because coming up with such a scene spontaneously is liable to stall play.  On the other hand, the more you prepare particulars, the more this does become Illusionist (IMO).  

Oh I definitely expect that the GM would have to have much more than just knowledge of the current or next provocation ready; this is not really intended as a replacement of the developement of content, so much as a guide and aide.  But in a rather bang-like way, the idea is that all you have to develop is a mini-situation which provides a commentary on the topical tension.  It doesn't even have to be a big deal to the players or the characters - it just has to happen on screen.

So I could imagine a GM or product having a few stock scenes to exhibit a tension to players operating in tourist mode, and that would be fine.  Or you might have a detailed scene with people and places and plots, and tight causality requirements.  At the moment I even consider GM narration of a cut-away or similar to be a provocation/scene.

Yes, Virtuality will not generally have 'jumps' in game-time where you have no idea what happened in between.  But the equivalent in Virtuality is abstracted resolution.  i.e. "You spend a week travelling and arrive at your destination".  If the players aren't interested in the current action, they can resolve it at a higher level of abstraction.

I'm well aware of that but it is not what I mean.  I've been in games in which the group of characters essentially sat around at home trying to figure out what to do next.  Unless they had a good idea, nothing would happen; and "what would most likely happen next" was... more of the same.  What should happen in drama is that we cut to training montage or similar, or a few long shots with dramatic light displaying the characters despair and frailty.  Neither happens.

And IMO this sucks; the pacing goes to hell.  The structure above should act as a prompt to move the "story" along, increase the tension, even if that is the case.  The requirement for escalating tension is not related to game content and the two may often contradict each others demands.  this attempts to reconcile the two by placing content events into a dramatic contextual framework without trying to predetermine the action.