How story evolves over time

[LordSmerf]

Tony,

That's something close to what I want to say, yes.  You have to be able to make stuff outside of expectations happen, but if you have mechanically established that everyone has the exact same expectations, and that without mechanical influence those expectations will come to pass, then where's the surprise?

If you have mechanically defined those expectations, and it's easy to change them, then who's going to invest any effort in expecting them?

You've got to have some way to make expectations long-term, and still have a way to violate them (in a good way).

Thomas

[TonyLB]

Yep, but there are several ways to do that.  So long as suddenly overturning a big expectation isn't something that can be done just any time, but which can be done in certain circumstances (which people could subtly aim toward), I think the tension can be maintained.  I'll posit one method, though I'm sure people can think of others.

Suppose resolving some big story-arc gives you a huge surge of resources.  You can either spread these out across many things, or roll them straight into one monumental effort, like confounding some other big story-arc.  For the most part the short-term efforts of a PC are insufficient to stop a story-arc that has a lot of momentum, but the resources from completing another story-arc are sufficient.

I'm thinking particularly of the TV series Angel here, which overturns expectations on several big counts, to the betterment of the story.  SPOILERS FOLLOW.



So, for an example, Darla and Drusilla are on a bloody rampage.  Events in that arc are "Angel finds Darla and Drusilla" and "Angel rescues their victims."  Wolfram and Hart are also yanking Angels chain, a lot.  Event there is "Angel gets fed up with the evil lawyers and stoops to their level to get vengeance."

So, naturally, when Angel finds the girls, they're about to chow down on the staff of Wolfram and Hart.  He rolls the resources he gains from finding them into increasing the importance of stooping to their level.  He resolves "Stoop to their level," closing the doors and locking the naughty solicitors in with the vampires.  With the resources he gained from that, he buys off "Angel rescues the victims" entirely.

Now that is in many ways unexpected.  Angel is letting people die.  Just walking away.  Surprising, yet (in its way) inevitable.  The long-established anger with Wolfram and Hart is what makes it acceptable for him to overturn the "Rescues Victims" event, whereas it wouldn't have been cool for somebody to just say "I think Darla and Drusilla get bored with killing, for no particular reason.  If we just leave well enough alone I'm sure there won't be any more trouble."

[Sydney Freedberg]

In some ways, this reminds me of Capes's "Event" mechanic (unsurprising: Tony = author of Capes). When a player puts a card on the table and writes on it "Event: The Love Interest plummets from a High Place" or "Event: the Hero defeats the Villain," everyone (assuming no veto) now knows that Event will happen, but no one is sure quite how they'll get to it or what will come of it, which offers plenty to be uncertain and engaged about: Will the Love Interest be pushed by the bad guy or jump in despair? Will she be caught or splattered? Will the Hero defeat the Villain easily, with difficulty, honorably, by stooping to his level? And, if these two Events are happing at once, does the Hero fail to save the Love Interest even in his victory, or is his victory precisely the thing that dooms her?

You can concoct endless other types of Events, too, which can be terribly abstract -- "Someone feels morally justified about their actions" -- or in service of particular genre conventions -- e.g. for John Woo, "Event: Mexican stand-off in a church" or for Star Trek, "Someone pontificates smugly."

One added dimension Tony seems to be seeking here is that these [Future] Events need to persist as future possibilities over many scenes and many sessions -- and that they can be cancelled out, made not to happen, if need be. But I'm sure there are other crucial differences I'm not seeing in my sleep-deprived state, so I'll just ask: Tony, what specifically are you trying to achieve that you couldn't already achieve with Capes-style Events modified to last indefinitely until someone specifically chose to resolve them?

P.S. I have a vague image of people writing down their desired Events on index cards, putting them on the table, and then arranging them next to already-played Event cards to create an outline of the proposed future course of events (i.e. plot) or to associate different Events (e.g. the way the Love Interest falling and the Hero winning were associated above, or the way "someone is infected with lycanthropy" followed "big werewolf fight" in Tony's example).

[Sydney Freedberg]

P.P.S.: I think what I just described above is Chris "Matrix Games" Engle's "plot track," except one that's customized and improvized by the players rather than pre-set.


P.P.P.S:

It seems to me that while what you're talking about here is a fascinating set of tools for story creation such that our creation of stories will probably be more interesting/more powerful, at the same time it may (I'm not sure yet) weaken things from the perspective of players as audience.  We are less able to feel the tension of things... maybe.

Ah, someone saying the same thing I said. There is a possibility that taking the god's eye/scenerio building perspective will ruin the tension of play.

There's been a longrunning debate/anxiety about that in various Forge threads, I believe; the Forge-terminology for the question is something like "does heavy reliance on Author or Director stance undermine Immersion and thus excitement?" I think the "orthodox" Forge answer is, true, you may feel less as if you're inhabiting your character's head and seeing through his/her eyes, but you can still get excited and tense even if you have far greater power over the story than your character does.

[Callan S.]

Let's examine the most bog-standard story-prep imaginable:  A GM says "Okay, they'll come into town and the Mayor will tell them that his daughter has been captured.  Then they'll go out and fight the werewolves.  When they win, they'll rescue the daughter only to realize that she's been infected.  Do they leave her as she is, kill her, or sacrifice a powerful magical artifact to cure her?  Moral decision!  Yay!  I'm a great GM!"

That story has a beginning, middle and end.  It has its own timeline.  During play that timeline unspools:  events cascade from the future, into the present, and then into the past.

Before play, clearly, that timeline is dealt with as a whole.  Say the GM thinks "Hey, what if the town blacksmith is in league with the werewolves?  He'd act shifty in the beginning, and then the werewolves might be well armed (with weapons of recognizable craftsmanship) in the middle, and there's a big moral confrontation at the end."  He's just changed the story as a whole, throughout all its parts.  The story, as a whole, is evolving over time, as stories should.

This is going to sound nit picky, but isn't that just the games scratch notes evolving? While story itself comes from actual play events?

I can see the play in your example, where players are clearly manipulating resources. But the play involved is part of a 'compete to create some scratch notes' game. In a way it works, if play starts right at the point of address and everyone says 'okay, these scratch notes are the facts of the case, take them into account in your address'. But the example seems to avoid an address...the girls pregnant, which doesn't propose any immidiate choice needs to be made. Are you sure the example meets your needs?

Side note: I've got their wierd feeling that maybe this is some huge perceptual shift I've been under during my gaming career, where perhaps I've been using rules for writing scratch notes as if they were rules for actually playing the scratch notes. Certainly it would answer the 'complete games with unlimited resource assignment' questions I asked in a recent thread. If so, then wow...disregard my question, I've got a whole new thread to start!

[Rob Carriere]

Tony,
This is completely out in left field, so use or discard to taste, but should the players be playing characters in this game? Shouldn't they be playing story elements instead?

So like, I'm playing "violence will break out" and you're playing "werewolves are misunderstood" or some such?

I know this is vague as all get-out, but I noticed I was explaining your idea to myself describing the story elements as active and the characters as undergoing the evolving story.

SR
--

[MatrixGamer]

Tony,
This is completely out in left field, so use or discard to taste, but should the players be playing characters in this game? Shouldn't they be playing story elements instead?

So like, I'm playing "violence will break out" and you're playing "werewolves are misunderstood" or some such?

I know this is vague as all get-out, but I noticed I was explaining your idea to myself describing the story elements as active and the characters as undergoing the evolving story.

SR
--

I frequently use the character "Amorphous evil" in games whose goal is to mess things up. It works and can be a fun "character" to play. I think giving players a goal like you've described is interesting and worthy of a thread of its own but probably not on the point here.

Tony's original point was about a game mechanic to allow change in the direction of the game.

It suggests several questions.

1. Can it be done? I think the answer is yes. People have pointed out a few ways.
2. Will Tony's mechanic work? I don't know - It needs to be play tested.
3. Should it be done? Or what are the implications if it is done? One answer is that it could lessen tension in the game.
4. Are their any tangential ideas spurred by this that could make good threads of their own? Which I think is yes. Rob's idea being a case in point.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press = Engle Matrix Games

[TonyLB]

This is completely out in left field, so use or discard to taste, but should the players be playing characters in this game? Shouldn't they be playing story elements instead?

How about both?  I don't think you get into conflict of interest, so long as the rewards for playing a story element are dependent on other players engaging their characters with that element, and likewise the rewards for playing a character are dependent upon engaging your character with other people's story elements.  That should be enough to discourage solitaire play, where you're both creating and resolving adversity for your own character.

[MatrixGamer]

This is completely out in left field, so use or discard to taste, but should the players be playing characters in this game? Shouldn't they be playing story elements instead?

How about both?  I don't think you get into conflict of interest, so long as the rewards for playing a story element are dependent on other players engaging their characters with that element,

If a player takes on the role of "Werewolfs are evil fiends" it doesn't related only to one character. To enact this goal in a game a player might want to make many different characters act. They might want the old crone to tell about past attacks, have the mayor's daughter try to talk to her captors and get bit for her troubles, or have the hero see a werewolf eating a fluffy bunny. When you divorce player's play from one character it has decided implications for play.

How important is a player playing one character to you? And how much ownership does one player have of their character (ie can I make your character do something stupid if it enacts my goal?) If players are limited to their character then taking on the goal of "fill in the blank goal" is limited.

In Engle Matrix Games I have people pick characters but they are not tied to them or totally control them. Actual play can be very role play like if the players want it to be but it can also be very detached. When it gets detached it can look and feel not like role playing.

How do you feel about characters? Do players control only their guy? Do you want a detached game? I'm interested. Your answers will set the parameters of how the game is played.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press = Engle Matrix Games

[timfire]

Tony, I have an honest theorectical question here---Why should the players ever invest in future events, rather than just focus on present or near-present events?

OK, so I have this cool idea for a future event. You're trying to find a way to make sure this happens. But in the meanwhile between now and when this cool event is suppose to happen, something might come along that makes my idea irrelevent or inappropiate. You acknowledge that this might happen. In your original example, you have the players negate... err, some sort of fight scene in favor of something else. Obviously, something happened that made the players change their minds.

So my question is, given that there's always a possibility that some future event will make me change my mind, why don't I save myself the trouble and just let things happen intuitively---meaning, I only worry about the here and now, and what I'm going to do immediately next?

[Mike Holmes]

Bill Cook recently sent me a game called "Story Steps" that I think is trying to do what you're looking for, Tony. Only it's all just "write up the end goals, and then write up the steps to get there, etc." I think it definitely could be done in a more mechanically solid way.

But I agree with Thomas, only more so. Reading Story Steps, I was thinking "this is like Universalis, but worse." Meaning that I agree with you that Universalis doesn't do this sort of thing, but it almost did. When designing the game Ralph came up with a huge set of rules about monitoring story progress across arcs. You can probably still see them on the website (though I can't seem to find the website...). We removed them from the rules, however, because it was just too much stuff. Which turned out for the best, I think.

Basically, I don't want to have any pre-generated idea of what's going to happen. Oh, sure, I'll have ideas about what I'm going to do in play personally. But what I think is a feature of RPGs is that they have the same quality of the future being unknown that books do. That is, you get to create something with similarities to a book, yet you also get it revealed to you as you go along like a book. That's unique, and I don't want to lose it.

Now, people said the same sort of thing about Universalis that if they couldn't keep their association to the character that it wouldn't be fun. So, perhaps I'm just being a fuddy-duddy. Take it for what it's worth. But the power to create "now" on the spot, and not "what's going to happen" seems to be the attractive part to me. Just saying.

Mike

P.S. Crossposted with Tim. But I think he's saying much the same thing.

[timfire]

Mike---yeah, I think we're saying the same thing.

I also wanted to ask something else, Tony---why should the player delay his gratification? Meaning, why should I invest in future events and not just make those events happen right here and now?

For example, the "mayor betrayal" plot, or whatever it was. Why should I invest in having that happen some time down the road, instead of just making it happen right now? Why can't I just throw down a Drama point or whatever and declare,"As we turn around the mayor gives us an evil grin...He's up to something!!!" That way, the fact that he's involved in some sort of betrayal is entered into the SIS immediately.

Like I said, these are honest questions. If you have reasons for this that you think I'm not seeing, I would love to hear them.

[Sean]

If you drop into and out of scenes, then there may be, in a well-designed game, incentive to focus on the now and the later both. Especially if you accumulate a resource in-scene which drives the game from scene to scene in some way (as in My Life with Master). So e.g. beating the werewolves boosts your story pool, so then you can choose whether you want to buy down the 'inflicted with lycanthropy' follow-up or invest in creating a 'romantic interlude with hot wolf chick' follow up.

(That way of looking at it creates an incentive to keep the in-scene resource and the scene-manipulating resource separate, IMO.)

[TonyLB]

Tony, what specifically are you trying to achieve that you couldn't already achieve with Capes-style Events modified to last indefinitely until someone specifically chose to resolve them?

What I'm trying to practically achieve with this general theoretical concept?  I have no such goal.

What I'm trying to practically achieve with a specific application of this theoretical concept?  Again, a good question, but I'm going to defer it until I have a new draft of Misery Bubblegum to discuss in IGD.

[TonyLB]

I also wanted to ask something else, Tony---why should the player delay his gratification? Meaning, why should I invest in future events and not just make those events happen right here and now?

I get that the question is honestly meant, but I don't understand why you expect me to have a once-and-forever answer to it.

I don't know what uses people will put this ability to.  Asking me that is like asking "Why would anybody want to narrate something in Director stance, rather than just achieve the same effect by doing something in Actor stance?"  It's not hard to give a specific answer ("Well, many times you can establish dramatic tension more quickly by simply narrating what you need for the scene, rather than trying to create it second-hand by GM reaction to your character actions") but there is so much territory to cover that no one answer is likely to satisfy every contingency.

So, why would you want to contribute toward a scene happening later rather than make the scene happen now?  Here's a specific answer:  Your actions are linked through story structure to the later scene, but there is a lot of build-up which is required before that scene actually takes place. 

For instance:  Your martial-artsy character is berated in the opening scene by his teacher, who says that "Until you learn to trust yourself, your Kung-Fu will always be weak."  This scene (at least to me) is clearly foreshadowing the issues that will occur at the climax of the episode:  the character's ability (or inability) to trust himself needs to be revealed and important in that climax.  But I don't want that scene now.  God no!  I want several more scenes, in which his current inability to trust himself is highlighted, underlined and put in the spotlight.  I also want some scenes where he is given an opportunity to learn to trust himself, hopefully by an unexpected and entertaining angle (falling in love with a good woman is classic).

Now, through all of that, I want to be continually modifying and codifying the climax scene that this is all leading toward.  When that climax occurs, the resources should already be in place showing how it is an outgrowth of everything that went before, because at every juncture of "before" we were looking forward and modifying the future climax.  That climax could not possibly have the same depth and richness of meaning if it occurred immediately after the first scene ... indeed, it could not be the climax if it occurred then.  Something else, later, with more importance, would have to be the climax.

So, to turn your question around:  the very next scene, the one that's about to happen, that has a certain place in the story.  It may not be a very important place, no matter how hard I try in this moment.  Why should I limit my efforts to effecting that scene, when all of the story, past, present and future are available for me to fiddle with?