Mystics

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Ian,

I highly recommend not using Story Bones in any way. Story Engine is smart, and works, although it's further out there than Hero Wars in its resolution. Story Bones, on the other hand, is weakly written, and is limp compared to Story Engine, in that the most interesting rules are excised, and the revolutionary parts of SE are removed, leaving only a resolution system that's not that interesting.

It will also make the Simulationist in you climb onto a bell-tower and kill.

[Ian O'Rourke]

HW and SOAP have only one thing in common. But it's important. Playing SOAP teaches players how to think actively in Author and Director stance. Or rather, how to get out of Actor stance.

I see your point, and I may try that. Then we have jargon alert :)

What do we understand as Author and Director Stance? I have actor stance nailed - they play the part and don't actively try and change anything, they just react to the GM.

I think the players are okay with author stance in as much as they will add stuff to the scenery, or proactively add stuff via backgrounds - but I must admit they do it on the fly only rarely. They also never do it in such a way that authors something onto, into or that effects another player character (not sure if this is a Hero Wars thing - but I think it is a SOAP thing).

Director Stance - how does that come into HW, and what is it? It's obviously something above and beyond Author Stance?

[Valamir]

There are entire threads dedicated to that debate, including some that deny that director exists and that its merely an extremen implementation of author.  Best I can do is give you an example of how I see them.

Take a character whose a police detective investigating a series of bizarre serial killer type murders.  Lets say these murders are being perpetrated by a local cult.

Actor Stance:
The players all know (from having been out of scene witnesses to prior events) that the cultists meet regularly at the fountain in the park at midnight to plan their crimes.  The detective character does not know this, his routine is to go the bar after work for a couple drinks, and then home to bed.  So thats what the player has the character do.

Author Stance:
The player knows about the meeting in the park that night but his character doesn't.  So the player engineers a situation where the detective can't sleep because he can't stop thinking about the case.  Hopeing to clear his head he decides to go for a late night walk...and his route coincidentally takes him through the park...at midnight.

Director Stance:
The cult is behind the murders but the GM has never even considered having them meet in the local park.  The player has his detective character interviewing his street contacts about the case.  The player decides that one of them mentions strange goings on in the park at night, so the player decides his character will investigate them.  Essentially the entire "cult meeting in the park" bit was created by the player rather than the GM.


Thats how I use them anyhow.  I don't think any of those old threads ever really reached a consensus.

[Mike Holmes]

Those are pretty good examples, Ralph. Precise definitions are unnecessary for these purposes, the examples should give you the idea, Gordon. The point is that you want the players to stop making the majority of their decisions in Actor stance. They may not use a lot of Director stance (or maybe they will), but they should be looking at creating a story, not just driving a character about. They should not have the characters motivations in mind, they should have an author's motivations as regards the character in question (which doesn't discount character motivations, but doesn't cater to them solely). This means they should be just as happy when the character fails in an intereesting way, BTW, as when he succeeds in an interesting way.

SOAP forces you to do this, as, being without a GM, the players are going to have to create the story. There's no way around it.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

Ralph has nailed the three stances quite clearly. I have found that Author is the hardest for people to understand - for instance, Ian described Director stance when he tried to define it, and that's pretty common.

There are three issues central to your concerns with Hero Wars and Narrativist play in general, Ian.

1) Author stance - making player decisions first, and then forcing character decisions to conform to them.

2) Scene resolution - or more accurately, finding a satisfying point or range between resolving individual actions and overall scenes, which usually means deciding where the conflict lies in that spectrum.

3) Fortune-in-the-Middle - being able to tweak, adjust, or otherwise mess with the conflict's outcome even after the Fortune method has been applied.

None of these is a small matter. All of them work together in a multivariate fashion. Hero Wars integrates them to an extent I have never before seen in RPG design.

Best,
Ron