[Shadowrun] What's wrong here?

[Lamorak33]

I think this is one of these "Please diagnose my problem" threads. I'm a jaded player who's been out of rpgs for a while, and I'm trying to work out:

a) If there's anything in rpgs worth coming back to.

and

b) What kind of play I can actually enjoy.

Hi Rob

Listen, I am only one of the dweebs here, there are far more cogent and sage contributors than I. However, I am never short of an opinion, so.....

I will assume you have read the articles about Gamism, Simulationism and Narratavism by some of the things you say, like feeling 'the unhappiest player in the world syndrome'.

Listening to your words I would say that you are not so interested in the exploration of a world that is not of your design.

You love that moment when you get to 'step on up', and hate any notion of fudging.

You like to be challenged to make interesting decisions that actually drive the story.

You will become disinterested in play where you detect you are playing along to the scenario/ GM's story.

I think this marks you out as a gamism player, which means that you will also enjoy the Narratavist creative agenda for reasons explained in Ron Edwards article Narratavism:Story Now.

Thus we can see that you will enjoy D&D games where you maybe hack through a dungeon, and games like Sorcerer and games of that type, which are really about players making meaningful choices and being in control of their own characters destiny.

One thing to remember about the Creative Agenda's, is that they are models of player/Gm behaviour. System Does matter, as per Ron Edwards article, because a good system will support a particular CA, which will broadly benefit the roleplaying experience.

I suspect that you have little time for classic simulationist play, and doubt you would get much out of the average Call of Cthulhu scenario either! I think the Narrativism:Story Now article has a chart with many common roleplaying games on, showing how they  relate to the various CA's, but beware that because a game supports a particular agenda, play will only conform to the CA agenda presented by the GM. Sorcerer explicitly talks in ways to foster 'Story Now', but the game Heroquest, which is a very powerful Narratavist system is actually presented as something like a solid Simulationist game, and that is how many play it.

Any help?
Regards
Rob

[TonyPace]

I love Shadowrun, but it's not easy to do right. I guess it's pretty much a gamist thing, but very different from D&D.

In Shadowrun, tactics is largely about your character and the caper style cool plan to get in. Beyond that it's all gear selection and refining your kit. Why do I love it? Because the gear really stacks up, the measures and countermeasures are tightly detailed, and the crunch is heavy. There is a very narrow spread in Shadowrun between 'dead easy' and 'near impossible' and when you angle yourself to the right end it's a very worthy feeling - as is the moment of dread when you've been angled out of it and it becomes rather tough.

Now, the modules - the modules are crap. In SR you need a GM with the leeway to say yes or roll dice. A module just doesn't provide that. And we don't really need any more analysis on why the clue train is going nowhere fast.

So, the typical Shadowrun mission - get hired to steal some cool shit at some heavily guarded location. Then you find a slick way to get in. Somehow, everything goes to hell, the alarm gets sounded, and you have to fight your way out. Then there's some tricky business with the Johnson at the end.

Now, the tough fight and the alarm more or less take care of themselves. But the real tricky business is the slick way in. I read one module that went to great lengths to cut off every damned reasonable plan to get in with some clever countermeasure. What a load of beeswax. This is the cool caper movie style thing! You need them to set up their surveillance and AVOID geting bogged down in an endless cycle of planning. Which means more or less SAYING YES to the first decent clever thing they come up with, and then throwing in a wrinkle or two.

The modules look good on paper, but as you said, who cares about virtual Seattle! Blow it up! Shadowrun lives and dies on it's characters stepping up to be cool one by one, and it's the GM's job to make that happen until they blow the crucial rolls and it all comes crashing down.

BTW, Humanity? There is no humanity in SR. It's Cyberpunk you're thinking of, I suspect.

[John Burdick]

Rob,

As far as the Shadowrun game, it sounds to me like you mainly just want to be able to play.

I don't play bridge, but I know that a player role called the dummy involves not being able to play. Another player uses the dummies cards. I assume that doesn't bother the people who enjoy the game. It is temporary, fairly distributed, and clearly communicated. The dummy is free to leave the table for a bit. In an rpg where the gm is the only one making choices, it's like being the dummy all through the game.

Since D&D, games have normally had a clearly defined means for making a character become dead. Killing may be the only solidly defined conflict resolution in the game. Most things are left to GM interpretation. As Tony says, a good GM can make those games work by having the right mindset, but the books don't tell you crucial parts. One of the common ideas in forge games is having reliable means of determining whether a player succeeds in achieving his goal, beyond only succeeding at his action. I like Great Ork Gods as an easy fun intro to conflict resolution.

I play with a guy that is a good GM, but tends not to run the same game for any significant time. I encouraged him to run games that are intended to be complete at the end of the day, instead of being left hanging. We've had good games with closure at the end of the night doing that.

John

[Rob Alexander]

Joshua -

What kind of stories do you like to tell and participate in? It seems most likely you need a better match.

That's kind of a big question, and pretty much what I'm trying to work out here! I think lack of data is a problem, I have so few *positive* experiences that it's hard to find stuff to draw on for an answer.

(Which leads to the question of how I stuck it out for so many bad experiences....but that's for another thread, "Obsessive gamer behaviour" perhaps)

You also might want to check out FindPlay and see what other people in your area are into.

I signed up last week, but as of yet there's no-one showing near my city (York, England) or any of the neighbouring ones. Not sure how well Google's map data works for this country or this latitude.

One thing I might try is IRC-based games although, again, being UK-based and working (mostly) office hours will probably make this harder. I'll have a look.

[Rob Alexander]

I don't see that much that points to a particular CA here. I think there's not enough information, frankly. In particular, what did you like about these stories you've liked?

Well, ok, I'll have a stab. My concern is that by doing this (rather than letting others infer it from my experiential descriptions) is that I'll just put out ideas about myself and gaming that I've picked up from reading and that aren't actually consistent with my experiences. I know that when I was younger I did that a lot, in lots of different fields.

I like rolegaming as an act of shared creation. I'm interested in creating, with friends or acquaintances a fantasy world that is uniquely ours, *even if it is very derivative* in the general sense. This is, I think, what I've always been most interested in. And I've almost never encountered it in other people's games - instead, I've found half-hearted fandom towards commercial products.

I'm not bothered about (or even interested in) extended, regular campaigns; given the schedule constraints of adult life I'm much more interested in Conan-style "drop in, drop out" expeditions into characters or setting. I'm even quite interested in "the world is mutable" i.e. warping the setting between games or runs as ideas come to me. M. John Harrison (of the Viriconium stories) has an essay related that at:

http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/show.html?ey,viriconium,1

which I found really interesting.

(link found via John Kim's site, thanks for that)

As I've noted elsewhere I'm also interested in a "can we win against the odds" style of tactical play, but the logistics to make that work just aren't what I'm willing to do as a GM.

Beyond that, it's hard to say. I just don't have enough good experiences to work with. (That said, before the last few years I just didn't have the intrapersonal skills have good experiences with anything much....so, as others have commented in this thread, I probably need to get out there and game.)

[Rob Carriere]

Rob,
When I read what you enjoyed as a GM, I think that you might find this thread very interesting. It discusses a set of techniques/style of play called No Myth, where the basic idea is indeed that you make it up as you go. There's quite an extensive discussion of the practical issues with that and how to handle those.

It is quite long though (6 pages of posts).

Hope you like it,
SR
--

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

I don't think so. Only a moderator can split a thread.

Anyway, this is your thread. Do with it what you will. I think the questions and comments probably fit both situations.

[Rob Alexander]

Okay, while I remember I'll throw something else in. Don't know how useful it will be since it's an emotional response to a throwaway comment, but still:

Something on the Forge struck me quite strongly the other day, and made me sit up and go "Yeah! I want to do *that*!". In the thread at

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=12764.0

Ron makes the comment:

Wow, that is old-school RuneQuest! I just had a high-school era flashback.

Lookit all that stuff there was to do ... drugs! Zorak Zoran worship! Broo and gorp! And the never-ending fascination of trolls.

Ignoring the drugs and the (intelligent) monsters, it's the "all that stuff there was to do" that really hit me. I've never played in (or, I think, run) a game where there were "lots of things to do" and a player could just choose to "do them".

I mean, I have no idea who Zorak Zoran is, but the idea that you could just choose to worship him....and that the GM would be willing and able to just go with that...I mean, the possibilities are endless.  You could end up teamed with Broos hunting Gorp on a quest to Initiation with Zorak Zoran while totally stoned on hallucinogenic mushrooms. All because the player(s) wanted to!

(And of course, Zorak Zoran's probably a mad, dead god who's highly inaccessible and very bad news, and although the Mayor of the neighbouring town nearby are very happy to have your help with all the goblins he's getting pretty funny about all this hanging around with Broos... and the fact that his daughter's run off with one of the other PCs isn't helping.)

That's the kind of thing that got me interested in rpgs in the first place (admittedly, I was a kid back then, and my), but I've never been involved in anything that managed play a game that worked like I've just described.

(There's lots of stuff here that's problematic. Not the least that the favour/disfavour with the god and the mayor and the daughter really needs some kind of mechanics if it's going to be viable to make it interesting over time... that kind of stuff is just too hard to adlib convincingly, certainly for me. One time reaction, fine. But if the player keeps worshipping (or wooing) over days and days...that's way too hard.)

Does this shed any more light?

[Rob Alexander]

BTW, Humanity? There is no humanity in SR. It's Cyberpunk you're thinking of, I suspect

He means Empathy, I guess. Like humanity in Cyberpunk, you lose it as you install cyberware. Having a low Empathy causes problems like resistance to helpful magic.

[Rob Alexander]

When I read what you enjoyed as a GM, I think that you might find this thread very interesting. It discusses a set of techniques/style of play called No Myth, where the basic idea is indeed that you make it up as you go. There's quite an extensive discussion of the practical issues with that and how to handle those.

Thanks for the link, I'm reading that now and trying to digest it; as you say, it's pretty long and heavy.

Good, though. And the parallels between this Shadowrun game and the problematic game that 'hyphz' describes are striking.

[ffilz]

Funny you should bring that run up when I'm again examining my inner self and trying to decide between running Rune Quest and Cold Iron. I'm still not confident that Rune Quest will go well (I'm about to start a new thread and try and dig into my past RQ experiences ). I'm a lot more confident about Cold Iron.

Rune Quest has been an inspiration to me a style of gaming where the players are presented with more choice than just combat. D&D is great for providing "meaningful choice" in combat (which when celebrated, results in good gamist play even if the railroad tracks lead straight to the dungeon entrance). Rune Quest enticed me to to extend that choice to negotiating with monsters, players looking at the map and deciding where to go next, and other choices. But it hasn't always worked for me.

The reward system in Rune Quest does help promote these choices. By not fighting the troll, the players aren't denied XP, in fact, they expand their XP options (they already are eligible for a chance to gain XP in their combat and magic skills, talking to the troll opened an opportunity for a chance to gain XP in their interpersonal skills). They might have lost out on some treasure (but treasure has a very different role in RQ from D&D - it mostly is spent on training, which improves XP). With a world out there that has some meaning, allies are useful.

A key though to the success of that run was that I did not have a plot. The PCs could have helped the trollkin kill the villager in the first encounter. Killing the troll instead of talking to him wouldn't have disrupted some convoluted plot of mine.

Your brainstorming about the sheriffs daughter is something that can be a danger zone. If the GM fixes in his mind the role the daughter is to play (and that role isn't to "just get them to the action" in a gamist dungeon crawl), choice may be removed from the players. If the role of the daughter is at least partly up to the players, then new choices have been opened.

Frank

[Rob Alexander]

Funny you should bring that run up when I'm again examining my inner self and trying to decide between running Rune Quest and Cold Iron.

I wasn't really thinking of RQ as such, I was just adlibbing off Ron's comment. Although I can understand that having 'monsters' with their own, intelligible, goals and lives could lead towards a lot more interesting options. And the comment about 'looking at the map' is interesting although I never noticed that in the RQ material I used to own (admittedly, this is the Games Workshop version of RQ3 that came with no Glorantha material at all).

Regarding the Sheriff's daughter, I didn't mean to imply that the GM had plans for her... rather I meant that the player had made his character take an interest in her and (maybe after a few social conflict rolls) the character had won her affection and the GM was now running with that.

With a world out there that has some meaning, allies are useful.

And enemies, too, I suppose. Now what I'd like is a combat/conflict mechanic with scope for results like "he gets away", rather than a (say, traditional task-resolution) one that would require the GM to plan his escape route and make it work (or just fudge it, which is unsatisfying).

Possibly HeroQuest might be appropriate here; the rules synopsis is in my 'to read' pile.

[ffilz]

Oh, I realize you weren't thinking of Rune Quest specifically for yourself. I was just noting that it was interesting that you brought up that old post of mine, when I'm in a very similar position now, a year and a half later...

As to the map thing - I am a visually stimulated person, maps with interesting things on them will inspire my play. Lots of other people are the same way. They create relationships (not in the same sense as the relationship maps mentioned in many of the narativist supporting games here) between places. If places have meaning, then those relationships have relevance. You see this in traditional D&D dungeons.

Your thoughts about conflict resolution and stakes other than death are very valid. It will be hard to get them in a combat system like D20. Hero Quest or any of the other numerous conflict resolution games discussed here will definitely allow this sort of thing.

Frank

[Lamorak33]

Possibly HeroQuest might be appropriate here; the rules synopsis is in my 'to read' pile.

....and if you do make it to Dragonmeet in London, I can guarantee you a game of Heroquest. I and a few others will be running demo's under the Masters of Luack and Death banner.

(And of course, Zorak Zoran's probably a mad, dead god who's highly inaccessible and very bad news, and although the Mayor of the neighbouring town nearby are very happy to have your help with all the goblins he's getting pretty funny about all this hanging around with Broos... and the fact that his daughter's run off with one of the other PCs isn't helping.)

Crikey, you'll be a fine narratavist gm with that mindset!

Regards
Rob

[Callan S.]

Hi again Rob,

Ignoring the drugs and the (intelligent) monsters, it's the "all that stuff there was to do" that really hit me. I've never played in (or, I think, run) a game where there were "lots of things to do" and a player could just choose to "do them".

Have you ever player a console 'sandbox style' game, like Grand Theft Auto, or Mercenaries?

I get that 'I can choose to do whatever' stuff from these games, though it's not nearly as powerful as it would be engaging an imagined game world. Here's a link to an actual play example of mercenaries I wrote up, since I was so impressed: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=14575

(There's lots of stuff here that's problematic. Not the least that the favour/disfavour with the god and the mayor and the daughter really needs some kind of mechanics if it's going to be viable to make it interesting over time... that kind of stuff is just too hard to adlib convincingly, certainly for me. One time reaction, fine. But if the player keeps worshipping (or wooing) over days and days...that's way too hard.)

I find the problem in gaming this way is between two design goals.
1. Explore the world in a 'just choose to do stuff' manner.
2. Have tactically interesting conflict.

I find they just don't sit easily with each other. See, the exploration (and it's required adlibbing) doesn't tend to create interesting conflict without focus on that. And if the GM focuses on making tactically interesting conflict, it kills off exploration since were not finding out about the world, were just finding out what the GM thinks is a good challenge.

GTA and Mercenaries in particular do combine the two, but most by making exploration so easy that it's easy to do tons of it...and eventually by chance you end up in some tatically interesting situation. Very problematic time wise to try in tabletop play. And it ends up more like 'betterist gamer in the world' style play.

Sound familiar at all?