[actual] transition

[jmac]

  There was a game played, live action city-based (a kind of looking-like-human stuff), couple of dozens of players. Concepts of CA were implicitly used in theory and discussion of rules for this game, but they never were a key element. It was played couple hours a day, for a week or so. Real world stuff was limited to time and space treatment, comunication and using real objects as a source or base for generating fictional, important in-game info. I believe there was really a little difference between this game and a 'traditional' sitting-and-talking game wtr to topic.

   Anyway, what actually happend:
1. Actually sim. Character and Setting Exploration, mostly plain talk.
2. GM throws a piece of info, if player happens to aquire it, she actually get's a Challenge (mostly puzzle solving and GM's thought-reeding).
3. At the end of the Challenge there awaits a problematic situation with recognizable premise.

   So, a transition happend, at least twice for certain amount of players. Those, lucky (and trained to recognize transition initiated by GM) got three kinds of satisfaction there. But the problems are and were obvious:
- transition was implicit, so not everybody recognized it - incoherence with GM;
- transition wasn't very comfortable even to those lucky;
- since first player found himself at point 2 there was a considerable amount of so called 'friction' - product of incoherence;
- each of the three parts of a game actually fulfilled it's purpose quite scantily.

   Of course, I could forget something.

   I'm not sure if there is anything to discuss here, this is just an example, maybe someone could find it useful. Feel free whatever.

   My personal opinion is that I'm sure such transition-based game _can_ be designed and actually played in a more functional way (though even this one was mostly good), but I'm not sure if it's really worth effort.

[ScottM]

Was this a game filled with strangers, was it a home game with people who had played with each other for years (so the GM could tailor clues/transition to that person), a con game, what?

I appreciate that you didn't clog your example with tons of "in the fiction" stuff-- but I don't have a sense of the GM or players either.  Care to talk about who you shared the scenario with?  Were you the GM?

-- Scott

[Adam Dray]

Ivan,

There wasn't much Actual Play posted here, unfortunately. It's your opinion of what you think happened in some Actual Play, without any of the details for us to know what happened. Even you say, "I'm not sure if there is anything to discuss here." Since this is a discussion board, you probably should give us more to discuss.

Can you tell us more about the game? I'm particularly interested in hearing:

1) what rules did you use?
2) what did the players do (examples!) that make you think it was "Actually sim"?
3) what info did the GM give that transitioned players into "Challenge" mode?  what did the players do (examples!) that made you think there was some kind of switch in Creative Agenda?
4) what was the "problematic situation with a recognizable premise" that followed the Challenge? what did the players do -- if anything -- to Address Premise and get Story Now in that situation? examples!
5) what did the players do that made you think the transitions were uncomfortable or incoherent?

THAT stuff will be the meat of an Actual Play post that supports your first post.

[jmac]

I have been discussing the Big Model with my friends, we were trying to find examples of Techniques in actual games that we played and displays of CA's in player behaviour. This particular game was really interesting and I wanted to tell about it here, though I really don't have all the information a participant would have. Maybe I hadn't much "right" to start this thread at all.

Anyway, the Sim happened in the first phase of the game when everybody truly used only game world considerations, used his imagination and expressed this. It was not like 'meet everybody you will act with later', characters were really interesting and setting was really explored (in literal meaning). There also was little possibility to make up some kind of challenge or premise without breaking Social Contract. like "While wondering at Real World Street, I (fictional person) met (another fictional person). We happended to work together couple of years ago. We discussed this and that, the architecture and suddenly I understood why (in fiction) those buildings were built in that particular way. We went to the backyard to check this and found (GM's code number, we called him and knew what we've found there - the Clue)."
This was point of no return to sim. For players trained to this kind of games, StepOnUp was clear - there is something GM hides from me. Then one should find a second clue and third, maybe take something from the other player, use some Resource and finally find out, what GM was hiding.
And then, there is really nothing to 'fight' for anymore, and all is left in Exploration is Chracter, Setting elements from the preceded 'detective' and just aquired thing which all together produce a Bang. Now player has to prepare and make desicions - actually resolve the premise.

Sorry if I've clarified nothing. I'm not trying to get away from the questions, just want to be sure what I'm talking about.

I can say some more about discomfort of transition. Should I?

If you wish, I will ask for a player-story or|and a GM-story and post it.

[Adam Dray]

I think a bit of player-story and GM-store are what I'm looking for, exactly. Mind you, I don't need the intricate details of the character story, though the outline can't hurt. Describe your game without any Big Model terms at all. Don't analyze it. Describe it and let us as a group analyze it (you can join after you post, of course).