[HeroQuest -modified] Scene Framing Questions

[Web_Weaver]

Hi all,

This time out I am not expressing a problem, as I am confident that the game is on track here, but I have little twinges of doubt and want to work through the situation to seek either reassurance or improved technique.

My RP history is laid out at the beginning of Lifting the Veil, for background, but is not a must read for this thread.

I am working with some pretty sim-thinking players, who have successfully engaged in my Narrativist game for many years but have had difficulty with addressing premise (not talked about in these terms at the table), which has led to long periods where the game ground to a halt or needed a jump start. I have now changed some rules and I have got my jump-start all right, and I am attempting to establish a reward cycle that will aid me.

The players are enjoying the Narrativist style, they just don't all clearly see how it differs, and so my main challenge is to make this apparent through play.

For specific context I have introduced new rules.

I have clearly structured my game with scene framing, and use three enumerated goals per player as flags. I have inserted a Goal Point (GP) mechanic to replace Hero Points (HP), which allow expenditure on character improvement only when goals are achieved. GP can still be spent to bump. I hold authority over when a goal is achieved, but I only wield the authority when goals are not clearly objective, and I dissuade subjectivity in goal setting.

This was inspired by this post in the HQ forum, but taking things further than suggested : A mechanic swiped from Nine Worlds: Goals
(again only background reading) I have not read Nine Worlds and have not been directly influenced by its text.

I will either introduce a pre-prepared scene that contains progression towards, or potential conflict for, a number of the players' goals; or I will ask players which goals they are interested in pursuing and frame a scene (pre-prepared or improvised) that caters to that goal. Any participation in a scene that a player regards as relevent to a goal gains a Goal Point, which adds onto the enumerated goal, one point per scene. (They get the point by explaining how, to their own satisfaction.)

Effectively I am rewarding players for addressing premise, goal points are a reward in and of themselves, as goals are skills like any other (all be it temporary), and also feed into the longer term rewards of character improvement.

This has had a profound effect on play, the players are much more focused on resolving the goals of their own and other player characters. The pace of play has upped considerably from a sluggish base before the rules change, and is still increasing. There are some issues, not everyone has embraced the system fully, and there is some confusion over what constitutes a goal, but I am still in the process of letting the reward cycles take effect and hopefully they will help inform play.

Now to my point:

Between scenes, there are sometimes snippits of information that may come to the players attention, that I just provide straight with no intended interaction. Perhaps setting things up for future scenes, or just a kind of FYI.

Now, players being players, there have been times where they immediately see conflict in the information presented. And, my inclination is to turn these into quick, single issue scenes. If the player is jumping into the situation with conflict that addresses premise then it seems the correct thing to do.

Example:

A character, Angelos, has history with an NPC, Urvar, that his player feels needs resolution and uses this to define a player goal. I tell the group that Urvar is running for political office and making speeches about his honourable and altruistic intentions. I don't intend this as a scene, just stuff going on in the background. I do know that it will push the players button though, so I am not surprised then the player says,

"I will be front and centre where he can't ignore me and try and resolve his grudge against my character, in the light of his so called honourable intentions, by asking him about the 'incident' and if he is prepared to forgive and forget".

This works for me, but my doubt is over how this occurred in the first place. Should I be applying that time honoured maxim of story telling "show don't tell", and framing everything within scenes? Certainly I can imagine an idealised game where everything occurs within scenes, but I am not sure this is possible in reality.

Questions:

Those of you that have had more practice with scene framing techniques, is this a common and indeed desirable consequence of the technique?

Am I applying "show don't tell" just by being flexible?

Are there any tips for framing scenes that may be of help here?

Am I right to assume that a certain amount of narration will always be extra to framed scenes?

[Lamorak33]

Hi

My reading of your situation is that you seem to be proselytising your players to the Narratavist CA. Is that a fair comment?

Whats all this about addressing premise? It sounds like they are not addressing the premise in a way that you would like them to. If you are using narratavim and they are playing insituations principally devised by you the GM how can they not be addressing premise?

Example: In a HQ game that I ran the fundemental premise is 'what are you prepared to do to save your clan from the depredations of the Lunar Empire'. Returning home they find their clan mate crucified, obviously by Lunars, and near to death. What do they do? I don't know, I set the situation, the players actions address the premise, but whatever they do is their decision. Thus the address rests with the players, and is not under my control. So I dont get what you're saying at all on this point.

Regards
Rob

Regards
Rob

[sebastianz]

Hi, Jamie.

"I will be front and centre where he can't ignore me and try and resolve his grudge against my character, in the light of his so called honourable intentions, by asking him about the 'incident' and if he is prepared to forgive and forget".

This works for me, but my doubt is over how this occurred in the first place. Should I be applying that time honoured maxim of story telling "show don't tell", and framing everything within scenes? Certainly I can imagine an idealised game where everything occurs within scenes, but I am not sure this is possible in reality.

Questions:

Those of you that have had more practice with scene framing techniques, is this a common and indeed desirable consequence of the technique?

Am I applying "show don't tell" just by being flexible?

Are there any tips for framing scenes that may be of help here?

Am I right to assume that a certain amount of narration will always be extra to framed scenes?

I am not sure I understand your concerns. I take it that you think this incident is not a scene. But to me it sounds like your player framed the incident into a scene. All you have to do is to take his lead. There is the PC and the NPC he has an issue with. There is also a time and place (at one or several of the NPC's public speeches). Further detail could be provided as needed. So what is it that you would consider extra narration?
Or do you talk about what you call "snippets of information"? You can give that via cutscenes or through the local paper boy if you care to, so I wouldn't consider this extra, either.

But as I already said, I am not sure that I understand you correctly. Perhaps I am completely off track here. Therefore, it would be nice of you to clarify things.

Sebastian.

[Andrew Cooper]

Example:

A character, Angelos, has history with an NPC, Urvar, that his player feels needs resolution and uses this to define a player goal. I tell the group that Urvar is running for political office and making speeches about his honourable and altruistic intentions. I don't intend this as a scene, just stuff going on in the background. I do know that it will push the players button though, so I am not surprised then the player says,

"I will be front and centre where he can't ignore me and try and resolve his grudge against my character, in the light of his so called honourable intentions, by asking him about the 'incident' and if he is prepared to forgive and forget".

This works for me, but my doubt is over how this occurred in the first place. Should I be applying that time honoured maxim of story telling "show don't tell", and framing everything within scenes? Certainly I can imagine an idealised game where everything occurs within scenes, but I am not sure this is possible in reality.

Questions:

Those of you that have had more practice with scene framing techniques, is this a common and indeed desirable consequence of the technique?

Am I applying "show don't tell" just by being flexible?

Are there any tips for framing scenes that may be of help here?

Am I right to assume that a certain amount of narration will always be extra to framed scenes?

Jamie,

My opinion is that you might be over-thinking this point a little too much.  There's a whole lot of variation that can be applied to effective scene framing.  If the pacing of the game is good and everyone is satisfied, then you are probably doing a fine job.  However, I'll use your example above to show how I would probably frame the scene for my group.


Me: Urvar is running for political office and making speeches about his honourable and altruistic intentions.
Player: I will be front and centre where he can't ignore me and try and resolve his grudge against my character, in the light of his so called honourable intentions, by asking him about the 'incident' and if he is prepared to forgive and forget.
Me: Okay...  It's a political speech so finding out where and when it is happening is easy enough.  You make your way through the crowd and plant yourself on the front row.  Urval is going on and on about how much he has done for the city and his grand vision for what the city could become under his leadership.  The crowd seems to be responding fairly well to his words.  What do you do?


This example is something like what I would do for my group and they'd run with it.

I think (from reading your questions) that you might be hung up on whether the players are in Actor stance or Author stance.  What stance they are in has very little, maybe even nothing, to do with good scene framing.  A player saying, "My character walks over to his rival, smacks him in the face, and insults him." is showing just as much as the player that drops into Actor stance and actually plays out the witty dialogue.  I wouldn't worry about this at all as it relates to scene framing.  There will be spots where the players will adopt Actor stance naturally and places where they'll tend to adopt Author stance.  Just because they stay in Author stance doesn't mean you having framed the scene appropriately.

Scene framing is really pretty simple once you understand your group and what they like.  Framing is simply skipping the stuff they find boring and going straight to the stuff they find fun.  That will differ from group to group.  My D&D group happens to like to fight things.  So, I skip a lot of dialogue.  I skip lots of traveling scenes.  I frame right to combat.  I only do the other stuff if I know there's something in the scene they will enjoy.  That's fairly agressive framing but it keeps the pace brisk.

[Web_Weaver]

Thanks all,

I think I am just over thinking as Andrew suggests, the more I look at what is occurring, the more I realise that the difference between scenes that players request and scenes that emerge during extra-scene information is trivial. It is just a matter of sequence:

Player requests scene - Narrator agrees - Narrator provides setting information
Narrator provides extra-scene information - Player requests scene - Narrator agrees - Narrator reiterates information as a scene.

Indeed Andrew, your example was almost word for word what happened so we are on the same page when it comes to how we frame such things. And as Sebastian suggested I only needed to take the lead in the situation, which is what happened.

My reservations are probably due to it feeling more reactive and less structured, but this is not really an issue, as ideally, once we are all familiar with the structure, this would be less prominent and more seamless anyway. I am used to there being contemplation on what the next scene should be, in the form of a quick discussion between myself and the players, but once players understand the context and appropriateness of scenes, this process will probably get quicker and less formal.

Indeed this example may just be the early signs of this process happening, as the player listened to the information and thought "hey that is ideal for a scene, and I know just how I can make it one". Which is substantially better than what may have happened before scenes were introduced, where trivial or non-dramatic detail may have provoked protracted discussion followed by less directed play that either didn't address premise or at its worst resulted in no fun being had for a protracted time.


Rob,

My reading of your situation is that you seem to be proselytising your players to the Narrativist CA.

In context, yes and no. I have always run my game with an unidentified Narrativist agenda, but this has in the past resulted in players getting lost, and not being sure what to do. Which is why I am concerned with premise.

Rob,

Whats all this about addressing premise? It sounds like they are not addressing the premise in a way that you would like them to...

I am not concerned that this instance did not address premise, and I don't care how they do so. The problem in my game has been the identification of premise in the first place, but this term needs unwrapping, so to explain in this context.

I have set out a thematic set of circumstances, but the situation is both complex and occluded (kind of Glorantha meets Cyberpunk), which the players appreciate and respond to. But, on occasion my players got lost in the detail and I found it difficult to refocus them without second guessing their vague intentions, which resulted in significantly less fun moments than we require from a game. 

By changing my play style and emphasising scenes, the players are beginning to see where my focus lies, the themes of my game are being cast in sharper relief, and we are maximising the interaction between player and game. In short it cuts out all the faffing around and allows each player to identify their character's place in the story.

To repack: I was having difficulty in establishing the premise with the players in the first place, which led to poor development of premise and lack of resolution.

I am now clearly establishing premise, the players are getting a handle on how premise is developed between us, and we are actually achieving some measure of resolution.

Note: I try not to use such terms around the table.

[Web_Weaver]

Andrew, I have left your point on stance for separate consideration. Partly because its a side issue

I think (from reading your questions) that you might be hung up on whether the players are in Actor stance or Author stance.  What stance they are in has very little, maybe even nothing, to do with good scene framing.  ...

In as far as this is related to scene framing, I agree that it is not really an issue. But interestingly the player concerned does have an issue with stance. He is the type of player that feels that roleplaying properly involves Actor Stance. So far this issue has not caused any overt difficulties but I can see dissatisfaction when others including myself utilise Author Stance. I also have concerns that adopting a pure Actor Stance can limit narrativist possibilities.

Ron's Story Now essay suggests that Author Stance needs to be at least part of the overall mix, and I tend to agree. However, it may be that the player concerned will adopt Author Stance when issues get more personal or rely on character dilemma.

[Lamorak33]

Hi

In context, yes and no. I have always run my game with an unidentified Narrativist agenda, but this has in the past resulted in players getting lost, and not being sure what to do. Which is why I am concerned with premise.

I don't understand the above statement. If a game gets bogged down, and the players get a little lost this is the time I would introduce another bang. I assume that you run your games using bang's yes? To get back on topic, can you give an example of a play situation where the above has happened, and how did you resolve it?

Regards
Rob

[Web_Weaver]

Rob,
This is drifting from the thread topic, which has been substantially resolved. But to answer you briefly:

Your confusion stems from my game having two phases before and after I began using techniques that reinforce my agenda. Before, I was playing in a "Vanilla Narrativist" mode, with an agenda clash causing confusion, it was at this time I had the problems detailed in the quote.

By all means start a thread on premise if you have examples that you want to explore or clarify, I would be happy to chime in there with examples of my own.

[Lamorak33]

Hi Jamie

If your issue has been resolved then thats great. As narratavism was the cure to my gaming ills, I find it difficult to understand people actually having problems with it. But then, as you say, thats a whole other thread!! :^)

Regards
Rob