[Viking Con] A Day in the Life

[Jason Morningstar]

i]A Day in the Life<A Day in the Life<
A Day in the Life is arranged to emulate a film like Short Cuts or Magnolia<Prime Time Adventures<A Day in the Life.<
A Day in the LifeA Day in the Life<
A Day in the Life is arranged to emulate a film like Short Cuts or Magnolia<Prime Time Adventures<A Day in the Life.<
A Day in the Life

[Jason Morningstar]

Some photos of my fellow players, the table during play and the school room in which we played:

[1] [2] [3]

[Per Fischer]

Thanks for posting this, Jason (I've listened to the recording of the debate you had with the wroter Mikkel as well).

As an exiled Dane I have been exposed to the above since the early 90s, and I have written a number of "acclaimed" and award-winning scenarios myself, albeit before Mikkel entered the scene. I have played in these convention scenarios as a player, but mostly as the GM.

I'm really (REALLY) struggling with imagining that you've never ever experienced something like this before - you really haven't experienced GM-controlled, consensus-driven roleplay before? Wow.

The reason I left this kind of roleplaying behind a handful of years ago is that I am more interested in the collaborative, creative effort a group may come up with than primarily a single author's vision. When I want the latter, I read a book or go see a movie.

We did write these kinds of scenarios (in Denmark) before the first edition of Vampire (my first official one is from 1992, I think), but the 'literary' ambitions behind Vampire really kicked it off - Rein*Hagen was guest of honour at Fastaval 1994 and was a huge inspiration for the auteur/GM-scenario writer. Personally I think Vampire's "how to write an adventure" is very much in line with the Danish tradition. Is Illusionism at best, at if you like that sort of thing, great!

I don't. Not anymore. In fact it nearly killed of my interest in roleplaying. Weird.

Per

[Jason Morningstar]

Hi Per,

Thanks for your thoughts.  I don't think I've ever experienced anything like this, honestly.  I approached it knowing that I wouldn't have any control over the structure of the story we'd be telling together, and that my contribution would take a different form.  Since I'm attracted to games with more-or-less structural constraint (my games, hugely influenced by MLWM and The Mountain Witch, obviously), this didn't seem at all problematic - it was just placing that authority in the hands of another player (the GM, in this case) rather than in the system.  It worked well for me and I felt like I made a unique contribution.

[FredGarber]

This sounds to me very close to improvisational theater, as much as playing a game.

The quality of the experience also seems to depend very strongly on the GM having a firm vision of the text, and the players sharing that vision.

I've never played in a "Danish Scenario" (sounds like something I could find illegally down in Tijuana, though ), but I have done theater games like this, which fell apart when the GM/Director wanted to play certain storylines as tragedy, while the actors/players tended towards comedy. Do you think one player pushing for a Blood Opera for Anoub might marginalize the parts of the story around, say  Audrey's relationship with the politician?  Or someone who wanted deal with Aubrey's love might marginalize Anoub's conflict, making him into less of a conflicted man and more into a 2D "bad guy"?

[fjj]

Per, could you please state if you have a) read A Day in the Life, and b) played A Day in the Life.

[Per Fischer]

I've read it, not played it. Why?

Per

[Jason Morningstar]

Do you think one player pushing for a Blood Opera for Anoub might marginalize the parts of the story around, say  Audrey's relationship with the politician?  Or someone who wanted deal with Aubrey's love might marginalize Anoub's conflict, making him into less of a conflicted man and more into a 2D "bad guy"?

Sure, these techniques were familiar to me from improv and traditional theater.  I should note that it was challenging to play three fully realized characters - I'm very comfortable playing one central character with a constellation of less well-drawn characters around them, but giving equal weight to all three was hard, and I don't think any of us achieved it.  What happened in play is that some stories gathered momentum and others, less so - in our game, the Anoub/Liv/Darren triangle became extremely compelling, for example, and occupied a bit more time than the James/T.P./Gail triangle. 

[Jason Morningstar]

Fred, to answer your other question, yes, it absolutely depends on a strong GM vision.  Brian and Mikkel compared notes on two different games of A Day in the Life with different GMs, and the style of GM moderation varied enormously.  This would obviously impact the experience of play, because the GM is so important - players can't set the pacing, they can't frame appropriate scenes (at least during the first third of the game).  A game with a weak, ambivalent, or talentless GM would definitely fall apart - I pointed this out as a big difference with more highly procedural games.  That said, I don't think having the expectation of a strong, engaged, and skilled facilitator is necessarily a bad thing.

[Jonas Ferry]

Hello Jason,

If my post sounds negative, please know it's not directed towards you, but to the form of scenario you're describing. They're a big part of Swedish convention culture as well, and represent a kind of play I don't want to involve myself in any more. I'm happy to talk about them, though, if you like.

It was interesting to read about your experience. Your conclusion that since the plot is essentially fixed player contributions takes the form of differences in interpretation of their characters is spot-on. If you play these scenarios with that in mind you'll have a lot more fun.

As you say, the scenarios require complete trust in the game master and their ability to entertain the cast of players. The scenario writer is very important, as they lay the foundation through character and scene descriptions, but the game master is the person who handles everything at runtime. A bad game master is someone who either doesn't control the story and let the players run it off track, or who controls it in such a way it disables the players' abilities to contribute anything. A good game master keeps the story moving from one interesting scene to the next, cuts when necessary, and reveals the secrets of the scenario at the right points. Preferably you want the scenario write to be the game master, as they know what parts of the scenario would be fun for the particular group to explore.

In Swedish convention tradition these scenarios are called "freeform scenarios", with all resolution power in the hands of the game master. I see no real difference between the game master role of these scenarios and the game master of a traditional dice-based game that rolls dice secretly behind the game master screen and guide the players from one planned scene to the next. The later kind is how you're "supposed" to role-play, with open dice rolls being strange and direct player control over the story something really weird.

The thing is that many players enjoy this kind of play, especially in conventions. If you play a scenario you're guaranteed to have something between an OK and great time. If you like acting you get to act like another person for a couple of hours without any real responsibilities. If you don't find your character interesting you can enjoy the intricate plot the game master presents to you.

In fact many players enjoy this kind of play so much they come to expect them at conventions. When I've run Dogs in the Vineyard, InSpectres and My Life with Master people have been very surprised you start the session with character creation ("What, no pre-gens?"), use dice and that the actual content of the story is up to them. Since they expect the game master to entertain them and that all their choices will be without consequences it takes half the session before they realize they are actually supposed to contribute something else than usual.

I know of groups that play convention scenarios just to try to get the story off rails. They glance at their characters and play some trait to the extreme, or they make an effort not to do anything the game master wants them to. Imagine what happens when you give them Dogs, and just follow their lead, and their surprise when they realize you're not fighting them, but actually listen to what they have to say.

I would say almost all Swedish convention scenarios are written in this fashion, even scenarios for traditional games. They're supposed to be run by a game master who doesn't know the rules of the particular game, who've skimmed the characters and whose preparation is to memorize the different points of the plot they have to move the group between. This makes it hard to write a Dogs town and expect people to run it for you.

Same thing with My Life with Master. At one convention a game master told me after his session that his group liked the game so much, and had been so into it, that they threw out the rules and freeformed the second part of the session, including killing the Master and selecting what epilogues they liked. It wasn't that they disliked MLwM, they did enjoy it, but they treated the game like one of these freeform scenarios as that's what they expected.

When some groups sign up for a slot of a game their interested in (say My Life with Master, or a Swedish game like Mutant or Drakar och demoner), but the game master doesn't use any of the rules from the game, they feel cheated. They pay to get to see a certain game, but get one of these system-less freeform scenarios instead.

But you're not talking about traditional games being played like freeform scenarios, you're talking about scenarios written especially for this. The Danes have a reputation for being serious about these scenarios, and I hear they're very good at what they do. I haven't played a Danish scenario myself, but from what I've read it seems like Swedish scenarios are similar.

If I should mention one last thing about Swedish convention scenarios it's that they're almost expected to have a clever twist of some kind. Maybe it turns out you're all playing different sides of someone's personality, or you play two different sets of characters and it turns out the first group is chasing and trying to kill the second group. The game master will cut between scenes and at some point the players hopefully "get it", and realize how cool and clever the scenario is. The players usually won't have to do anything special, the coolness is already hard coded in the characters and the scenes.

Do you feel my description contradicts what you experienced in the convention scenario? Maybe I'm talking about something different from what you played, but then at least you got a snapshot of Swedish convention traditions.

- Jonas

[Jason Morningstar]

Hi Jonas,

Thanks for that thoughtful description.  I hope we can examine the similarities and differences of different traditions together - this is all pretty new to me.

...Same thing with My Life with Master. At one convention a game master told me after his session that his group liked the game so much, and had been so into it, that they threw out the rules and freeformed the second part of the session, including killing the Master and selecting what epilogues they liked. It wasn't that they disliked MLwM, they did enjoy it, but they treated the game like one of these freeform scenarios as that's what they expected.

I heard an identical story at Viking Con about a group who did this with Dogs in the Vineyard.  I think this is, in reverse, the same impulse that makes me immediately look for conflict in every scene - it's my tradition, it's what I play every week, so I come to expect it even when it doesn't need to be there. 

I've played games with strong GMs and linear plots (Heck, I've been the guy running it more often than not) and I think there's a solid difference between that and what I experienced.  I don't think any of the players in A Day in the Life had any illusions about the boundaries of our creative input, and we all trusted Mikkel to do his part - there wasn't any deception.  I knew from the beginning, based on the R-map and the initial bang, where things were probably going to go.

I can easily see how this set-up can go really wrong, and maybe I was fortunate to be playing with really clever people and the scenario's designer.    Overall my experience was positive and enlightening and I want to take some of the good things from it.

[Jonas Ferry]

I can easily see how this set-up can go really wrong, and maybe I was fortunate to be playing with really clever people and the scenario's designer. Overall my experience was positive and enlightening and I want to take some of the good things from it.Bleking." It was fun to run because, as you can guess, I'm usually not that into this kind of role-playing. I was helped by Tobias Wrigstad, so you get some Jeepform wisdom as well.

In order:
1. ASF freeform and Jeepform
2. Planning to GM freeform
3. Thoughts on FAtB

- Jonas

[Jason Morningstar]

Thanks for the links, Jonas - I'll check them out ASAP. 

[Sanne Harder Flamant]

quote author=Jonas Ferry link=topic=25062.msg242409#msg242409 date=1192572036]

As you say, the scenarios require complete trust in the game master and their ability to entertain the cast of players. The scenario writer is very important, as they lay the foundation through character and scene descriptions, but the game master is the person who handles everything at runtime. A bad game master is someone who either doesn't control the story and let the players run it off track, or who controls it in such a way it disables the players' abilities to contribute anything. A good game master keeps the story moving from one interesting scene to the next, cuts when necessary, and reveals the secrets of the scenario at the right points. Preferably you want the scenario write to be the game master, as they know what parts of the scenario would be fun for the particular group to explore.

[Per Fischer]

In my experience it's definitely not always a plus to have the writer as GM. Actually it seems to me that writers are very often good at - hm - writing, whereas good game-mastering is basically about direction, and then some very important social skills that are somehow hard to pin down.

I agree with Sanne - to me, the quality of the scenario also lies in the writer being able to describe how to play it. Playing a scenario you have written yourself is the easiest thing in the world - making sure it's playable but someone else without the writer's presence, that's bloody hard.

What I like about the Danish scenario tradition might be exactly what Per v. Fischer dislikes. I like it that there is <Quote

As a matter of fact, I think this makes the stories really focussed and heartfelt. They have some kind of artistic depth that I enjoy very much.

Oddly enough, that's what I get with the weird hippie shit I play nowadays

Per