Plotless but Background-based Games

[John Kim]

Sure, we clearly had lots of power and all, but it seemed all the time like there was this Big Secret that we had to figure out.  Once we figured it out, we went to the now-mostly-collapsed Soviet Union and stole about 500 megatons of nuclear weaponry, then in effect pushed it through a portal to the other world with the fuse lit, and closed the hatch.  We got back to find a glassy crater where the bad guy's castle used to be, and a guy whose power was to be totally invulnerable, walking slowly and dejectedly around the pit (he couldn't actually get out, not having any abilities beyond invulnerability, nor any clothing or equipment since it had been vaporized).  

So now it sounds like actually a lot of it was constructed more or less reactively, which is amazingly different from how it felt.  At the time, I sometimes thought John was skirting perilously close to the Ken Hite Railroad.  
...
Now working from your structure of Scope, Blocks, and Relationships, how in hell did you make it seem like the whole thing was pre-determined?  I mean, this was an entire campaign, not just a single mystery.  I think this may get at why what you're describing isn't really identical to Illusionism, or Narrativism, or whatever.  In a way, it's like reverse Illusionism: the illusion is that the GM is in control.

Really!?!  That's fascinating.  It really was a game which was more "Open Sim" (i.e. no fudging on my part) than most of my others.  I chose it because it was an extreme example.  

No, really.  At the start of the campaign I had this idea that the PCs would investigate the conspiracy that they were told about -- you remember?  NOTE: Since the PCs didn't have any initial grounding, I kicked off the campaign by having the PCs contacted by someone who was an ex-member of a worldwide conspiracy.  The thing is, that the PCs eventually decided to turn it down.  After a fight with some of the other ex-members, they never actually investigated the conspiracy, and they went off to do something completely unrelated.  From that point on, I had no idea what exactly they were going to do.  

Now, there certainly was a Big Secret (TM) to my background -- there was a central source for all superpowers and all other strange events, which had its own logic.  However, I never had any real idea or plan about what the PCs would to do about it.  The closest thing I had was my initial hook of a conspiracy that they rejected.  As Chris mentioned, they eventually came up with an idea that was totally out of left field -- they would steal nuclear weapons and use them to conduct a nuclear strike on a fortress in the alternate dimension.  I believe Chris and our friend Steve originally came up with the idea Out-of-Character, somewhat as a joke.  I was absolutely floored by the idea and never would have dreamed of it, but I encouraged them to go ahead with it.  

As for the feeling of it, I guess it comes down to a poker face.  Since I never blinked at the things you did, I guess you felt as though whatever it was the "right thing".  The thing was, it wasn't just a bluff.  I really did have a big spiral notebook filled with my list of every paranormal who ever lived in my world.  I didn't have them all statted out in Champions terms, but I usually had enough that it wouldn't be too much work for a given individual.  And I was constantly jotting down ideas of stuff they were doing.  (It was college... I had a lot of time on my hands.)

I remember a moment of mental disconnect.  It was after a major fight -- I had enlisted Steve to play the NPC cyborg who was attacking them.  I only told him what his character knew and then acted as referee.  When it was over the cyborg got away and one of the PCs was near death.  One of the players asked me "How were we supposed to win that one?"  I was stunned for a moment, because it was a question I had never really considered.  I guess intuitively I perhaps avoided making the cyborg too tough, but mostly I was just writing up my concept of him.  

Anyhow, I kept a bunch of notes on that game.  Would you be interested if I went back and tried to break it down into Power Blocks?

[Emily Care]

No, really.  At the start of the campaign I had this idea that the PCs would investigate the conspiracy that they were told about -- you remember?  NOTE: Since the PCs didn't have any initial grounding, I kicked off the campaign by having the PCs contacted by someone who was an ex-member of a worldwide conspiracy.  The thing is, that the PCs eventually decided to turn it down.  After a fight with some of the other ex-members, they never actually investigated the conspiracy, and they went off to do something completely unrelated.  From that point on, I had no idea what exactly they were going to do.  

Now, there certainly was a Big Secret (TM) to my background -- there was a central source for all superpowers and all other strange events, which had its own logic.  However, I never had any real idea or plan about what the PCs would to do about it.  The closest thing I had was my initial hook of a conspiracy that they rejected.  As Chris mentioned, they eventually came up with an idea that was totally out of left field -- they would steal nuclear weapons and use them to conduct a nuclear strike on a fortress in the alternate dimension.  I believe Chris and our friend Steve originally came up with the idea Out-of-Character, somewhat as a joke.  I was absolutely floored by the idea and never would have dreamed of it, but I encouraged them to go ahead with it.

I've found this particular structure of gaming to facilitate multi-gming.  I think I see why, now.  

John offered the players a plot hook, they rejected it and created another that he fleshed out instead.  In essence, players drove the plot.  This isn't that different from what happens in a more formally plotted campaign. But in this case, instead of trying to coax/coerce the players to follow the lead intended by the gm, the gm gave the players the lattitude to follow what they were interested in and provided materials to support it.  So, the division of labor between gm and player of such a structure ends up being slightly different.

When you multi-gm in such a game, you just take it one step further: anyone can populate the world, anyone can create back-story, anyone can come up with an interpretation of events that leads to plot.  It may sound like cacophony, but really the only difference between John's experience and what I'm describing is the conscious acknowledgement that everybody is "in control".

Now working from your structure of Scope, Blocks, and Relationships, how in hell did you make it seem like the whole thing was pre-determined?  I mean, this was an entire campaign, not just a single mystery.  I think this may get at why what you're describing isn't really identical to Illusionism, or Narrativism, or whatever.  In a way, it's like reverse Illusionism: the illusion is that the GM is in control.

Maybe that's just always the case.

--Emily Care

[Jason Lee]

I've found this particular structure of gaming to facilitate multi-gming.  I think I see why, now.

Hoorah!

This style pops up pretty often in our game...which is not simultaneous gming, but rotates gms.  When the rotation happens in the same setting, consistency can get a little screwed up if you don't run this way.  People may try to cram their 'great overarching plot' into the setting (which conflicts with the initial setup) or improv details contrary to the setting.


The key to making this sort of play work, I think, is just to make sure you have enough conflicts positioned near the PC's starting points.  Oh, and you need each conflict-important NPC/Power Block to have a clearly defined motivation.  If you know what each NPC/Power Block wants, reacting to the PC's is easy.

I like to see these conflicts take on a life of their own.  While the PC's may have chosen to immerse themselves in the struggle of NPC A, NPC B is still going about his life fighting his own battle.  Eventually, the law of six degrees of seperation may take effect and things will collide.  You might need a catalyst, but PC's make good catalysts.

I have an actual play example of a game in run in this fashion I found rather enjoyable.
The setting and NPCs were basically stolen from the Anita Blake books.  We even made us a 3d animated model of the city.  So the myth of reality was very heavy.

(Conflict 1):  The PC's got a may-day call from one of the PC's uncle, he got attacked by pirates and crashed onto a planet.  The planet wasn't supposed to know about aliens, so the overseers of the planet (the Architects) were going to 'remove' dear uncle Thaine and his spaceship.  But, they gave us some time to pull him out first.
(Conflict 2):  Tracked injured Thaine to a small farmhouse, only to find that the nice people who had taken him in had been torn apart by wild animals (vampires actually).  And yes, he was missing in the carnage.  There were some clues:  burnt body in the shower, matchbook for a club in town, surviving boy hiding in barn.
(Conflict 3):  The boy was determined to save his sister, who was also missing.  Why this is a seperate conflict is because the people who attacked the farm house were on a different side than those who took the boy's sister (A different faction of vampires, not that we ever discovered this).  The boy took off to do so.
(Conflict 4):  Internal PC arguement lead to a split group.  One of the PC's in the group, being the psyche wierdo that he was attracted the attention of an evil nighthag NPC.  The PC (Mark) was kidnapped and handed over to a mad scientist.
(Conflict 5):  The other PC (Caspian) in the group was kept by the evil nighthag NPC as a play thing.
(Conflict 6):  As one of the assailants happened to be a werewolf, one of the PC's (Jet) contracted lycanthropy...she had two days to find a cure or be terminally fuzzy.
(Conflict 7):  The PC's effort to prevent the kidnapping lead to a few murders...So, they got to take a trip to the police to answer a few questions about what happened.  This wouldn't have been a problem, except for the fact that the PC's, being aliens, didn't have IDs and couldn't speak the language.
(Conflict 8):  The PC's fast-talked their way into being released on bail.  The PC's began looking for clues to find Thaine, Mark, and Caspian.  Made some allies and enemies, and discovered a ghoul infestation in one of the graveyards.
(Conflict 9):  There was some business with an undercover alien and some Architect ruins (remember those overseer guys).

All at about the same time, the alien ruins became important.  We found out how to cure Jet.  We found out where Thaine, Mark, and Caspian were.  The PC's all split up to deal with everything, which pretty much exploded in a fast paced series of events.

We never followed up on the farmhouse murder, the boy and his missing sister, the ghouls in the graveyard, a series of lycanthope murders (Conflict 10) we never even found out about, or any of the personal priorities of the varies NPCs.  In fact, only Conflicts 1, 2, 3, 8, and 10 were part of the setting...all the others were simply reactions.

I've obviously left out a lot of what happened (like how the conflicts were resolved and the details that made the game interesting), but I just wanted to show how important a conflict ridden environment is.  Games run in this fashion I've played in that suffer from dullness do so because they only included one major conflict built into the setting.  Sure you could force the PCs into your singular conflict, but then you wouldn't be playing very open anymore.

The game didn't run remotely how the GM thought it would.  Which, I suppose, is pretty fun for the GM.  All the GM has to do is play his NPCs/setting, just like the players play their characters.

Note:  I kinda like the term Pinball Sim...'cause when the ball gets stuck (PCs inactive) all you have to do is tip the table (have a conflict near the PCs errupt) and your back to bells and flashing lights.