Heavy Setting Prep (from Jorune thread)

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-10-31 18:17, kwill wrote:
so I guess the question is, given a rich setting, where do you begin introducing the players and the characters?

Excellent question. This is essentially the question that I put to Seth Ben-Ezra regarding Alyria which I see as having this problem in spades despite it supposedly having an open framework for building world. His solution was compact handouts on cetain subjects, IIRC. Which sounds really cool. But I'm sure we can come up with some other stuff.

and, given a mystery/secret background setting, how do you lay out the secrets so that you aren't funneling the players towards them, but that they do find them eventually?

...okay, initial thought is a version of the wandering clue (where the players speak to the gardener instead of the butler, so HE tells them about the screams last night; in relation to a mystery setting, if the players hang around the gardener instead of the butler it turns out HE is a Red Vampire)

This is classic Illusionism, and I'm down with it. But others are not. This is the problem that the Narrativists have with pre-planned plot, and Meta-plot. They don't want to be funneled to any such secret by any means other than their own machinations. This means that either the GM doesn't have any secrets, or he may have to share them before hand, making them less than a surprise. There are other techniques that the pro Narrativists can relate to you as well, but I think the general trend is towards creating plot as you go rather than trying to get to pre-decided secrets.

As an opposing method to Illusionism, I propose what I call the Schroedings Cat method. That is, the plot sits awaiting discovery, but does not actually exist as such until it is found. This is essentially the same as IntCon (Intuitive Continuity, see UnderWorld), but includes entirely player driven plot and randomized plots as well.

I think that there may be lots of room for discussion here.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Mike,

I posted a lot of stuff that might be relevant to this thread in the Hero Wars forum.

Best,
Ron

[Paul Czege]

Hey Mike, David,

the problem that the Narrativists have....They don't want to be funneled....This means that...the GM doesn't have any secrets....the general trend is towards creating plot as you go rather than trying to get to pre-decided secrets

I'm not sure I'd say that Narrativist GM's don't have secrets. However, I do think secrets function differently in a Narrativist scenario than in more Gamist or Simulationist mystery scenarios. The most lucidly written observations I've read about this are Josh Neff's comments about mysteries and crucial information on the second page of the http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic=820&forum=14&start=15">Narrativism and Bobby G thread in Actual Play.

Paul

[Mike Holmes]

So, Paul, are we talking Bangs here? What other techniques?

[Paul Czege]

So, Paul, are we talking Bangs here?

Yeah, that's pretty much bangs.

What other techniques?

Well, as I describe in Blake's http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic=786&forum=14&start=15&15">X Games in Actual Play, I've become a huge fan of having extra NPC's on hand as part of my prep and throwing them into scenes for no good reason other than the chance they might get drawn into things and become important. Scott Knipe developed a theory about it after the scene between his character and Vulf Power that he describes in the http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic=698&forum=18">Plot Flow and Metagame Resources thread in the Random Order Creations forum. He thinks that player use of Authorial power in relation to the actions of NPC's results in an amazingly powerful hooking of the player. Vulf Power was one of those NPC's that I just threw into the scene. It's one of the reasons I'm getting interested in Swashbuckler lately...the skills in the game are skewed to be so interactive. "Dance" is described as making "gathering information a much easier task."

Paul

[ This Message was edited by: Paul Czege on 2001-11-02 16:16 ]