seeking methods for "Plot Framing"

[kalyptein]

After the holidays, my group will be starting a new game, a space opera adventure using a slight mod of Feng Shui.  As I was jotting down adventure seeds, I found it most easy to think of them as the opening scenes for a tv show.  Rather than begin with "so you're flying through space and you pick up a distress signal from an unknown shop, do you want to investigate?" we start with "while flying through space you picked up a distress signal from an unknown ship.  You've docked at the derelict and we open with your characters on the bridge, working to reactivate the artificial gravity..."  In other words, a ferocious level of scene, or rather plot, framing.

I've never tried this before, and I don't want to end up as sole arbiter of plots.  Each of the characters has interesting built-in plots and interests which I will of course explore, but I want to give the players a more direct handle.  I was thinking of giving out a Plot Point to each player every so often which they could spend to shape an upcoming plot.  Something like "I'd like us to cross paths with that guy who betrayed us two episodes ago" or "lets have an adventure where we're living it up in the lap of luxury after a huge haul" or whatever.  I'm not really sure how many of these I'd give out, but I figure at least half of the plots should be player initiated or shaped.

Is this a method other people have used successfully?  I'm looking for suggestions or mechanics to help in doing this, as well as any caveats I should watch out for.  I've never tried something like this before, so I'm a bit nervous.  I tend to use a kind of "sim caulking" to bridge from one story arc to the next; when one story ends we do unfocused blue booking until I or a player throw something out that looks like the start of a new story.  This has been fine for our previous open-ended fantasy game, it allowed for larger gaps of time which gave it a more epic/generational feel, but I really don't want that for this game.

I should mention that these plots and seeds are not meant to be railroad trips to a specified ending, but rather more bang-ish.  In my example above, I decree that they do in fact stop and investigate this ship, but not more than that.  If they want to run at the first sign of trouble, its up to me to make that part of the adventure, such that the adventure either becomes about them trying to get off the ship, dealing with the alien parasite that crawled onto their ship while they were docked, being hunted by gangsters who want the ship's coordinates so they can loot a hidden treasure off it, or whatever.

Alex

[bifevo]

Alex:
  From time to time, I have tried such things with varying amounts of success. How well this works really depends on your players and how much they trust you.

  If the players don't trust you, or know where you are wanting to go, then when you say "while flying through space you picked up a distress signal from an unknown ship. You've docked at the derelict and we open with your characters on the bridge, working to reactivate the artificial gravity..." they'll respond with "wait, before we boarded I wanted to scan for lifesigns," "I don't want the gravity to be turned on. There might be enemies on board that are using for a trap," or something of the same. In my experience, this is done not so much because they are trying to interfere with your plans but rather the players are wanting to avoid a trap, ambush, or something similar.

  If the players do trust you, then it's different. If you say that they investigate the ship, then the players know that there isn't anything they could have done beforehand that would have really helped. They will assume that pursuing this goal you've set out (turning on the gravity) won't get them killed, because they trust you enough not to do something like that. Generally, they realize that you have the story going somewhere and so trust you enough to hand over temporary control of their character to you in these intros / cut scenes.

  You won't need mechanics if the players a) trust you and b) know that you aren't trying to "railroad" them as much as you are fast-forwarding the exposition of the story. At least, that has been my experience. Hope this helps.

-Scott

[bifevo]

Posted in error, apologies

[kalyptein]

I'm definitely not worried about player trust, my players are all long time close friends.

I might actually use scene framing to set up a trap, but it would not be a haha-you-screwed-up-and-now-I-hose-you situation, so much as chance for a cool action scene.  Nor would I assume that the characters had acted in a less than competent manner (so it would have to be a good enough trap to escape the notice of both the brilliant engineer and the master tactician).

My concern is more that if I don't formalize the players' say in setting up plot, that I will tend to take their suggestions and say "I'll get to that just as soon as my own ultra-nifty plot reaches a stopping spot", which considering my love of conspiracies could be years from now.  I want to make sure that a player can say "hey GM, shut up for a second, this will be part of the next plot".  While I might then ask them to forbear for a couple sessions if I can see a great place to insert it coming up (or can't see a way to insert it now), I'd be aware that I was GMing on borrowed time, which will tend to keep me under control.  The more elegant a plot sharing mechanic I have, the more smoothly this will all work out.

Alex

[Roy]

Hey, Alex!

Is this a method other people have used successfully?  I'm looking for suggestions or mechanics to help in doing this, as well as any caveats I should watch out for.

I've used Plot Points several times over the last few years and they've always worked very well for me.  

The best use of Plot Points was in a Shadowrun-style game I was running with a home-brew system.  The players used Plot Points to find contacts, find out info on the big players in town (usually kicking off an adventure in the process), and accomplishing various personal goals "off camera".  

During one adventure, for example, the Shadowrunners had "acquired" Project X for a client ... the only problem was that Project X was a homeless guy with a chip implanted in his brain.  Instead of completing their mission, they decided to hide the homeless guy and help him start a new life.  They used a Plot Point to state that they knew a priest who ran a mission and left the homeless guy with him.  

During the adventure, they had discovered the identity of the doctor behind the project.  One of the players paid a Plot Point and slipped me a piece of paper stating the doctor had been found murdered in his bed.  I presented that to the other players as "late-breaking news" on the television.  It really helped bring that player's character to life.

I suggest you tie the Plot Points into your game's reward system.  For example, if you want to reward a player for describing a really cool action in the game, give them a Plot Point for it.  Here's a good article on modifying reward systems:  Modifiers and Rewards.

I also suggest you actually use something tangible (like a glass stone) to represent the Plot Points.  I've found that it reinforces a player's behavior much more when you give them a physical object instead of just having them write it down on their character sheet.

My only caveat is that you might end up with one player who'll test you by spending a Plot Point on something ridiculous or extremely powerful.  This is usually a player that's been railroaded to death in the past and he's wanting to see if he really does have some power.  You might want to head off the problem by addressing it in your group's Social Contract.

For example, I had a player in a fantasy game spend a Plot Point and say "I'm really a god, but I don't know it because I have amnesia".  He about fell off his chair when I said "OK".  That player used Plot Points more reasonably after that and the character turned out to be very interesting.  

Good luck with your game.  Let us know how it turns out.

Roy

[Matt Wilson]

Hey Alex:

Primetime Adventures uses a scene structure like the one you're describing. To keep things from being GM-weighted, each player gets an opportunity to frame a scene. Basically you say who's there, and what's happening. In addition, the player can clarify what the point, or agenda, of the scene is. Is it supposed to focus on character or plot? That gives 'em an awful lot of say in what's going on.

You might also want to check out Trollbabe, which influenced some of the scene ideas in PTA.

Or for that matter, Universalis.

[Mike Holmes]

I want to make sure that a player can say "hey GM, shut up for a second, this will be part of the next plot".

Then ask them.

Plot points are fine, but mechanics like that tend to get forgotten. If you want to be sure that players are trusting you, and that they feel that they're empowered enought, then empower them equally. When a scene ends, go to a player who needs to have a scene. Ask them, "What scene do you want to have for your character?" Then if they hem and haw at all, ask, "How about XYZ?" Then they say, "Well, sure but ABC, too."

Eventually you work it out between you. Once this gets going, you can sometimes just take over for a scene, and dictate what's goin on. Which may be important for you to do. Given that you've empowered the players in previous scenes, they'll understand that you're using your authority as GM for a good reason, and won't mind a bit.


There are three other rules with scene framing, and they're really easy to follow.
1) Only frame to situations that are internally consistent. This is a no-brainer. If you make a mistake, however, and it's pointed out, immediately correct the framing.
2) When framing you often make some assumptions about what the characters are doing. Always frame in such a way as to make the characters look good somehow. No player will complain if you use fiat to display just how cool the character is. That said, don't frame past the action...
3) Frame to the conflcit. That is, you can have it so that some action may have past, but it can't have resolved the conflict. In fact, make it so that it intensifies the conflict if any. Get to the point at which the players involved need to make some important decisions (be they tactical, thematic, or exploratory), and then let them make those fateful decisions.

Does that help? I think with these three tips, and keeping in mind that you can ask the players for their input (often this is just an improved method of saying "what do you do next?"), anyone can use scene framing to good effect.

Mike

[Roy]

Great post, Mike!  I agree with you except for the following little bit:

Plot points are fine, but mechanics like that tend to get forgotten.

I've found that the opposite is true if you use physical tokens to represent Plot Points.  I've had some pretty gunshy players that went to town once they had a form of currency to empower them.  Granted, most of these players had been railroaded to death by other GMs, but it took the Plot Point mechanic to convince them that they really had some control over the game.

It really comes down to what you think will work for your group, Alex.  If you think the method Mike mentions will work for your group, then I'd suggest you use it.  It's a lot of fun if you've got a group that'll engage with you and nobody has to worry about keeping track of Plot Points.

If you find your group needs a mechanic to justify the power you're giving them, give Plot Points a shot.  It might be just the thing you need.

Roy

[Mike Holmes]

I've found that the opposite is true if you use physical tokens to represent Plot Points.  I've had some pretty gunshy players that went to town once they had a form of currency to empower them.  Granted, most of these players had been railroaded to death by other GMs, but it took the Plot Point mechanic to convince them that they really had some control over the game.

Like you said, whatever works. But as an example, I played one game where I handed out cards that said stuff like, "Make up a news event from a far off land." And the players lost them (much less used them).

In a game of FATE I'm playing with players who are completely used to Director Stance use, none of them have used and FATE points for director stance stuff, despite a nifty online tracking system.

When Syreyas was working on Torchbearer, I gave him the same advice - if you want players to do stuff like this, you have to give them a prompt. Now, if the GM prompts that works, but GMs forget too (doing it as a regular part of the scene to scene is the only way I've seen it done consistently). Tokens, records, these all work less than a prompt that occurs automatically.

What I'm saying is that if you want a mechanic like this in the game, then have some point in the system where they're asked if they want to use the mechanic. As a bad example, you could say that any time a player rolls a natural 20 on resolution that he has the opportunity right there to use such a point. The idea is that if it's a normal part of the procedure, that it'll get used a whole lot more, and more consistently. Now, for the kind of thing that you're suggesting, no particularly good point for a prompt comes to mind. I could suggest that they could use it at the end of every scene (what could be more sensible), but then that would be just like the prompting that I describe above where you just ask; in which case the tokens aren't really useful.

Or, rather, if the player knows that they can call for a scene at that point then the tokens aren't doing anything except limiting the player. That may have value of it's own - that's another debate. But the tokens themselves in this case are superfluous to giving the player the power consistently.

Mike

[Roy]

Mike,

I get what you're saying.  It seems to me like it comes down to whether your players are proactive or reactive in nature.  Interesting.

Roy

[Mike Holmes]

I agree about the proactive thing. But then, again, if they are proactive, simply giving them the power to frame their own scenes (with approval, etc) seems to me to really be the way to go.

As I've said, however, that's all assuming that there's no other use for Plot Points. I think that there is, actually, which is to ensure that players are careful in what they create. That is if you make their ability to create stuff limited, they'll do a better job with each use.

This is the entire idea behind Universalis. Playing Universalis without tokens is called Freeform play. :-)

Mike

[Bankuei]

Hi Alex,

One thing that has assisted me greatly in scene framing and prep is to create a list of "information points" rather than events.  These bits of info need to be communicated to the players at some point in play, but beyond that(reactions, outcomes, etc.) are left unconsidered.

For example, a recent game I played had a list like this:

-Introduce the major players
-Tommy's anger issue
-Rachel is obsessive
-Michael's making power moves
-Sir Walton's immortality research
-Half the family is sorcerers, and play nasty
-The book ressurects people.
-Dead wizards turn to werewolves turn to vampires

Naturally, some of these bits of information have more kick to certain player characters, and also work better if presented in a certain order, but overall, there's lots of room for play in how it occurs.

By presenting information(usually through events) in such a fashion, I'm giving power over to the players, handing them the ball and saying, "So what are you going to do?" in effect.  Their actions and reactions result in more info coming forth.

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

I'm going to recant a bit. Not that I think that Tokens will get used a lot or anything, but if the problem is just in establishing trust, then the tokens are a really good idea. They say to the player that they have the authority to change things if they like. And therefore the GM must be working with them.

So, for establishing trust, I think they're a really good idea.

Chris, good note. My prep for sessions these days boils down to one page of paper or less with just those sorts of bullets. When I have a moment, I glance down at the list and see what would be good to inject next.

Mike