Narrativist Missions

[Ron Edwards]

Fang has a good point - that one GM does not a group make. I cannot agree more strongly.

It so happens that over the last months, some of us (me more than anyone, via private email) have gained quite the clear picture of The Saga of Jesse's Group, and I'm pretty sure that we're talking about Narrativists-by-any-other-name at this point. And I was originally the most skeptical of all about that, based on some old threads here.

Since that information isn't available on this thread, though, I agree with Fang, as I said, that we shouldn't forget that we're not talking about The Esteemed Mr. Burneko so much as TEMB and Those Inimitable Players of His.

Um, am I correct in concluding that this thread has pretty much brought us all to the point of seeing and acknowledging one another's positions?

Best,
Ron

[jburneko]

Hello Again,

Ron and Fang are absolutely right.  I have a very strange group of players.  And also my descriptions of my players can often be misleading and confusing because I really am talking about three groups of people with three different dynamics but with some overlapp between them.

One day I'm praising my group the next day I'm condemning them usually because I'm talking about two different SUBSETS of the group of people I game with.  Perhaps it would make things clearer if I explained that I have a gaming group of about 15 people of whom I am playing with 6 to 8 at a time with about 4 to 6 of them being fixed at all times.

I don't know what subset I will be playing with when I get around to running SLA Industries.  So, I really can't make a judgement on what effect the system will have on them or how they'll react to the system.   The best I can do is just start thinking about what I want to acomplish with the game and how to acomplish it.

I definitely think everyone has made themselves quite clear.  This thread has gone in directions I never intended it to.

Jess

[contracycle]

Your conversion of SLA -> Sorcerer was very impressive.  I think that with myabe the exception of Ebons and Frother's you'd have eleminiate the actual Sorcerery rules.  That is, these people have their demons pretty much fixed.  But

Ta.  I guess with the Ebons/BrainWasters, there is a certain progression toward Necanthrope-dom which might be governed by the ability; for frothers they could arguably need some emchanic for controlling, riding the high.  Maybe - it would require some work.

It occurred to me over the weekend though that possibly the Conspiracy-X mechanic would be more appropriate for SLA.  Its high Karma, and only rolls for a subset of possible decisions.  Abilities, skils, whatnot, are rated on a universal scale with human abilities falling from 1-5.  You only roll if you are trying to overcome a rating 1 or 2 points higher than your own.  If you have a higher rating, you automatically succeeds.

So, it works something like this:
Your rating = 3, difficulty = 3, you automatically succeed
Your rating = 3, difficulty = 4, you must roll <=7 on 2d6
Your rating = 3, difficulty = 5, you must roll <=4 on 2d6
Your rating = 3, difficulty = 6, you automatically fail

I find this high-karma system, which in effect weeds out many of the far-end results before randomised resolution, very rapid in play and once you grok it.  Its primary virtue in this context is that it would catch a lot of the technical hardware fetishist stuff.

Caveat: I may have made detail errors in the above - all from memory.

[Daredevil]

How is a mission structure, when used as mechanistically as in InSpectres, not railroading? A structure that makes every mission have the same general form (like starting with a client interview, proceeding to r&d, as in InSpectres) is limiting player options.

I hope this isn't constituted as an attack of any sort. I'm just curious about how people (esp. with narrativist leanings) see this situation. I don't personally think all railroading is necessarily bad railroading.

[Marco]

On 2001-12-25 22:25, Daredevil wrote:
How is a mission structure, when used as mechanistically as in InSpectres, not railroading?

My understanding is that a fixed plot structure in narrativist play isn't railroading because a fixed plot in narrativist play implies that plot events are *not* what is relevant to the game (exploration of the premise).

So if you run "Assault on Everest" as a narrative game, the "point of the game" can't be finding out if you get up and down the mountain--but something else.

That was my understanding.

-Marco

[Mike Holmes]

Well said, Marco.

Additionally, agressive framing and element introductions are all fine by Narrativists, it would seem. Only taking away the players ability to drive the plot (read as "events that are important to the premise) is important. As a GM if you want to set a scene in a certain place, or if you want to decorate that place a certain way (including NPCs), these things are all fine by the Narrativists unless they somehow reduce the player's ability to drive what the plot is about.

If you'd like to call these things railroading, then these are forms of railroading that are inoffensive to Narrativists. Note how agressive scene framing is probably much more irritating to a Simulationist ("Wait, how'd we get here?!?") than a Narrativist.

Mike