So, on Tuesday, the curent Eden Falls scenario came to a conclusion. As usual I offered up the option to either keep playing with these characters in this setting with this system or to move on to a different game. This is the first time my players didn't want to switch. Getting my players to vote on anything is tricky at best. I got two enthusiastic votes to keep going, one, "I definitely want to do more with this but I can wait..." and two "whatevers."

In my last post I had mentioned that the player behind Dumah, the holy sorcerer charged with guarding the words of creation, hadn't really made any kind of stand in the conflict. By the end I still don't think he did, not the way the other PCs did, but he did end up in a very interesting place. You see the "missing words of creation" had fused with a baby still gestating in his mother's womb. The game ended with the birth of the child. But the players suddenly realized that both of the child's parents were murderers and the child's nearest relative was Eden Falls' local criminal overlord. So after sending the child's parents to prison Dumah convinced the criminal overlord to entrust the child to him. So Dumah is still the guardian of the words of creation, it's just the words are now a living breathing human being.

I think it was this significant point of resolution that contributed to the players' desires to keep going. I think they want to see Dumah deal with this potentially devinely infused baby. Another contribution was that one particular player had taken a REAL dislike to my Reverend-Mayor NPC and really wants to see him go down. In the end she ended up planting seeds of doubt in one of the city council member's mind concerning the Reverend-Mayors ambitions. She also suggested that another PC should run for mayor herself.

I find it interesting that the three players who were MOST involved in the story's RESOLUTION were the same three players who were most interested in keeping it going.

Now for a look at my two "whatever" votes.

So, there's the past psycho who recieved a vision of hell and is hunting down his ex-associates and victims in an effort to escape (or embrace) his fate. Personally, I enjoyed this character a lot and from my stand point he came to an extremely satisfying resolution. At one point in the game it was revealed that he was basically "the new Job", a bet between god and the devil, and that's why he had been given the vision of hell and brought back from the dead. That little twist was my contribution. After dealing with all the ex-associates and victims he went to find the Sheriff who was trying to pin a series of murders on him that he didn't commit. He visited his vision of hell upon the Sheriff who promptly confessed that he and his wife were responsible for the murders. With his last goal accomplished Lucifer came to him and asked him if he wanted to stay and try and find a new purpose. Lucifer informed him that he could "arrange" it for him if he wanted. The player gave this great last brief speech about how the only thing he wanted is what he's wanted all along: oblivion and that the last thing he wanted was to be indebted to the devil. So Lucifer shrugged and threw him off the waterfall into the darkness below.

The ironic thing here is that this is the player I've talked about before who usually DOESN'T come to a resolution. He's the guy that creates these characters with these really long term goals and when everyone else has come to a resolution point he's just getting warmed up. Now here's what I find interesting about this particular case.

First, he didn't engage any of the prep-ed material that I brought to the table. Instead he provided me with a list of ex-associates and victims plus what he did with them and what they do. I was very cool with this. All I did was run down the list and add a "twist" to each of the characters to keep them fresh. For example, one of his old partners in crime had gone legit and a prostitute that used to be "his girl" had gotten married.

What worked so nicely is that his actions were so violent and public that it ended up driving the behavior of a lot of the NPCs from the material that I had brought to the table myself. Because his actions were affecting the NPCs they ended up affecting a few of the PCs and one PC ended up hunting him (Brother Denis mentioned bellow). At one point he commented on his character's disassociation from the rest of the setting. He said that it was the only way he could think of creating a character that could come to a resolution within a single story arc.

He also said something kind of odd to me at the end. He said that he had to change the character concept based on how I had played the NPCs. I find this odd since I don't see how me playing the NPCs alters the character concept and also we're using The Pool. At anytime he could have gotten into a conflict with the NPC in question, rolled and taken a Monologue of Victory to setup the NPC the way he wanted it. He seemed kind of disappointed in the end and I'm not sure why. I'll probably discuss it with him the next time I see him.

So that brings me to the last player. This is the same player who had expressed a concern about "performance pressure" after being exposed both to this game and Sorcerer. He was playing Brother Denis, the "doubting Thomas" monk.

First of all he kept lamenting the lack of a "party." I mentioned that I was not trying to keep the players apart and that if they decided to join forces or became bitter enemies that was entirely in their hands and that I had no stake in either outcome. I even mentioned that one of the reasons why everything is played out in the open is so that if he wanted to he could deliberately angle his character at anyone of the PCs or NPCs or whatever conflict or situation interested him. He said, "Yeah, I get that but it somehow feels a little unfair."

Another thing he lamented was the lack of a "plot-driven story." By that I believe he means one in which theme is decided first and then all of the elements of the story are reversed engineered to slam-dunk that theme home in the climax. He recognizes that Theme will result here as a consequence of the character's decisions but I think what he's lamenting is the lack of the opportunity to marvel at how cleverly and subtlly everything was DELIBERATELY (keyword) placed to drive home this one key point. He's missing the audience experience of the "reveal" where all the pieces fall into place and he suddenly realizes what it's really been all about from the beginning. In a sense what I think he's driving at, is that because Theme is constructed organically from multiple authors bouncing off one another no one can recieve authorial "kudos" for the construction as a whole even if we appreciate individual key contributing points.

Finally, I think he's one of those people who sees GNS as a divider. He hasn't said so in as many words but he said that it seems to him that having a strong sense of Creative Agenda means, "prioritizing the integrity of the game over friendship." I said, "I'd never make a friend of mine go bowling if they didn't like bowling." He countered, "Maybe but I'd certainly go see a movie I didn't want to see if it meant spending more time with my friends." He seems to be of the school of thought that if friend A is into dungeon crawls and friend B is into romantic interactions with NPCs that the GM should provide alternating scenes between dungeon crawls and romantic NPCs so that we can all have fun in our own way while hanging out with our friends.

Anyway, I'm interested to see where it goes. We're taking a week or two off while I prep another scenario.

Hope that was interesting.

Jesse

Thanks for the writeup; I'm experiencing a somewhat similar situation in my own games. What I've done to keep the "waiting for the big reveal" players happy is to provide a framework on which the other players can hang their stories. That might not have worked for you, but I suppose it's possible that you could encourage the monk's player to become involved in "the plot" as it stands by using the situations from the past scenario as a lead up to the new one.

Hello,

I plan on doing just that. I realized that I think the kind of experience he's describing CAN happen but not within a single session but as the result of folding the dangly bits (like the seeds out doubt in the council member's mind and the baby entrusted to Dumah) that aren't really full conflicts or are biproducts of a resolution into the next scenario. As you keep adding new elements and folding in old elements eventually I believe you will reach a long term point at which it will seem like everything was building to that point all along.

But I'm not sure if even that would satisfy him given certain philosophical beliefs he has about what stories are what their purpose is.

Jesse