I'm running a play-by-post game which makes liberal use of scene agendas. So for each major scene, I'm trying to get people to say (or, worst case, accept my judgment on) what needs to happen or be resolved in the scene. Then we know where to start the scene, and where to end the scene.

But folks in the game (myself sometimes included) are having a hard time making the distinction between a scene agenda and the character's agenda.

So, in my more coherent moments I realize that "We need to defeat Sauron" is not a scene agenda for anything in Lord of the Rings, even if it is the unwavering agenda of the characters involved. The scene agendas are things like "As Sam and Frodo make their way out of the Shire they know, we see more clearly how hard it is for them to undertake this quest"... yes?

If I have the general sense of the tool (and I think I do... I'm excited by the prospects) does anyone have suggestions on how I can think about it and explain it so that it stays clear in my mind and is communicated clearly to others?

Try framing it like a movie story board, or a page of comic book panels. That might get the point across that what you're talking about is what needs to happen between the time the Director says "Action" and "Cut" and not what the goals of the character are.

I'd also stress Player Agenda over Character agenda.

What do the players want to see established / accomplished in the scene?

Is it necessary to see an actual clear endpoint? The example you give, of Frodo and Sam, doesn't have an endpoint. The issue is established, and that serves as a fundamental focus for the scene. But there's no absolute conclusion.

I say this because your players may be having problems with having to know what has to be accomplished or completed, which may seem to break the spell and make it all seem predetermined (sort of like Calvinism). This can be hard, and people may want to shift over to their characters so they can get the necessary divine-like distance to be able to see the spectrum.

If instead, they just need to see the general issue or point at stake, and then focus play around that, you can have them all say, "I think the point is made; let's move to the next point" and go from there.

But you'd have to provide more examples for me to know whether I've got that in any way right. Hope it's useful.

Chris Lehrich

It sounds to me like scene agenda could be best defined as "what the author (or player) intends to say through the scene" whereas the character agenda is "what the character intends to do in the scene." You might encourage players to say "I want to show x in this scene. My character intends do x."

This will fit exactly with what you're talking about in your Lord of the Rings example.

clehrich wrote: Is it necessary to see an actual clear endpoint? The example you give, of Frodo and Sam, doesn't have an endpoint. The issue is established, and that serves as a fundamental focus for the scene. But there's no absolute conclusion.

Tony:

Since my PM idea didn't quite click, and since I'm at work early (damn allergies), I'm gonna try again with some ideas.

A couple questions first:

1. Who declares the agenda? Is it a group process? Do you take turns?

2. If you do take turns, does the character of the player who decided get any special focus? Is the scene about that character, more or less?

3. Who decides officially when a scene is over? Do you get consensus, or do you want to be able to be the guy who decides, and not get several emails afterward that say, "wait, wait, I wanted more"?

I can think of a couple games in addition to the one I'm working on that rely heavily on construction of scenes, and give a lot of thought to who gets to decide things about them. One is Universalis, and the other is Trollbabe. You might want to check them out if you have a few bucks to spare. Plus they're dang cool.

Is your group actually playing a LotR game? It'd be great if you posted some actual play events. What game system are you using?

TonyLB wrote: Man I hope I'm making sense here. My hope is to go into each scene agenda saying "I have no idea what the ending will be, but I'll know it when I see it".

orbsmatt wrote:

TonyLB wrote: Man I hope I'm making sense here. My hope is to go into each scene agenda saying "I have no idea what the ending will be, but I'll know it when I see it".

I'm trying to understand the purpose of the scene agenda here. If you have no idea what the ending will be, what does the scene agenda set out? Wouldn't it be easier to just set the scene and see where it goes from there?

Ahhh... that makes a little more sense. I had thought that it was to determine how the scene would end, which would defeat the purpose of roleplaying.

Thanks Chris!

Yeah, pretty much what Chris said.

Part of the purpose of the scene agenda is to make sure that scenes stay focussed on the "good stuff" (as defined by the players and GM) as opposed to drifting off into stuff that would be better handled off-screen. Still on LotR, after they get out of Moria they could have had some encounters with wolves or such on the way to Lothlorien... it's a good day's travel. But it doesn't advance any agenda that the audience is interested in, so they skip straight to the forest, where the good bits are.

And part of the purpose is to help guide players who are acting in Author or Director stance. It can be hard to trust other players with that sort of power, precisely because you feel they'll "ruin your scenes". Hopefully having an agenda that people agree to, and having each player bend their story-telling toward that agenda, will help to foster that trust.

Matt Wilson wrote: 1. Who declares the agenda? Is it a group process? Do you take turns?

2. If you do take turns, does the character of the player who decided get any special focus? Is the scene about that character, more or less?

3. Who decides officially when a scene is over? Do you get consensus, or do you want to be able to be the guy who decides, and not get several emails afterward that say, "wait, wait, I wanted more"?

Is your group actually playing a LotR game? It'd be great if you posted some actual play events. What game system are you using?

jdagna wrote: It sounds to me like scene agenda could be best defined as "what the author (or player) intends to say through the scene" whereas the character agenda is "what the character intends to do in the scene." You might encourage players to say "I want to show x in this scene. My character intends do x."

TonyLB wrote: And part of the purpose is to help guide players who are acting in Author or Director stance. It can be hard to trust other players with that sort of power, precisely because you feel they'll "ruin your scenes". Hopefully having an agenda that people agree to, and having each player bend their story-telling toward that agenda, will help to foster that trust.

I don't agree with Mike. This sort of thing can be used as "training wheels," but it doesn't need to be.

One way to do it well, I think, would be to have a sort of rota by which everybody has to frame scenes periodically. Whoever frames the scene could be the main PC of the scene; since everyone gets a turn, everyone has to be the main PC periodically as well.

So let's say we've got George, Nancy, Bob, and Sarah playing. Let's suppose for a minute that the GM-ing is also distributed, since I think this is something that such formal scene-framing would support well. Okay, so the gang are a troop of the usual violent thugs that come up in D&D games.

First Scene: George is main PC
He declares that the focus is going to be on his recurrent problems with his sword, which is cursed and he can't get rid of it. Sarah says she has a cool idea about this, so she's the GM for the scene. Nancy and Bob are implicitly required to support the general focus of the scene.

Sarah has a person come running out of the woods, straight at George; this person is dressed in a nightie, and looks small and unthreatening, but is carrying a big stick. Nancy immediately leaps out with her sword, planning to stop George from wasting this person because of his cursed sword. Bob starts talking fast. George, following the cue, drags out his sword and starts trying to kill the nightie-lady.

Sarah had sort of thought that it would be interesting if George did kill this person, but since he's not going to with Nancy in the way she changes her mind and has this person actually be an illusion covering a monster of some kind -- which promptly attacks Bob.

By the time the smoke clears, George has stabbed (though not killed) Nancy, the monster is dead, Bob is wounded. George is now freaking out about how he's got to get rid of the sword, because the curse is starting to spread (as it were).

Second Scene: Nancy is main PC
Nancy declares that the issue is that she actually thinks George's sword isn't cursed at all; she thinks he is a psycho who's pretending. She's planning to try to prove this. George has a nifty idea about this, but since he's obviously got to be a big deal in the scene, Bob, who's wounded anyway, decides to run the scene (while his character moans in the tent).

Bob sets the scene and waits for Nancy to take the lead. Nancy uses her thief skills to sneak into George's tent, planning to steal the sword and replace it with a perfect duplicate (using a nifty little piece of illusion magic). George wakes up, and thinks Nancy is trying to seduce him, to which he is perfectly amenable. Sarah hears the ensuing confusion, and drops by, and sees an unclothed George, a partly unclothed Sarah, and two matching cursed swords. She freaks (since she actually does want George, although he doesn't want her), grabs one of the swords (which one?) and threatens to lay into them both.

By the time the dust clears, nobody knows which sword is which, everyone is on edge, sexual tension is riding rather high, and poor old Bob is wondering what the hell is happening (since he can only hear the commotion from his tent).

....

And so on. Note that these are stupid examples, pulled out of my butt (you knew they stank :-p ).

One of the effects of this sort of thing, as I see it, is that all those weird little character hooks people design automatically come to the fore. You don't have to wait for the GM to pick up the hook or find a way, nor do you need to scan other situations for ways to use your hooks to complicate matters. You just put it right up front and go hog-wild.

This would work really well, I think, with TROS SA's: you just build scenes around the things your own self, and everyone else pitches in to make things as messy as possible. It would certainly be one way to run TROS without a Seneschal.

Another point is that in these examples, there's no plot. Just one damn thing after another. But on the other hand, everyone's involved and their characters are getting more complicated by the second. If you wanted there to be a plot, people would be folding together their personal problems with plot issues, making NPC's a bigger deal, and so forth.

Chris Lehrich

Hey, I'm all for structure - every Universalis scene starts with a bid, and then a location, time, and elements.

The thing is that other games provide these things in other ways. That is, either they have a GM to set location, or, in the case of a game like TROS, they already have the "needs" for the scene encoded in the SAs themselves. That is, you don't have to take a moment and look at your sheet and see what SAs you have and then plan, you just play and the SAs "speak" to you in terms of what they "demand" to function. This mechanical feedback is, to my mind, superior than "meta-framing" the scene to "get it right."

So you end up with just fun play, not the "work" of playing before you play which detracts from the drama of the narration when it occurs. I'm not saying that scenes with agenda's can't be dramatic or even have surprises - just that you'll tend to see some planned stuff, and that always seems stilted.

As a slanted example, it's like you've said, "I'm going to have my character go to the door. OK? My character goes to the door." Why not just say, that the character goes to the door and edit in the process? Yes it's working without a net, but that's what's fun about RPGs to me.

Perhaps just a stylistic thing...

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Yes it's working without a net, but that's what's fun about RPGs to me.

Hello,

Funny, Jonathan ... I see that as less "narrative control" rather than more.

I suppose it would make sense to me if the term were "narration rights" rather than "narrative control." Does that seem reasonable to you?

Best,
Ron

Mike Holmes wrote: Just trust the players, give them the power to author in obivous ways so they know that you trust them, and they'll trust you back. If they need reinforcement, say, "Go ahead, I trust you." It's really as simple as that.

Mike Holmes wrote: The thing is that other games provide these things in other ways. That is, either they have a GM to set location, or, in the case of a game like TROS, they already have the "needs" for the scene encoded in the SAs themselves. That is, you don't have to take a moment and look at your sheet and see what SAs you have and then plan, you just play and the SAs "speak" to you in terms of what they "demand" to function. This mechanical feedback is, to my mind, superior than "meta-framing" the scene to "get it right."

Ron Edwards wrote: Funny, Jonathan ... I see that as less "narrative control" rather than more.

Careful with the term PC, that's a fictional character. You're talking about the players. I find it interesting that players would have a problem trusting each other. I mean with the GM, at least they may have had a pre-existing mode where the GM competed, or was at least seen as somebody who needed to be watched. PvP tension indicates PvP comptetition in the players' histories.

Was that the case previously? Was there lots of player competition? Functional or dysfunctional?

Oh, be careful with the acronym PC. Player Characters are fictional - I think that you're talking about the actual players.

And sorry to be ambiguous with my acronym; by SA I meant Spiritual Attributes - I was refering to TROS throughout the example. But it's just an expample, other games have other methods. Inspectres, for instance, supports players framing coherent scenes via structure and the attributes.

Jonathan, I can see the style potentially, but it strikes me as being a tad like Simulationism in that your constraints are alread given once you head into the scene - the main difference here being that the player gives himself the constraints instead of the GM. I'd just prefer to do it during the scene using other structure like, say, HQ personality trait abilities as a guideline.

Mike

Jonathan Walton wrote: So, all of this, coupled with the fact that I like having "scene agendas" (as Tony calls them) determined by the players or group as a whole (not by the GM) makes me think that through-framing can be a tool for player empowerment, allow people to step up, take the reigns, and steer the game in the direction they want, much like calling for a scene in MLwM.

It's layered on Amber DRPG.

Mike Holmes wrote: PvP tension indicates PvP comptetition in the players' histories.

Jonathan, I can see the style potentially, but it strikes me as being a tad like Simulationism in that your constraints are alread given once you head into the scene

None of my players are attributing malice to each other, but the thought of boundless power in many hands still makes them feel uneasy.

Jonathan, I can see the style potentially, but it strikes me as being a tad like Simulationism in that your constraints are alread given once you head into the scene

Do you think a Scene Agenda is a constraint? I thought of it more as a common short-term goal.

Do you see it being inherently more constraining then any other part of the social contract?

TonyLB wrote:

Mike Holmes wrote: PvP tension indicates PvP comptetition in the players' histories.

I don't think that follows. Trusting somebody not to deliberately set out to destroy your enjoyment is a much lower bar than trusting them not to do it accidentally. None of my players are attributing malice to each other, but the thought of boundless power in many hands still makes them feel uneasy.

Mike Holmes wrote: Are there guidelines for going too far, or not planning enough?