So I was re-reading Ron's Narrativism essay on the bus today, and came up with a much more compelling phrase for "Bang."

Hot Potato

You like? I like. To me "Bang" is arbitrary onomotopeia.

Well... if you're not going to gush about how awesome "Hot Potato" is, why do you think "Bang" is still better?

In the meantime I'll be cooking up Hot Potatoes for my players.

Interesting.

I had been pondering this myself, and I think of GM manipulation as "hooks" and "prods". So here a "hook" is a new element which pulls the PCs towards a specific place/situation/scene. In contrast, a "prod" is something which forcibly jars the PCs into action, but isn't specific about where they should go with it.

So I think that Bangs would be equivalent to prods in this analogy.

Hi Misk,

Outside of your coingage, "Hot potato" is slang for a task that people or players try to pass off to someone else. This "pass it off" element is definitive of the term. Does a bang include the "pass it off" element?

I was thinking more along the lines of "Here ya go, deal with THIS!" GM tosses it to a player, player tosses it back at the GM (maybe after some kibitzing), GM tosses it to someone else.

I suppose it could be thought of as passing off immediate narrative responsibility onto the player, and the ensuing chain of passes.

More importantly, it suggests an immediacy. I dig the hook/prod dichotomy. Yeah, "Hot Potato" would be something the player(s) have to deal with right NOW. As opposed to "Here ya go, deal with this at some point or maybe choose to ignore it."

Hi folks,

It sounds like what you guys are drifting away from Bangs and drifting towards what I call the Ball, a specific feature of how input gets passed around during play. I spoke on it in these two threads:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6507
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6522

Bangs are a specific application of what I would call Passing the Ball. The GM passes the Ball("input") to the players with momentum(generating excitement, interest or suspense amongst the players), and then doesn't lean for any given outcome.

Bangs are name from television writing, but refer to the break up of commercial time, where there isn't a lot of time for build up without having to hit a "spike" in the plot to keep people's attention. "Bang" because its like a small explosion to add momentum and excitement, a plot twist to keep people watching through the commercials.

Chris

Very useful threads.

Yeah, I suppose "hot potato" is essentially the same as the Ball with an implicit understanding that you should pass it off as soon as possible.

Actually, the ball threads suggest another synonym that will be useful to my particular group of players, who are all into hackey sack. I'm now pondering physically tossing a hack around, at least until they get the idea.

I was not aware of the origin of Bang, such context makes the term much more useful.

The "ball" verses "choice" is one element where I think "hot potato" definitately does not fit for a bang.

A bang is a term that only applies in narrativist - the chance for a player to make a thematically important choice. Far from wanting to get rid of it, the player who likes narrativist play grabs onto it. These are the moments they play for.

Hi guys,

One of the issues brought up with the hot potato analogy is the link between how fast the ball gets passed and excitement at the table. Every group has an unspoken social contract rule of how long is "acceptable" to hold the ball, the right to input. Overstep that, and the energy dies down, go too far, and people get irritated.

You can see this in all forms of play, from the Typhoid Mary in Nar play, to the 45 minutes real time to "barter for shoe strings" guy in Sim, to the Gamist who spends half an hour looking up rules and modifiers to optimize each action in combat. Granted, these are extremes, but "Ball Hogs" are a major part of broken social contracts that gets shuffled under, "problem players" and left unexamined.

Active scene framing is effectively the GM applying force to keep the momentum up. If one person is either holding the ball too long, or not doing anything with it, getting it to someone who will. Groups that jibe well together tend to almost intuitively know when the optimal time for passing the ball is, and also tend to apply author (or Pawn) stance to engineer good transitions for the next player.

The same logic applies to Ron's band metaphor. Good communication means subtle clues about when the solo is being passed, and when its about to drop out. Bad communication means folks trying to play over each other, missing cues, starting too early, hogging the solo, etc.

Chris