Hi

This is my first forge post (though I’ve been lurking for a few months). I’ve found the discussions here extremely useful and remarkably inspiring.

Predictably, in my first post I’m looking for advice.

My friends and I plan to start up our regular gaming group again (after a summer hiatus) in a couple of weeks. I’ve suggested, and they’ve agreed, to switch systems from a highly house-ruled d20 (in a bronze-age setting) to Heroquest.

I was tired of having to come up with more and more house rules just so we could play the way we wanted to, and Heroquest looked useable without modification. The characters were also reaching the point when their adversaries would take me hours to write up (classes, templates, skills, feats, magic items, oh my!). Moreover, I guess I felt that Heroquest would make it easier to expand the story beyond monster killing (though we all enjoy that a lot too).

We’ve had one exploratory game already (with only two of four players) and it went pretty well. While there will likely be some hiccups while people (not least of all myself) learn the system, I’m optimistic in this respect.

What I wonder about (and this perhaps only because of far too much reading of these forums) is whether I should suggest a serious discussion of creative agenda. How important is it for the player’s agendas to be laid out before play? We’ve been having a pretty good time up to now; will it improve our game if we all agree, explicitly, to try a narrativist approach (my likely preference, and one supported by Heroquest)? I think that, so far, we've been playing something pretty mixed, though there has, I think, been some drift towards narrativism.

One of my problems is identifying my players’ preferences. I’m not sure how to ask them directly without bringing in forge-speak and possibly putting them off the whole thing. They all lead busy lives (I’m the youngest at 35) and for the most part prefer not to spend too many hours talking about (or e-mailing about) the game when we aren’t actually playing.

Is it too much to introduce a new game system and a new theory of role-playing at the same time? Should I get on with playing the game instead of getting myself too tired for work over this?

Thanks,

Charles

Hi Charles,

You're the best judge of your friends but I will contribute a couple of thoughts.

I find that discussing the theory makes the try of the agenda too self conscious. It also has the side affect of possibly starting a 'right way to roleplay' kinda thing. There is no right way. You are best off just playing the game as written and making sure you understand all the implications of the system. It will happen by itself. Perhaps trying a variety of games that seem to support the agenda you want to experiment with and see how you like them.

If they're interested in this stuff why not casually direct them here to consider the ideas for themselves?

best,

Trevis

Hi,

Having tried different approaches when introducing Nar play, I must say that I agree with Trevis Martin. A theoretical discussion about Creative Agendas rarely work, and might in fact have the opposite effect from what you intended. Essentially, "just play the game for a couple of sessions" is probably good advice.

Also, if you are interested in Nar, focus a lot on relationships; use the relationship rules of HeroQuest, and make sure that the players understand how to use their relationships to people and communities to their own advantage.

All the best,

Trevis and Peter,

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm rather glad that you advised against the direct approach. Play will be much more fun if we aren't always asking how premise-ful we're being.

My players have already shown lots of interest in relationships while playing d20, going so far as to create new NPCs (without prompting from me), or declare themselves relatives of NPCs I've introduced. This is one reason that I think Heroquest will be a good fit.

Charles

I have been trying to drift D20 recently toward something that felt "more right" and in the process I have come up with a game that looks a whole lot on paper like HeroQuest. So I was wondering; what features did the group take to easily and what has seemed harder?

Hi Thor,

I think I know how you feel. I'll be better able to answer your question after we've played a bit more (which we'll do in a week or so). I may post something in Actual play after we've actually played.

Charles

Some players are used to navigating their characters through mazes and squaring off against antagonists. Maps, charts, HeroClix help them visualize this.

So, why not spatialize your story. If you set up a chart with, lets say competing factions, and position your heroes in relationship to those forces, say by using sticky notes to show when they are entering the sphere of influence of one faction, they can see their character's choices (ethical and moral rather than tactical) embodied in space.

In other words, something like relationship maps or character webs or venn diagrams of political conspiracies or a version of the D&D alignment chart that replaces alignment terms with with ethical/political/sexual dimensions, will all help players realize that Narrativist role playing is just a different version of practices that they are already familiar with.

Some players are used to navigating their characters through mazes and squaring off against antagonists. Maps, charts, HeroClix help them visualize this.

So, why not spatialize your story. If you set up a chart with, lets say competing factions, and position your heroes in relationship to those forces, say by using sticky notes to show when they are entering the sphere of influence of one faction, they can see their character's choices (ethical and moral rather than tactical) embodied in space.

In other words, something like relationship maps or character webs or venn diagrams of political conspiracies or a version of the D&D alignment chart that replaces alignment terms with with ethical/political/sexual dimensions, will all help players realize that Narrativist role playing is just a different version of practices that they are already familiar with.

I tried (unsuccessfully) to move a d20 group from D&D to HeroQuest. One of my BIGGEST mistakes was bringing out the Forge lingo. It didn't help that I myself was just getting accustomed to the terminology and its practical application. My approach was: "Hey, this is a new way of playing! Let's try it out and see how it works." Not that there's anything wrong with that approach on its own, but when the first thing you launch into is ---

"A long, long, time ago... in a Galaxy called the Forge... Jedi Ron Edwards whipped up "Story Now"...."

I was dejected/disappointed/crushed that players didn't share my enthusiasm for all this theory stuff. I understand better now that my first steps were my worst steps.

That said...

There's a lot to this Narr thing. And a lot that I think many people don't catch... at all... Especially in my first read-through. I've now read the whole Sorcerer line twice in the last month after having a Zen-koan-like epiphany and realizing: "Wow! I really didn't get this at all..."

With some of these new perspectives/paradigms, I can honestly say that, in my whole career of playing, I have not played in a single Narr game. Not as set out by Ron in his essay and in his Sorcerer books. I've come close. In fact, the closest I've come was Mike's Shadow World game (which, by its strictest interpretation, is a Narr-Sim hybrid) or a game with my last group where the GM just let the players run amok. It wasn't highbrow Narr (or even intentional Narr) but it was a close approximation to what Ron's talking about.

I have, however, stumbled onto Narr in some games that I ran. I know now better than I did what I did right (and what I did wrong) and maybe some of this will help you.

First off, using relationship maps at the table is a good thing. Using them at all is pretty critical. Ron mentioned here on the Forge that he's used diagrams and charts at the table to help people keep the relationships between different NPCs straight. It's my opinion that this is the way to go if you plan on using more than 7 NPCs in the game (which, in HQ, may just barely account for the PC's followers).

Next, make your PCs the main crux of the story. This is something that is repeated over and over in Sorcerer that I think is critical to Narr play. I find it difficult to fathom how a Narr game can be put together without knowing the characters beforehand. In retrospect, one of my next biggest mistakes was coming up with the relationship map and a concrete setting prior to character creation. It was just bad news. The PCs weren't tied into the setting (because they had no choice/say in it) and the PCs found it hard to really care about the Relationship Map (again because they had no real stake in it). If I could call a "do-over" I would've waited until after the characters were created and I had a handle on what type of game the players wanted before putting together my RelMaps. I would've also left my setting a bit more vague at the start, allowing for more player creativity at the onset.

Another thing I'd consider is the scale of the adventure/campaign. I've found it easier to start small. In fact, the moments where I sort of intuited Narr GMing from the subliminal messages here at the Forge were almost always situations where the stakes of the adventure were very small and very personal to the characters involved. The Big, Evil, Bad Nasty was something we built up to. A lot of times my d20 group would run off to "save the world" against some huge, nearly insurmountable threat. But we got our most Narr moments when it was just a roving barbarian betraying his clan to save a comrade from an evil curse. That was deep stuff (and very Narr-oriented), beating down the Dragon-of-the-week wasn't (but it could be given the right circumstances and build-up).

I'm not sure if I would've tried to start off my first session with a "Kicker". Although I understand them much better now, then I didn't. And the players didn't either. So we wound up with lousy kickers, a lousy start, and it just got really painful for that first session.

Maybe just taking the time after character creation to discuss with the players what their character is like, what makes him tick and then working into a kicker from there might do it. Or getting players to give their PCs a Feng-Shui style "Melodramatic Hook" and parsing a Kicker from a brief discussion. Keeping the RelMap open, though, is important here, IMO, as I think that tying a PC's kicker into what's going on around them is very important for putting PCs at the center of the action (and thus creating the story there with them as opposed to around them).

An example, I guess, was my first session (a flop) where I described what a Kicker was and asked the players to come up with one. Bad move. Really, freakin' bad move.

In contrast, two sessions later I summarized where I thought the story was going. It was actually a player's question that spurred it on:

"So, do I need to write up another character or will my PC get rid of this curse?"

To which I replied, "Of course, you'll get rid of the curse. That's a given."

But then it occurred to me...

"How do you plan to get rid of the curse, though?"

What followed was essentially the players piecing together Kickers through a group-brainstorm exercise that developed (a week later) into the most Narr play I'd ever been a part of. The "story" developed entirely from the players' perspective, not from mine. I was a participant but really didn't have much more say in the matter beyond that. It was a brief moment of savantism where I put to use all the things I "understand" now, with absolutely no understanding. And no means of repeating the results.

Hence, my game crumbled. Soon issues began to evolve around the definitions of terms that even I only partially understood. Politics crept in. And nothing grows where political ambitions take root. End of story.

Learn from my mistakes. Check out these threads:

http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=753
http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=770
http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=828
http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=876

And succeed where I did not.

Scott

P.S. The threads posted are for the "Art-Deco Melodrama" game where Ron pointed out how he prepares for a game of Sorcerer. Most of the concepts could easily apply to a Narr HQ game. If you're really interested in running Narr, I can't think of any single document that would be of more use. Otherwise, HQ does Sim very well (better in terms of portraying people in a particular setting, IMO, than d20) but the focus of HQ-Sim seems to work best when applied to a cultural perspective. Again, advice would be to start small (at a tribal or community level) and branch out from there. Beyond that, yep, a focus on relationships would be helpful in HQ-Sim as well, although HQ-Sim would be prepped a lot like a *normal* RPG session, IME.

Scott,

Sorry for the long delay in replying. In fact I've found a lot your various posts really useful in doing this conversion. Thanks for all the help, even if you only recently knew you were helping.

I don't think my game is really going to be pure anything and so far (we've played 2 sessions using Heroquest) it's been mostly sim. Or so I would guess from my limited understanding of the terminology. Some of the players are starting to really get into the relationship thing though.

In truth, I doubt it matters that much as long as we're all having fun, and I think we are.

Thanks again,

Charles

CCW wrote:
In truth, I doubt it matters that much as long as we're all having fun, and I think we are.

Mike, hopefully I didn’t imply that my motto is “if it ain’t broke…” That phrase is one of the most aggravating excuses for complacency…it makes me want to tear my hair out.

It’s just that before we started playing, I sometimes found myself really getting stressed out about whether or not players would be ADDRESSING PREMISE. Then I got stressed about the fact I was stressed. Now that it’s in motion, I’ve relaxed considerably and I’m happy to try to introduce narrativist elements without being overly invested in the result. It was a sort of stage fright, I guess.

Scripty, I really like your idea of a group piecing together of Kickers session, and I’d like to try it at this weeks game. As your game was, we are in the middle of things here and don’t really have the opportunity to make all new characters (I’m attempting what my be the most foolish approach to this sort of thing: converting a campaign mid-stream, with existing characters and storyline).

Nonetheless, we’ve come to a pretty good break-point /end of season, so now would be a good time to do this. I think the threads you suggested should be a big help in trying to figure out how to piece together a kicker-like entity (I don’t own sorcerer, alas, and am not 100% clear on the concept yet).

How would people recommend introducing this idea to my players?

Charles

Hey Charles.

Not having Sorcerer either, I'm also a little vague on the whole kicker concept. But I've read a lot here. I am just starting a campaign based in Glorantha, with people who have mostly been d20 and White Wolf players. I decided to NOT overload them with Forge speak about Narrativism and the like. Especially since I doubt I could explain it well in the first place.

I tried explaining Kickers with examples from movies of that first scene you get a character in. The one that gives us a sense of what his or her story is about. (In particular, I used the introduction of Han Solo in Star Wars, in which we know he is a smuggler, dumped a cargo, and is in hot water with his boss. I figure if that was a PC, he would have set up those conditions and as a kicker said, "I find out that Jabba knows, and he sends someone to talk to me as I try and scrounge up a job.")

That's probably not a good example. Since I'm also trying something new, I figure my game will be a hybrid something, I just want to try adding some new ideas and see if they make things more fun.

But I did get the players together to talk about how all their characters have a story arc their pursuing/investigating. So the Merchant with links to the rebellion's leader (but not really the rebellion) is exploring his ambition versus his old loyalties. The Shipwrecked Sorcerer is putting together a story about how much evil he will commit to free his people from a greater evil. And the Runaway Scholar is looking at a redemption story, how can you ever atone for the inexcusable? Deciding all that made it much easier for them to make their characters. (They came up with what kind of story they wanted to try and then made a character that would let them do it.)

I don't know if any of that helps really.

Lightcastle,

It does help, thanks. Examples of how other people have gone about this sort of thing are something I certainly need. I agree that Forge speak is right out, and thanks for the idea of using opening scenes from movies.

It sounds like each of your players has defined a conflict that their character wants to resolve, a question that needs to be answered. There is probably a lot of material from the campaign so far for my players to draw on to do the same for their characters.

I suppose there are two routes to narrativist play: one is to start with this central conflict and then find situations to address it, the other is to start with a life changing situation and then explore how that creates an interior conflict.

Charles

CCW wrote: Mike, hopefully I didn’t imply that my motto is “if it ain’t broke…”

It’s just that before we started playing, I sometimes found myself really getting stressed out about whether or not players would be ADDRESSING PREMISE. Then I got stressed about the fact I was stressed. Now that it’s in motion, I’ve relaxed considerably and I’m happy to try to introduce narrativist elements without being overly invested in the result. It was a sort of stage fright, I guess.

Scripty, I really like your idea of a group piecing together of Kickers session, and I’d like to try it at this weeks game. As your game was, we are in the middle of things here and don’t really have the opportunity to make all new characters

(I’m attempting what my be the most foolish approach to this sort of thing: converting a campaign mid-stream, with existing characters and storyline).

I suppose there are two routes to narrativist play: one is to start with this central conflict and then find situations to address it, the other is to start with a life changing situation and then explore how that creates an interior conflict.

Mike Holmes wrote: This is truely, to me, the key to narrativism. That is, the GM presenting situations that don't have a tactical solution, no win condition. Often, but not always, actual "no win" situations for the character.

Brand_Robins wrote: First let me say that Mike is cool and I someday hope to be as cool as he is.

Just a brief note to thank you for your generous replies.

It was really good for me to see how premise is something that just emerges once players are given situations where they must make significant decisions for their characters. I've been looking at the links scripty posted, as well as some others, such as the Well of Souls, trying to get ideas of how to form bangs. I think at this point it's a matter of trying out the techniques and seeing if I can make them work.

I don't think, now, that I'll get the players to produce kickers as such, though this depends somewhat on what they say they want to do next. I'd rather give the characters some down time, and discuss with the players what they want to go on during that time, who their characters interact with etc. In other words, flesh out the character's relationships and establish a sense of what normal life looks like for them.

I'd also like to spend some time completing a relationship map (which I've been using in one form or another since well before we switched to Heroquest). Fortunately most of my players have been good at relationships right from the beginning, tying themselves into existing NPCs and creating new ones on the fly, so making the r-map explicit shouldn't be that hard. I have a pile of pictures of people which the players can use to represent NPCs they have relationships with--I imagine us sticking them to a sheet of poster paper then drawing lines between them.

Finally, if we have time to do some actual playing, there are a couple of bangs I can throw at them to get things going. I drew these from relationships they already have, though I'll probably want to adapt them after our discussion.

All this to commence tomorrow night over Ethiopian takeout. I can't wait.

Charles

CCW wrote: It was really good for me to see how premise is something that just emerges once players are given situations where they must make significant decisions for their characters.

I don't think, now, that I'll get the players to produce kickers as such, though this depends somewhat on what they say they want to do next. I'd rather give the characters some down time, and discuss with the players what they want to go on during that time, who their characters interact with etc. In other words, flesh out the character's relationships and establish a sense of what normal life looks like for them.

I'd also like to spend some time completing a relationship map (which I've been using in one form or another since well before we switched to Heroquest). Fortunately most of my players have been good at relationships right from the beginning, tying themselves into existing NPCs and creating new ones on the fly, so making the r-map explicit shouldn't be that hard. I have a pile of pictures of people which the players can use to represent NPCs they have relationships with--I imagine us sticking them to a sheet of poster paper then drawing lines between them.

Finally, if we have time to do some actual playing, there are a couple of bangs I can throw at them to get things going. I drew these from relationships they already have, though I'll probably want to adapt them after our discussion.

Hey Mike, I love this one.

Maybe. OTOH, I find that it's usually safe to make assumptions. Even if you're wrong, that revelation is often significant. For example, let's say that your bang is that the character's girlfriend is sleeping with the character's best friend (a classic). For most people, this is a no-brainer bang, because it seems to set up an obvious dilemma. A particular player might, OTOH, not see it as a dilemma, "Big deal, Ragnar likes her, but they weren't exclusive or anything. Well, cool, the character doesn't have to take sides or anything, but now we've had revealed something important about the nature of the character's relationship.

Next bang, then is the GF saying to Ragnar that she's interested in being monogamous - she's very dissapointed that he didn't protest about her being with the other guy. See how the one flows into another?

Well, drifting a tad to the off topic, but I really don't have much of a response. First, more is better than less in terms of overall characters because you can always just not use the less useful ones. In terms of how intertwined? The tanglier the web, the better. It's possible to get implausibly tangled (you only get one co-incidence, for example, any more breaks suspension of disbelief quickly), so avoid that, but stop just short of it. As long as you can come up with a plausible connection, put it in.

Mike

I don’t mean to spend a long time talking about their daily lives, but I think it might help us to identify who the characters have relationships with--give the players more things to write on their character sheets. It’s relatively easy to imagine yourself a self-sufficient adventurer when you’re off fighting demons (or what-have-you) but much harder when you have to think about daily life: “you mean you just spent six months sitting silently in a tavern, waiting for the faceless king’s messenger to turn up with a mission?”

Mostly I see it as a warmer for building the r-map.

I do see what you mean about keeping the action inside the r-map. This was a problem I made a while back in my game. The characters went off on a quest and initially I wondered why things felt so much less satisfying; then I realized that they were, for lack of a better term, out of context. I was, indeed, trying to affix a more traditional D&D type quest to what had been becoming much more relationship based.

I’m not too worried about making assumptions, it’s just that some of the details may change, not the broad strokes. I do like your advice about changing the nature of a relationship, I might just make use of it tonight (though maybe not your specific example—I still have 3 hours to think about it…). “What scene should we do now” is definitely something I want to make more use of.

That’s a good question, Lightcastle, though I must confess it hadn’t occurred to me. I figure it should be as convoluted as you can make it, as long as you, as GM, can easily keep track of it all.

Charles

I'm back. Sorry it's been so long. Mike covered a lot of important stuff already and quite well. He is the greatest. If only I were as cool as him, then I would be one step closer to being as cool as Brand. (heehee; just an oblique reference to the earlier love-fest, they are both equally cool individuals).

Now, on with it!

I differ from most people here at the Forge on the issue of size of relationship maps. I think that size does matter as regards an R-Map. The larger the R-Map the more NPCs the players have to keep straight, the wider the horizon of connections, the more connections that must be made plausible, etc. I tend to feel, as regards R-Maps, that less is more. Here are some guidelines that I use.

If you are doing a short adventure, the smaller the R-Map the better. If I'm doing a 3 session adventure, I like to keep R-Maps to 7 NPCs or less. Things are tighter, more entangled and more focused.

If you are doing a longer series of adventures, more is okay. I've seen R-Maps with upwards of 10 or 11 NPCs. IMO, that's fine but recognize that there may be more "drift" as players work their way around the R-Map. Further, I think that if you have more than 7 NPCs then the R-Map should definitely be kept on a chart for all to see and updated regularly as new connections are discovered between the NPCs. Again, this is all to help the players "keep up" with what's going on.

A last caveat with R-Maps is that no matter how big you make your R-Map, understand that it's going to become much bigger during play. Your players are going to have NPC connections that will (and should) tie into the R-Map. There are going to be incidental NPCs associated with individuals already on the R-Map, though they may not play as great a role they're still there. So, no matter how big you *think* your R-Map should be, I would advise to shoot lower. If you want 11 people in your R-Map, detail 7 of them and leave four blanks to fill in (either with the players' NPCs or incidental supporting characters). If you want 7, detail 5 of them. Your R-Map will fill out, believe me.

The R-Map, however, as presented by Ron in Sorcerer's Soul is presumably going to be based on a work of fiction. In the Art Deco Melodrama threads, there are some enlightening examples of tying both players' NPCs (and players) into the R-Map as well as paring down the R-Map to eliminate unnecessary NPCs. We see Ron substitute NPCs on the R-Map for NPCs listed on the players' sheets and we also see Ron combine NPCs from the fiction into one person on the R-Map as well as remove some NPCs on the R-Map that no longer made sense or were cumbersome.

This is an important skill, IMO, when dealing with R-Maps as I think they can easily get out of hand. Mike himself commented in our last ShadowWorld HQ campaign that his list of NPCs had grown upwards of 45. NPC creep is not your friend!

A final bit of text about kickers, bangs, etc. I think Brand and Mike are spot on with their advice. But there is something within there that I think is really important that might be overlooked.

Mike Holmes wrote:
Lots of ways to discover conflict in play arising from tweaking the current situation ever so slightly. Note that when you really get rolling in this mode, players will be setting stuff like this up just as much as you are with their decisions.

If you are doing a longer series of adventures, more is okay. I've seen R-Maps with upwards of 10 or 11 NPCs. IMO, that's fine but recognize that there may be more "drift" as players work their way around the R-Map. Further, I think that if you have more than 7 NPCs then the R-Map should definitely be kept on a chart for all to see and updated regularly as new connections are discovered between the NPCs. Again, this is all to help the players "keep up" with what's going on.

A last caveat with R-Maps is that no matter how big you make your R-Map, understand that it's going to become much bigger during play. Your players are going to have NPC connections that will (and should) tie into the R-Map.

The R-Map, however, as presented by Ron in Sorcerer's Soul is presumably going to be based on a work of fiction.

This is an important skill, IMO, when dealing with R-Maps as I think they can easily get out of hand. Mike himself commented in our last ShadowWorld HQ campaign that his list of NPCs had grown upwards of 45. NPC creep is not your friend!

Tweaking. Tweaking. Tweaking. I tend to call it "spiking" after how Ron refers to "spiking the Kicker". As I understand it, it's pushing the tension in a situation or scene. Upping the excitement level just that bit.

IMO, it's the way to make a dull Kicker something really, really good. It's a way to think of Bangs ("What would be really good right about now?"). It also unconsciously ties into theme/premise. If it's not a really good setup, then it likely isn't asking questions that the players want answered.

For example, lame Kicker #1267280. A player says "I woke up and my car was gone." Mkay. Here's the horse, there's the water... Ask questions that you think might add "spike" to the kicker.

Me: "What if there was a note from cultists who had kidnapped your wife and took her somewhere? But they wanted this ancient tome you have on your character sheet in exchange...."

Me: "Screw that. You're getting off the plane in Tiajuana, with a name and a phone number."

Me: "Cool. You're headed to an art gallery where you've found out a couple of the cult members work. You've got a shotgun in one hand and..."

P: "No. All I want to take is my ceremonial knife..."

Firstly, let me point out that Scripty, Mike, and Brand are all so cool I could keep a side of beef in them for a week. :-)

The Gleam thing is a nice description, Scripty. I was always that player, throwing out all kinds of things for the GM to work with, often ignored as he went about his merry way of his own plot.

I'm trying to avoid that.

As for the R-map, the idea is for an 8-10 game run for this thing. My idea was that I'd start with all the NPCs people put on their character sheets (explicit and/or implicit) and then work at linking them to each other and to a some core NPCs I've got for the city.

This seems a reasonable approach.

Mind you, I'm aware that this will not be a Sorcerer-esque R-map, since it isn't just sex and blood ties involved here. I also am not basing it too much on a work of fiction.

I fall somewhere between Mike and Scripty, not as a matter of theory but as a matter of dealing with the PCs that I have. I often do have a large NPC arsenal, but I'm very careful about where the NPCs come from and how they relate to the PCs. I try not to introduce more than 7 or 8 "external" NPCs per session, or my players lose track of who is who no matter how hard I individualize and act. However once an NPC is stuck in their heads I'll add more, because at that point the confusion is minimal.

To build from this example:

Mike Holmes wrote: For example from Brand's character, Thomas, in addition to his three followers who I don't count because they're player controlled, I count one lover (Alitia), a brother (Andric), brother's portly driver (Nezzik), a sorcerer (Porcaru), and a buddy from his order (Rej). That's five NPCs right there without bringing in anybody from outside the character's personal map. Note that Alitia was also on Chris's character Fahja's sheet (as a flaw), and that Porcaru ended getting messed up with Nathan's character, Aysha. And lots of folks bumped into Andric and Nezzik.

I used to tell it to my players this way, "Just wait till he bleeds you, then you'll never forget who he is. And until he bleeds you, you don't need to worry about any more folks coming along with knives."

Brand_Robins wrote: I try not to introduce more than 7 or 8 "external" NPCs per session, or my players lose track of who is who no matter how hard I individualize and act. However once an NPC is stuck in their heads I'll add more, because at that point the confusion is minimal.

Scripty wrote: A well-known Eugene O'Neill quote is that if you show a gun on the wall in the 1st Act it should be used to kill somebody in the 3rd. To me, this is efficiency. To Ron/Mike, it's interconnection.

The most difficult part of all this Narr stuff, in my opinion, is to convey this practical knowledge through language and not practical application.

That's how I "figured out" Narrativism, at least as I read it through all the Sorcerer books, Ron's essay, and then taking what I read and analyzing it through the filter of my experience. What I've come up with is my take on this whole thing. It has to be.

I would recommend some serious consideration of all the advice you've received here and taking it back to what you know, bringing it into your own experiential frame of reference.

Several unrelated points.

First, Scott, I never said you did anything wrong - I liked your example. That's precisely how I would have done it too (on a good day). I was just correcting a point of jargon - what "spiking" means in Ron's text.

As for "debunking", there's a real problem that some people have with getting into narrativism in that they're doing a lot more work than they have to do. That is, they're taking the description of this sort of play and making it into a flowchart for how to play. It's just incorrect. As soon as I see somebody in play saying, "Hmm, know what would be a good premise? If I had the character get into a situation where he had to shoose between X and Y." That's where I tell the player to stop verbalizing, and, like Nike would advise, just do it.

No analysis during play allowed. I slip into it all the time (go figure), and it's just a distraction. Better to do it "wrong" and quickly, than to take a long time figuring out the right way to do it.

As for the difficulty with getting to know the many NPCs - well, that's in part a problem of the medium in question, and the way I handled it. In IRC, there's a tendency to focus only on the action that's happening to you. I know that I do this in other games on IRC. Also, given that I played without players on many occasions, simply substituting some players for others when neccessary, made this sorta inevitable, too. Especially for people who came in "late" to action. Given the time restrictions, I rarely had any chance to take time to give any backstory for any characters.

So, instead, I relied on the old "What the character knows" as the basis for updating the player. Now, of course, that tends to not be the best for narrativism. But, again, I had little choice. I could have limited things to a smaller group, but I don't think that I could have gotten 19 sessions out of a smaller group.

Looking back, I realized that I should have taken some steps to ensure that players had more access to something that could refresh their memory. At some point I started distributing lists of characters (as you suggest above), but that was too little, too inconsitently, and too late.

In the current iteration, I intend to make information much more accessible, and thank the heavens for the Wiki. This takes the place of physical lists that I'd have in a FTF game (in the Lankan Empire FTF, I've got Visios showing the who's who in politics). Like you suggest above. So, I'm hoping that this will take the place, perhaps even do a better job, than paper would.


Here's the thing. If you look at any Soap Opera, the cast includes over 50 characters easy. Any fewer, and things really become incestuous to the point of unbelievability. That, or characters die off, and the map becomes so small that there's really very little left to resolve with the combinations that are left. Heck, even Soap Operas are implausibly tight - as my game was, too. There were times when I was really worried that I had broken suspension of disbelief. It was actually to my advantage that not everyone had a perfect understanding of every character, so that I could get away with this.

The soap style is actually somewhat more Simulationis, oriented than other games. In general, my style has some definite simmy moments. Not to be pedantic (I hate when people quote this at me), but RPGs are not books or movies. So the dramatic rules that apply there, the shotgun rule, for instance, don't always apply to RPGs. In my game, I don't put a weapon in the game only if it's going to see use - I describe whatever makes sense at the moment that it's encountered. The drama comes from using narrativism to make of that interesting situations. Not the reverse, where I create everything only to support a dramatic situation.

For a long term game like I'm running, I think this is very important. Short term games can ignore stuff like this, because everyone is focused on getting to resolutions of the overall story. In the long term game, the premises are undiscovered until you find them in the material presented. As such, I have to just chuck out a lot of material and see what sticks. That means the some of the material doesn't get used.

I find it interesting that you liked the monk (I can't even remember who this is). Because if you liked him and wanted to see more of him, then why didn't you say so? I work off of the player's cues. I find it particularly interesting in the light of the power grab you made in play a session ago, where you director stanced in a bit of evidence pointing to Elle's lost sister (Alitia as it happens). You seemed to have no problem making your desires known through narration - so why can't you tell me in the OOC box what you want to see? Take too much time in IRC? :-)


Anyhow, really important here, we've all said quite a lot, and we need to hear if any of this is helping Charles - it's his thread after all. Keep that in mind.

Mike

10-digit phone numbers? I'd say you are ruined then, Brand. :)

I totally agree with the NPC arsenal vs. central cast terminology. Although I think that the Forge terms are already pretty full to bursting, if a change in terminology is going to actually add clarity to the discussion, then I'm behind it.

Mike, first, you're a great GM. And I totally understand your desire to use something rather than hold off and miss an opportunity. As Lemony Snicket pointed out in his last book, "those who hesitate are lost..."

I'm afraid my last post put you in a position to defend yourself, which is how I felt after your last post. That was not my intention. I was just illustrating how my experience as a player and a GM has led me to believe that a tighter R-Map is better. But that's really just my impression. I have never posed it as anything but. I could've just as easily pointed to the Wuxia game I ran with a R-Map based on the movie "Death to Smoochy". That was a disaster. There were 15+ NPCs in the R-Map before play even started. NPC creep led to upwards of 25 NPCs, only about 15 or so were necessary. The rest were all extemporaneous. It was inefficient on my part. A mistake. But your game was much more fun than that one. I don't mean to slight your abilities. I agree with Brand's assessment of your faculties (how many other people get called a genius twice in one day?). I'm sorry to have put you in a corner like that.

Again, we just disagree here. It's no big deal really. I think NPC creep should be guarded against. I doubt it can be avoided entirely. But that is a limitation of myself as a GM, I think. I've seen other GMs manage it quite well, including yourself. However, I think that once players start missing out on elements of the story, including NPCs, they become a bit disempowered and reliant on the GM to fill them in on the rest of the story.

That's why I say NPC creep isn't a friend. But it shows up at almost every game I've run and every game I've played (barring those games where the entirety of the session is spent in a dungeon or significant portions of the setting are destroyed for some reason).

I agree this is Charles' thread and hope he can get something useful out of all this. Sorry to hijack it.

Scott

Wow, this thread has reached a size that I'm having trouble absorbing it all. Not that I'm complaining, mind, it's full of fantastically helpful ideas.

I must admit though, that the size of the r-map is not of maximum importance for me: I'd be overjoyed to reach a point in my campaign in which the r-map, any r-map, plays an important role of any kind.

The game on Wednesday didn't go quite as I had hoped. The players wanted to continue playing out the situation, which I had thought was pretty much done with. Thus we never reached a point in the game where I felt I could try out the advice I'd recieved from all of you. This has left me feeling a bit deflated and the truth is don't really know what further to ask or to contribute here until we've played some more.

Charles

Oh dear, that does sound whine-y doesn't it? That'll teach me to post while I'm tired AND hungry.

Fortunately, at the moment I'm merely very very tired so I'm sure I'll have no problems at all (although for some reason things keep getting farther and farther away...).

The characters in my game have, for the last while, been off on a quest far away from their home, and far away from almost all the NPCs who they connected to at the beginning of the game (their families, contects, etc.). This has made it hard for me to entangle them in a web of conflicting responsibilities and deceit (or what-have-you) because I made the mistake, mentioned by Mike a page or so ago, of moving the source of action way outside the r-map. Even at the time it didn't feel right, but only now can I identify why.

Fortunately, they're on their way home, unfortunately (at least in some sense) the players wanted to play out some of the journey. Fool that I am, I couldn't resist introducing some complications to make things interesting. The good news is that they've now found their way to the homeland of one of the characters, which isn't too far from their destination, so I'll be able to start throwing relationships at them a bit more next week.

Good night,

Charles

Scripty wrote: Mike, first, you're a great GM. And I totally understand your desire to use something rather than hold off and miss an opportunity. As Lemony Snicket pointed out in his last book, "those who hesitate are lost..."

I was just illustrating how my experience as a player and a GM has led me to believe that a tighter R-Map is better. But that's really just my impression. I have never posed it as anything but.

I'm sorry to have put you in a corner like that.

Again, we just disagree here. It's no big deal really. I think NPC creep should be guarded against. I doubt it can be avoided entirely. But that is a limitation of myself as a GM, I think. I've seen other GMs manage it quite well, including yourself. However, I think that once players start missing out on elements of the story, including NPCs, they become a bit disempowered and reliant on the GM to fill them in on the rest of the story.

That's why I say NPC creep isn't a friend. But it shows up at almost every game I've run and every game I've played.

Posting twice in a row here (don't miss the one above)...

CCW wrote: Oh dear, that does sound whine-y doesn't it? That'll teach me to post while I'm tired AND hungry.

The characters in my game have, for the last while, been off on a quest far away from their home, and far away from almost all the NPCs who they connected to at the beginning of the game (their families, contects, etc.). This has made it hard for me to entangle them in a web of conflicting responsibilities and deceit (or what-have-you) because I made the mistake, mentioned by Mike a page or so ago, of moving the source of action way outside the r-map. Even at the time it didn't feel right, but only now can I identify why.

Fortunately, they're on their way home, unfortunately (at least in some sense) the players wanted to play out some of the journey. Fool that I am, I couldn't resist introducing some complications to make things interesting. The good news is that they've now found their way to the homeland of one of the characters, which isn't too far from their destination, so I'll be able to start throwing relationships at them a bit more next week.

Mike Holmes wrote: Yer bucking for extra HP, aren't ya? Well, no way, dude, this GM is uncorruptable (unless you want to talk about cash...). ;-)

Mike Holmes wrote: In fact, in earlier days before I spent a lot of time advocating for narrativism, I was thought of as the "simulationist" guy on the Forge. Right now I'd like to think that I'm the "everything as it's needed" guy. Rather, the most important thing to have in a game is a coherent CA shared by all the players. Not a specific mode of play.

Mike Holmes wrote: Well, that says to me that the trade-off that I've gone for in my game wasn't working for you. Can't back out of it. That, or it did work, in which case, I think I'm correct in saying that it's something that a person can use.

Mike, I did actually have an r-map on the island they were exploring (based on Griffin Island from RQ3). The players hadn't yet connected very seriously to the NPCs and I felt that the r-map in their home city had more long-term potential. Also, I tend to want everything to be connected on some level--a holdover from my other style of GMing where I was something of a master of the complicated mega-plot (25 years of gaming are hard to shake off).

I'm quite excited about the next game. They have made their way to a ruined city off the coast of one of their homelands. Naturally it's full of nastyness, and one of the characters has just suffered a 50% wound from a sword blow. This seems a good time to get the demon that has been riding around in his body to pipe up and offer magical help (so far the characters have been avoiding magic like the plague due to it's demonic roots). Also with any luck I'll be able to work in another charater's family--I think one of her relatives is second in comand of the 'baddies.'

I'll try to put up an actual play post when I get a chance.

Scripty, No need to apologise. I've found the discussion of number of NPCs very interesting, it just doesn't happen to be one of my insecurities. I do tend to have NPC creep, but I also try to have a picture for each of the major ones, and to allow some to fade into the background if the players don't show interest in them.

Thanks all,

Charles

CCW wrote: Mike, I did actually have an r-map on the island they were exploring (based on Griffin Island from RQ3). The players hadn't yet connected very seriously to the NPCs and I felt that the r-map in their home city had more long-term potential. Also, I tend to want everything to be connected on some level--a holdover from my other style of GMing where I was something of a master of the complicated mega-plot (25 years of gaming are hard to shake off).

I'm quite excited about the next game. They have made their way to a ruined city off the coast of one of their homelands. Naturally it's full of nastyness, and one of the characters has just suffered a 50% wound from a sword blow. This seems a good time to get the demon that has been riding around in his body to pipe up and offer magical help (so far the characters have been avoiding magic like the plague due to it's demonic roots).

Also with any luck I'll be able to work in another charater's family--I think one of her relatives is second in comand of the 'baddies.'

Mike Holmes wrote: Heh, sounds like what I do, actually. :-)

Mike Holmes wrote: What you have to prepare yourself for is the possibility that they won't link up with the hometown R-Map, either.

Mike Holmes wrote: Remember to put some pressure to get that healing - some time element. So that it's a choice to take the healing and suffer the consequences, or to not, and, well, suffer the consequences. :-)

Mike Holmes wrote: Kidding aside, you might want to check with the player. Sometimes players get proprietary about their NPCs.