Hi - I thought I'd share with you my recent session of Serenityquest, wherein I tried a much more Narrativist approach than I've done before, and it worked really well.

We've played one session of this before, and it went pretty well - it was a standard heist, simulationist, with a climax and plot, yadda yadda.  But ultimately I felt like I was just guiding rats through a maze, and I wanted to try the Narrativist approach.  The last session ended up with a couple of interesting hooks - they had the dead body of Colonel Saxon, the villain, in their hold after he died of his wounds while recieving (half-hearted) medical treatment on board.  And they had Absalom Baird, the accountant of the local crime lord, Colonel Lathrop (lot of Colonels round these parts) drugged on board their ship.  Finally, they had double crossed Colonel Lathrop and returned the stolen money to the locals who needed it to make the local payroll.

The characters - out group is normally four - but only two played tonight.  The first is Kip Ge, an uptight ex-Fighter Pilot from the Core, kicked out for 'seeing too much' on a black op, and his goal is to get back into the service, since being a pilot is all he ever cared for.  He has an experimental shuttle. 

Second, in no particular order, is Jack O'Connor, a Space Pirate, who is looking to avenge the death of his brother.  He is also an ace shot.

So we begin.  I start with the most obvious bang - the body.  Both payers don't even bat an eyelid - into the airlock it goes.  Jack considers blackmailing the baddies, but eventually they decide against it.  Typical sociopathic player behaviour up until now.  Colonel Saxon's body sails into the Black.

Next, the medic on board gives a shout - this is the second bang.  Baird is going into cardiac arrest, and the only way to save his life is to give him an adrenaline shot which will wake him up.  Jack wonders why they don't shoot him, but Kip has 'Strong Moral Compass' and decides that they have to wake him up.  They resuscitate him, and then tie him to the bed while they decide what to do.

Eventually, after much in-character discussion (I really enjoyed watching them settle into points of view) Jack washes his hands of the whole affair and Kip decides that they will return to Persephone to return Baird home.  This is all done without dice rolls - played in-character.

There is an interlude, where they try to negotiate with Lathrop via a Wave, but Lathrop takes a strong moral stance, and demands they repay their money.  He also says that Baird is a family man, and he's willing to bet they won't kill Baird in cold blood.  Kip hangs up.  I reckon Lathrop has Good Judge of Character, and i see him as a moral man, making hard decisions as a crime boss.

At this point I get Jack to exlain his relationship with the medic, Xor Kane - he was a friend of Jack's brother who got into some trouble gambling, and lost his job after stealing and trying to fence some medical equipment.  Jack helps him out because of a sense of guilt over his brother's death.

They tie up Baird and bundle him into Kip's shuttle, and fly off.  Kip flies (he is the only person who can fly the shuttle) and Jack watches the prisoner.

This is where it got really interesting - I threw in an impromptu bang - Baird was originally knocked out by Kip, so he is really angry with him, and blames him for the whole situation.  He tells Jack that if he turns Kip in to Lathrop, he'll arrange for his debt to be wiped clean and for Jack to recieve a modest reward.  We played this out with Jack's Get His Own Way augmented by his Ambitious and Sly vs his Friend augmented with Kip's strong moral compass, and honourable. So Jack's dark side, versus Jack's light side augmented by a desperate Kip.  Kip knocks out Baird, but Jack (a short contest) wins and draws a gun on Kip, and tells him to land at Eavesdown docks, where the crime lord is.

This description doesn't give credit to all the discussion - in trying to justify the various augments, the two players really defined their relationship to each other.  Kip tried to get a few dodgy augments, but by forcing them to act out how the augment would actually work, I could get them to justify augments.

Kip tries a couple of things (he's at a -10% for the marginal defeat, so I rule he's nervous with the gun in his face).  We have another contest - Kip declares a feature of his ship is it can paralyse passengers 15 (some sort of shock) - he augments this with his Diciplined Mind and Daredevil.  Against this Jack uses his keen vision, augmented by Suspicious and Sly, with a discounted Gunslinger (to intimidate Kip).  This plays out as a minor defeat for Jack - he sees Kip press the button and leaps out of his chair in time, but his lombs feel heavy and numb (-10%).  I declare the two -10%'s even out and cancel them out.

Kip then tries a maneuver - to open the door and then loop the ship to throw Jack and Baird out.  But he loses marginally against Jack (Keen Eyes again) and he feels the cold ring of steel against his neck.  "Just put her down, Kip," whispers Jack.

At this time we had a real feel for the conflict.  Taking a step back, the whole thing was just three people travelling in a shuttle, but it played like an episode of Firefly.  The interpersonal drama felt real, and there was a lot at stake, and the players were actually inhabiting their characters point of view.  I explained the game afterwards to my wife, and she asked me, "what did you do while all this was going on?" and it was a good question - I wasn't narrating, just facilitating two characters in conflict.

At this point I decided to force things to a head - Absalom orders Jack to kill Kip.  This lets Kip back in the game - Kip actually uses one of Jack's traits (Love Family) to remind Jack that this sort of selfish behaviour is what led to the death of his brother. I felt that was truly inspired and gave Kip a bonus. Kip spends a hero point and Jack narrates the following - he says, "Get off the ship," and we think he's talking to Kip, but he turns the gun around - he's actually speaking to Baird.  He kicks Baird off the ship, and Baird picks up his bowler and shouts at them that they are dead men.  The players were relieved that the situation was resolved, and had a bit of fun at this point, narrating the outcome.

We then narrate a nice little scene where on the way back, Jack takes out a creased photo of his brother, and then unfolds it - to show him with his arm around his brother.  Kip is in a foul mood on the way back to their ship, but he sees this in the reflection of his shiny dashboard, and sees that perhaps Jack isn't a total jerk after all.

The Bangs worked very well - even little things could end up being a good conflict. I liked the fact that character abilities could drive a character into a conflict with himself or with another character, and that this conflict actually worked well as the central conflict for the game.

The next step for me is to try and think of some Bangs that relate directly to their character issues/wants (Jack wants to avenge his brother's death, Kip wants to get back into the service).  Thre was a bit more to this session, relating to Jack running into an old Piracy buddy on Beaumonde, but I'll add it later.

To summarise, the bang worked really well.  I felt nervous not having anything prepared in the traditional sense, and a bit later I found myself doing 'plot' not 'bangs' but I feel these are just the remnants of old habits that are hard to break.  My players seem to really like Heroquest, and really enjoy doing little 'flashbacks' about their characters that make them come to life - through the conflicts the charcter really came alive.  I think a 'Group Bang' is a workable concept - the conflict can be within the group not just wthin a character.  Within a character is workable, but within a group is also doable.

Any comments or questions welcome, and any advice is very welcome.

OK, a couple of preliminaries to get going.

First, welcome to the Forge, and what's your real name?

Second, where did you learn about these techniques? It's good to get some context on what you know, so we don't have to reiterate anything that you've already read, and we can make references to those things, etc.

Lastly, kinda starting back from the end, "Group Bangs" are a great technique. It's good to have bangs that hit only one character at a time, too, to give them a little more spotlight now and then. But bangs that hit the entire group, if they really force everyone to make decisions that reveal their characters or highlight them somehow, are great stuff. In part because the outcomes of them are often really muddy rather than just the black and white of, say, a typical dilemma type bang. That is, first, the players have to consider the ramifications that their characters' decisions are going to have on the other characters and, therefore, players. Second, once decisions are made, these often automatically cascade into further decisions that have to be made by other characters in response. The Bang sorta mutates as it runs its course amongst the players, or sprouts new bangs.

For instance, if you have a situation where the characters of a village have been sworn to protect the peace, but have an incentive to go to war, the first character that breaks the peace creates a new bang for the rest of the characters about whether or not to join with them, or act to stop them or ameliorate the damage done. If a second character acts to stop the first by attacking him, then player 3's has to consider which side to enter on, or to just the fight play out. Eveyone else has to respond to the questions raised by that action, then ("Why didn't you help me?!?") Before you know it, one bang has become a whole pack.

So, yeah, Group Bangs, early and often. Just don't let them substitute for individualized bangs entirely. Because the one potential problem with group bangs is that it's always more likely that one of several players isn't impacted by the bang. If that player is the same one over and over, then group bangs just aren't going to do it. Make sure that you have stuff for individuals too. You might not have to use it, but it's important to have if you do need it.

Mike

Thanks Mike,

My real name is Russell, and reading the list of users I see that the standard is to use a real name - apologies.  I've been reading the forge for a while now, but I never really picked up on that until now!  Long time lurker, first time poster.

I never got Narrativism until Droog pointed me to several essays on the web, mostly here at the Forge, and I took them on board.  We had an abortive game of Sorcerer which introduced me to some of the concepts, but they weren't really clear to me.

I've felt frustrated for some time with roleplaying as a medium because I had experienced it's limitations with players who passively sat back and watched the story unfold - in many cases none of the characters ever came 'alive', and when you have already plotted an adventure there is not much challenge for you as a GM in making, as I said in my original post, the rats run through the maze - I think that is referred to as 'illusionism' here.

In regards to the Bangs, group bangs work quite well - but as I get more into individual (to borrow a movie term) story arcs related to their individual goals, the bans will be more individual, I think.

Heroquest I feel is outstanding for enabling this kind of play, but also enabling traditional 'scenario' type of play, too.  The thing I love about last nights game is that all they really did was return a prisoner to his homeworld and then (not part of the writeup above) have dinner with an old Pirate buddy of Jack's.  But it was more engaging and interesting than the previous adventure, where they robbed banks, flew around in ships and had gun battles.

Nice to meet you, Russel.

Yep, the play you mention sounds like illusionism. At least as long as the players weren't sure when you were putting the walls in front of them to enforce the maze. That is, if you force the left hand turn, then, at least occasionally, it's a matter of them thinking that they were the ones that chose to turn left. If they can see you pushing them through the maze, then it's politely called Participationism if you really think they liked it, or Railroading otherwise. :-)

I'm intrigued by your comment about "Scenario play." Interestingly HQ adventures are mostly written this way, but I think that it's largely a wast of HQ play to do scenario play. Might just be me, however. :-)

This is all done without dice rolls - played in-character.

I think all adventures are written in a 'maze' way, and I can't see that changing in the future.  Narrativism depends (IMHO) on using attributes of a character to drive the story.  If an adventure supplement is going to be useful to all players of a game, you can make some broad assumptions about characters (the players are all adventurers, the players are all Heortlings) but not specific ones (the players want to find the Browncoat who killed their brother).  So, in order to sell, adventures must be structured and plot driven, and be broad enough to accommodate any type of character who might end up playing.

I like these sorts of adventures, but I like 'settings with cool adventure seeds' better.

With regards to roleplay vs roll=play, it's good to encourage players to talk in character - I think it's good not to interrupt with dice unless;
1) The talking has died down and needs to be forced to a climax
2) The stakes need to be raised, to 'compartmentalise and contain' the conflict
3) A player stands to lose something, and therefore the use of abilites and dice gives the player some ownership over the result, but also some risk of loss.

I find the use of dice in the above game helped characters think about their attributes, and served to separate themselves from themselves and think more as their characters would.  The arguments and discussions followed the characters positions, less than the players.  By forcing the players to think in terms of augments, they ended up referring to the character.

It's a balancing act, eh?

screen_monkey wrote:
I think all adventures are written in a 'maze' way, and I can't see that changing in the future. 

Narrativism depends (IMHO) on using attributes of a character to drive the story.  If an adventure supplement is going to be useful to all players of a game, you can make some broad assumptions about characters (the players are all adventurers, the players are all Heortlings) but not specific ones (the players want to find the Browncoat who killed their brother).  So, in order to sell, adventures must be structured and plot driven, and be broad enough to accommodate any type of character who might end up playing.

With regards to roleplay vs roll=play, it's good to encourage players to talk in character - I think it's good not to interrupt with dice unless;
1) The talking has died down and needs to be forced to a climax
2) The stakes need to be raised, to 'compartmentalise and contain' the conflict
3) A player stands to lose something, and therefore the use of abilites and dice gives the player some ownership over the result, but also some risk of loss.

Mike wrote:
That said, actually I'm not all that concerned, personally, with first person portrayal and dialog. That is, I'm just as satisfied personally with third person, "I try to get him to do that." But that's just me.

Well, actually I think that good design promotes these things, and that it's not, then, a balancing act. That is, with HQ, I have yet to see any player think about their character as a pawn. There's just too much built in advantage to thinking about them as individuals with the personality indicated on the character sheets. So, actually, my experience is that the more you use the mechanics in HQ, the better the play gets.
Mike

Hello,

This discussion got abstract awfully quickly.

Russell, I'm more interested in straightforward journalism about your group's play-experiences. I liked your account of two players' interactions, although I'm not sure how to talk about them, because you only provided character names. Are the other two players, the ones who were absent for this second and more successful session, returning to play next time? Do you think their absence contributed to the success of this session?

Also, has this group played Heroquest in the past, with other characters or another setting?

Best,
Ron

Ron wrote:
Hello,

This discussion got abstract awfully quickly.

Russell, I'm more interested in straightforward journalism about your group's play-experiences. I liked your account of two players' interactions, although I'm not sure how to talk about them, because you only provided character names. Are the other two players, the ones who were absent for this second and more successful session, returning to play next time? Do you think their absence contributed to the success of this session?

Also, has this group played Heroquest in the past, with other characters or another setting?

Best,
Ron

That last bit is interesting, about the contest to see if he's wanted. That's a very drama oriented conflict. Did it have an in-game explanation? Or did you just use it to set up the metagame situation?

Generally speaking on these posts, try to give a player context to the events of play. That is, recounting it as a narrative doesn't tell us a whole lot about the play, just the output. It's the play that's the interesting part.

Mike

Mike wrote:
That last bit is interesting, about the contest to see if he's wanted. That's a very drama oriented conflict. Did it have an in-game explanation? Or did you just use it to set up the metagame situation?

Generally speaking on these posts, try to give a player context to the events of play. That is, recounting it as a narrative doesn't tell us a whole lot about the play, just the output. It's the play that's the interesting part.

Mike

Mike wrote:
That last bit is interesting, about the contest to see if he's wanted. That's a very drama oriented conflict. Did it have an in-game explanation? Or did you just use it to set up the metagame situation?

Generally speaking on these posts, try to give a player context to the events of play. That is, recounting it as a narrative doesn't tell us a whole lot about the play, just the output. It's the play that's the interesting part.

Mike

Could you explain a bit more about C, Russ? What is it he doesn't like exactly? How hostile is he and how does that manifest itself?

droog wrote:
Could you explain a bit more about C, Russ? What is it he doesn't like exactly? How hostile is he and how does that manifest itself?

It's nice to be back. And I'll explain for the rest of the people reading this thread that, due to my going overseas just as the game was starting up, I haven't actually played in this game yet. So it may be that I'm misreading certain things, and I hope you'll bear with me, Russ.

We seem to have a little bit of contention on the home board over the internal conflict issue. I'd like to throw it out here and see what happens. The issue is this:

Then R had decided to grab a suitcase full of money that the banditos had brought as ransom (long story).  I thought it would make an interesting bang for his character, and tried to initiate a contest between whatever traits vs his Stong Moral Compass.  R argued that strong moral compass would not preclude him from such an act.  I didn't and don't agree, but I should have let R decide - it is his character, and it is grey enough.  If I want players to 'own' their characters I have to allow elements that seem a little wrong to me enter the story.

Hi Jeff,

The issue isn't abut 'enforcing character actions via abilities' - it's about making interesting contests that just happen to be occuring entirely within a character's head.

So with Kip not taking the money, it wasn't me moralising or saying 'taking money is wrong, 'mokay?' it was actually me saying, 'Hey, there's a conflict here, guys - let's play it out.'

As far as I see it, this sort of internal conflict is no different, in Heroquest, than an external one.  I want to do something, there is something trying to stop me doing it, I enter a contest to overcome it.  If I succeed, I get to do what I want.  If I don't succeed I don't get to do some or all of my intended action.

As for labels regarding Narrativism and Sim - well, I don't know what I want to do in reards to these labels.  I'm interested in Narritivist ideas, but I see no reason to follow dogma in order to fit a game entirely into a single category. 

My intention with the game is to throw up interesting dramatic conflicts for the players to resolve, with no predetermined idea of what the outcome of the conflict will be, and with no predetermined narrative path that the players must follow.  Does that have a name?

Okay, perhaps I expressed it badly and that's why it comes across as dogmatic. I'll try to get a little more concrete.

If the GM initiates these sorts of contests, he's removing the ability to make a choice in a moral issue--address premise. You're locking the player into a statistical pattern of behaviour. That works in Pendragon because the aim is to evoke Arthurian legend and make the character act like one of Malory's. But it takes this elaborate infrastructure to maintain the dream: numerous sub-systems (hunting and falconry, land management etc), solo scenarios, lots of adventures and adventure seeds, complete campaign, etc.

HQ isn't that sort of game and doesn't have that sort of support for simulationism, especially when you're using much skimpier resource material than Glorantha. I think that's why J is asking about tighter definition of abilities. You want to know how your character might be forced to act (in PD this is already obvious from the standardised Traits and Passions). It's worth asking why C didn't seem to mind the Traits/Passions in PD, yet isn't happy about this development.

I think that the crucial difference between what you called external and interpersonal conflicts on one hand, and intrapersonal on the other, is that those intrapersonal conflicts are the heart of this form of play. You were quite right to emphasise their importance. But it's right there that the player ought to be creating story by his decision. The other sorts of conflicts help determine the outcomes of the decisions made.

droog wrote:
Okay, perhaps I expressed it badly and that's why it comes across as dogmatic. I'll try to get a little more concrete.

If the GM initiates these sorts of contests, he's removing the ability to make a choice in a moral issue--address premise. You're locking the player into a statistical pattern of behaviour. That works in Pendragon because the aim is to evoke Arthurian legend and make the character act like one of Malory's. But it takes this elaborate infrastructure to maintain the dream: numerous sub-systems (hunting and falconry, land management etc), solo scenarios, lots of adventures and adventure seeds, complete campaign, etc.

HQ isn't that sort of game and doesn't have that sort of support for simulationism, especially when you're using much skimpier resource material than Glorantha. I think that's why J is asking about tighter definition of abilities. You want to know how your character might be forced to act (in PD this is already obvious from the standardised Traits and Passions). It's worth asking why C didn't seem to mind the Traits/Passions in PD, yet isn't happy about this development.

I think that the crucial difference between what you called external and interpersonal conflicts on one hand, and intrapersonal on the other, is that those intrapersonal conflicts are the heart of this form of play. You were quite right to emphasise their importance. But it's right there that the player ought to be creating story by his decision. The other sorts of conflicts help determine the outcomes of the decisions made.

screen_monkey wrote:
In order to make the intrapersonal conflict important, it has to be dramatised.  to dramatise something in Heroquest, it has to be a contest.

Is there any real difference between...
"I wanted to kill the dragon but my sword skill wasn't good enough", or
"I wanted to kill the dragon but I was too afraid"?

In both cases the character had attempted an action and failed.

I hear what you're saying, and I agree with all of it but the internal contests stuff - I think it's roleplaying gold, and I still regard there being no fundamental difference between the two - the player still decides what they want to do.  There is an obstacle to that action.  What difference does it make what the obstacle is?

Exactly--it's roleplaying gold, and that's why it should be in the hands of the players.

The distinction between player and character is crucial. When my character takes an action I am authoring him. When he comes up against obstacles, I, the player, am given further opportunities to author the character (whether he succeeds in his goals or fails).

When I, the player, am balked in my attempt to express my own thematic judgement, my authorial decisons are not obstructed, they are negated. I have been deprived of an opportunity to author my character. I have been deprotagonised.

If the player decides to run away from the dragon, he's added something to the game. He's made a statement that has meaning. If the dice say that the character runs away from the dragon, then they've made that statement. If the player says, "I want to roll for it" he's saying that he's more interested in the suspense of the roll and would rather have the system decide for him. But in that case, he's made that decision to add that suspense and added that to the game. If you make the player roll, then what has he added? Where was his part of the interaction?

The key to all RPG play, is finding out what it is that players find interesting in terms of input into the game, and then allowing them to add that input. If the system does it for them, it's not interesting.

Mike

Mike wrote:
If the player decides to run away from the dragon, he's added something to the game. He's made a statement that has meaning. If the dice say that the character runs away from the dragon, then they've made that statement. If the player says, "I want to roll for it" he's saying that he's more interested in the suspense of the roll and would rather have the system decide for him. But in that case, he's made that decision to add that suspense and added that to the game. If you make the player roll, then what has he added? Where was his part of the interaction?

The key to all RPG play, is finding out what it is that players find interesting in terms of input into the game, and then allowing them to add that input. If the system does it for them, it's not interesting.

Mike

The rule in question is implied in several places. Under contest consequences, for instance (though that can be read a number of ways). Further, this is actually standard with relationships per that sections rule on changing the nature of relationships. There's a couple of other places, too.

Then in the narrator advice section it says at one point that the narrator can simply just give players abilities when he thinks it makes sense to do this. Or take them away. Well, changing an ability is just taking one away and giving another.

Now, actually I have a problem with this in that it gives no real good guidlines on how to use this power, and seems to disrupt the otherwise pretty simple cost structures of the game. If a player has to pay to get an ability in one case, why should it be free in another? I could go on (and have in the past) about this particular problem. I think that it's a case of MGF being interpreted as the "golden rule" that the narrator can do anything with the rules he likes as long as it makes the game better. Which I think is bad policy.

But it's pretty clear that the rules on what you can do here are pretty unclear. That is, if you want to alter the name of an ability, you can justify it through the rules. Better yet, I'd recommend simply putting in a flat rule that a player may rename any ability for one HP with narrator approval.

In fact, I actually have a somewhat radical interpretation of the character generation rules. Basically I use all three forms at once with every character. That is, I allow people to write as much as they like, but make the limit on abilities from the narrative the same as for players using the list method, 10 abilities in addition to keyword abilities. I don't require these all to be enumerated before play - most players start in some part "As You Go" therefore. Further, anything that's on the character sheet, I consider tentative until I see it in play. So if you've put down an ability, but we haven't seen the character to possess it yet, then you can change it to something else at any point prior to it's being established in play.

In this way, everyone gets the advantages and limitations of all three methods. And it means that players are free to redesign their characters somewhat into the story in case it turns out that they find themselves having more fun playing the character in a different way than they had previously written them up. And by having the tentative ideas about the character written down in some measure for most characters, the narrator has something to work with on the character sheet (something that doesn't happen when you do As You Go with a blank sheet).

So in my game, I'd see "Moral Compass" on the player's sheet, note that probably means he's interested in moral dilemmas, set up some of these, and then on the first of them the player might decide, "Know what? How about we make that 'Moralistic' instead?"

Again, these are very different forms of play. That is, the form where the character sheet is a contract about how best to portray the character from the start, and the form where the character sheet is a living document that changes over time to represent where the character interests are going. Both are fun ways to play, but you have to choose one of the two ways to play. Either the player has creative control of how the character develops, or the player is under system constraint to play the character as concieved.

BTW, this is not some weird radical notion overall that I'm expounding, but generally considered by a lot of the posters here at The Forge to be a tenet of good play. That is, recognizing which of these sorts of methods of play you prefer, and playing to that preference. Instead of thinking it's all the same.

Mike

The 'as you go' method appeas to me also, since it kind of reflects the experience we have in films and TV - you see a person, know very little about them, and only learn about them through their actions.

Exactly. It also means that the participants in the game can adjust to things in order to make sure that the character is interesting in the situations that are engineered.

About the time you have all of the abilities down on the paper that are allowed in chargen, then the player starts spending HP to continue this development. That is, keep in mind that players can add new abilities at any time under the "had em all along" clause (costs double by the rules unless you do some finegling in interpretation). Just make sure you're not skimping on the HP.

Mike

Mike wrote:
Exactly. It also means that the participants in the game can adjust to things in order to make sure that the character is interesting in the situations that are engineered.

About the time you have all of the abilities down on the paper that are allowed in chargen, then the player starts spending HP to continue this development. That is, keep in mind that players can add new abilities at any time under the "had em all along" clause (costs double by the rules unless you do some finegling in interpretation). Just make sure you're not skimping on the HP.

Mike