Hi,

I've been running a play-by-email game recently and have been trying to use techniques like bangs, kickers and premise. Recently I ran a scene which didn't go at all well and failed to engage the two players in the scene at all.

The scene began in the lair of a forest spirit. One of the PCs (Jack) had just chased after his NPC girlfriend into a spirit gate leading to the lair and another PC (Wat), tagging along to spy on events for his master. The girlfriend, a budding witch, had previously contacted the spirit and had agreed to get intimate with the spirit in exchange for information about a threat to the town everyone lives in.

So the PCs get together and look for the girlfriend/witch. They find her talking with the forest creature about to agree to getting intimate with him in exchange for info. Jack intervenes, trying to stop her from going ahead with the bargain. The spirit says he's been promised her, so what can Jack offer instead? He responds by convincing his girlfriend that they can find the information elsewhere and persuades her to renege on her part of the bargain. The spirit responds by saying they're not getting out of there without offering him something, and suggests a boon to be collected later or the tranference of the boyfriend Jack's father's love to the spirit.

Meanwhile Wat hid, watched, then decided to leave by climbing out of the lair. To engage him in the scene I had the spirit of his dead mother (taken from his backstory) greet him on the way out.

Things went wrong about here.

Jack's player seemed to get frustrated by the options presented to him, not wishing to dicker with the spirit over exact terms. My initial reaction was that he just didn't like any of his choices and felt cornered, and that was just his character's tough luck, but later it seems he disliked the negoatiation aspect and would have preferred a straight binary choice: girlfriend's safety versus Jack's father's love, which would he rather lose. The way I saw it, this was a definite option but not the only option - I didn't want to step in the player's toes by forcing him to only choose between two options if he could think up a third way.

Wat's player didn't know what to do with the confrontation with his mother's ghost and described backing away from her in fear, risking falling from a great height (they met on a ledge). We're using FATE, so I invoked his Haunted by Mother aspect, with him overcoming his fear or plummeting from the ledge to very bad (but not fatal) consequences. He chose to accept the invoke and fell from the ledge, and I had him impaled on a tree root in critical condition, now forced to choose between being stuck there in the spirit's lair or making a deal with it to get rescued. Again I left it open to the player what the terms would be, but I thought he might also want to bargain for the release of his mother's spirit. I backed the character into a corner, but felt justified in doing so as the player had accepted the fate points and was aware that the consequences would be bad.

Instead his character fell unconscious and dropped out of the scene (due to out of game commitments I understand), which unfortunately shifted the onus for Wat's fate onto Jack's player. At this point both players were tired and unhappy with the scene and I could still not really see where the problem lay.

Eventually we solved the situation by having Jack choose his girlfriend over his father and with Wat's mother indebting herself to the spirit in exchange for the healing and freeing of her son.

Okay, so that's the essentials of the scene laid out all messy. Certainly part of the problem arose from miscommunication and differing expectations - the game is by email with players I have never met or gamed with before, so a lot of communication signals - body language, etc. are missing. I guess a lot of this could be ascribed to social contract issues which have now been largely resolved (I think), but I feel the bangs in this scene were poorly presented by myself and could have worked a lot better. Did the situation I presented the players with even constitute a bang? I'm not sure anymore.

So if anyone would like to give me some advice so I can sharpen up future scenes and avoid player disatisfaction from reoccurring I would really appreciate it.

Cheers,

Adrian.

What are the character's Kickers?

Jack: Came home from the war, saw his love embracing a stranger in the woods (which later became the forest spirit in the scene)

Wat: Witchhunter turned up in the night demanding Wat show him where the witches gather. Wat's only friend is a witch (who is in turn best friends with Jack's love and Wat was in the scene spying for the witchhunter)

Tancred wrote:

Wat's player didn't know what to do with the confrontation with his mother's ghost and described backing away from her in fear, risking falling from a great height (they met on a ledge). We're using FATE, so I invoked his Haunted by Mother aspect, with him overcoming his fear or plummeting from the ledge to very bad (but not fatal) consequences. He chose to accept the invoke and fell from the ledge, and I had him impaled on a tree root in critical condition, now forced to choose between being stuck there in the spirit's lair or making a deal with it to get rescued. Again I left it open to the player what the terms would be, but I thought he might also want to bargain for the release of his mother's spirit. I backed the character into a corner, but felt justified in doing so as the player had accepted the fate points and was aware that the consequences would be bad.

Tancred wrote:

So the PCs get together and look for the girlfriend/witch. They find her talking with the forest creature about to agree to getting intimate with him in exchange for info. Jack intervenes, trying to stop her from going ahead with the bargain. The spirit says he's been promised her, so what can Jack offer instead? He responds by convincing his girlfriend that they can find the information elsewhere and persuades her to renege on her part of the bargain. The spirit responds by saying they're not getting out of there without offering him something, and suggests a boon to be collected later or the tranference of the boyfriend Jack's father's love to the spirit.

So these tough and tumble choices were right after the kicker, which is the opening scene?

I'm all for driving the game with bangs but after those difficult choices where was the game to go?

Do you think you drove the player too hard for the opening scene and should have built to those kinds of terrible decisions?

I find that when you let bangs build, and I'm not saying lead with weak bangs, far from it, but lead with bangs that allow for the possibility of the character being cool and thus the player feeling cool.  It seems like his kicker went off and you hemmed the PC's in immediately with damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don't decisions.

What is the game's concept?  What kind of TV shows or books or movies have you all agreed this game is influenced by?

Tancred wrote:
We're using FATE, so I invoked his Haunted by Mother aspect, with him overcoming his fear or plummeting from the ledge to very bad (but not fatal) consequences. He chose to accept the invoke and fell from the ledge, and I had him impaled on a tree root in critical condition, now forced to choose between being stuck there in the spirit's lair or making a deal with it to get rescued. Again I left it open to the player what the terms would be, but I thought he might also want to bargain for the release of his mother's spirit. I backed the character into a corner, but felt justified in doing so as the player had accepted the fate points and was aware that the consequences would be bad.

Paka wrote:
Do you think you drove the player too hard for the opening scene and should have built to those kinds of terrible decisions?

I find that when you let bangs build, and I'm not saying lead with weak bangs, far from it, but lead with bangs that allow for the possibility of the character being cool and thus the player feeling cool.

Paka wrote:
So these tough and tumble choices were right after the kicker, which is the opening scene?

I find that when you let bangs build, and I'm not saying lead with weak bangs, far from it, but lead with bangs that allow for the possibility of the character being cool and thus the player feeling cool.  It seems like his kicker went off and you hemmed the PC's in immediately with damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don't decisions.

What is the game's concept?  What kind of TV shows or books or movies have you all agreed this game is influenced by?

Tancred wrote:

Paka wrote:
So these tough and tumble choices were right after the kicker, which is the opening scene?

No, this was the 3rd or 4th scene after the kicker. Maybe just shy of midway through the game.

Tancred wrote: I guess my position was at this stage of the game, let the players decide where the game would lead. This meant I was winging the scene and I felt I needed something concrete and meaningful to come from the scene. It was intended as damned-if-you-do, etc. for Jack's player...

Brand_Robins wrote:
Others can probably talk about the theoretical framework going on here better than I, but I do have some observations from my table around this point.

In my experience with my railroading tendancies as a GM (yes, I have them, and bad) and my players backgrounds in illusionist/participationist games things like Fate and Drama points used in the mode of "get points because the GM pushed bad things at you" does not lead to player-centered authoring. It leads to a moderated form of GM centered authoring.

I've found it a very useful tool in games like Truth and Justice for playing under Sim modes ("I'll give you 2d6 drama points if you accept being put in a death trap now" "Yea sure, I could use them, plus it would be what happens in the comics!"). It does soften the blow of GM direction, and can offer the players choices as to when they just flat out deny taking the points to do what they want. However, in essence I find the system to be most often used to bribe people into going a direction the GM finds interesting rather than letting the players proactivly chose what they want to do.

For comparison, in Burning Wheel when you have a belief or trait that you play to, you can get Artha for playing to it. However, there is no turning it around on you and offering you points if you do what the GM thinks would be cool now. Similarly, you can revise your beliefs as a result of things that happen in play, and don't take penalties for doing so. As a result the things that happen to you, the things that get you points, are all as a result of you pushing things. When you instead get points for responding to things the GM offers you, you end up with the GM pushing things and players responding.

In the situation you're describing, this is what I see hapening. You push, the player responds, you push harder, the player responds more softly, you push hardest, the player is in a corner. If it had been the player helping set the stakes and/or invoking his own Aspect, then it would have been his choice. I think you need clearer communications around what the Aspects/Fate Points mean, who invokes them, and what players are saying when they accept the Fate point. As it was you took it as "screw with me more" where the player may have meant something very different.

Paka wrote: I'm not following ya.

You were just getting to the player-authored kicker in the middle of the game?  Why wasn't the PC finding his girlfriend with a stranger the opening scene if it was the kicker?

I am really not trying to pick at your bones, Tancred but I just want to help but need to understand if I am to be of any help at all.

Tancred wrote:
Once you've put a 'you must respond' decision/situation in front of a player, what do you do when the player doesn't know how to respond? We kind of hit a stalemate and the falling invoke was me grasping for a way to move the scene on (as you say pushing harder - forcing Wat's player to make a decision or risk death/being trapped in the lair.

Joshua wrote:

Tancred wrote: I guess my position was at this stage of the game, let the players decide where the game would lead. This meant I was winging the scene and I felt I needed something concrete and meaningful to come from the scene. It was intended as damned-if-you-do, etc. for Jack's player...

I dunno, this sounds like a bit of an unconscious contradiction to me.  You wanted the players to lead the game, but you were choosing the situations they were in?  Did Jack's player really have a choice in the matter, or was giving up his girlfriend a bunk choice compared to his father's love?

Let me put forth a hypothesis:  I think Jack's Kicker was resolved at precisely the moment you thought things went wrong (well spotted, by the way).

You heard "He finds his lover in the arms of another man," and thought that meant that Jack needed to prevent that man from ever coming between them again.

He heard "Jack comes home from the war and sees something that shows him that everything has changed," and thought that meant that he needed to understand the new world he's been dumped into.

So you guys both get to this scene, and you think you're both on the same page ... and then you explain what happening to Jack.  And Jack's player is left there thinking "That's it?  Well, I guess I understand the world I've been dumped into.  So I'm done, but ... well, that was quick."  Meanwhile you're sitting there with your eyes on the "Stop this man/spirit/whatever from being a problem" prize, and you're bewildered by Jack's sudden loss of interest.  I mean, this is where the good stuff starts, isn't it?

How does that sound?

Lamorak33 wrote:
I think framing is important here. Maybe if you said that they wouldn't get out there alive unless they did some sort of deal, I don't know the game, before he went in. But when he gets there then just reneging must have seemed a good or reasonable idea and they probably percieved your not letting them off that lightly as railroading again.

Just a few thoughts.

Regards
Rob

TonyLB wrote:
Let me put forth a hypothesis:  I think Jack's Kicker was resolved at precisely the moment you thought things went wrong (well spotted, by the way).

You heard "He finds his lover in the arms of another man," and thought that meant that Jack needed to prevent that man from ever coming between them again.

He heard "Jack comes home from the war and sees something that shows him that everything has changed," and thought that meant that he needed to understand the new world he's been dumped into.

So you guys both get to this scene, and you think you're both on the same page ... and then you explain what happening to Jack.  And Jack's player is left there thinking "That's it?  Well, I guess I understand the world I've been dumped into.  So I'm done, but ... well, that was quick."  Meanwhile you're sitting there with your eyes on the "Stop this man/spirit/whatever from being a problem" prize, and you're bewildered by Jack's sudden loss of interest.  I mean, this is where the good stuff starts, isn't it?

How does that sound?

I think Jacks player had made his address and it's that his girl will have nothing to do with the forrest spirit. That includes ignoring any deals the spirit demands for a deal, because the address is that strident - no deals! I take my girl back and that's it!

I think there was a lack of escalation about the 'no deal' thing. There was no 'Well, if you don't deal with me I'll shoot my darts of agony into your skin" which would find out what it would take to make Jack open up his ears and make a deal about his girlfriend. Instead, he's said 'No deal' and the GM's just kept asking for a deal. There needs to be escalation, so Jacks responce will tell us something new. As is, he's telling us the same thing 'no deal' and the story is stagnating.

Tancred wrote:

Lamorak33 wrote:
I think framing is important here. Maybe if you said that they wouldn't get out there alive unless they did some sort of deal, I don't know the game, before he went in. But when he gets there then just reneging must have seemed a good or reasonable idea and they probably percieved your not letting them off that lightly as railroading again.

Just a few thoughts.

Regards
Rob

Yep I think you and Brand could be right. More OOC discussion before the scene and clearly setting the stakes for conflicts would have helped I'm sure.

Wat here.  Yeah, more OOC would have helped.  I realize now I felt stymied--Wat had a secret mission whose failure he wanted to report as soon as possible.  Was also enjoying the climbing task that Tancred laid out for me.  He's wringing his hands here, but the set up for the scene was Very Cool.  I took the fall (literally) because 1) I trusted that Tancred wouldn't impose a character death (he told me as much); 2) because goofy little Wat falling into the midst of a serious negotiation seemed comic to me; and, 3) because I wondered how the hell Tancred was going to handle it.

So, if we had set out intents, stakes, etc., I would have brought up why Wat wanted to get the hell out of the hole he was in--the reason remains secret in-game, so I won't mention it here.

Cheers,
N.

nilsderondeau wrote:
Wat here.  Yeah, more OOC would have helped.  I realize now I felt stymied--Wat had a secret mission whose failure he wanted to report as soon as possible.  Was also enjoying the climbing task that Tancred laid out for me.  He's wringing his hands here, but the set up for the scene was Very Cool.  I took the fall (literally) because 1) I trusted that Tancred wouldn't impose a character death (he told me as much); 2) because goofy little Wat falling into the midst of a serious negotiation seemed comic to me; and, 3) because I wondered how the hell Tancred was going to handle it.

So, if we had set out intents, stakes, etc., I would have brought up why Wat wanted to get the hell out of the hole he was in--the reason remains secret in-game, so I won't mention it here.

Cheers,
N.