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if you want to play Lacuna and not GM it, you probably want to stop reading now

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OK so I just finished GMing my first game of Lacuna

to my surprise, it was very much an old-school experience

I mean, the system is clever and all, and the Static mechanic is great

but boy was it GM-centric and GM-intensive

I had prepared some bangs and stuff beforehand, as well as a couple of proto-missions

then I tried to feed what the characters "were about" into the game (their Mentors, the Talents...)

but I felt like I should have prepped way more, including NPCs, their motivations, etc.

maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but after playing DITV, Polaris, Contenders and the like for a while, I had forgotten how much of a pain GMing could be

has anybody else experienced this with Lacuna?

or, since the game is apparently a Rorschach Test for the GM, does that just mean that I fell back on my big bad Illusionist GM habits?

let me expand on that a little, now that I've slept on it :)

we started out like this: the player declares his intentions ("I want to see if that creepy guy is following us.")

then the player rolls

if he succeeds, the player (not the GM) decides what happens ("Yes he's following us.")

this felt very comfortable, as GM

I only had to throw little tidbits into the game here and there (my bangs), and play some NPCs

but the players felt like they were playing their own opposition

they also felt that their lending intentions to NPCs was incompatible with the "world full of secrets" style of the game

so we dropped that modus operandi, and reverted to "GM calls for rolls and narrates the outcome"

thinking back, I think we should have stuck with the first way to play

after all, the dice provide the opposition (will I succeed, and is it worth rolling in the first place?)

and maybe I should have been open and said: "guys, there's not pre-established story here, so instead of me making it up behind my screen, let's make it up together"

I guess I was swayed by the how the game reads (or how I took it to read): keep the players in the dark about everything (the rules, the background, their own characters...)

Hi JC,

I'm going to talk about what I experienced (as a player) during my first game of Lacuna, and what worked.

I knew about the 'roll an eleven' rule, the heart-rate rules, the no-gm-dice rules, a hint of the static rules, and the basic hook of the setting (you're agents in the matrix hunting bugs).

What really drove play for me was the tension between needing to get stuff done (roll dice) versus raising heart rate.  That totally handled any concerns over "setting your own adversity" or whatnot -- the stuff happening on the character sheet was (for me) just as important vis-a-vis my continued enjoyment of the game as the stuff happening in the fiction.  (I also submit that in practice, that divide is completely imaginary.  However, it's a useful deliniation for the purposes of this discussion.)

Cheers,
Darcy

hey Darcy :)

so did you get to participate in building the story during play?

for example, when succeeding on a persuasion roll, could you, as a player, say "I get him to admit that he's working for Senior Agent Chambers", even though no one had any idea up to that point that Senior Agent Chambers was in fact still alive?

Hi JC,

Yes.  However, not in the way you're implying.  We'd declare what we wanted to happen before rolling the dice.  The GM (usually) held the stamp of narrative authority over the results, but he had to keep it in line with our declarations, so it was cool.

I don't know how that compares to the rules.

Cheers,
Darcy

I don't think (not having run it yet) that Lacuna is a pure player-driven game like Donjon.  I think it would be completely kosher for the GM to have a couple guys following the Agents with no preset backstory about why they are -- just roll with how it turns out in play.  If they win the roll to get the guy to admit to working with Agent Chambers, boom, that's part of the game now.  If not, you come up with something else.  The main thing is that they're raising their heart rate and possibly generating Static.  If they're getting bogged down in trying to find out who "Mr. Big" is, throw another Bang at them or have Control yell at them for wasting time.

Danny_K wrote:
I don't think (not having run it yet) that Lacuna is a pure player-driven game like Donjon.  I think it would be completely kosher for the GM to have a couple guys following the Agents with no preset backstory about why they are -- just roll with how it turns out in play.  If they win the roll to get the guy to admit to working with Agent Chambers, boom, that's part of the game now.  If not, you come up with something else.  The main thing is that they're raising their heart rate and possibly generating Static.  If they're getting bogged down in trying to find out who "Mr. Big" is, throw another Bang at them or have Control yell at them for wasting time.

Hi JC,

I thought I'd jump in at this point, beginning with the Creative Agenda stuff and then talking about Lacuna.

1. I think you might be entangled in a common misunderstanding about Narrativist vs. Simulationist play: the idea that in the former, everyone makes up what's going on (setting, back-story) right there during play, and that in the latter, one person (the GM) has made up that stuff and treats it as a given piece of preparation.

That comparison, however, is totally irrelevant to whether it's Narrativist or Simulationist play. In Sorcerer, the GM has total power over the back-story and is expected to have prepped it in some detail; it is a powerfully Narrativist-facilitating game and is demonstrably not fun to Drift to another CA. Whereas in Dead of Night, in some variants, the GM is merely playing hapless NPCs and the players all have GM-type authority over the back-stories of the monster or monsters; it is a powerfully Simulationist-facilitating game and I suspect would not be fun to Drift out of that.

Do you want to talk about that stuff any more in this thread? I'd be glad to help it make more sense for you. Or would you rather say, "Ah, that was just a tossed-off comment and who cares anyway"? If so, that's cool too.

2. Now, let's talk about Lacuna. I'm actually glad that the game broke some implied expectations: "Hey, this is a Forge game [Story game, Sorensen game, whatever] and so there won't be any GM control!"

One question is whether the game text itself gives that impression or offers any way to make that kind of play possible. I suggest there isn't. My reading of Lacuna is that it explicitly says, "This game book does not provide a back-story or explanation, but it does provide an immense amount of stuff that's going on. The GM will have to fill in the gap of the big picture by himself." This isn't actually all that wild or kooky; it's pretty common among games written in the early 1990s, for instance. I think the book is pretty clear that playing requires the GM to bust his butt, either before or during play, to generate some semblance of sense "behind it all."

A lot of Jared's games and interest in game design are aimed at building the situation at the same time as playing it; InSpectres is one of the great seminal game designs based on this idea, in which the Scooby-Doo like problem or case is constructed by the players' successful rolls as the characters guess and investigate. Another of his games, octaNe, permits constant contributions by the players as well to an even greater extent.

However, Lacuna just doesn't do this. Resolution rolls really are about whether the Agent successfully manages to do X or Y, as announced as X or Y. In many ways, I think one of the design goals of the game is to prompt quality setting creation on the part of the GM as opposed to providing a setting for the GM to transmit. It's not like there's nothing at all to work with, either. There are some pretty strong nuggets of explicit back-story - especially the business about where the Agents come from, and what they were before getting their memories wiped. Jared was pretty cunning to pretend, for promotional purposes, that the game offers "no setting," but he is of course lying through his teeth in saying that.

3. I hope you don't get the wrong idea - I'm not trying to tell you that you didn't understand the game or whatever, and looking over my post so far, I realize that I wrote #2 above as much, or more, to the general reader (to explain this aspect of the text) as to you and your inquiry. So, to provide feedback on your basic question: "Yes!" I agree. It's not like Contenders or Polaris at all.

Funny thing, though - you mentioned Dogs in the Vineyard, which is more like (hell, exactly like) Lacuna and Sorcerer. The GM owns the back-story and presents it; there's no way for a player to roll successfully and thereby dictate "what's going on" at that level of situation and scenario. Did you play Dogs differently, in which this Technique was present?

Best, Ron

Ron wrote:
Do you want to talk about that stuff any more in this thread?

Very brief note: Ron is right about narrating outcomes.  I've read the rules literally a dozen times -- how did I make such a basic mistake?

Danny_K wrote:
Very brief note: Ron is right about narrating outcomes.  I've read the rules literally a dozen times -- how did I make such a basic mistake?

H'mmm, that's kind of an odd response.

JC, I posted in this thread to agree with you about how GMing Lacuna is a lot of work. I'm not sure why you're posting to argue about this other issue, and I don't see an immediate reason to debate with you about it. No one's saying "you played wrong!" or anything like that. You've allowed as how the game can be played the way I described, and I did not plan on pushing you farther than you want to go about that.

If it's really important to you, please let me know why that is, and maybe we can discuss it. But it shouldn't be about "argue with Ron so I don't look stupid," or anything like that. People can read the game for themselves and decide whether I'm right about what I posted, or wrong, and it doesn't reflect badly on you either way.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote:
H'mmm, that's kind of an odd response.

JC, I posted in this thread to agree with you about how GMing Lacuna is a lot of work. I'm not sure why you're posting to argue about this other issue, and I don't see an immediate reason to debate with you about it. No one's saying "you played wrong!" or anything like that. You've allowed as how the game can be played the way I described, and I did not plan on pushing you farther than you want to go about that.

If it's really important to you, please let me know why that is, and maybe we can discuss it. But it shouldn't be about "argue with Ron so I don't look stupid," or anything like that. People can read the game for themselves and decide whether I'm right about what I posted, or wrong, and it doesn't reflect badly on you either way.

Best, Ron

Hey, I read over my post again, and it's true, I wrote really didactically - "it is this and it is that," and so on. So I'll cool my own jets too and post better as we continue.

Best, Ron

OK, let's see if I can express myself a little more clearly this time around...

Ron wrote:
JC, I posted in this thread to agree with you about how GMing Lacuna is a lot of work. I'm not sure why you're posting to argue about this other issue, and I don't see an immediate reason to debate with you about it. No one's saying "you played wrong!" or anything like that. You've allowed as how the game can be played the way I described, and I did not plan on pushing you farther than you want to go about that.

If it's really important to you, please let me know why that is, and maybe we can discuss it. But it shouldn't be about "argue with Ron so I don't look stupid," or anything like that. People can read the game for themselves and decide whether I'm right about what I posted, or wrong, and it doesn't reflect badly on you either way.

Hi JC,

First, a minor comment in your favor: I think it’s a little hard on yourself to say “I was wrong” about Forge games and GM prep; it’s more like “hey! What an interesting mis-perception I was carrying around.”

Now for the neat stuff.

the reason I'm "arguing", is that I think that Lacuna allows for a mode of play where both GM and players contribute to the back-story during the game

true, there's nothing in the rules to support this, but they also don't state the opposite

so why not?

then, if we can agree that Lacuna can be played like this, I'd like to talk about the possibility of playing the game with a "mixed" group: some players contributing to the back-story, and others not

I must confess I have a hard time wrapping my head around a Sim game where the players have authority over the back-story, but if you say it can be done, I believe you

out of curiosity, could you provide an example, or a link or something?

or should I just look up Dead of Night?

finally, on a related topic: if players can't contribute to the back-story, how does Lacuna facilitate Nar?

the only thing I see are the Static rules, that make characters choose whether to stick with an incompetent or even hostile Company

(and I see that Nar does not equate "players contribute to back-story", but "players contribute to back-story on a succesful roll" does seem to me like a Nar-facilitating rule)

hey Ron,

thanks for another detailed answer

I definitely feel we're getting somewhere

Ron wrote:
I suggest that the question is not “can,” but rather what works best for Lacuna given its other features and rules. Sort of: sure, one “can,” but is it an added motor or a wrench in the spokes?

Ron wrote:
Here’s the feature that I think is most relevant. The GM is expected to be the only person to have read the book and apply the information in it. It’s also expected that the GM use that information to construct many aspects of the back-story. If Lacuna were played as you describe, then it’d be like one guy with a big Moog organ and a bunch of “helpers” with penny-whistles – and not necesssarily tuned ones, either. To fix that, if everyone were to read the book and thus transform play into basically a bunch of Lacuna GMs, some of whom have player-characters, well, I think that would entail throwing out quite a bit of the other rules and text about play. It’d require major Drift.

Ron wrote:
It’s also expected that the GM use that information to construct many aspects of the back-story.

My reading of Lacuna is that it explicitly says, "This game book does not provide a back-story or explanation, but it does provide an immense amount of stuff that's going on. The GM will have to fill in the gap of the big picture by himself." This isn't actually all that wild or kooky; it's pretty common among games written in the early 1990s, for instance. I think the book is pretty clear that playing requires the GM to bust his butt, either before or during play, to generate some semblance of sense "behind it all."

Ron wrote:
Now for a subtopic of this issue, based on your examples and phrasing. I noticed that your examples are immediately situational, like being followed by person A, not really back-story. We should distinguish between (a) being able to bring Agent Chambers into the scene via a roll, which is Situational Authority in my terms; and (b) stating that Agent Chambers is trying to assassinate a given character, via a roll, which I call Content Authority.

Ron wrote:
I suggest that Situational Authority might not be much of a stretch, as a general thing, and isn’t much different from the common phenomenon of suggesting such things as a player, with the GM having the final call. When people play like that, it’s often no big dal, as long as the suggestion doesn’t contradict what prep and play so far has already established. It’s always interesting to consider how trivial this technique is, and how often it’s informally employed (and typically instantly forgotten or denied that it was employed).

Ron wrote:
(snip stuff about how allowing players the option to add to the back-story can be functional)

Ron wrote:
(snip how players can contribute to back-story in Sim games)

Ron wrote:
I see what’s up here – you’re looking for techniques, like back-story narration or authority over situation or whatever, which you are thinking of as “makes Narrativism.” This is a big deal, actually, so I’m glad we can talk it over.

Ron wrote:
I’ll start with your parenthetical statement first: the answer is “no.” If players could have contributed to back-story in, say, my long-running game of Hero Wars (now HeroQuest), or in any of the many Sorcerer games I’ve played in, then the Narrativist power of those games would have been damaged and confounded, not enhanced.

Ron wrote:
(snip how Lacuna facilitates Nar)

Ron wrote:
I submit that these questions, and the Narrativist power which they can generate, are best conducted in the fog of disinformation, mental and physical stress, and desperation based on ignorance. I also submit that that fog is best played in the context of a single person having authority over the back-story, and having at least rubber-stamp authority over the set-ups for situations (who’s there, when is it, what do we see), whereas each player has authority over what their characters choose to do and hence a great deal of decisive impact on the developing story itself.

So as I see it, Lacuna hits its strongest Narrativist stride in part because it does not include player contributions at the level you’re talking about.

Ron wrote:
None of which contradicts your basic point that you “can” play it with such contributions. I’m not telling you what you should or have to do. It might even be lots of fun, who knows, and I’m not the one to dictate otherwise. And hell, for all I know, maybe there’s some particular way to organize those player contributions so that those questions and issues are even better brought to the fore, although I tend to think not, in this case.

I'm trying to follow this, and the phrase "Back Story" is getting me confused.

Are the players trying to muck around and Create a Past and History for their characters?
Or are they mucking around with the Setting of Lacuna?
Or are they mucking around with the current Plotline of the GM?
Or are they mucking around with the Motivations of the NPC (Mentor) characters?

-Fred

hey Fred,

FredGarber wrote:
I'm trying to follow this, and the phrase "Back Story" is getting me confused.

Are the players trying to muck around and Create a Past and History for their characters?
Or are they mucking around with the Setting of Lacuna?
Or are they mucking around with the current Plotline of the GM?
Or are they mucking around with the Motivations of the NPC (Mentor) characters?

Hi JC,

Damned interesting thread you started.

I wrote, and you quoted,

I’ll start with your parenthetical statement first: the answer is “no.” If players could have contributed to back-story in, say, my long-running game of Hero Wars (now HeroQuest), or in any of the many Sorcerer games I’ve played in, then the Narrativist power of those games would have been damaged and confounded, not enhanced.

I guess I was just looking for rules, when in fact all aspects of the game contribute

to go on a bit of a tangent: can a game facilitate Nar even if its rules do not?

or would the answer to that be that a game’s back-story is part of its rules?

so what you’re saying is that it’s all about choices, and that, for the characters to make interesting choices, the GM has to have total control over the back-story?

don’t you think that a player’s contribution to the back-story can be part of the way he has his character answer a given bang?

hey Ron :)

about players contributing to back-story being bad for Sorcerer's Nar etc.

OK, I see the distinction a little better now

thanks for clarifying that

about spoiler warnings

it's true that I had Lacuna's background in mind when I included that spoiler flag

however, the aspect I was most anxious not to spoil was the Static mechanic

about being sure if Lacuna is best played without players contributing to the back-story

I plan to investigate this in the future, by giving the players the option to contribute to the back-story if they like

I'll let you know how it pans out!