Well, we just finished our first gaming session under the new "more story" banner and it was NOT a scintillating success, for many reasons. This is a continuation of the "Transitioning GM/Group from Gamist to Narrativist" post I put up as Skar, before I was able to log-in under my own name. (By the way, how do I make that quote a link so folks can click on it to go to that thread? I don't know what the codes would be.)

This post covers a lot of ground, but I'll try to be as concise as possible without leaving out pertinent details. Basically, I'll share the pre-session communication (or lack thereof), what happened during the session, and the lessons I've learned from all this. Hopefully it will be interesting/helpful to someone. :)

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Two weeks before the session:

I send out a long-winded, four-part email. This email covers:

1. My perceptions of what everyone is looking for, based on recent feedback and earlier conversations with them. I list 7-8 things, and ask everyone to let me know if my perceptions are correct.

2. Several paragraphs of suggestions for ways in which the players can be more proactive in moving the action along or adding to the plot/story.

3. An explanation of the spiritual attributes concept along with several examples from movies (LotR and The Princess Bride, primarily).

4. A preview of the new magic system for the game (we are playing an original system that has been in "alpha" for way too long).

After a couple of days of crickets chirping, Tim (the engineer) responds (to everyone, as is our custom in email discussions) with some very cogent and helpful comments on the new magic system, along with a rebuttal of my suggestions for player involvement. I am taken aback by this, as my feeling is that they were just suggestions to be considered, not a position that needed to be refuted. His response wasn't hostile, but definitely came from a place of "you're saying we're supposed to do this, but I think that is the GM's job". I responded to his rebuttal, which just gave more weight to the whole thing, when really it wasn't the point of the original email.

More crickets chirping.

One week before the session:

We get together at Ted's for an evening of other gaming goodness (LotR Risk and poker] but talk briefly about the shift of storytelling responsibility. Negative reactions from Tim, Ted and Dave, but we don't have time to really explore it (kids on laps, wives joining for poker, etc.) I am baffled since I thought this was what they wanted. I am also annoyed that no one seems willing to respond to my email except for Tim's rebuttal. We confirm a date/time to RPG the next weekend.

I send out an email to everyone with the date/time for the next session. I let them know that I'll need their spiritual attributes by Wednesday in order to come up with an adventure for Friday. I give them a half-dozen things to keep in mind as they create their SA's and encourage them to call or email me if they have questions.

Crickets chirp for two days with the exception of one lengthy email from Kelly arguing why one of my suggestions of things to keep in mind about SA's is totally wrong. :(

I send out another email. In it I state that we got sidetracked about the whole storytelling responsibility thing and really missed the point of my original email, which is that in order for me to give them what they want in the campaign, I need to know what they want. I include just the section from the original email where I listed my 7-8 perceptions of what everyone wanted and again ask them to let me know if my assumptions are correct. I also say that I haven't received any SA's from anyone, which ties my hands as far as adventure prep if we are going to go with a more player-driven approach. I let them know that I am seeing strong signals that they don't want to go that route, which is okay, too, I just need to know. I ask everyone for a yes/no vote on the player-driven approach. I also toss out some things to keep in mind as we play to make the sessions run more smoothly.

More !*#@!% crickets.

Shari sends out an email suggesting that email might not be the best way to discuss this, so maybe we can talk about it on Friday before we play. This email gets a flurry of short responses (one "okay, let's do that, these emails are confusing me", one "when are we playing?", one "read your email, it's Friday" one "oh yah, totally missed that", etc.) I'm very disgruntled and not optimistic about the upcoming pre-session "talk".

I try to prep an adventure for Friday, but have NO clue as to which side of the player-driven/GM-driven fence the group is going to come down on. I wrestle with this for a while and finally decide to just come up with a railroad-type adventure with a couple of combats thrown in that will set up a cool (hopefully) premise and backstory for the campaign. I can't think of what else to do. Which leads us to...

The session:

We gather at Ted's. After some small talk, we start discussing the game and the direction the group wants to go. I stress that I don't think there is anything wrong with what we've been doing, I've just read a lot about SA's and player-driven plots and thought it might be something fun to try.

The group doesn't seem to have any objection to trying something new, including player-driven plots. They were just unclear about what that meant, what they had to do, how SA's worked, etc. A couple of them also voiced strong feelings of not knowing how to pick "good" SA's. They were concerned that they'd pick SA's that wouldn't be useful. I explained that in a GM-driven game that could indeed be a danger, since the GM might never lead them into situations where their SA's apply. But in a player-driven game, the characters will be constantly moving towards their SA's, and that that movement will create situation after situation in which their SA's apply. The subsequent lightbulbs were in the 15-25 watt range and there was some definite flickering, but I'm pretty sure I saw lightbulbs.

We then spent a good chunk of time coming up with SA's for everyone. I stressed that this can and should be a collaborative effort. There was some good sharing about character concepts and ideas were tossed back and forth about translating those concepts into SA's.

After SA creation and character tweaking, I briefly went over the new magic rules and we started the adventure. I may post the story and action separately, but suffice it to say that the railroad/expository/setup adventure I planned had no opportunities for the characters to use their brand new SA's, and their location (deep in a twisted, sorcerous forest, as established from the first two sessions of the campaign) didn't give me much opportunity to reasonably introduce new characters/situations. The adventure I ran got them to the nexus of the forest and it's corruption where they received a quest to recover an artifact from a large city halfway across the world and return with it to destroy the source of the corruption. We basically ended the session with the characters swearing an oath to complete this quest. The session was very flat overall, as is not surprising. I had some vivid and unsettling events/descriptions for the forest and NPC's, an emotional setting for the quest-giving NPC, and some intruiging revelations about the background events, but the players didn't have much to do except puzzle out some narrative clues and the two combats I planned ended up being totally lame. One was so unchallenging as to hardly get the players out of their slouches) and the one I thought would be really challenging ended on the first round by an extraordinay success on the part of Tim's character. (In a very telling comment on the combat system, this extraordinay success wasn't the least bit exciting.) The introduction of a new magic system was distracting and killed what little momentum the adventure might have had, as did the fact that we hadn't played in three weeks and so the stuff that was new then, was new all over again this week. In all, the lack of familiarity with the rules, the introduction of new rules, and some rules that frankly don't work well all added to the burden of an already weak session.

On the ride home I talked to Shari about it and she said she'd rate the session as a 4 out of 10 for fun (which is fair and accurate--I probably would have rated it a 3 myself), but that she was intruiged by the situation now and was thinking a lot about what could happen next. So at least I was able to set the hook for the campaign with her, and I think in most of the others as well. (Ted also mentioned afterwards that he felt better about the campaign now that the group had a goal.)

My intention with this particular quest was to dump them in a place seething with people, situations, conflicts and opportunites so that they can explore their SA's and get a chance to "steer the boat" a little as far as the plot is concerned. Overall I'd expect them to come back with the artifact, but we could take our time getting there. Based on their post-session conversation, however, they seem focused on getting the object, completing their mission and getting their reward.

What I've learned:

1. I need to make my emails MUCH shorter and to the point. (This is really true of all of my communication efforts. I tend to want to include everything.) If I want specific information from the group ("am I on the right track with this summary of what you want?") then I need to send an email with JUST that information in it.

2. Once the water is muddied, find other water. Once the email thread went off on a tangent, it was unrecoverable, at least with this group. I don't think it was unreasonable of me to hope for a response to a separate, much more concise email, but that apparently isn't going to happen with these guys.

3. That when the players said they wanted more story, they really meant that they wanted more story from me. While they are willing to try SA's and more player contribution, their total lack of response over an extended period speaks volumes for their lack of enthusiasm. It's possible that they may take to it, but probably not. ("You can lead a horse to water...") Also, the responses I got to comments during our "talk time" this session about their total lack of response to my emails ("I've been busy", "some of us have real jobs", etc.) also indicates that their mindset is one of wanting to just show up and be entertained. Thinking back over the past year, Tim is the only one who has consistently provided thoughtful input into issues of game mechanics and/or system design or who has even been reliable about responding to emails.

4. YOU CAN'T PLAY WITH ALPHA RULES. In our last campaign we had a lot of fun and the fact that the rules were very much in flux didn't seem to be an issue. In looking back, however, I realize that we had many sessions of "I wan't to test THIS mechanic so let's focus on THESE activities". We were primarily just doing stuff and seeing if the rules could handle it. The fact that these sessions grew into an evolving story was a happy accident. I think that in order for the players to be able to get into the story, they have to be able to get away from the rules. This can be accomplished by either having fewer rules or by making the players more familiar with the rules. And, of course, the players can never get familiar with rules that are constantly changing.

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So what to do from here? I think the first thing is to separate testing my game ideas from running a campaign. If I am going to continue GMing for the group, I need to find a system I like and run a campaign with that while I continue to work on my own system on the side. From time to time we can get together to test pieces of my system, but that should be separate from the ongoing campaign.

Secondly, I think the experiment with player-driven plots should also be separated from the campaign. A better approach (at least with this group) is to run a one-off adventure with The Pool (or something similar) and let them have a taste of really authoring an evening of shared adventure. If they like that, then we can talk about how to include some aspect of that into an ongoing campaign. But it definitely seems that their unfamiliarity with the concept, combined with the perceived ramifications of any "mistakes" on their part in an ongoing campaign, is making them all hesitant to try something so completely outside their realm of experience.

Anyway, that is what I'm taking away from the whole experience. As always, comments and questions are welcome and appreciated! :)

1. Could you talk a little more about that email you sent out? It sounds pretty important. Like what examples of SAs or ways that they could protagonize themselves.

2. So, the system is like, a pretty unstable homebrew with SAs from riddle of steel tacked on...? How entirely was the SA system impleneted, such as in character-improvement/waning of SAs? Well, if the system is like a traditionial RPG, than it probably supports Gamist/Simulationist play alot better than Narrativist.

My suggestion would be to play an already designed Narrativist game, OR design a system yourself with narrativist intentions. I ran a one-shot of a game I made 12 hours prior to playing it and it worked great, but I think that has alot to do with the fact that it was very focused on what I wanted to do that session(Even though it had several inherent flaws.)

3. Shift of storytelling responsability. The most important responsability, for narrativism, I think, is your character deciding what to do. Is that what it meant? If that idea doesn't appeal to them, than they obviously have a pretty big personal bias against narrativism. Do you think they disliked it because of something else you bundled in with it as "storytelling responsability", though?

4. How is a twisted, sorcerous foresty devoid of potential uses of SAs...? I mean, if you wanted there to be interaction with a community, couldn't you just have them stumble on some Feyish sort of people? Lots of intereasting situations have been made in fantasy literature relying on characters stumbling on bizarre forest folk, what makes your situation idfferent?

5. What do you mean by narrative clues...?

6. The session sounded to me like, my typical interaction with WW's games. A continual pretension of "story", and reference to what sounds like Narrativist gaming, but really some combination of Gamism/Sim that happens to be LESS supportive of narrativism than your average game of D&D, because

A. In order for the "Story" to be implented, the PCs must have less control over the direction of the game

B. Players are told that they MUST contribuite to a coherent story that doesn't really involve them, which means pretending to have a great intereast in what is going on, and not exploring what their character is intereasted otherwise

C. All sorts of mandates inherent in the games about the way that characters should do and think, including accusations of breaking the accurate models of creatures built from pastiche and/or threats to destroy their character with NPCs made exclusively to control PC behavior, etc etc. I guess it doesn't apply to your session, though.

7. Do you really think they just want to just show up and be entertained? To me, when you mention extended moments of their not doing anything to further the story, that you expect them to entertain themselves while you just show up. In any type of game it works best as a balance, I personally don't see Narrativisim as requiring any more player input than Gamism, just in a different way.

Wow - I had the EXACT response regarding "That's the GM's job" from a person I play with a lot. I found this out during a chat. Essentially, they saw providing any sort of narrative material as work, not fun at all. Now that I know this, it's much easier to work around and deal with.

From my experience email is not a good form to try and decide on anything. People naturally talk in a wishy washy form that takes a lot of going over to sort out. When typing people fall into that form but they're also lazy and or need clarification on many points and it takes a lot to work those out, many emails. Face to face discussion is the best way to sort out what people actually want.

Sirogit,

Thanks for your questions/comments. I'll try to respond.

1. Could you talk a little more about that email you sent out? It sounds pretty important. Like what examples of SAs or ways that they could protagonize themselves.

2. So, the system is like, a pretty unstable homebrew with SAs from riddle of steel tacked on...? How entirely was the SA system impleneted, such as in character-improvement/waning of SAs? Well, if the system is like a traditionial RPG, than it probably supports Gamist/Simulationist play alot better than Narrativist.

My suggestion would be to play an already designed Narrativist game, OR design a system yourself with narrativist intentions. I ran a one-shot of a game I made 12 hours prior to playing it and it worked great, but I think that has alot to do with the fact that it was very focused on what I wanted to do that session(Even though it had several inherent flaws.)

3. Shift of storytelling responsability. The most important responsability, for narrativism, I think, is your character deciding what to do. Is that what it meant? If that idea doesn't appeal to them, than they obviously have a pretty big personal bias against narrativism. Do you think they disliked it because of something else you bundled in with it as "storytelling responsability", though?

4. How is a twisted, sorcerous foresty devoid of potential uses of SAs...? I mean, if you wanted there to be interaction with a community, couldn't you just have them stumble on some Feyish sort of people? Lots of intereasting situations have been made in fantasy literature relying on characters stumbling on bizarre forest folk, what makes your situation idfferent?

5. What do you mean by narrative clues...?

6. The session sounded to me like, my typical interaction with WW's games. A continual pretension of "story", and reference to what sounds like Narrativist gaming, but really some combination of Gamism/Sim that happens to be LESS supportive of narrativism than your average game of D&D...

7. Do you really think they just want to just show up and be entertained? To me, when you mention extended moments of their not doing anything to further the story, that you expect them to entertain themselves while you just show up. In any type of game it works best as a balance, I personally don't see Narrativisim as requiring any more player input than Gamism, just in a different way.

Steve Samson wrote: All I want is for them to make some contribution so that I don't have to think of everything that happens all the time. Ron talks about Director, Author and Actor stances. I'd add an Audience stance as well, which is what my group tends to be in a lot. When they aren't rolling dice or cracking jokes, they're waiting for me to tell them what happens next. I'd LOVE to have one of them say "I can't believe we're here in Khazan. My grandparents grew up here. I wonder if I've got any cousins or something still in town." Or, "It almost seemed like that last bandit recognized us from somewhere, what's up with that?" Stuff like that.

Steve

Per Sirogit's request, I have posted the relevant emails. They are in the "Efforts towards Protagonism/SA's" thread. (Again, how can I make that title a link to the thread? Anyone?)

I was worried that my responses were taking on abit too much of an accusational note, glad you found them usefull.

They don't sound terribly receptive at all. To me, the keypoint in noticing a player wants to play in a more narrativist style is that the voice complaints at their actions being led by NPCs. If they haven't done that, than they may not be very intereasted in Narrativist gaming at this point, or ever.

I still maintain a possibility of running the game where Shari's character makes the important choices and gives you feedback, and the rest of the characters are somehow charged to help her with their tactical playing. It would seem to fit what everyone asks for. Heck, if it doesn't work, it could be good, if someone says something like "Hey! Why does Shari make all the damn intereasting choices?" Than you give them an intereasting choice and see what they do with it.

Would it at all be possible that you could take a break from these players, and than get a new group that would be more excited about narrativism? Than, you could work it out with yourself about what Narrativism requires, pick up alot of a new tricks, and than maybe, you could retry it with your current players with more capable techniques and see if the narrativist thing works at all for them.

Games I'd recommend running in that event:

Riddle of Steel:
As mentioned before, the SA system, if well-impleneted, can do a good job at turning Gamist/sim intentions into Narrativist ones.

My Life With Master:
It's drama tracking system makes it alot easier to run a coherent story, and there is pretty much no support for playing anything other than narrativism. With the stipulation your players have an intereast in Gothic romance, ala Dracula, Frankenstien, etc etc, though I have heard threads about adapting to anything involving dysfunctional relationships centered on a single abusive figure.

Steve,

roll your mouse over the URL button (upper right) in the post screen., It'll give you the code which is

http://url or enter text here


regards,

Trevis

I was going to reply here, but decided to rant instead. Steve, this isn't meant to point you out particularly, you're just the guy who happened to set off the rant. Still, I think it pertains:

Mike's Standard Rant #7: You Can't Sneak Up on Mode

Mike

... from a non-theorist, non-academic.

All this talk of Theory and CAs and Narrativist is fine...

... but it doesn't belong anywhere near the game itself.

Avoid any use of the "lingo."

Second... only do one new thing at a time. Introducing SAs and then new magic rules, etc., etc., They are only going to focus on what appeals to them. This group sounds like it will always look at "rules" before thinking "what is a cool story?"


My suggestion... ask them simply, "What does your character want? Describe to me a scene in the game that would be fulfilling to the character. That would make them real and interesting as if they existed in a real place, not just a pile of stats."

If they can't do something as simple as that... you are in big trouble.

Hey Steve,

I send out another email. In it I state that we got sidetracked about the whole storytelling responsibility thing and really missed the point of my original email, which is that in order for me to give them what they want in the campaign, I need to know what they want.

I think they probably don't consciously know what they want. Check out on making the same character over and over.

Paul