Huffy is a hiking version of Fluff(y), and served about as well. We only had a couple rolls for the combat scene.
The supplies needed include: a pen and scrap of paper (which got a little damp in a light shower), 3dF (small) in a transparent (medicine) bottle, 5 blue chips (plot points), 2 white chips (to mark light injury), and 3 red chips (for heavy injury). All this fits in a few pockets without much trouble.
Our hiking path didn't include too many road crossings, which is good. Your Huffy player party should include someone who can walk and chew gum at the same time to keep an eye on everyone, especially at intersections. S. does this well.
I found that combining hiking and gaming means the gaming goes a little slow as there are pauses to enjoy the scenery, and some of scenery is a bit of a blur because I was deep in thought on gaming. But I tend to think of gaming whenever I hike, so it wasn't that much different! By combining the two activities, you can focus more on one whenever the other hits a bit of a boring lull.
I felt that the biggest problem we encountered--which is larger than just some broken Huffy mechanic--is how to steer the story when we're making it up as we go. I'm still used to D&D, where time seems to divide roughly into 50% combat/strategy, 30% adventuring/dungeon crawling/narration, and 20% town/roleplay/interaction. (Well, that's recently in my Omri campaign. In Dragon Wars, it's probably closer to 65/20/15. In another campaign I play in, it's closer to 80/15/5.) In this context, the main challenge is to come up with dramatic battles and tricky dungeons puzzles (though, yes, it should all still be in the pursuit of some interesting goal).
But lately I'm trying to shift this time division to about 10% combat, 50% narration, and 40% interaction. But this means there needs to be a lot more story ready to go! Yet at the same time, I'm trying to play short, lite-weight campaigns that don't require more than 20 minutes advanced planning.
So what are some possible mechanisms to use here? I still think Instant Game does a great job of quickly giving you a campaign setting--the world and the basic conflict of the story. What I was missing yesterday was more of the story details that then flesh out that conflict.
I did include S. in more explicit story planning at the outset. This means we spent as much time planning as actually playing though. But S. seemed to enjoy being able to shape the world and the story as well as just her character. But once we were into the playing, I felt that the pressure is really on the GM to come up with the next encounter.
Another idea I had was to make a list of story elements before we started that we could then try to work in. Again, S. contributed to the list, which included things such as: feral hordes, a high speed chase, a fight on a narrow archway, a knife fight, spitting in someone's face in defiance, slippin' someone a micky, a foretelling. This did help a bit. I'm already foreshadowing the feral hordes. The knife fight didn't quite come through, but it did suggest the fight between the 3 men. We did a bit of foretelling too (though it's hard to prophesy when you have no clear plan beyond the next encounter!)
All of three of these--Instant Game's setting and opposition, player contribution to the world, and a list of potential story elements--helped. But all three of them require pre-game prep. Is there any generative thing we could do to foster play-time plot generation? And I'm not talking just rolling up another combat encounter here--though the idea of a random table could be used (which the story element list already hints at). In the spirit of Zludge, it'd be nice to stay away from reference tables during play-time.
Hmm... something to ponder more. It's also nice to see my RPG interests coming back around to my IN work!
Showing posts with label player control. Show all posts
Showing posts with label player control. Show all posts
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Notion: Explicit Player Meta-plotting
Our recent DHYH session and some experiments with AnimalBall.com's Instant Game have prompted me to think a bit about direct player involvement in story planning.
DRYH explicitly involves the player by letting them lay out the first scene that starts the action, as well as specify a story goal for their character to achieve by the end of the story. During our session, I would occasionally ask S. directly for more info about her character's backstory--such as naming three anthropomorphic toys her character had as a child. Some DRYH GMs have gone so far as to allow players that win their contest to assume narrative control for the following scene.
I've also lately been exploring the mechanic of plot points, where the player can introduce some coincidence, minor story control, or introduce some world detail.
I guess perhaps its my IN research that prompts me to shy away from all this as something that will break player "immersion" or "narrative presence" in the story. Yet, in my own solitaire gaming, I've felt the difference between plotting and playing. Since I'm both player and GM, I know what's going to happen ahead of time in my storylines. The only variation from my plan is going to come from the dice--which can introduce interesting and significant variation at the micro-level, which may in turn prompt new ideas. And yet it's still a rewarding experience to play through and make all those general plot lines concrete. I guess it's like reading a plot summary or reading the original work--the details make a big difference!
So why shouldn't this experience also be rewarding for my players? Yes, there's a breaking of immersion, but at the gain of greater player control and involvement in the story.
So here's a few ideas on how I could try to add more player control:
"Yes, and..." World Building. One thing I noticed with a recent Instant Game exercise was that sometimes the GM and player might want to take the world-building in different directions. One possibility is to play the "Yes, and..." improv game here. The two take turns adding details to the world, but can't retract or change what the other has already added. (No "Yes, but..."s.) I suppose there could be some sort of "plot point" buy-out mechanism if the GM didn't want to go the full way here. Perhaps the GM has 3 chips which let him veto that many player-generated elements. Or perhaps both player and GM each get 3 chips and can veto each other. This would be better, since vetoing in general tends to kill the spirit; at least this way the two are on even footing.
As you can see, I'm hesitant to give equal power to the player. I noticed during the first part of our DRYH session that giving control to the player doesn't mean you're going to get a story out of it. (I was impressed with S.'s contributions and creativity though!) Someone--or at least some mechanism--needs to be in place to guide the story in some direction, or else things just stall. Unless there's something else at work, that guiding "mechanism" is usually the GM. And giving the player story control actually means more work (or at least flexibility) is required of the GM.
Co-GMing. It would be interesting to take turns narrating with the player, so each alternates the GM role. I know other systems (Dogs in the Vineyard, perhaps?) have a stakes-based conflict resolution system. Perhaps something like that could be used here to see who takes control of the story. Of course, some players will be passive and not want story control, while others will always want it. And this still doesn't resolve the problem of "who's driving this thing, anyway?"
Explicit Pre-game Plotting. But again I'm falling into the trap of thinking that all of this plotting needs to be subtle and in character, or emergent from the rules. I started this post with the realization that explicit plotting is not a bad thing! So perhaps following up on DRYH's notion of an explicitly-started story goal is a good one. All of this could be negotiated before the game starts--even including any major plot points that should be hit along the way. If everyone's agreed on the direction and the major waypoints at the outset, then it doesn't matter who's currently driving. Instant Game is close to this, as their instant story tables gives the main opposition and other actions that need to be worked in.
Evil Hat's Spirit of the Century/FATE 3.0's aspects are another possibility here. Aspects can be tied to the campaign/story itself, so anyone can invoke them. This serves to at least direct the story towards certain themes, if not in a particular plot direction.
Hmm... something to continue to ponder.
DRYH explicitly involves the player by letting them lay out the first scene that starts the action, as well as specify a story goal for their character to achieve by the end of the story. During our session, I would occasionally ask S. directly for more info about her character's backstory--such as naming three anthropomorphic toys her character had as a child. Some DRYH GMs have gone so far as to allow players that win their contest to assume narrative control for the following scene.
I've also lately been exploring the mechanic of plot points, where the player can introduce some coincidence, minor story control, or introduce some world detail.
I guess perhaps its my IN research that prompts me to shy away from all this as something that will break player "immersion" or "narrative presence" in the story. Yet, in my own solitaire gaming, I've felt the difference between plotting and playing. Since I'm both player and GM, I know what's going to happen ahead of time in my storylines. The only variation from my plan is going to come from the dice--which can introduce interesting and significant variation at the micro-level, which may in turn prompt new ideas. And yet it's still a rewarding experience to play through and make all those general plot lines concrete. I guess it's like reading a plot summary or reading the original work--the details make a big difference!
So why shouldn't this experience also be rewarding for my players? Yes, there's a breaking of immersion, but at the gain of greater player control and involvement in the story.
So here's a few ideas on how I could try to add more player control:
"Yes, and..." World Building. One thing I noticed with a recent Instant Game exercise was that sometimes the GM and player might want to take the world-building in different directions. One possibility is to play the "Yes, and..." improv game here. The two take turns adding details to the world, but can't retract or change what the other has already added. (No "Yes, but..."s.) I suppose there could be some sort of "plot point" buy-out mechanism if the GM didn't want to go the full way here. Perhaps the GM has 3 chips which let him veto that many player-generated elements. Or perhaps both player and GM each get 3 chips and can veto each other. This would be better, since vetoing in general tends to kill the spirit; at least this way the two are on even footing.
As you can see, I'm hesitant to give equal power to the player. I noticed during the first part of our DRYH session that giving control to the player doesn't mean you're going to get a story out of it. (I was impressed with S.'s contributions and creativity though!) Someone--or at least some mechanism--needs to be in place to guide the story in some direction, or else things just stall. Unless there's something else at work, that guiding "mechanism" is usually the GM. And giving the player story control actually means more work (or at least flexibility) is required of the GM.
Co-GMing. It would be interesting to take turns narrating with the player, so each alternates the GM role. I know other systems (Dogs in the Vineyard, perhaps?) have a stakes-based conflict resolution system. Perhaps something like that could be used here to see who takes control of the story. Of course, some players will be passive and not want story control, while others will always want it. And this still doesn't resolve the problem of "who's driving this thing, anyway?"
Explicit Pre-game Plotting. But again I'm falling into the trap of thinking that all of this plotting needs to be subtle and in character, or emergent from the rules. I started this post with the realization that explicit plotting is not a bad thing! So perhaps following up on DRYH's notion of an explicitly-started story goal is a good one. All of this could be negotiated before the game starts--even including any major plot points that should be hit along the way. If everyone's agreed on the direction and the major waypoints at the outset, then it doesn't matter who's currently driving. Instant Game is close to this, as their instant story tables gives the main opposition and other actions that need to be worked in.
Evil Hat's Spirit of the Century/FATE 3.0's aspects are another possibility here. Aspects can be tied to the campaign/story itself, so anyone can invoke them. This serves to at least direct the story towards certain themes, if not in a particular plot direction.
Hmm... something to continue to ponder.
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