Here’s how we’re laying out troupe-style play in the Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven’s Ars Magica playtest document.
Part I: Troupe-Style Play
If you haven’t played role-playing games troupe-style before, this should be a pretty good place to start. Let me lay it out for you.
- You create and play a wizard.
- You also create and play characters in the other wizards’ households.
- There’s no dedicated GM. Instead, whenever someone wants a GM for something, you can step in informally as an acting GM.
Main characters & Supporting Cast: You can think of your wizard as your main character, and your other characters as the other wizards’ supporting characters. This way, each of you plays a main character, and each of you plays the others’ supporting casts.
(It’s not quite true: you might discover in play that your real main character is another wizard’s long-suffering housekeeper, and that wizard’s really just her foil after all. You never know how it’ll turn out.)
Acting GMs: Think of the things that you want a GM to do for you. Things like:
- Describe the weather, the room you’re in, a person you’re meeting, the sounds of the tavern, or the politics of the local duchy.
- Ask you what your character does, or what your character’s doing.
- Decide whether it’s time to roll dice for something, when you’re in your character’s head.
- Provide enemies and challenges for your character to face, mysteries for your character to solve.
- Start and end the game session. Remind everyone where we are and what’s happened to bring us there. Organize the long term of play when you’re paying attention to the here and now.
Instead of having one person dedicated to all of them, everybody takes responsibility for them, sometimes.
When one of your characters is at the center of the action, the players whose characters aren’t central are free to act as GMs. Any question you’d have for a GM, ask them. Anything you’d want a GM to do for you, they can do it.
When your characters aren’t central, then it’s your turn to act as a GM for them.
There’s no need for formal turn-taking, baton-passing, a handoff of power. It might take a little practice but soon it will seem normal. Just step up and fall back whenever you see a need, and whenever you feel the urge.
Part II, Oblique: The Game’s Moves
Make these moves whenever you think they’re right.
Move #1, to begin a session, a scene, or an encounter from scratch: Turn to another player. Ask them where their wizard is right now, what they’re doing, and who’s there with them.
Move #2, when you have a good idea for a scene or an encounter: Turn to another player. Explain the situation that you want to see their character in. Confirm that it makes sense to them.
Move #3, when you need to make a decision, but aren’t sure how to make it: Turn to any other player, or to the group at large. Ask for a detail that you think will prompt you or help you make up your mind. “Hm, I’m not sure where I am right now. What time of day is it?”
Move #4, when you want to introduce a character into the action, wait until a natural moment.
If it’s not a good time yet, that’s okay, now the other players know that your character’s on the way. They’ll tell you when, or you can ask again at the next natural moment.
Move #5, when you think someone should make a roll: Go ahead and ask them what effect this might have on their character. You can be specific, if you like: “do you think you might be knocked off your feet? Or drop something?”
Move #6, whenever anyone casts a spell: If they don’t think to mention it themselves, ask them their practice level and what casting the spell requires them to do.
Move #7, when you’re not happy how things are going: Ask everyone to hold on just a sec. You can call for a do-over or a retcon. You can summarize or skip ahead. You can ask someone else to reconsider their character’s action or their answer to a question. Whatever you need.
It’s okay for your character to fail and suffer, but this is a collaborative game with nothing on the line. If you feel like you’re the one failing and suffering, that’s not right.
Move #8, to end a scene or an encounter: Wait until a natural moment, then ask if it’s time to move on to what’s next.
If it’s not time yet, that’s cool. Somebody still wants something here. If you can, help them get it.
Formal Tools (optional): If you find any of these moves difficult to make casually, it’s a good idea to formalize them.
- You might like to bring a graphic of a stoplight to the table, for instance, to help with move #7.
- You might like to introduce turn-taking for move #1, where each player gets a turn in order.
- You might like to experiment with a kind of episode format for move #2, something like “Midsummer is coming to the countryside, which means that the peasants are getting excited and the Church is getting antsy. Let’s go through and see how each of us is preparing…”
- You might like to make maps — or even use miniatures! — for move #4.
As a matter of rpg theory arcana, I consider having a GM to be just this same kind of formalization.
What’s Working For Me
This idea:
Think of the things that you want a GM to do for you. Things like:
- Describe the weather, the room you’re in, a person you’re meeting, the sounds of the tavern, or the politics of the local duchy.
- Ask you what your character does, or what your character’s doing.
- Decide whether it’s time to roll dice for something, when you’re in your character’s head.
- Provide enemies and challenges for your character to face, mysteries for your character to solve.
- Start and end the game session. Remind everyone where we are and what’s happened to bring us there. Organize the long term of play when you’re paying attention to the here and now.
+ This idea:
If you find any of these moves difficult to make casually, it’s a good idea to formalize them.
= Having a GM.
…Is really working for me.
What do you think?
If you’ve played troupe-syle co-GMed games, does this match how you’ve done it? Does it match your own reflections?
Nat Knight says:
I’m currently playtesting a troupe-style game where players write/direct/star in their own version of _Alien_. I tried to sidestep some of these complexities by putting moves on cards and having some very, very light deckbuilding in a structure that drives them along a sort of Intro/Encounter/Struggle plot structure.
I was hoping players would organically make some of the moves you describe here, but I’m finding that without a prescriptive procedure for setting scenes and describing shots that players quickly describe the fictional beat described on their card and move on. The very light game-ey mechanics were a huge distraction. This is where I think the magic in a game like _Fiasco_ is: any dice rolling or pick-lists are just icing on the rich, rich cake of “set up a scene and then play it out together”.
This writeup feels like vivid and thorough blueprint for this kind of play. Thank you for sharing it 🙂
Vincent Baker says:
Sure thing!
It’s interesting, I’ve often found the same: you want your formal structures lightweight so that they leave space for dense informal play, but often they wind up creating lightweight informal play instead. Kind of like, play coalesces around them, but they can only support so much.
Matthijs says:
I love the idea of just asking for a GM when you need one.
I’m currently in the depths of designing a bunch of GM-less games, so this post hit me right in the interests. I love the informal flow you’re describing, and how everything is structured around moves. For me, it echoes how Archipelago was structured around ritual phrases.
The way we play right now is this:
* Everyone fills out some scene cards – which describe elements that they want to appear in their character’s story. These are usually Relationships and Goals; we want recurring characters (Relationship), and we want the characters to strive towards something so we can feel for them (Goal).
* All the scene cards go into one deck, and each player draws a hand. (If you get your own character’s cards, they go back in the deck).
* We take turns setting scenes. So on my turn, I might have one of your Relationship cards, and I use that to set the scene.
* When I set a scene, someone else is the supporting player – I just set the stage, and they drive the drama. They will play your Relationship, they will support or challenge your struggles towards your Goal.
* Finally, there are drama cards that everyone can use, anytime at all. They call on players to describe detail, or throw in plot twists, or flesh out characters, or escalate problems, et cetera. I want everyone to be able to participate and engage in everyone else’s story.
The main characters might never meet at all. Campaigns last 6 sessions, usually – going through the deck 3 times altogether.
It’s more formalized than what you describe, mostly because I have some very specific things I want the games to do, and I need people to unlearn some things – old habits will easily ruin the experience.
Vincent Baker says:
Oh that’s very cool. Check me if I understand.
The way I read it, “my relationship” is a person my character has a relationship with, right? So the card might list “Vincent’s character’s Weird Uncle Travis,” for instance?
So then, does my character’s Weird Uncle Travis have a consistent player? I can read “someone else is the supporting player” both ways (or more).
I’m curious about this point in particular because I’ve played a ton of games that go one way (Weird Uncle Travis doesn’t necessarily have a consistent player) and relatively few that go the other way. But in practice, when we’ve played the former, we gravitate toward informal consistent players anyway — like, if we’re volunteering to play Weird Uncle Travis, one of us will come to be the person who always volunteers to play him, and it would be offputting for someone else to take the role. How does it work in your game?
Matthijs Holter says:
It’s not always consistent. If you and I and player X are playing, either X or I might have the “Uncle Travis” card and play it, at some point.
The thing is, the person playing the card – the Director – picks someone else to be Supporting Player. So with there players, there’s not much choice – if you’re Director, and player X is the main character, then I’m going to be Supporting.
With more than 3, there’s room for choice, and there’s usually consistency wrt who plays which NPC.
A thing about being Supporting Player – they have a set of options to choose from when playing a relationship – such as Focus on the positive, Put external pressure, Bring a crisis, Show consequences of past decisions.
In other scenes – Goal, for instance – the options for the Supporting Player are different.
Vincent Baker says:
That makes sense to me. Very cool.
What are the options for a goal scene?
Matthijs says:
The Goal scenes are currently more tightly structured. They carry a lot of weight in the story, so in the main game (Saqaliba) they are as follows:
* Act 1: Use a secondary character to show how the character got their motivation.
* Act 2: Use a secondary character to give the character an Option to get closer to their goal – and a Price they will have to pay, sooner or later. Force them to choose: Do it or don’t do it.
* Act 3: Show the consequences of their choice.
In Avgrunnen (Abyss) they’re options to choose from. The options are:
* Show why the goal seems impossible
* Give an option, with a price
* Fulfil the goal (only allowed in act 3)
* Show consequences of earlier goal scenes
I’ve only started to explore the space of options for the scenes, to be honest, and it’s a work in progress (I changed things a bit for today’s game, and it looks like they’ll change again before next time). But it looks like a very fruitful and flexible setup for giving different scenes different flavors.
It’s also proven necessary to have a limitation: in Relationship scenes, you’re not allowed to focus on Goals or other major plot threads. They have to be about the human connection, the relationship dynamic. (People very often drift into excessive plotting in these kinds of games, and it takes away the opportunity to have real human moments, sometimes).
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