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Messages - Simon C

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136
roleplaying theory, hardcore / Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
« on: September 11, 2010, 06:55:15 PM »
I confess sometimes these conversations make me want to throw my hands in the air and make noises.

Vincent, you're making a good point, I think. But here's what I stumble on:

When you look at any instance of play, overwhelming, to a great degree, the participants are focused on creating interesting and coherant fiction.

Even in the most hard-core, pawn-stance, play-your-fighter-right-or-we-send-you-home, three-hours-of-combat-five-minutes-of-talking game, the orcs are orcs and they stay orcs for the duration of the game, and it matters that they're orcs and not goblins, and not just because the numbers are different, but because we said they were orcs and you can't change that now. And what's that for? Why go to all that effort (and it is an effort) if it doesn't support what's supposed to be the point of the game?

Can you also give some examples where the game has winners? I only know of a few, and in those it's this thing where you're kind of competing but you're really not supposed to try too hard, and if you're actually playing competitively then you're doing it wrong.

And protagonists. I guess I don't get it. Can you give me some examples of games where the players' characters are not protagonists, and show me why?

I mean, maybe it's a thing where I've only experienced one kind of Creative Agenda, and I just can't wrap my head around other ways of playing. But I've played a lot of games, a lot of different ways, that seem to be encompassed by the GNS agendas, and they still seem like really confusing, pointless categorisations. Like, that other thread here about GM Agenda and Right to Dream and such. What's going to come out of that conversation? To me it reads like Anatomy of Unicorns 101.

I guess I got my cranky pants on there for a bit. I guess I just find it frustrating, because yes! It matters that players are on the same page, creatively. And yes! The way the game is designed matters to what kind of creative agenda it can sustain in play. But GNS just seems like the least useful way of talking about that.

137
roleplaying theory, hardcore / Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
« on: September 10, 2010, 09:53:44 PM »
I'm not seeing examples of understanding Step on Up and Right to Dream helping people design games, fix problems in play, or articulate creative differences.

This:
Quote
As far as examples go, the clearest, to me, is ... hmmm. The biggest, for me, is that if we have an NPC that stands in the way of the PC's direct or indirect goals, the NPC often gets full attention. It's non-stop "attack" until the NPC is no longer a threat, where attack is any method the character can think of to get rid of the NPC. No characterization, no attempt at a realistic portrayal of character. It's simply: "What is the best plan that I, the player, can come up with to remove this threat?". Everything else falls by the wayside.

It's not bad roleplaying, really. In literary terms, it's just a fondness for plot-based narrative over character-driven narrative.
Seems like a pretty good explanation of creative differences in a game, that doesn't rely on any kind of understanding of GNS.

I'm not arguing that it isn't possible to categorise play in terms of GNS, I'm arguing that it's not often very useful. As Vincent and I agreed at the start of this thread, there are in fact much more useful ways of talking about creative agenda. It's possible that historically it was useful, I'll grant Vincent that. But outside of the concept of Story Now, which I agree provides a good framework for producing functional games, I don't see GNS contributing to dialogue about creative agenda. Mostly I see it causing arguments, confusion, and a narrowing of the scope of design.

138
roleplaying theory, hardcore / Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
« on: September 09, 2010, 10:38:07 PM »
Chris,

How useful would you say the concepts of Story Now and Step on Up are to you in improving the experience of play in your group? Do you explicitly reference them at the table? Do they help you form a coherant creative agenda?

Can you give some examples of this Creative Agenda clash in play?

139
Apocalypse World / Re: AP: The Diner and the Storm that's coming
« on: September 07, 2010, 10:49:15 PM »
Those are good thoughts, Mike.

Lively blaming Millions made sense to me, at least at an emotional level. Pepper would probably still be alive if Millions wasn't so awful. I still feel kind of sick about Pepper dying. So rough. "Look Through Crosshairs" can be a burden as well as a release.

I'm really looking forward to seeing where this thing goes next. I feel like we've tapped into the thematic core of the characters much more now, and the game will only be richer as a result. Also it's going to be fun cooking up some awfulness for Joan's Town.


140
Not to derail the thread, but AW has an explicit conflict resolution system (as opposed to an implicit one - all games, in play, have a conflict resolution system).

Maybe start a new thread about it? I like talking about conflict resolution and task resolution.

141
As far as I can see, MCing is exactly the right approach to GMing most of those White Wolf games, as well as Ars Magica. You've got the PCs as uneasy allies against a host of nebulous threats, and the GM's job is to stage-manage the threats against the PCs in such a way as to always give them something to do, and never let them quite get on top of everything.

A lot of White Wolf GMs already discovered this style, as I suspect Vincent did playing Ars Magica. What you could do to make the MC moves work even better for you is to make yourself a new set of threat types, and a new set of moves linked to those.

In terms of interacting with the nWoD ruleset, I think your only challenge is to make sure that when you're rolling dice, you're genuinely resolving conflicts in the fiction, rather than just resolving tasks, and leaving conflict resolution up to the GM. That's important to the "Play to find out what happens" agenda. If you're setting up the threats and also tacitly deciding when they're resolved, you're not playing to find out what happens, and you're giving yourself a much harder job.

The rules as written don't give you a lot of guidance on that issue, and I've found that individual groups vary widely in their use of the WoD rules. It may be that you're using the rules as a conflict resolution mechanic already.

A good discipline I used to get accustomed to resolving conflicts with the dice is to announce each and every time the consequences of a failed or successful roll before the dice hit the table. It's surprisingly hard to remember, but also very easy to do. Saying things like "The danger is..." or "If you win, you'll..." or "What's at stake is..." will help make sure you're resolving conflicts with the dice.


142
blood & guts / Re: Tone and Color
« on: September 03, 2010, 12:34:55 AM »
Oh yeah, Mike, that's smart. It's funny. Sketching up that threat type gave me some interesting insight into the guts of the game. The threats all have active, driving motivations to change the world. It promotes the "no status quos" thing. When making threats you've gotta think about how to keep them relevant to play by making them constantly push against the PCs.

143
blood & guts / Re: Tone and Color
« on: September 02, 2010, 09:21:39 PM »
Jason,

I think one of the biggest things you could do to change the tone would be to create some new threat types. Like, at the moment you can't really have a single person in town who has an agenda that's not the PC's, and the means to achieve that, without them being a Grotesque or a Warlord. I like that, but it promotes a certain tone.

You could add a new threat type, like "Survivor", with types:
Lone Wolf: impulse: to resist fetters
Owner: impulse: to grow and profit
Dealer: impulse: to buy and sell things
Patriarch: impulse: to preserve the status quo

And then give them a list of moves, like:

Offer a deal
Require payment
Take ownership of something
Impose a law

and so on.

I think that will promote a game which has more status quo, less propensity to spiral into violence, and PCs coexisting with threats more peacefully.

144
roleplaying theory, hardcore / Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
« on: August 30, 2010, 04:50:50 PM »
On point A, I guess I submit to your superior experience. I only really got involved in the discussion around the start of 2007, so I didn't see a lot of the initial discussion around GNS.

In terms of answering the question "why do I see people playing roleplaying games in ways that I would hate to play them, and yet they seem to be having a great time and they get all pissy when I tell them they're doing it wrong", I can see how GNS was useful.

I don't see the contribution to game design, so much. I can see how the specific understanding of Story Now play that developed definitely contributed to game design, for sure, but I'm not sure that understanding required GNS. I dunno. Maybe.

I think there's a bunch of stuff about what people want GNS to be vs. what it is, and how categorizing things seems to make people kind of crazy sometimes, which I think you'd agree has been a huge pain in the ass. Worth it? Maybe so.

On point B, which is far more interesting, I'm with you. That is a useful way of talking about Creative Agenda. Is it the most useful way? What tools can we give people to facilitate that discussion? I have a couple of ideas, but they might be all wrong.

145
roleplaying theory, hardcore / Creative Agenda and GNS
« on: August 29, 2010, 11:26:10 PM »
On my blog just recently, I posted about some things I've been thinking about. Some of that was just hare-brained rambling, but this bit I'm sticking to:

"Play should be personally and socially fulfilling" is the one big thing to come out of the Forge in the last ten years, apparently. I'm like "Yup. Cool." Creative Agenda, as a thing that exists and makes play personally and socially fulfilling is something I can get behind, no problem. Things happen in a game, stuff changes, on your character sheet, in the fiction of the game, and in the social relationships between the players, and you notice and appreciate that change. You see it as "progress" rather than just change, because you've got a creative agenda.

So no problem with that.

But! I'm not sure that the specific formulation of creative agendas as falling into three general categories of "Story Now", "Right to Dream", and "Step on Up" is a useful way of thinking about Creative Agenda. I don't see it helping in design, nor do I see it helping in fixing problems in play. I do see evidence that specific understandings about how to design for Story Now play are useful, but I don't see correlated insights into Step on Up and Right to Dream play. I do see a lot of arguments and explanations and wars over definitions.

I don't think it's even a challenge to the Forge orthodoxy (if there is such a thing) to say that there are other ways of understanding creative agenda. I guess what I'm suggesting is that:

a) Historically, GNS (as a seperate thing from Creative Agenda) has been more of a burden to talking about design than a benefit.

b) There is a more useful way to think about Creative Agenda (but I don't really know what it would be).

If you like, I can describe what I mean by creative agenda, to make sure we're talking about the same thing and I'm not terribly mistaken.

146
Nocker,

This post by Vincent will probably fix your confusion: http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=443

Vincent, does that policy from your blog apply here too? I think it's a good policy (although, to be honest, I don't think I've ever seen a conversation where talking about GNS made anything clearer or easier).

147
Apocalypse World / Re: New Playbooks I Want!
« on: August 15, 2010, 08:05:43 PM »
Oh man, I'm grossing myself out, but:

When you show someone kindness or sympathy or express remorse, roll +cool

10+, Hold 3
7-9, Hold 1

Spend one hold to:

- Have that person flinch, hesitate, or falter
- Have that person come to your call
- Roll +1 on Seduce or Manipulate against that person


148
Apocalypse World / Re: New Playbooks I Want!
« on: August 15, 2010, 07:56:15 PM »
When you break someone's will, roll +hard (sharp? Hx?)

10+, choose two
7-9, choose one

- They love you
- They will obey you
- You don't have to hurt them

This is probably too close to home for me to play and enjoy easily, but yeah.

149
the nerve core / Re: Dedicated Custom Moves Forum?
« on: August 14, 2010, 01:46:11 AM »
Yay! Fixed!

I hope that thread becomes a good resource for finding custom moves. I guess I oughta go find some cool custom moves to link to.

150
the nerve core / Dedicated Custom Moves Forum?
« on: August 13, 2010, 12:48:20 AM »
When I was making my fronts, it came time to make a "When you enter the territory of the bad guys" custom move, and I was like "I'm sure someone has already come up with a really provocative version of this" but I couldn't find one.

Making custom moves is easy, but making those custom moves that really draw out horrible implications and drive interesting behaviours is an art form. I think a dedicated forum just for posting, discussing, and improving custom moves might make it easier to find interesting things. At the moment they're kind of being lost in the Apocalypse World forum.

I'd be happy to talk about alternative ideas though too. A wiki? A searchable database? A seperate forum entirely, that takes advantage of tags and searchability?

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