darkbard
Legend
Quite frankly, your surmise is wrong. As @AbdulAlhazred notes, other games have different ways of bringing the setting into play.
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Advice for new "story now" GMs
- Thread starter pemerton
- Start date
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Just thinking about Stonetop, the premise is built into the game along with the core of the setting and some basic situation, but they're not fleshed out in detail until the players bring PCs to the table. It's guaranteed there's a threat to the village and politics and survival stuff but the key details are not set. That stuff happens in play.
niklinna
satisfied?
It's shaping up! Some of us aren't entirely happy with particular playbook moves, but I gotta say for the Ranger, the only problem is there are so many good ones and I can't pick them all. It's the first ranger I've seen that really feels effective as such. (I do hear good things about the Pathfinder 2 Ranger.) Maybe we should start another thread to talk about Stonetop though.
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AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I think Stonetop playbooks, at least a couple of them, could still use another design pass. I think some of the moves verge more on being 'powers' vs being moves that get triggered. And its rather ambiguous in my book exactly what they're attempting to do, at least in the case of the Seeker's 'Work With What You've Got', which has a trigger of "wield your environment against your foe(s)" which is FAR less TRIGGER in my book, and far more "what I want to do." I mean, is chucking a rock at someone triggering this move? What is the advantage over Let Fly? I mean, the outcomes are slightly more favorable, maybe, and its obviously applicable to more situations, but which ones? What exactly flavor is being conveyed here? Is this 'magic' (the Seeker is a kind of magically gifted wizard-ish sort of character). I can think of a huge array of possible ways it can be interpreted as being triggered, but all of them are 'fuzzy'.
Still, Stonetop is a very solid effort. Its still being PTed, so perhaps these things will be addressed...
This post and the next have some further bits of advice, prompted by a couple of posts upthread. This one is about setting.
There is no single best way to use the setting in "story now" play. In some games, it is likely to be mere backdrop or context - after all, the imaginary events of play have to happen somewhere, and the setting provides those places. Some RPGs I've played where this is the case are Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant, Cthulhu Dark, Marvel Heroic RP, Wuthering Heights and In A Wicked Age. In this sort of RPGing, the opposition is likely to be introduced into play either (i) by decisions that the players make during PC build or during play - NPCs or situations that they are dealing with, for instance - or (ii) by the GM presenting the players (via their PCs) with a situation that speaks to somewhat "generic" player concerns for their PCs.
In saying that setting is backdrop or context, that doesn't make it uninteresting - upthread I posted an account of some BW play, which included a bazaar scene and a wizard's tower. When we were playing, I think these were quite colourful and engaging. What I'm trying to get at, in describing them as backdrop/context, is that they did not, in themselves, really generate the opposition or contain the players' concerns for their PCs. The BW episode I described illustrates (i): during PC build and during play, the player of the sorcerer PC had made demons, sorcerous cabals, and the like salient sources of opposition; and my facilitation and my narration of opposition introduced appropriate setting elements.
Prince Valiant and MHRP are two RPGs that (in my experience) exemplify (ii): the PCs have somewhat "generic" concerns, to do knightly things (Prince Valiant) or to do superheroic things (MHRP), and as a GM my job is to present situations that speak to these concerns, including appropriate setting elements. For instance, in a MHRP session where one player was playing War Machine, we began the session in Washington DC (because that was where our last session had finished) with the PCs going out to a bar in their civvies. Naturally, the women they met and were chatting up were supervillains (the "B.A.D. Girls"), hoping to target an exhibition of Stark tech at the Smithsonian and looking to get help (either inadvertent, or by way of manipulation or seduction) from Rhodes. The bar, the presence there of the villains, the exhibition at the Smithsonian: these were all made up by me as GM as part of the early back-and-forth of the session, framing the situation and setting the scene for (ie facilitating) the action. What makes it "story now" is that the way the scene is framed, and the subsequent action adjudicated, doesn't prejudge what is the "proper" thing for War Machine's player, and the other players, to have their PCs do.
Just to be clear, setting that is introduced as backdrop and context might still figure significantly in particular moments of action resolution: for instance, in the BW episode I described, at a certain point the players decided to have their PCs infiltrate the wizard's tower, and so appropriate actions were declared and resolved. In the MHRP game, Rhodes called in his armour via remote control, and then grabbed one of the villains and flew up to the top of the Washington Monument and left her dangling from it. To reiterate: describing the setting as backdrop/context is not dismissing it as a source of colour and an element of the action, but rather pointing out that it is not the source of opposition, player-established concerns for their PCs, etc - it is introduced subsequently, to facilitate and develop those things.
The contrast with this is provided by RPGs where setting is more than just backdrop, and is reasonably tightly integrated with the PCs and so more fundamental to players' concerns for their PCs and a source of opposition in itself. In this sort of "story now" RPGing, the players need to have a handle on the setting from the outset, so that they can position their PCs in relation to it. An example of this approach is 4e D&D played with the default setting/cosmology: 4e D&D presents the setting to the players in the race and class write-ups, and in the descriptions of gods and alignments); and it invites the players to build PCs with concerns directly connected to that setting - they are devotees of the Raven Queen, or trying to restore the glory of lost Nerath, or whatever else.
When GMing this sort of game, you will still need to introduce particular setting elements (eg places, people) off-the-cuff, but you need to make sure that when you do this you respect the established elements of the setting that the players have been building and playing their PCs around - otherwise, there is a serious risk of de-protagonisation, and pulling the rug out from under a player. At the same time, you still need to provide opposition as one aspect of facilitation, and to push the players to declare actions for their PCs. So judgement is necessary, and over the course of play hopefully you'll be able to build up a sense of how hard you can push.
To give an example: if a player chooses to build their PC as a Raven Queen devotee, hostile to Orcus, an interesting situation is one in which the player has to choose how hard they will push, and how much they will risk themselves and others, to pursue some undead. But it would be de-protagonising to present a situation, early in play, which reveals that the Raven Queen and Orcus are really collaborators, with their supposed rivalry just a ruse: because that undercuts the whole logic and orientation of the player's concerns for their PC. However, if over the course of play situations recur in which - as those situations play out - the relationship between Raven Queen, undead and Orcus seems to become more and more uncertain, then the idea that their hostility is manufactured or even pretence might be something that is put on the table. (When in doubt, follow the lead of the players.)
A given game might change its character over the course of play. An example is my Classic Traveller game, which began in a way fairly similar to what I described above for Prince Valiant or MHRP: the PCs had reasonably generic motivations coming out of the process of random PC gen that Traveller is famous for, and the earlier sessions of play focused on various situations that engaged those motivations, with setting being introduced by me as GM as it was needed. But as setting elements accreted, a sort of "deep history" started to emerge, involving psionic-using aliens, the opposition between psionics and the Imperium, etc. And some of the players have developed concerns for their PCs that are oriented towards this setting backstory and the associated elements that have figured in play. This puts an onus on me, as GM, to take care with those setting elements and not introduce new revelations or elements that would prejudge or undercut those player-established concerns, and hence de-protagonise those players.
I wonder if anyone who is familiar with the role of Duskvol in BitD could comment on whether it can manifest a comparable sort of trajectory, in the role the setting plays in the play of the game?
There is no single best way to use the setting in "story now" play. In some games, it is likely to be mere backdrop or context - after all, the imaginary events of play have to happen somewhere, and the setting provides those places. Some RPGs I've played where this is the case are Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant, Cthulhu Dark, Marvel Heroic RP, Wuthering Heights and In A Wicked Age. In this sort of RPGing, the opposition is likely to be introduced into play either (i) by decisions that the players make during PC build or during play - NPCs or situations that they are dealing with, for instance - or (ii) by the GM presenting the players (via their PCs) with a situation that speaks to somewhat "generic" player concerns for their PCs.
In saying that setting is backdrop or context, that doesn't make it uninteresting - upthread I posted an account of some BW play, which included a bazaar scene and a wizard's tower. When we were playing, I think these were quite colourful and engaging. What I'm trying to get at, in describing them as backdrop/context, is that they did not, in themselves, really generate the opposition or contain the players' concerns for their PCs. The BW episode I described illustrates (i): during PC build and during play, the player of the sorcerer PC had made demons, sorcerous cabals, and the like salient sources of opposition; and my facilitation and my narration of opposition introduced appropriate setting elements.
Prince Valiant and MHRP are two RPGs that (in my experience) exemplify (ii): the PCs have somewhat "generic" concerns, to do knightly things (Prince Valiant) or to do superheroic things (MHRP), and as a GM my job is to present situations that speak to these concerns, including appropriate setting elements. For instance, in a MHRP session where one player was playing War Machine, we began the session in Washington DC (because that was where our last session had finished) with the PCs going out to a bar in their civvies. Naturally, the women they met and were chatting up were supervillains (the "B.A.D. Girls"), hoping to target an exhibition of Stark tech at the Smithsonian and looking to get help (either inadvertent, or by way of manipulation or seduction) from Rhodes. The bar, the presence there of the villains, the exhibition at the Smithsonian: these were all made up by me as GM as part of the early back-and-forth of the session, framing the situation and setting the scene for (ie facilitating) the action. What makes it "story now" is that the way the scene is framed, and the subsequent action adjudicated, doesn't prejudge what is the "proper" thing for War Machine's player, and the other players, to have their PCs do.
Just to be clear, setting that is introduced as backdrop and context might still figure significantly in particular moments of action resolution: for instance, in the BW episode I described, at a certain point the players decided to have their PCs infiltrate the wizard's tower, and so appropriate actions were declared and resolved. In the MHRP game, Rhodes called in his armour via remote control, and then grabbed one of the villains and flew up to the top of the Washington Monument and left her dangling from it. To reiterate: describing the setting as backdrop/context is not dismissing it as a source of colour and an element of the action, but rather pointing out that it is not the source of opposition, player-established concerns for their PCs, etc - it is introduced subsequently, to facilitate and develop those things.
The contrast with this is provided by RPGs where setting is more than just backdrop, and is reasonably tightly integrated with the PCs and so more fundamental to players' concerns for their PCs and a source of opposition in itself. In this sort of "story now" RPGing, the players need to have a handle on the setting from the outset, so that they can position their PCs in relation to it. An example of this approach is 4e D&D played with the default setting/cosmology: 4e D&D presents the setting to the players in the race and class write-ups, and in the descriptions of gods and alignments); and it invites the players to build PCs with concerns directly connected to that setting - they are devotees of the Raven Queen, or trying to restore the glory of lost Nerath, or whatever else.
When GMing this sort of game, you will still need to introduce particular setting elements (eg places, people) off-the-cuff, but you need to make sure that when you do this you respect the established elements of the setting that the players have been building and playing their PCs around - otherwise, there is a serious risk of de-protagonisation, and pulling the rug out from under a player. At the same time, you still need to provide opposition as one aspect of facilitation, and to push the players to declare actions for their PCs. So judgement is necessary, and over the course of play hopefully you'll be able to build up a sense of how hard you can push.
To give an example: if a player chooses to build their PC as a Raven Queen devotee, hostile to Orcus, an interesting situation is one in which the player has to choose how hard they will push, and how much they will risk themselves and others, to pursue some undead. But it would be de-protagonising to present a situation, early in play, which reveals that the Raven Queen and Orcus are really collaborators, with their supposed rivalry just a ruse: because that undercuts the whole logic and orientation of the player's concerns for their PC. However, if over the course of play situations recur in which - as those situations play out - the relationship between Raven Queen, undead and Orcus seems to become more and more uncertain, then the idea that their hostility is manufactured or even pretence might be something that is put on the table. (When in doubt, follow the lead of the players.)
A given game might change its character over the course of play. An example is my Classic Traveller game, which began in a way fairly similar to what I described above for Prince Valiant or MHRP: the PCs had reasonably generic motivations coming out of the process of random PC gen that Traveller is famous for, and the earlier sessions of play focused on various situations that engaged those motivations, with setting being introduced by me as GM as it was needed. But as setting elements accreted, a sort of "deep history" started to emerge, involving psionic-using aliens, the opposition between psionics and the Imperium, etc. And some of the players have developed concerns for their PCs that are oriented towards this setting backstory and the associated elements that have figured in play. This puts an onus on me, as GM, to take care with those setting elements and not introduce new revelations or elements that would prejudge or undercut those player-established concerns, and hence de-protagonise those players.
I wonder if anyone who is familiar with the role of Duskvol in BitD could comment on whether it can manifest a comparable sort of trajectory, in the role the setting plays in the play of the game?
This post is about stakes. It will be shorter than the previous one.
As a "story now" GM, remember that what is at stake - that is to say, the way the opposition that you've presented speaks to the players' concerns for their PCs - does not have to be grand, let alone grandiose. It just has to matter.
Think about things that matter to people in real life: Who will look after my pets while I'm on holiday? How am I going to pay my rent? even How are we going to split this restaurant bill?
In RPGing where the players establish the concerns for their PCs', and where your job as GM is to facilitate the expression of and engagement with those concerns, including by providing opposition, you can go small just as much and just as easily as you can go big. The main constraint, I think, is not the scope of the fiction but rather what can your chosen system's action resolution rules handle.
It is because many systems oriented towards "story now" RPGing can handle small stakes as well as more grand ones that they can tend to produce play that feels more "intimate" or inward-focused.
As a "story now" GM, remember that what is at stake - that is to say, the way the opposition that you've presented speaks to the players' concerns for their PCs - does not have to be grand, let alone grandiose. It just has to matter.
Think about things that matter to people in real life: Who will look after my pets while I'm on holiday? How am I going to pay my rent? even How are we going to split this restaurant bill?
In RPGing where the players establish the concerns for their PCs', and where your job as GM is to facilitate the expression of and engagement with those concerns, including by providing opposition, you can go small just as much and just as easily as you can go big. The main constraint, I think, is not the scope of the fiction but rather what can your chosen system's action resolution rules handle.
It is because many systems oriented towards "story now" RPGing can handle small stakes as well as more grand ones that they can tend to produce play that feels more "intimate" or inward-focused.
AnotherGuy
Hero
This is a great thread pemerton. I've just discovered it so I've got quite a bit of reading to get through.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I think Doskvol is MOSTLY backdrop, and a source of tone and helps establish the specific genre of the game. However, it has 2 major parts to it. One is the physical setting, the city itself and the general environs, the death lands, the lightning rail, etc. The other part though is the social structure of gangs and crews, social stratification and exploitation, etc. that drives the characters. So a LOT of character motive drops in from the setting, but far from all of it. The city is fairly well detailed, but not down to the level of the layouts of buildings or even the nature of most of them, nor things like what lies beneath the city, or outside it. There are a pretty decent roster of NPCs, but they only represent a few of the more influential ones (most of the major gangs have one or two named figures in them, etc.).
So, maybe starting off things might typically be driven for the first couple of sessions mostly by an interaction between what the players feel like doing and what's presented in the setting, mixed with GM introductions and some random stuff. Over time things are more likely to get pretty focused on stuff the PCs are into, and dealing with the fallout from whatever they did before, as it interacts with what they've come up with to do next. At least in our game a lot of it was sort of 'outrunning chaos', we'd make a bunch of tier one enemies and then move on to tier two and kind of leave those in our dust, along with situations best not thought about too much.
But then whatever you are about to collide with is probably also something that was at least mentioned in the setting. Like we eventually got to tangle indirectly with the Governor of Doskvol and the City Council more directly. They're kind of big wheels that ignore you at first.
niklinna
satisfied?
So much this. I see a tendency for story now advocates to promote rapid escalation of consequences to life-or-death as ideal, and yeah they're great on occasion, but I find a continual series of them to be emotionally exhausting. The sim/realism folks do have a point there, but I often feel like I'm being pressed to adopt one extreme or the other, instead of being able to navigate the space between them. So no, I don't want to deal with the guards at the town gate, or haggling at the market Just Because, but also I don't need every climb to be Mount Everest. Maybe haggling at the market is necessary to get a nice gift for the barkeep I'm sweet on. Maybe fetching those special herbs at the top of the local hill is enough of a hike, and maybe we can enjoy the view once we get there, with little at risk except being a bit winded or twisting an ankle. Sure, that can presage or feed into a later, bigger escalation, but I'd like a variety of smaller peaks & troughs instead of a continuous incline or a regular sine wave.
Stonetop, as one example, kind of supports this with its expedition & steading phases. The former tend to be (much) higher stakes, the latter vary a lot more but can include lower-stakes things. My ranger had lost two hounds on our first expedition, for example, so I went to the town dog breeder and through some light back-and-forth got a cranky, mangy mastiff I had to cure and retrain. I also just got handed a free horse, but it's lamed, and will need some tender loving care as well. On the other hand, I did go out to fetch some herbs (to help with a high-stakes ritual) and got accosted by poachers on our land (through my own choice not to avoid danger due to a 7–9 dice roll), and, largely and ironically because I actually wasn't in the mood for high drama to result from that right away, I feigned retreat and then attacked with my pets as soon as they dismounted and killed or took them prisoner, and got their horses to boot! This also resulted in my character's instinct changing from "harmony" (so bland) to "ruthlessness", as I realized my character was Not In The Mood For That Crap.
I'm still figuring out how to tune into my own wants with regard to intensity, and with how to convey my desires ("let's floor it!") and limits ("I do not want to see that character come to that kind of harm") during moment-by-moment play—which is often when I realize what my (ever-changing) desires and limits are, and part of why I play story now (session zero talk does not help you discover your limits). I think this is a skill that needs quite deliberate fostering, and short of saying, "I want to go this far tonight", or "I do not want to push this any further right now", I'm not sure how. And to be clear, I think it's totally legit to speak that bluntly about what I want in a gaming experience as it unfolds, but there's a heck of a lot of inertia and momentum making that difficult for me. The main tool I've used in moment-by-moment play is to not pick the option that leaves an opening for danger, but that is a switch rather than a dial, and I know I'm not here for uniformly anodyne play—I want to be challenged, but maybe only so much, right now, I've had a day, thanks.
Bit of a ramble, but maybe some folks can relate to this.
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