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Jan. 25th, 2003 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotnik2004We're supposed to be playing Unknown Armies on Monday, and I'm kinda stumped as to what is going to happen.
I've got piles of ideas: weird people to meet and places to go and plots to be embroiled in and so forth. Coming up with that stuff is easy and fun. It's logistics that drive me crazy. How do I herd the PCs to the place where the story kicks in? Will they investigate lead A or lead B? Will they be interested in subplot C or subplot D? Now, I don't think that "railroading" is always the crime that a lot of gamers say it is. My Adventure! game was a massive exercise in consensual railroading and that seemed entirely appropriate for the genre. But it is a lot of work, and I'm not all that interested in doing it week after week after week.
I have this idea, though. If, say, I want to run a session where the PCs are in rural Appalachia searching for the Book of Good Roads, or are being chased by an implacable bounty hunter across the New Mexican desert, why can't I just start the session by saying "You're in rural Appalachia, searching for the Book of Good Roads." Or "You're in the New Mexican desert. A bounty hunter is chasing you." If I was going to run a one-shot, that's what I'd do, and nobody would complain. Couldn't you run an extended campaign this way?
It sounds like I'm robbing the players of their autonomy, and to some extent I am, but all the herding takes place "off screen," between sessions. In a lot of ways the players end up with more "in game" autonomy, because I've already established the situation I want to explore. They now have absolute freedom in how they respond to it. No need to spend half the session asking "What do you want to do? Wouldn't you like to look into that intriguing-sounding McGuffin that NPC muttered about last session? [clatter of dice] You hear rumors it might be in Appalachia..." And of course, if the players say, "but we wanted to go to Minnesota!" then I can always start out the next session with, "You are in Minnesota."
Basically it's the difference between a TV show like 24, where each episode leads directly into the next one, and one like Samurai Jack, where we have no idea how much time has elapsed between epsisodes or even what order the stories come in. The latter probably leads to a more picaresque, episodic story structure, but then that was always part of my plan for this game.
I've got piles of ideas: weird people to meet and places to go and plots to be embroiled in and so forth. Coming up with that stuff is easy and fun. It's logistics that drive me crazy. How do I herd the PCs to the place where the story kicks in? Will they investigate lead A or lead B? Will they be interested in subplot C or subplot D? Now, I don't think that "railroading" is always the crime that a lot of gamers say it is. My Adventure! game was a massive exercise in consensual railroading and that seemed entirely appropriate for the genre. But it is a lot of work, and I'm not all that interested in doing it week after week after week.
I have this idea, though. If, say, I want to run a session where the PCs are in rural Appalachia searching for the Book of Good Roads, or are being chased by an implacable bounty hunter across the New Mexican desert, why can't I just start the session by saying "You're in rural Appalachia, searching for the Book of Good Roads." Or "You're in the New Mexican desert. A bounty hunter is chasing you." If I was going to run a one-shot, that's what I'd do, and nobody would complain. Couldn't you run an extended campaign this way?
It sounds like I'm robbing the players of their autonomy, and to some extent I am, but all the herding takes place "off screen," between sessions. In a lot of ways the players end up with more "in game" autonomy, because I've already established the situation I want to explore. They now have absolute freedom in how they respond to it. No need to spend half the session asking "What do you want to do? Wouldn't you like to look into that intriguing-sounding McGuffin that NPC muttered about last session? [clatter of dice] You hear rumors it might be in Appalachia..." And of course, if the players say, "but we wanted to go to Minnesota!" then I can always start out the next session with, "You are in Minnesota."
Basically it's the difference between a TV show like 24, where each episode leads directly into the next one, and one like Samurai Jack, where we have no idea how much time has elapsed between epsisodes or even what order the stories come in. The latter probably leads to a more picaresque, episodic story structure, but then that was always part of my plan for this game.
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-27 06:07 am (UTC)What specifically is Reese "introspecting" about? Something about the old man's mutterings and his apparent backstory? Or just the obvious moral issues involved in feeding an apparently helpless old man to a giant alligator?
no subject
Date: 2003-01-27 06:49 am (UTC)The moral issues... he's kind of OK with feeding the guy to the alligator, but he feels there ought to be compensation. Not in an Old Testament sense, he's not waiting for the world to strike back at him, but he thinks that he ought to do something to rebalance things. This is particularly acute because it seems like the old guy might have been one of his patron saints. Leaving the Ponce de Leon crowd untouched rankles. That doesn't mean that I as a player need to go back immediately, but if Reese ever figures out what to do I might request another Florida trip sometime. It does mean that right after the Florida trip Reese is spending a lot of time muttering to himself, and it'd be good to get that period past him and let time heal a few of the sharp edges.
This also ties in to the answer to your Third Character Question (I haven't forgotten!). Email on that coming soon, I promise.
By the by, is this the sort of talk about gaming that Ron Edwards claims we don't do?