10-19-2018, 04:20 AM | #41 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: Drama, dice-rolls and Plot
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At times, i have started a session with only things written down being the protagonist (rarely in any detal) and what he wants to accomplish (and why). Quote:
As for the dice, I think they add suspense, not drama. While a very bad or very good dice roll might be memorable ***, it's not a story either. I have also rolled dice at times, frowned at the result, then continued on without comment, to see if I can get players worried. * Inspired by Shadowrun, but less cyber and more horror ** Given that the PCs were police detectives, it seemed appropriate *** I remember four over 35 years, including a mage getting a critical success (create fireball) and critical failure (throw fireball) on consecutive rolls.
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A generous and sadistic GM, Brandon Cope GURPS 3e stuff: http://copeab.tripod.com |
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10-19-2018, 06:05 AM | #42 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: Drama, dice-rolls and Plot
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OTOH, for fans of the participants or sport, a much lower degree of skill at retelling the story is required, as they already have an interest. I recall the episode of Red Dwarf where Rimmer went into great detail on a game of Risk he played once, and when Lister asked high m how he remembered all the die rolls, he said it was because he kept a Risk journal ...
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A generous and sadistic GM, Brandon Cope GURPS 3e stuff: http://copeab.tripod.com |
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10-19-2018, 08:38 AM | #43 | |||
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Drama, dice-rolls and Plot
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Its tricky to do, and I have to admit I throw away or warp a lot of the results I get. I often use custom tables as well, or very generic ones that give ideas. The dice aren't dictating what happens: they're assisting me in my brainstorming. And usually I'll come up with three or four ideas this way and use one of them. I've got good automatic rollers for the things I do a lot of, and I can quickly build more, so I can bang things out pretty quickly. As an example, I needed to build a political framework between 6 cities for a game. To do this, I rolled up 6 NPC's using the collaborative gamers NPC generation system (I have an automated generator for that). Then I randomly generated a graph of "Good connections" between the 6 city rulers. I also generated a sympathy rating, their background (military, civilian, religious), and a competency rating. I knew which location needed to be the ring leader, and that he needed to be military, so I assigned the graph and the NPC profile to that location. I also knew one city had to be politically isolated from the others and have a certain type of leadership, so I assigned that. Then I distributed locations, graph relationships, and NPC's to the different cities. And then I sat down and figured out why these relationships worked. Why is the short fat appointed incompetent civic leader friends with absolutely everyone? Perhaps he's good at the wining, dining, and politicing aspect of things. There are two military leaders, and one of them is the leader of the faction... perhaps the other one is trying to imitate the actions of the more successful. The drama came when the PC's tried to navigate this political system. Who do they need to beat in battle to stop everyone? who can be used as a neutral party to negotiate a treaty? Who can be easily bought off? Who can be brought into the war, and what can you offer them? Often, when I'm struggling to be creative, I find that imposing limits gets my mind going. Its easier to come up with a reason why the true power in a city is informal than to just build a city power structure from scratch. And you need to have just the right random tables. I usually build custom ones when I'm noodling with an idea, and run it a few times to make sure the ratios come out right. Quote:
I don't have that stable of NPC's, so I use the dice. As a side note, how did you build the stable, and how do you ensure you have someone appropriate for every situation?
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Be helpful, not pedantic Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one! |
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10-19-2018, 09:18 AM | #44 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Drama, dice-rolls and Plot
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This is maybe a cheeky suggestion, but I wonder, Bill, if it would make it at all more interesting for you to think of it as a process a bit like divination, without the superstition. You're looking for some inspiration from outside yourself, so you just throw down the bones, the sticks, the cards, or whatever, and then try to generate an interesting and logical solution to your problem within the framework of whatever's now on the table. I find that I really enjoy that process of interpretation. When I have to force my imagination into an odd-shaped box, I'm more likely to come up with things that surprise me.
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My (ahem... hugely entertaining... ahem) GURPS blog: The Collaborative Gamer |
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10-19-2018, 12:36 PM | #45 | ||||
Forum Pervert
(If you have to ask . . .) Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Somewhere high up.
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Re: Drama, dice-rolls and Plot
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I do minimal planning as well. I know what the goal is, and maybe even an idea of how they'll accomplish it. But, then we'll go. Quote:
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If I think the scenario is going to require a specific type of NPC, I'll create it before the game. Otherwise, there's someone in my stable that will work. The most recent NPC I had to create, from scratch, during a game, was Gnagagnodart, the insane gnome jeweler. The only thing I generated randomly was his name, and even that wound up getting tweaked as I didn't quite like the original. I decided that he was . . . not normal. I decided that he was an amazing jeweler. I decided on his voice. I decided that he had a massive, dwarf-enviable beard (and nose-hairs) that had all of his jewelers tools tied to (so he'd stop losing them). My players are freaked out because they know that he's now, permanently, in the stable, and they'll meet him again, in other games. |
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10-20-2018, 07:35 PM | #46 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Drama, dice-rolls and Plot
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A narrative involves statements that form a chronological sequence, not just in that the reader or hearer must encounter them in some order (for one thing, any set of statements can be read in a variety of orders, or, if heard, can be recited in a different order). Those statements describe a series of events. The events must be causally interconnected; if not, what you have isn't a single narrative, but multiple narrative. In a literary narrative (as opposed to, say, a description of the sequence of events that make up a cycle in a V8 internal combustion engine, or the detonation of a hydrogen bomb), a significant part of the causation is agent causation. It's not mandatary for the agents to be humans, but they must be entities that human beings can imagine taking the viewpoint of. I'm sure there are other constraints, but I think that those apply to the kind of narrative that goes into RPGs, and that they do exclude many, many sets of statements.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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10-20-2018, 10:01 PM | #47 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Drama, dice-rolls and Plot
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a narrative does not have to be a story, and requires neither drama nor plot. |
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10-20-2018, 10:42 PM | #48 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Drama, dice-rolls and Plot
Primarily because I was responding to Stormcrow's statement that "It doesn't become storytelling until I tell you about it later and I impose a narrative structure on it." I was saying that you don't need to "impose a narrative structure" on an rpg, because narrative structure is inherent in rpgs. It m ay be a minor point, but I have presented other arguments for rpgs having other storylike qualities.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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