Gumshoe, its genus of RPGs, and distancing mechanics

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Brett

When I'm GMing I like character-players to exercise creative initiative, and I find it a problem that they too often feel not entitled to do so. I hoped the FATE might be the answer, but I did not find it to be so.

How so, how did you expect it to help, and how did it fail to?

Originally Posted by Brett

Writing which suddenly reminds me that in all my time playing James Bond 007 I only ever spent one Hero Point, and that was when having found a speedboat just where I wanted one I spent a Hero Point to have it be a red one.

For some reason that paragraph sounded extremely cool.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

How so, how did you expect it to help, and how did it fail to?

I had a group of players who did not feel free, or did not feel confident, to add detail to the game world from the character-players' chairs as I like players to do. I played a session of Spirit of the Century with the (one of the others GMing) and observed then enthusiastically spending Fate Points to do things that I would have been happy for them to do for free. I supposed that the rules and mechanisms of FATE might be providing them a reassuring framework for doing what they did not feel prepared to do in a more freeform way. So I ran a few scenes, adventures, and two abortive campaigns using FATE, but success was very limited, and overwhelmed by features and qualities of FATE that were not congenial to us.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Brett

Note that this is quite different from die roll used to resolve the outcome of a uncertain event in the game world, which is a simulation of chance in the game world. This, and not the management of Fate Points was breaking point for FATE with my friends and me. Dicing for narrative control, and worse negotiating concessions, hauled us out of an attitude of identification with our characters, and spoiled the dramatic feeling of the narrative as arising out of the interplay of character and incident in a developing situation. We found it mood-busting, SoD-busting, and narrative-spoiling.

This almost suggests an underlying philosophical difference. I've written about Ayn Rand's definition of "romanticism" in terms of characters having volition, and about my own recasting of that as being about characters having agency, the power to make things happen. This other style of play almost seems like a representation of what Rand would call "naturalism": The portrayal of characters who lack agency. On one hand, the character's ability to act is strictly limited by the formal convention of a point budget, so that, in your example, they can fail to perform a task not because their skill isn't up to it but because the game mechanic says they have to give someone else a turn. But on the other, the whole approach is almost a dramatization of the idea that people live as pawns of fate, or their social class, or their psychological compulsions, or some puppeteer that pulls their strings—in the last analysis, by the decision of the storyteller to make them do things.

I've thought for some time that characters in a story acquire free will by the novelist's identification with them, which lets the character, in effect, say to the novelist, "No, I wouldn't do that, and you can't make me." A corollary of that might be that if you don't identify, but observe from outside and manipulate, the characters don't have free will.

Or maybe this is making too much soup from one onion.

Bill Stoddard

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The real question, to me, seems to be, why is this being called "narrativist"?

Because the mechanics are about who narrates. That doesn't mean it's the only possible meaning "narrativist" could have had, or that it's the only possible meaning the word has in the current gaming community. It's just the one people started using to distinguish the design from the more common simulationist style. Why is the GURPS ability called "Warp" and not just "Teleport"?

RPGs give players (in theory) an unlimited scope of agency. You can try to do anything you want, certainly by contrast with the traditional wargame. Since no set of rules less detailed and complex than the universe is going to be able to resolve "anything" mechanically, we have referees. That in turn made the GM the focus for the narrative. The GMs are providing the story for their entire campaign. If you have more than one player that wants to GM, you might alternate campaigns; you can think of this of a way of rotating narrative control at a coarse granularity. Gamers invented troupe-style play, which rotates the GM position and thus that narrative reponsbility and control from story to story, different adventures within the same campaign. The "narrativist" game designs are trying to manage that rotation on an even more fine-grained basis, within a single storyline, and even a single scene.

Inevitably, players will have different ideas about where the story should go, so there's a need to resolve this conflict. The childhood games of Let's Pretend are famous for arguments of the "Bang! You're dead! No, I'm not!" sort. Traditional RPGs have lots of rules to adjudicate the banging and whether or not you're dead. The narrative conflict is resolved just by assigning it solely to the GM. There are other shared storytelling forms, though. The shared writing projects, where one person has to pick up a story from where the other left off, usually rotates either according to a fixed schedule, or on a first-come, first-served basis. Stage improv is famous for the "Yes, but" rule, and relies on the skill of the actors to pass control to entertain an external audience. To me, this "narrativist" style seems to be about trying to invent rules to dynamically govern that sharing process, rather than having it assigned up front, or relying entirely on goodwill.

I agree with you that none of this says anything at all about the quality of the story, how coherent the narrative is, or how entertained the players are by the resulting story, as opposed to the process of wrestling over it. (Sometimes people care more about winning a conflict than having whatever it is the conflict is ostensibly about.) You might get more of the latter with some sort of voting mechanism, where players give others points or dice according to how entertained they feel, so that the most entertaining players wind up with more narration control.

I'm even more skeptical of the prospect of mechanics producing a "good" story. Those usually take crafting by a skilled author. But, there are at least rules of thumb about that, the sort of thing they teach in writing and drama classes. This seems to be the angle for the sort of narrativist system where the mechanics are trying to cause a particular shape of narrative arc to emerge. Rising action, conflict, denouement, etc.; or suggestions like the ones to emulate the classic (if not cliche) form of TV mystery, for instance. I'm not sure these kinds of mechanics would work well in practice, or are even necessary. If everyone wants that story arc, that's what you'd get; you only need conflict resolution mechanics when there's a conflict over the outcome.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Because the mechanics are about who narrates. That doesn't mean it's the only possible meaning "narrativist" could have had, or that it's the only possible meaning the word has in the current gaming community. It's just the one people started using to distinguish the design from the more common simulationist style.

Unfortunately I think the use of the term "simulationist" in this system of discourse is even less plausible as a meaning of "simulationist." I've discussed this elsewhere but I can restate it if you think it would be useful.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

I'm even more skeptical of the prospect of mechanics producing a "good" story. Those usually take crafting by a skilled author. But, there are at least rules of thumb about that, the sort of thing they teach in writing and drama classes. This seems to be the angle for the sort of narrativist system where the mechanics are trying to cause a particular shape of narrative arc to emerge. Rising action, conflict, denouement, etc.; or suggestions like the ones to emulate the classic (if not cliche) form of TV mystery, for instance. I'm not sure these kinds of mechanics would work well in practice, or are even necessary. If everyone wants that story arc, that's what you'd get; you only need conflict resolution mechanics when there's a conflict over the outcome.

My experience has been that most campaigns—and most scenarios, in a campaign that is divisible into discrete episodes—have rising action, conflict, and denouement with no formal mechanism for bringing them about.

Bill Stoddard

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Brett

Writing which suddenly reminds me that in all my time playing James Bond 007 I only ever spent one Hero Point, and that was when having found a speedboat just where I wanted one I spent a Hero Point to have it be a red one.

In terms of Sagatafl's Luck Point system, that would have been a mistake, usually, since the purpose of its Luck Point is to make the character be observably lucky, by the other characters, in-world. Never for the player's amusement.

So it's a resource that the player gets to choose when to spend, but there's a duty assocaited with that privilege:

All LP uses have to benefit the character.

Of course, perhaps it did benefit the character... Maybe escaping from the bad guys in a red speed boat looks more stylish than if it had been some other colour? Maybe it'll impress other characters more, that way? Maybe it'll increase his chances of getting laid, later that day? All of those can be desirable for the character, from his point of view.

And it's not as if it ought to cost a whole lot of LP to alter the colour of a vehicle, when that vehicle is already there, and the colour is fairly normal (for that kind of vehicle). It'd be something else if the player wanted the speed boat to be striped pink and purple, with sparkly silver dots. That would (usually[1]) have been a clear-cut example of the kind of "for-the-lulz"-expenditure of LP that I don't want to see.

The LP are owned by the character, not by the player. The character is one of those few in the world who has LP, and has one or more Luck Traits that makes it possible to spend those LP (in more or less specific ways), then the purpose is for the character to be seen, over time, to exhibit a pattern of being luckier than average.

"But it amuses me," from the player, is never a valid argument for expending LP. The player doesn't exist. The character exists. The proper question to ask is "Was this good for the character? Better than it would otherwise have been?"



[1] The exception might be a Stylish Luck Trait, which specifically allows the expenditure of LP to affect small-scale world changes that fits the character's style, and makes him truer to concept, makes him cooler or more impressive. If a clown- or joker-type character had that Luck Trait, then it would be stylish for him to escape in a very odd-looking speed boat (because that makes him look sillier). Although it'd still cost more LP than just to have it be red (while merely-red would also be style-appropriate for a much wider range of characters). Sagatafl doesn't have such a Luck Trait yet, but it's fairly easy to add it into the existing structure of broad/medium/narrow Luck Traits.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I've thought for some time that characters in a story acquire free will by the novelist's identification with them, which lets the character, in effect, say to the novelist, "No, I wouldn't do that, and you can't make me." A corollary of that might be that if you don't identify, but observe from outside and manipulate, the characters don't have free will.

I've had one NPC from my Ärth setting do that, in a prose story that I'm writting, as part of the setting's background.

Kolku of Ulster was tasked with solving the murder of an ArchDruid, and "followed the track" to it's decoy end, a couple of archers who lauched the arrows. He was then supposed to stop there and arrest the archers, in exchange for getting promoted to ArchDruid himself. He was supposed to ignore the clues that pointed towards another ArchDruid being ultimately behind the murder (so that that ArchDruid's former student could get the newly vacated ArchDruidic position, as part of an elaborate and long-term power grab).

I originally envisioned it as an example of corruption and tragedy.

But Kolku went all "No ****ing way!" on me.

He wasn't having any of that. Even if it means never getting into the panties of the murderer's former student, whom Kolku has been interested in for many years. Even if it means ending up in bad standing with most of the druidic hierarchy. Even if, in spite of harbouring quite a dislike for the guilty ArchDruid, Kolku is quite reluctant to draw that conclusion, looking for more clues and evidence to support it before he'll finally accept it.

So he ends up publically announcing that the ArchDruid was behind the murder, and that at a specific date almost a year later, he'll infiltrate the supposedly impenetrable Castle Fantastic, helped by a former student of the murder victim (who first needs to travel to Constantinopolis, to find out how to perfect the art of casting spells without chanting, so he can use magic more freely in spite of his speech impediment), and execute the ArchDruid. And of course, being Kolku of Ulster, he then does exactly what he said he'd do, helped by the victim's former student and a few others.

(He also does get an ArchDruidical position rather similar to the one that he sort-of-wanted, supported by a cabal of non-mainstream Druids (and by his immense popularity among the nobility and commoners - he's easily Reputation +4 in GURPS terms, due to all the Trolls and Vikings and other monsters he has killed), while the murderer's former student gets the position of the murder victim - and never sleeps with Kolku.)

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by whswhs

My experience has been that most campaigns—and most scenarios, in a campaign that is divisible into discrete episodes—have rising action, conflict, and denouement with no formal mechanism for bringing them about.

Where I often find myself in this sort of debate is apparently opposed to Robin Laws - an uncomfortable place to be. His thesis seems to be that RPGs benefit by following a story structure broadly inherited from other media (hence Hamlet's Hit Points). Mine is an historical counterexample: film didn't become really interesting until it stopped trying to be a different form of theatre and started to develop its own story structure. Trying to convert a novel, or more usually a short story, directly into a film, while keeping the same story structure, is very often a failure. SImilarly I think that RPGs have their own native story structures, which don't always have that rise-and-fall pattern that you mention but can still be entirely satisfying.

For example: what happens if the PCs get really creative, and instead of having the planned firefight in the bad guys' base manage to get what they want by a combination of stealth and carefully-placed explosives? Fine with me! The reward the players get is the satisfaction of having come up with a really good plan.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

His thesis seems to be that RPGs benefit by following a story structure broadly inherited from other media (hence Hamlet's Hit Points).

Are you sure you have that right? RPGs have a fundamental difference from most media, in that they're (more or less) equally about several characters: the PCs. That changes story structure a great deal, and I'd expect someone as well-known as Robin to understand that.