thread: 2009-06-08 : Restating: Fictional Causes and Realization
On 2009-06-19, Josh W wrote:
Ralf, sometimes I just want the game to pause while I contemplate that awesome thing, like you stepping out of the narrative and just inflating that fictional world out of your imagination. But while I'm doing that, what's that in a social context? Zip.
It's just me going coma for a sec while everyone waits for my turn. At that point I'd like to translate that cool thing I'm doing into something everyone can share, activating it as things people can work with, but not in such a way as it invalidates the original activity. Plus I'd like to hear what is in other people's heads, because sometimes I might prefer the thing they thought of.
Marshal, totally on your wavelength there. Mutual creation, with all that emergent surfable coolness of a good jam.
But there is another side too; say I do something that invalidates options in an important way in my head, I don't want the game to carry on like I didn't just destroy the bridge we were going to cross. Why? Because that is a part of my characters arc, and symbolises this or that, and looked pretty awesome and momentous in my head. I don't mind us finding another way after a little effort, but I want to shift the pacing just a little as a consequence. That's something many GMs normally try to avoid, the "moment of silence" diversion, but I prefer those GMs who respect it (most of the time) but resolve it un-momentously to those who use it's lack of mechanical traction to ride over it as if it didn't happen.
Callan, I think you're really right on that first bit. One lovely friend of mine got totally driven off rp'ing because my brother kept vetoing his stuff for predictability. It's true he was totally predictable, but I was happy to let him start predictable and move on to his own stuff as and when he learned what it was he liked. I'd like to rehabilitate him to eyes-closed creation without that thumbs up/down confidence-trash, so he can move on to the point where he can deal with more abrupt feedback.
I would say that I think you can get creative on demand, but it's hard; like a journalist, you have to find a new angle, a skew-eyed deterministic transformation of the current situation that no one else can follow, but likes the result. You basically need to meet my Grampa! But on the other hand repeating such a pattern won't challenge you, so there's more to be said.
Creativity is like research; you jump into the land of the unknown and see what you pull out. It has to fail sometimes, or it's not really pushing. In that sense you manage your risks, and mix your time between rockets and skyscrapers. One gets you high consistently, the other might get you higher!
