thread: 2006-03-20 : Creating Situation: a practical example
On 2006-03-21, Vincent wrote:
Ethan: "How would you go about applying these principles to a long-term game? Like, a situation that spans several sessions of play? Would it simply be a matter of making a more complex situation, or are there different principles at work in a long-term game?"
Great question.
First: the size, the scale, of the characters' interests.
In my example above the characters all have wicked short-term interests: screw the guy, screw the girl, toss the girl into a hole. An hour from now all those questions will be answered.
But consider that each of those characters has interests simultaneously of at least three sizes: the immediate, the intermediate, the ultimate. The trickster god's immediately interested in waking up, but what are His longer-term interests? Accumulating a body of worshippers? Restoring the world to its pre-civilization chaos? Throwing down the current pantheon? Becoming incorporated into the current pantheon? Embodying Himself as a mortal? Could be any!
So now we're creating conflicts of interest that span months, years, decades, lifetimes, right? But that by itself isn't going to make the game longer, so...
Second: the size of the character's ability to act.
What makes the game longer is the ratio of action to interest. How much doing does it take to resolve the conflicts?
GM: okay, Mitch, what do you do next?
Mitch: I need a body of followers, so I attract a body of followers.
GM: roll for it!
vs.
GM: okay, Mitch, what do you do next?
Mitch: I need a body of followers, so I start by finding an old woman down on her luck.
GM: roll for it!
1. Small-scale actions + short-term interests = short play.
2. Large-scale actions + long-term interests = short play.
3. Small-scale actions + long-term interests = long play.
Make sense?
Now this game I'm envisioning? You can't tell it from just the post above, you have to read this comment too from the parent thread, and extrapolate, but this game I'm envisioning, it's a long playing game. How?
Because as these wham-bam situations go by, a set of recurring characters builds. Those recurring characters do have long-term interests, which develop over the course of the early game, and which have their expression right here:
So now we start the next story. We look at the first name under "we owe": the priestess. She's automatically in it! You choose to represent her thus: "A novice priestess, untried but good-hearted." (And we're like, dude, this story is totally happening in the past! Rock!) Plus you get to choose another element to be automatically in, and let's say that you choose "Events: The flight of a prince and his forbidden lover into hiding. (Wilderness)"
You get to contribute elements to your character's short-term situations that are relevant to her increasingly long-term story.
