thread: 2006-03-20 : Creating Situation: a practical example
On 2006-03-21, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
One thing I particularly like about this is that there's a quantified, mechanical link between the short-term conflict and the long-term story: If I pick easy fights, I'll probably gain control over the current scene but lose control over the next entire situation/adventure/chapter; if I pick hard fights, I'll probably lose control over the current scene but gain control over the next whole situation. And that dilemma is lovely, but more important to me is the very fact that "small, here, now" is linked to "big, there, later." Chapter links to story, tactical to strategic.
Here's my rant: In most RPGs, this link is pretty weak—even Indie RPGs.
In D&D, as the ur-example, "I kill this baby kobold, right here, right now" is linked by the XP/levelling up system to "eventually, I become uber strong and have a castle! Whoot!" Which actually works great as long as you're all about the killing of things. But often people try "do I save the kingdom from the Dark Evil of Badness?" And there's no system to link "I hit the baby kobold with my shoe again!" to "I save the kingdom!"—except GM fiat, aka "poor Herbie has to wing it again because the written system doesn't help."
In Prime Time Adventures, to take a really great Indie game that also fails to do this, I know my character's Issue, I know when that Issue is going to be secondary to other peoples' (low screen presence) and when it's going to be the center of attention (my spotlight episode). And I know to frame every single conflict in terms of that issue. I can even earn Fan Mail now that I can spend to help me later.
But! Whether and how I lose or win the current conflict has no mechanical effect on my chances to lose or win the next conflict, or to choose what the next conflict will be about. How do I determine what winning or losing this conflict, right now, means for the resolution of the whole episode, let alone the whole season? I wing it. The good news is that it's no longer just Poor Herbie the GM, it's the whole group working together in that amazing PTA-induced group brainstorming vibe, but if that vibe breaks down... you're on your own, because the written system doesn't help you.
I'm speaking from recent experience, having had exactly this kind of breakdown at the beginning of the last episode of an otherwise rockingly cool PTA season. We're contemplating The Mountain Witch next, and I'm looking forward, but I don't think Witch has a robust mechanical link either: There's this wonderfully crunchy Trust system where I can see, by glancing at the piles of chips, who trusts whom how much and how that's changing—and then there's some minimally structured Drama of "here's your Dark Fate, introduce it and keep the pressure on, you're ready for your final confrontation when, y'know, you know you're ready."
By contrast, Capes links now-to-then very well: Win or lose, you get Inspirations out of a hotly contested conflict that give you big bonuses to win later conflicts. But Capes doesn't give you much help on small-to-big (chapter-to-story, tactical-to-strategic). That's in part because Capes emphatically does not care about scale and treats "I make it to dinner on time with my love interest" exactly the same way as "I save the universe," which is actually a lovely thing, but there's no way for me as a player to choose some overarching goal across multiple conflicts and make it stick. (Tony did try to nest conflicts and scenes inside larger "Issues" in early versions of the game but never made it work to his satisfaction).
By contrast, My Life with Master makes this link very, very tight: Everything I do potentially affects the Love, Self-Loathing, and Weariness scores that determine my ultimate fate. Neither the GM nor the group as a whole has to wing it, because how small things, here and now, affect the ultimate big thing is absolutely explicit. No other game I've played does that, although I know With Great Power...'s Story Arc system is all about this kind of linkage.
Then again, Master and Power are each designed to produce one, specific kind of story ("minions are brutalized, minions find love, minions overthrow master and are transformed as people" and "heroes are smacked around by bad guys, heroes rebound, heroes defeat bad guys—or, well, not—and are transformed as people either way"). But I'm not sure that's a necessary limit of systems with tight tactical-strategic linkage, just a limit of the state of our art.
Note that traditional wargames actually do this pretty well: This engagement between these units on this part of the map, on this turn, affects the whole game—and a moderately skilled player can see how, just by looking at the board. I'd love to have this kind of clarity about how "Story Now" emerges in an open-ended narrativist RPG. I don't think anyone's done it, yet, not even Vincent, and even this idea is not-quite-there yet.
This, of course, assumes anyone but me cares...
This makes LP go "Yes, PTA"
is a game I want to play more, but the lightness of the system, while a feature in some ways, does two things. 1) It risks leaving gamers in the lurch, as you described. 2) It elicits the knee-jerk response, "But if I'm doing this anyway, I don't need the PTA rules, and if I'm not, they won't help. Still pondering.
