Mostly Geek

My game history was devoid of players-writing-the-story aspect prior to moving to NZ. But I now recognize it in a few other systems in lesser form. When a player creates a character background, that is partially injecting input in to a game, for example.

I discovered another layer of player-input with Spycraft and the use of “Action Dice” (often called Action Points, Cool Points, Karma Points, etc). SC uses a very systematic method to assign how many Action Die you receive in relation to the GM. With your Action Dice you can greatly enhance what a player can do to alter the story. While SC limits this to combat and other rolls, one could pretty easily expand the idea to “player writes the scene” sort of action.

I envision that Warriors could spend a small number of points to declare a triumphant end to a battle (for which some rolls would still need to be made), or a Rogue to dictact exactly how he/she got in to the impossible locked tower.

Action Point systems look to be easy to add to virtually any “traditional” RPG. I also like the idea of something like “fate cards” where players a dealt a small hand of cards that represent the ability to create a heroic scene in some way. Perhaps the Ace of Spades mean you can dispatch/incapacity/for to flee one foe, while the Ace of Hearts represents the ability to make one NPC entity fall in love with your character for that session, etc.

These are generic input systems that should that should tease out more player input.

You and Luke should have a talk. This is also something that Luke strives for in a game aswell. Both as a player and a GM.

For what its worth, I am also beginning to head in this direction aswell. The buzz that you get when something you want to see happens and it does, is just huge. Makes you want to see it happen more often.

I’m wondering whether it’s games that use shared narration that you’re having the fun with, or something else …

‘Shared narration’ is just a technique that a lot of games use to legitimise the spreading around of a lot of responsibilities that used to (officially) belong solely to a GM. I’m talking about responsibilities like describing the world around you, describing successful and failed outcomes. In The Mountain Witch, not only are the players required to invent their Dark Fates, but the game is designed to focus tighter and tighter around them.

So, yeah, a technique like ‘shared narration’ is awesome at how it encourages everyone to step up and contribute to creating the game they want.

But then you say this, about what you like:

“… games in which the players take an active role in trying to develop the plot, rather than just waiting for the GM to tell them what happens so they can react to it.”

I don’t know: are you familiar with the term “Story Now”? It’s a tagline, coined by Ron Edwards, to describe a style of gaming in which players come to the table with no expectations for what the story will be. Instead of expectations, the focus is on:

(a) committing to creating a volatile situation filled with juicy potential conflicts that the players are interested in exploring, and

(b) creating characters that can contribute and explore that conflict-filled situation.

Story Now refers to the concept that players can find it rewarding to drop into playing their characters in that situation, with no preconceptions about how it’ll turn out, no theories about possible solutions, and no idea what will happen next when PCs and NPCs come into conflict.

I bring this up because, reading between the lines, I can equally see your fun in gaming sometimes coming from this desire to push and be pushed by your fellow players into creating scenes, conflicts and stories whose outcomes continually surprise and move you.

Like I say: reading between the lines … but I have played with you and it has rocked for pretty much these reasons – which shared narration facilitates but isn’t the cause of.

Crap. I nicely paragraphed that comment and everything. Sorry about the wall of text.

Wow. This post was like the reason that I started the Grand Experiment on 12 June 2006

FWIW Steve is wise. The kind of stuff you are looking for don’t come from any specific RPG tool. In fact, using such tools to enforce a level of buy-in can be fraught with their own issues.

IMO the best way to achieve what you are looking for is more about how you approach gaming in a broader sense. As such, it can be applied to any RPG. The hardest thing is finding like-minded people and communicating this style to others.

Action Point systems look to be easy to add to virtually any “traditional” RPG. I also like the idea of something like “fate cards” where players a dealt a small hand of cards that represent the ability to create a heroic scene in some way. Perhaps the Ace of Spades mean you can dispatch/incapacity/for to flee one foe, while the Ace of Hearts represents the ability to make one NPC entity fall in love with your character for that session, etc.

Yeah that’s a good point. Adding a mechanic like Action Dice (or hero points or drama points) does allow a nice way for players to inject their own touches on games. Dragon Age PnP does this pretty well with the Dragon Dice, though it’s only limited to combat at this stage. It’d be interesting what would happen if you applied them to social conflicts as well.

I bring this up because, reading between the lines, I can equally see your fun in gaming sometimes coming from this desire to push and be pushed by your fellow players into creating scenes, conflicts and stories whose outcomes continually surprise and move you.

Yeah that’s very true, shared narration set ups don’t “bring the awesome” on their own. However I find that peoples expectations around how the game will run and who is meant to be “bringing the fun” shift when it’s commonly known that the game they are all playing will have a shared component. But like I said in the post, this doesn’t just relate to shared narration games, it also works in more traditional set ups as well. The weekly Buffy game I’m in has a huge amount of player input, because that’s just the way the players roll.

IMO the best way to achieve what you are looking for is more about how you approach gaming in a broader sense. As such, it can be applied to any RPG. The hardest thing is finding like-minded people and communicating this style to others.

Finding the like minded people is certainly more than half of it. I’ve got a rule when it comes to this stuff now. If I want to sit down and have a cup of coffee with the person, I’m likely to enjoy gaming with them.

That’s cool, Sophie. I think we’re on the same page – thought it was worth drawing that distinction out from your post a little.

Of interest, perhaps, a big similarly themed theory post from Eero Tuovinen: http://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/

That’s cool, Sophie. I think we’re on the same page

I think we most certainly are! One of the many reasons I wish I could play more games with you, they’re always epic experiences for me.

With a few notable exceptions, when I’m playing, I hate that feeling of being in a tunnel with no way to go except the story that is already in the GMs head (or worse that they’ve photocopied from a book)… a lot of my past roleplaying was “random GM”… in a long term shared world campaign… sometimes we’d do the dice roll halfway through a session when the current GM got tired, and you just had to pick it up and run with it… I haven’t got the hang of con GMing. I think you have to be more prepared because you have a very short amount of time to describe the world and catch people’s attention or it all drifts… and playtests don’t really help, because I find it easier to get people I know to follow me into the story and turn it into something new… I love it when players do something I haven’t thought of and I have to improvise (my goal for next kapcon is to run a game that is as fun as the playtest… or maybe I should playtest with strangers? )

I’m a bit more … traditional in my tastes than Sophie I suspect. And therefore a bit more traditional than a lot of the other commenters. But it might be that I see these things primarily as a game, not as a story telling device for either GM or player. No harm in that, it’s just not what I’m looking for. As someone said in a RPG.net thread recently ‘story is what you tell after the PCs have done things’. Partly this is because I hate, hate, hate railroads. But I also like the GM to have an idea of what events are going to happen. But of course as a GM I love it when players engage with their characters and tell me what they want to see happen.

Since I’m not that up on the indie scene and shared narrative techniques I have a question: when you say Soph that you get disappointed when a GM rejects your suggestion in “the outcome of an action or a scene” what exactly does that mean? Do you say “I think X NPC would respond this way” or what?