Metrophorums

[cijil]

An exercise in interactive storytelling (or what most people would call role-playing):

This weekend I went out and actually tried out one o' them LARP (live-action role-playing) things. This was significantly less lame than the "Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! Death! Death!" phenomenon that the internet masses are familiar with. Without going into the plot details or mechanics, I'll jjust say that the premise was all of the players were trapped in a valley by an avalanche, had to figure a way to get out, and there was something big and nasty that was laying waste to everything within that we had to avoid.

So the stage was set. We had an entire 4-H camp to ourselves for the weekend, the weather was nice, and there was all sorts of stuff to discover.

So what do the players do? They sit in the base lodge and talk. Talk, talk, talk. Maybe explore a little bit, then talk for a few more hours. Needless to say, not as much got done as could have been, and as a result a lot of things were left unresolved at the end of the game and the staff kind of had to put an ending together by way of fiat.

Now my question is--especially since I have a feeling this could be applied to more traditional storytelling as well--how does one keep something like that from happening? How does one keep players or an audience sufficiently engaged that they keep moving? I guess there's always the "you have X minutes to complete this task" idea, but I think there should be more innovative things than that. Ideas?

[Lord Xaphan]

I would think objectives would help. Action for action's sake is okay now and then but usually it's good to think about how can the action advance the story. In your LARPing example it would have helped if there were points in which the story could not possibly advance without some sort of activity from the players, be it fighting twoards some ancient relic or going exploring for some long forgotten mystery. Another idea off the top of my head could be that encounters should not just occur in the central location of the story but in varied locales along the way. This could help keep the players moving and not have them hugging the central camp.

Just my $.02
Xaphan

[Artis]

Yeah...I've noticed that that happens alot if there isn't some goal or objective that's clearly in mind. It's a fine line between railroading the group and letting them meander aimlessly. I mean, you obviously want them to do their own thing, but at the same time you do sort of have to herd...er...coax...them to a degree. I guess you need to just nudge them in the right direction if they seem lost.

I remember one tabletop game session I was in when people planned for 8 hours. EIGHT. HOURS. We kept outthinking outselves rather than let the GM do it. Not only that, but too often we went with what would work best rather than what would be the most fun. Contrary to what one might think, this is not the optimum way to go since fun is the ultimate goal.

[cijil]

Wow. That beats some of our Shadowrun planning sessions--for a while we were in a rut where odd-numbered sessions would be planning the heist and even-numbered sessions would be executing the plan, but I don't think any of them ever lasted for eight hours. Geez. I mean, geez.

Yeah, the balance between freedom and railroading is, I guess, more what I was going for. Or more subversively: railroading while maintaining the illusion of free will (also known as: all roads lead to Rome).

[Gillsing]

We used to plan a lot of stuff in Shadowrun, but it pretty much always boiled down to a lengthy session of astral scouting, and then the shaman making the mage invisible and keeping out of the badguys' line of sight, then the mage would make the sammy invisible and hang back, but within line of sight of the sammy, who'd kill anyone during looong turns of multiple actions involving automatic fire from a light machine gun. So first the sammy-player does nothing, and then the magic-players do almost nothing. So we had the decker-syndrome without even having one.

Our dear GM didn't like our planning sessions, so he blamed cheap bosses for not equipping their people with thermal vision, either cybernetic or of the goggle variety. That way we didn't have to plan and could just default to the above. Of course, when we did skip planning and just busted in, my character quickly got put into the hospital with a Deadly Wound. So much for doing it the 'fun' way. (Though that was an alternative character that I just felt was more fun to play than my regular, min-maxed elven hermetic mage. My elven mage would never have gone it with such lousy preparations.)

I guess it wasn't that much fun, but one problem with Shadowrun is that when you compare the stats of non-super shadowrunners with the stats of the security measures in the game, the runners would have to rely on very lucky die rolls to be able to execute a plan. And then there's the modern world to consider as well. A big city is full of complexity. Anything is availible, both for the runners and their opposition. What information you can get might make everything a lot easier, so runners who want to live try to get as much info as possible. Which leads to lots of things to consider, and plan for.

It's a complicated world, and I've been thinking of designing some sort of rules system that simulates that part of the game. And couple it with a much less complicated combat system, so as to balance the rules so that they cover more of the vital non-combat aspects rather than covering mostly combat and then letting the rest default to the brains of the players. If combat was handled by the same rules as the rest of the game, it would be either "roll your dice to win the fight" (as in most skill use) or "tell the GM what weapon you use and where you aim and how you move, and if you're right you win" (as in, there are no rules for the activity, and the players are basically limited by their own intelligence and imagination).

As for the LARP situation, I've come to understand that LARPers are social people, so sitting around talking is probably their default state. If you want them to move around and try to solve a mystery concerning a big baddie, you may have to make it clear that the big baddie is coming to camp. Or, if you are merciless like me, have the big baddie actually come to the camp and kill a player or two. That ought to show them what happens when they just sit around on their asses and do nothing. If the big baddie comes to camp without succeeding to kill anyone, then it may be big, but it certainly isn't that bad. So while that may seem like a nice way to light a fire under their arses, it can easily backfire into making them feel safer in camp than outside it.

Clear objectives are good though. Clear objectives with hidden alternative objectives, if you want to avoid railroading. I used to design RPG scenarios with objectives where it was up to the players to find a way to achieve them, with at least one path that would have a good chance to work. But that's bad design, since the players may not find that one path and then they're stuck.

[cijil]

Heh, clearly you found a plan that works; why not stick with it?

It's an interesting idea, bringing combat down to the level of a skill check. I suppose whether it worked or not would depend on what your players were in the game for. There's a lot of stuff that I try to do to vary combat, mostly as a player but usually as a GM too, and I don't know that a skill check would account for all of that. I mean, would you have one skill called "combat" that you'd roll against? Or would you not abstract it quite to that level, saying "okay, do you want to use your guns skill, magic skill, whip skill, or just run really fast?" Or are you just thinking of having something less complicated than allocate-dice-roll-hit-roll-dodge-allocate-dice-roll-soak-roll-knockback?

And have you been playing with the Shadowrun 4 rules? I don't care for them, myself, but they do make a lot of things simpler.

Also, the stats of the other things in Shadowrun depend very much on the GM. I usually tried to keep the game somewhat realistic, giving security systems ratings that people would actually have on their homes, small businesses, or children. A lot of times this ended up being underpowered for the players (you know, stuff in the 3-5 range). Yeah, a lot fo stuff can kill you in Shadowrun; it mostly comes down to hoping the GM uses it all judiciously and not, er, vengefully.

I get to see just how that LARP thing works this weekend. LARPers are generally social people, yeah, but a lot of them are in ti for different things. Some of them like sitting down and planning things out. Others like running around in the woods. I guess it's a matter of planning things for all types.

[Artis]

Oh man, I've so run into Gillsing's dilemma. I remember an eight hour planning session for Shadowrun once. Ugh. I have to say that planning sessions are my least favorite aspect of that game. Not that I don't think you need a plan of action for going on a run, but it tends to get out of hand sometimes. Likewise, I've run into the problem of finding a plan that works and sticking to it at the sacrifice of doing something a little less thoroughly thought out but significantly more fun....such as simulating another Renraku Archology scenario to get people to evacuate a corp building.

As far as larp...I'm afraid that's why I really don't like it, in general. It's a lot of talking. Then, when the larp ends, people KEEP talking about larp for the next six hours. Or theyr'e stuck in six hours of bluebooking. Nargle! That, and most of the larps I've found have been Vampire, which I hate. I have played in one that's kind of fun, but that's mostly 'cause it's 7th sea based. It's still got a lot of the problems larps in general have, though. Much more talking than swash buckling.

I think that sometimes the GM just needs to give the players a kick in the pants and introduce something new...throw it into the mix, as it were. Without continual stimulation, the players can get caught in a rut. If they develop something on their own and take it in their own direction, you need to go with that and work with them. But that doesn't always happen. If it's all talk and no action, you need to throw some action in there. Not even necessarily a fight- a plot point, a new npc, something that shakes it up a bit.

[Gillsing]

[cijil]

[Gillsing]

[cijil]

[quote='Gillsing"]
And I wasn't planning on a single roll to determine an entire battle, just having a single die per side determine who's incapacitated (or possibly dead) between one attacker and one defender. That way everyone is a mook, except that PCs also have extra points with which to save their die rolls. When those points run out, there's nothing left to buffer them against the dice.
[/quote]

Ahh, gotcha. That makes a lot more sense to me, now. And it sounds interesting, too; if you do try it, by all means let me know how it turns out.