In my experience that is the point where you tell the players what is going on and when something piques their interest you encourage them to go check it out and/or blast it with a shotgun.
Tony Lower-Basch I'm not sure I do have the technical skills! I guess I just have a proscribed conversation until something interesting happens. That seems .. inefficient.
Probably not related, but it's Friday night so whatever...
Someone on rpg.net - Roleplaying Games & More - RPGnet the other day (I forget who) said that he now only runs Gumshoe because he has realised that RPG are just a method of sharing information.
This made me sad.
It's like saying I just read lorem ipsum because books are just about scanning letters placed in a row.
William Nichols This sounds like the Paul Beakley thing from recently. "Yes, but what do you dooooo?"
Lots of PbtA games insist you "follow the players" and play off of them. I find in my experience that that only works for a certain type of player (aside: I find this to be a "players who also GM" vs "players who would never consider it" split in my personal player pools).
But if you have players who can't or won't generate their own story, you need to do it yourself. There's some gold in PbtA games to cover this as well: Threats. "Well, shit, what do I do... oh Grotesque sounds interesting... what the hell is a Mindfucker? I want a Mindfucker. Ok guys, you, you, and you are all in Tinman's shop waiting for him to make his next load of bullets, and this woman comes in with like a cadre of people behind her on chains..." etc
I hope I'm getting you right. What you do next is look to the threats if they don't produce their own. Make obstacles and opposition.
So William ... may I suggest that you railroad people mercilessly ?
I say this because, if they're looking to you wondering "What is the GM going to do to entertain us?" that is absolutely your cue to give yourself permission to run off onto something of interest to you.
"So, Bullet Jane says 'So I thought 'Look, I got all these bullets, and that's nice, but I could loan people bullets against some return they could bring me. People with bullets can bring back stuff worth more than the bullets. Maybe not all the time, but enough to make it worth the effort.' Now I been doing this for a while, and it's worked out okay, but now Shroom and his gang in Dark Town figure they already got my bullets, they don't need to pay me back anything. I need you guys to go out and make an example of Shroom.' What do you respond?"
William Nichols OK, so I try to encourage the players to take action at the start, that can be hard because they are looking a mostly blank slate. I try to colour that in until they see something that they want to interact with and we roll from there.
If that doesn't work though I give them something that they have to act upon. A bag of money left unattended. Someone just stole a PC's horse. A crying child. Stormtroopers! Whatever fits. Either the players will get involved or they will run away. Either way we've got a game.
So your game is about making money, and the game starts when your players start making decisions, so straight off the bat you have to either give them a money making opportunity or you open the game when they are lacking something (rent is owed, a debt or favour is called in...)
Think of the wargame Mobile Frame Zero in which Lego robots blow each other up. The game doesn't start with both sides neatly lined up on either side of the table; two opposing robots are placed just within reach others weapons range starting the game at the exact instant that they start blasting.
William Nichols - And then what? Everybody looks to the GM.
Right then? What do you do.
What you're running into there is how most games don't tell you how to structure the session. They're incredibly rare. MY does, Burning Empires does, Capes does, My Life with Master does, but they're rare.
Yeah, this is pretty much exactly what I've had to do. And pretty much exactly what I want to avoid -- I want the PCs to have the tools & desires to go after things without railroad plot coming out of my ass.
William Nichols If this was an OSR game there would be a "Random Opportunity Generator" which would be a table which would give you a rumour of a way to make some money, what the timescales and locality is, what the apparent difficulties are and what the hidden complication might be. The GM would roll a handful of different dice the times to get three different opportunities and the players would then pick one.
Could you do something like that with a player facing 'Find Opportunity' move?
Roll+Bonds 10+ choose a way you want to make money (dungeon/guard job/heist/quest) there is such an opportunity. 7-9 There is an opportunity. Choose one: - it is the type of work you want to do. - it should pay well. - you are the first team of adventurers hear about it. 6- None found. (GM can make a call in debt move or similar as the PCs are hanging around and getting noticed by old friends)
I think that if you want players to be able to make informed decisions about their characters' places in the world, they need to have knowledge of the options. There's a bunch of ways to do that, like maybe making a r-map of the town with them (maybe using bonds/Hx with NPCs?) and having the players inter-relate everything, or maybe doing the Fate style "2 issues" thing where the players come up with big setting issues up front...
I dunno, it's a hard problem to turn reactive players into proactive players.
Edit: I have used the following system to great effect once or twice: - starting with the GM, each player creates 2-3 local NPCs by name and description and gives them a unique role in or service they provide the community. - going around again, relate any two NPCs together - skipping the GM this time, just PCs, go around a last time and make a relationship with your PC to any NPC
Now you got a big old r-map of neat shit in the town/village partially created by the players
You need to use a system that makes players choose plot hooks and goals to specifically associate with their characters and run with it, if they are not being pro-active enough.
Include a GM starting story point, to give them time to organize and a bit of momentum.
Adding player-controlled scene framing to Misspent Youth largely solved the problem of converting reactive people into proactive people, or telling reactive people that the game isn't for them, and they should probably check out.
Characters (and players) need to want something. If they have no driving needs to fill, no burning secrets to protect, then why bother?
In AW, first session, figure out who the characters are. So have the players tell you a bit about their characters, then push a bit to find out what's important to them. Threaten the things they love. Then make up Fronts and make sure those put pressure on the characters. Ask "What do you do?" and if the players hem and haw, then make a soft move--probably ones that foretell danger or whatever.
When you're GMing, do you care about what happens? If you don't care, that would be a problem.
Keep me informed, then. I need to see styles that aren't mine / Tony's / local friends. And let me be clear, my local gamers and fantastic. But, it might be time for some novelty.
To add to Robert Bohl's list, re-read Monsterhearts because it absolutely kills it. So much so that I wish that chapter 5 (Teaching and Running the Game) came earlier in the book.
That said, MH Starts deliberately slow ("That way, when [the status quo] gets upset and turned upside down later, we’ll have a frame of reference to understand why that drama is interesting."), and that doesn't seem like what you're going for with your thing. What are you going for? And check out more different games and how more different people run games! That's at least half the reason why I've stopped running PBTA games on Thursdays (though I do need to bring Headspace 'cause Ariana still wants to play it).
Also, George Austin , Ariana has never played Fiasco. I've been meaning to bring it, but between needing to lug it in my bag and that she's not always there, I just haven't. That's a thing we should work on.
I think I'm mostly trying to teach financial lessons, actually. That you can pay the rent through money, sure. But you can also pay the rent with love, and having a place in a community. That responding with violence and disregard for others leads to being a worse person, and with the help of your friends you can make sure it goes the right way. That different people rely on different things to get the same goals.
That doesn't sound like a game anymore. I'll blame the headcold.
William Nichols plenty of games try to teach morals. I wonder if it's better to present the idea of paying with cash or karma as sort of a setting issue ("everything you want has a cost") and then making certain avenues poor choices (e.g. physical wounds are super costly - maybe you have to roll during recovery to see if you permanently lose a point of harm or whatever)
Maybe I make it so relying on bonds and credit is better than relyng on assets.
In the game, I ask people how they pay the rent and that sets the stage. For the example to my own life: I rely on Assets (dollar bills for literal rent), Bond with my wife, and Credit with, say, the Nova Small Press Indie Game Group.
From the first, I get safety. I can eat and sleep without much difficulty.
From the second, I get something ridiculous like companionship, some of the best food on earth, and better clothes because she won't let me wear rags. In the language of the game, I get comfort.
From the last, I get time to spend in hobbies and leisure. I have leisure, in the language in the game.
And that's what I want! I want the PCs to need to rely on each other and their societies. I think I've not done this well yet -- that it should be damaging to not spend one from each.
Ohhh... Yeah. Spend one from each of Assets, Bonds, and Credit, or choose from this list of terrible outcomes ....
It's worth a shot. I wouldn't throw away your current list of positive outcomes yet, though, even thought it doesn't seem to be as central to play/drive play the way you want it to right now.
This probably goes too far into fiddliness for my RPG tastes, but maybe you could make a distinction between spending resources (it goes away) and Investing or using your resources: you make it do a thing for a game-prescribed period of time, like placing a figuring in a worker-placement game.
Actually, such a thing might not be any more fiddly than the Go Adventuring/Mission move that you inherited from The Watch...
Regarding something you said to Mazza in another thread:
Assets, as they stand, probably need some simple tags - much simpler than your standard PbtA equipment tags. Paying the rent with a sword needs an in-game-system reminder (and probably an MC-sided move or procedure) that it's got different consequences than paying the rent with coin. Same thing with killing with oddments.
George Austin I miiiiight could make Pay The Rent into a bigger move, bringing the Relief moves into it.
Something like this: Spend, with a proscribed list. Abuse, with a different proscribed list and mark it off. and Jaded. Invest, with a third proscribed list and it pays off next time.
Something like that. Maybe not abuse, as I'm not sure about that.
Instead, I'm collapsing the take care of each other moves -- blow off steam, Stand Vigil, and Throw a party. These are now all accessible only after you pay the rent.
George Austin On the tags: In many ways, the names are tags.
GM: Paladin, how do you pay the rent? Paladin: I'll rely on my Blessed Sword. GM: Interesting. What's that look like? Paladin: Well, I murder anyone who said I need to leave. GM: With a blessed sword? Huh. I'm not sure the sword is going to like that -- who blessed it and why? ....
To go back to the original question, improvise genre tropes. Like literally just start describing a place that fits your genre. Pump in atmosphere. Hint at action. Throw in a character. Give them a goal. An accomplice or foil. At some point between steps 2 and 6, your players will start predicting where you're going with this—even though you have no idea—and jump in.
What happens if the PCs all live in the same enclave, and need to go on adventures to make wealth to keep everyone alive. That puts a lot more pressure on them than I had before, which might be good.
William NicholsThat's quite a specific scenario to put on them though. It's a good one, and one that many players will be happy with but some players might want to play a character who simply wouldn't do that.
Would it be possible to have a stage in character generation where each player defines what their character's reason for needing more money is?
Some players might still choose to be adventuring to bring back wealth for the community, others might be doing it to pay off a debt, while another is saving up to buy a knighthood. Maybe one just likes adventuring and sees more wealth as a means to that end.
Every character needs a reason to seek wealth, but perhaps each player should define their own reason.
I am remembering what I often do in things like D&D -- collect people to take care of, and start building a location to take care of the needy. And then going back out to murderize a dragon.
Oh, bur. I am not smart. Of course "I take care of the people of ____" is one potential credit with communities. Not a necessary one, but one you can choose.
William Nichols Given what you said there, games to add to the ludography include: Mutant: Year Zero (Buddha's your hook up, there) Ars Magica Playing with people who are really confident in making Dream Askew sing
You mean you don't know how you know, or you're having a specific problem?
ReplyDeleteLike in AW, say. You setup characters, you setup Hx or bonds or whatever. Maybe make them pay rent, as per AW 2e. And then what?
ReplyDelete[ As an aside, I'm home sick and may not be making sense. ]
ReplyDeleteIs this something like "Yes, I absolutely know all the technical skills involved in doing this thing, but I no longer understand why I would ?"
ReplyDeleteIn my experience that is the point where you tell the players what is going on and when something piques their interest you encourage them to go check it out and/or blast it with a shotgun.
ReplyDeleteI don't really use mechanics at that bit.
I don't know how to run RPGs plural. I know how to run an RPG, if that RPG tells me how.
ReplyDeleteare you having a midlife crisis?
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch I'm not sure I do have the technical skills! I guess I just have a proscribed conversation until something interesting happens. That seems .. inefficient.
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford But those are mechanics -- GM facing moves!
ReplyDeleteI feel like this happens a lot:
ReplyDelete-- Set up characters, bonds.
-- Make start of session moves
-- And then what? Everybody looks to the GM.
Right then? What do you do.
Probably not related, but it's Friday night so whatever...
ReplyDeleteSomeone on rpg.net - Roleplaying Games & More - RPGnet the other day (I forget who) said that he now only runs Gumshoe because he has realised that RPG are just a method of sharing information.
This made me sad.
It's like saying I just read lorem ipsum because books are just about scanning letters placed in a row.
William Nichols Well I guess, they aren't exactly structured though.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols This sounds like the Paul Beakley thing from recently. "Yes, but what do you dooooo?"
ReplyDeleteLots of PbtA games insist you "follow the players" and play off of them. I find in my experience that that only works for a certain type of player (aside: I find this to be a "players who also GM" vs "players who would never consider it" split in my personal player pools).
But if you have players who can't or won't generate their own story, you need to do it yourself. There's some gold in PbtA games to cover this as well: Threats. "Well, shit, what do I do... oh Grotesque sounds interesting... what the hell is a Mindfucker? I want a Mindfucker. Ok guys, you, you, and you are all in Tinman's shop waiting for him to make his next load of bullets, and this woman comes in with like a cadre of people behind her on chains..." etc
I hope I'm getting you right. What you do next is look to the threats if they don't produce their own. Make obstacles and opposition.
So William ... may I suggest that you railroad people mercilessly ?
ReplyDeleteI say this because, if they're looking to you wondering "What is the GM going to do to entertain us?" that is absolutely your cue to give yourself permission to run off onto something of interest to you.
"So, Bullet Jane says 'So I thought 'Look, I got all these bullets, and that's nice, but I could loan people bullets against some return they could bring me. People with bullets can bring back stuff worth more than the bullets. Maybe not all the time, but enough to make it worth the effort.' Now I been doing this for a while, and it's worked out okay, but now Shroom and his gang in Dark Town figure they already got my bullets, they don't need to pay me back anything. I need you guys to go out and make an example of Shroom.' What do you respond?"
William Nichols OK, so I try to encourage the players to take action at the start, that can be hard because they are looking a mostly blank slate. I try to colour that in until they see something that they want to interact with and we roll from there.
ReplyDeleteIf that doesn't work though I give them something that they have to act upon. A bag of money left unattended. Someone just stole a PC's horse. A crying child. Stormtroopers! Whatever fits. Either the players will get involved or they will run away. Either way we've got a game.
So your game is about making money, and the game starts when your players start making decisions, so straight off the bat you have to either give them a money making opportunity or you open the game when they are lacking something (rent is owed, a debt or favour is called in...)
Think of the wargame Mobile Frame Zero in which Lego robots blow each other up. The game doesn't start with both sides neatly lined up on either side of the table; two opposing robots are placed just within reach others weapons range starting the game at the exact instant that they start blasting.
William Nichols - And then what? Everybody looks to the GM.
ReplyDeleteRight then? What do you do.
What you're running into there is how most games don't tell you how to structure the session. They're incredibly rare. MY does, Burning Empires does, Capes does, My Life with Master does, but they're rare.
Go with plots until a situation strikes you as fun.
ReplyDeleteYeah, this is pretty much exactly what I've had to do. And pretty much exactly what I want to avoid -- I want the PCs to have the tools & desires to go after things without railroad plot coming out of my ass.
ReplyDeletePahhhaps this is a matter of game design -- give the characters short term objectives.
ReplyDeleteI had done something like this with agenda items, but if I make them more immediate & directed, then mayyyyybe.
William Nichols If this was an OSR game there would be a "Random Opportunity Generator" which would be a table which would give you a rumour of a way to make some money, what the timescales and locality is, what the apparent difficulties are and what the hidden complication might be. The GM would roll a handful of different dice the times to get three different opportunities and the players would then pick one.
ReplyDeleteCould you do something like that with a player facing 'Find Opportunity' move?
Roll+Bonds
10+ choose a way you want to make money (dungeon/guard job/heist/quest) there is such an opportunity.
7-9 There is an opportunity. Choose one:
- it is the type of work you want to do.
- it should pay well.
- you are the first team of adventurers hear about it.
6- None found. (GM can make a call in debt move or similar as the PCs are hanging around and getting noticed by old friends)
I think that if you want players to be able to make informed decisions about their characters' places in the world, they need to have knowledge of the options. There's a bunch of ways to do that, like maybe making a r-map of the town with them (maybe using bonds/Hx with NPCs?) and having the players inter-relate everything, or maybe doing the Fate style "2 issues" thing where the players come up with big setting issues up front...
ReplyDeleteI dunno, it's a hard problem to turn reactive players into proactive players.
Edit: I have used the following system to great effect once or twice:
- starting with the GM, each player creates 2-3 local NPCs by name and description and gives them a unique role in or service they provide the community.
- going around again, relate any two NPCs together
- skipping the GM this time, just PCs, go around a last time and make a relationship with your PC to any NPC
Now you got a big old r-map of neat shit in the town/village partially created by the players
You need to use a system that makes players choose plot hooks and goals to specifically associate with their characters and run with it, if they are not being pro-active enough.
ReplyDeleteInclude a GM starting story point, to give them time to organize and a bit of momentum.
Adding player-controlled scene framing to Misspent Youth largely solved the problem of converting reactive people into proactive people, or telling reactive people that the game isn't for them, and they should probably check out.
ReplyDeleteAdam Dray has some good stuff here: https://cityofbrass.obsidianportal.com/wikis/commune-meeting
ReplyDeleteAs per usual, Adam Dray is a smart guy. Setting up the PCs to live in the same place and have some issues is pretty clever.
ReplyDeleteCharacters (and players) need to want something. If they have no driving needs to fill, no burning secrets to protect, then why bother?
ReplyDeleteIn AW, first session, figure out who the characters are. So have the players tell you a bit about their characters, then push a bit to find out what's important to them. Threaten the things they love. Then make up Fronts and make sure those put pressure on the characters. Ask "What do you do?" and if the players hem and haw, then make a soft move--probably ones that foretell danger or whatever.
When you're GMing, do you care about what happens? If you don't care, that would be a problem.
http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/37457/roleplaying-games/thought-of-the-day-players-who-dont-bite
ReplyDeleteI need to play some more and watch what GMs do for a bit.
ReplyDeleteIt never hurts to expand your horizons and play with a number of GMs who use different styles, mechanics or settings. Best wishes.
ReplyDeleteCome play with me!
ReplyDeleteAnd me!
ReplyDeleteAdam Dray I just might, though nights away from home are always weird for me.
ReplyDeleteAaron Griffin Where do you live?
Heh, Chicago, but I run most stuff on Hangouts/Roll20. The future is here!
ReplyDeleteKeep me informed, then. I need to see styles that aren't mine / Tony's / local friends. And let me be clear, my local gamers and fantastic. But, it might be time for some novelty.
ReplyDeleteTo add to Robert Bohl's list, re-read Monsterhearts because it absolutely kills it. So much so that I wish that chapter 5 (Teaching and Running the Game) came earlier in the book.
ReplyDeleteThat said, MH Starts deliberately slow ("That way, when [the status quo] gets upset and turned upside down later, we’ll have a frame of reference to understand why that drama is interesting."), and that doesn't seem like what you're going for with your thing. What are you going for? And check out more different games and how more different people run games! That's at least half the reason why I've stopped running PBTA games on Thursdays (though I do need to bring Headspace 'cause Ariana still wants to play it).
Also, George Austin , Ariana has never played Fiasco. I've been meaning to bring it, but between needing to lug it in my bag and that she's not always there, I just haven't. That's a thing we should work on.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Austin Today, I'm not sure.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm mostly trying to teach financial lessons, actually. That you can pay the rent through money, sure. But you can also pay the rent with love, and having a place in a community. That responding with violence and disregard for others leads to being a worse person, and with the help of your friends you can make sure it goes the right way. That different people rely on different things to get the same goals.
That doesn't sound like a game anymore. I'll blame the headcold.
William Nichols plenty of games try to teach morals. I wonder if it's better to present the idea of paying with cash or karma as sort of a setting issue ("everything you want has a cost") and then making certain avenues poor choices (e.g. physical wounds are super costly - maybe you have to roll during recovery to see if you permanently lose a point of harm or whatever)
ReplyDeleteAaron Griffin Yeah.
ReplyDeleteI might make more moves cost rather than a dice roll. And spending is how you get XP.
In other words, steal even more from Jay Treat
Maybe I make it so relying on bonds and credit is better than relyng on assets.
ReplyDeleteIn the game, I ask people how they pay the rent and that sets the stage. For the example to my own life: I rely on Assets (dollar bills for literal rent), Bond with my wife, and Credit with, say, the Nova Small Press Indie Game Group.
From the first, I get safety. I can eat and sleep without much difficulty.
From the second, I get something ridiculous like companionship, some of the best food on earth, and better clothes because she won't let me wear rags. In the language of the game, I get comfort.
From the last, I get time to spend in hobbies and leisure. I have leisure, in the language in the game.
And that's what I want! I want the PCs to need to rely on each other and their societies. I think I've not done this well yet -- that it should be damaging to not spend one from each.
Ohhh... Yeah. Spend one from each of Assets, Bonds, and Credit, or choose from this list of terrible outcomes ....
Legit? Bad?
It's worth a shot. I wouldn't throw away your current list of positive outcomes yet, though, even thought it doesn't seem to be as central to play/drive play the way you want it to right now.
ReplyDeleteThis probably goes too far into fiddliness for my RPG tastes, but maybe you could make a distinction between spending resources (it goes away) and Investing or using your resources: you make it do a thing for a game-prescribed period of time, like placing a figuring in a worker-placement game.
Actually, such a thing might not be any more fiddly than the Go Adventuring/Mission move that you inherited from The Watch...
Regarding something you said to Mazza in another thread:
ReplyDeleteAssets, as they stand, probably need some simple tags - much simpler than your standard PbtA equipment tags. Paying the rent with a sword needs an in-game-system reminder (and probably an MC-sided move or procedure) that it's got different consequences than paying the rent with coin. Same thing with killing with oddments.
George Austin I miiiiight could make Pay The Rent into a bigger move, bringing the Relief moves into it.
ReplyDeleteSomething like this:
Spend, with a proscribed list.
Abuse, with a different proscribed list and mark it off. and Jaded.
Invest, with a third proscribed list and it pays off next time.
Something like that. Maybe not abuse, as I'm not sure about that.
I don't like abuse. That's bad.
ReplyDeleteInstead, I'm collapsing the take care of each other moves -- blow off steam, Stand Vigil, and Throw a party. These are now all accessible only after you pay the rent.
George Austin On the tags: In many ways, the names are tags.
ReplyDeleteGM: Paladin, how do you pay the rent?
Paladin: I'll rely on my Blessed Sword.
GM: Interesting. What's that look like?
Paladin: Well, I murder anyone who said I need to leave.
GM: With a blessed sword? Huh. I'm not sure the sword is going to like that -- who blessed it and why? ....
To go back to the original question, improvise genre tropes. Like literally just start describing a place that fits your genre. Pump in atmosphere. Hint at action. Throw in a character. Give them a goal. An accomplice or foil. At some point between steps 2 and 6, your players will start predicting where you're going with this—even though you have no idea—and jump in.
ReplyDeleteJay Treat You inspired ideas. As you usually do.
ReplyDeleteOr, maybe I'm just stealing from Adam Dray .
What happens if the PCs all live in the same enclave, and need to go on adventures to make wealth to keep everyone alive. That puts a lot more pressure on them than I had before, which might be good.
William NicholsThat's quite a specific scenario to put on them though. It's a good one, and one that many players will be happy with but some players might want to play a character who simply wouldn't do that.
ReplyDeleteWould it be possible to have a stage in character generation where each player defines what their character's reason for needing more money is?
Some players might still choose to be adventuring to bring back wealth for the community, others might be doing it to pay off a debt, while another is saving up to buy a knighthood. Maybe one just likes adventuring and sees more wealth as a means to that end.
Every character needs a reason to seek wealth, but perhaps each player should define their own reason.
Brian Ashford It maybe is pretty specific.
ReplyDeleteI am remembering what I often do in things like D&D -- collect people to take care of, and start building a location to take care of the needy. And then going back out to murderize a dragon.
William Nichols Well then ask yourself, is that the story you want your game to tell, or a story you want your game to tell?
ReplyDeleteYou might also want to seek out some of the 'Actual Play' podcasts out there on the net if you want to experience other GMs and their styles....
ReplyDeleteMy life would be so much easier if I liked podcasts. Seriously.
ReplyDeleteOh, bur. I am not smart. Of course "I take care of the people of ____" is one potential credit with communities. Not a necessary one, but one you can choose.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Given what you said there, games to add to the ludography include:
ReplyDeleteMutant: Year Zero (Buddha's your hook up, there)
Ars Magica
Playing with people who are really confident in making Dream Askew sing