That is; Scrum is a particular methodology that is lightweight, hackable, and designed to be there when you need it. It is a subset of story games, which are more a philosophy than a methodology. Scrum and pbta demand the players/developers have an agenda, and advocate for themselves.
Top-down GM centric games -- I'm looking at you, Dungeons & Dragons -- put more of the onus on the GM, and expect the players to follow along in the world the GM has built.
I've said this before. I find it more and more true as I practice being a Scrum Master (SM); I provide a structure, and the
Or, to phrase this another way: Most of my job is the same skill base as MCing Urban Shadows.
Hard disagree, also as a scrum master. Not everything has to map to everything else. Specifically: in a game, you’re presenting obstacles for a team to overcome, rather than removing obstacles to make things as streamlined and conflict free as possible.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Waterfall just plain doesn’t work, and D&D is plenty hackable.
Waterfall works very well for certain specific classes of problems. The issue is that people saw that early, and then tried to generalize it to all problems.
ReplyDeleteUse the right tool for the job.
> in a game, you’re presenting obstacles for a team to overcome, rather than removing obstacles to make things as streamlined and conflict free as possible.
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm not. That's kinda my point. I do not create monsters or obstacles; I take what the players say and run with it.
I realize this is foreign to a lot of your gaming; believe me when I say I use very nearly the same skillset in both.
"No, I'm not. That's kinda my point. I do not create monsters or obstacles; I take what the players say and run with it."
ReplyDeleteI wonder if this is why PBTA games never quite gel for me and my group. I understand your words technically, but I can't really picture what that would look like at a table...
OSR is Wagile.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I’m sure you do, and that’s great for you, but using that to crap on other people’s fun and the games they like is pretty rude, and beneath you. Generally, I like and respect what you have to say- this is pretty hurtful.
ReplyDeleteRabbit Stoddard I'm not seeing any 'crapping on fun' going on, just a comparison between player-driven RPGs and developer-lead projects.
ReplyDeleteI mean, clearly you don't like Waterfall, but you do like D&D (or at least traditional RPGs) so that's a comparison you won't enjoy, but I don't think William intended for his comments to imply that PbtA is better than the rest.
Rabbit Stoddard Yeah, Brian is right: No intention to crap on fun!
ReplyDeleteAlso, to be clear: Rabbit's feelings (like everyone's) are more important than the discussion, so let's pause further discourse until and unless that is resolved.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I see what you were trying to say, and I can see where the servant leadership of being a scrum master meshes with playing a story game. Though I stand by waterfall not working- it was originally diagrammed out as an example of what not to do in delivering anything that has multiple steps that could potentially cause a break. Funnily, this all comes from the auto industry. As a result, I bristle a bit at the comparison. There is still an overall emotional connotation of comparing two things to call them bad, and two others to call them good- even if this was not explicitly the intent.
ReplyDeleteTo put it another way- if not for the line about D&D, I probably would have just nodded along without objection and thought about how scrum approaches would apply to increasing my enjoyment of PBTA, instead of tripping over a roadblock of annoyance.
ReplyDelete