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Welcome back to Narrative Control. This week Justin and I respond to a old post by Vincent Baker on suspense, what cause it and how to add it to a game.
Hosts: Sean Nittner and Justin Evans
Length: 25:08
Show Notes
[00:28] Intro to the show. What causes suspense in stories and how to recreate that in your games.
[00:39] RPGPodcast.com promo
[00:47] Do you ever doubt Jack Bauer will stop the terrorist in 24?
[01:43] What do we learn about in the first 23 hours?
[02:10] The question isn’t will he make it, but what does he have to do to get there.
[02:24] I didn’t think of this. I read it on Vincent Baker’s blog.
[02:49] Suspense: What will the protagonist have to go through and how will they change?
Techniques we have used to create suspense
[03:33] Setting stakes that are not directly tied to the character goals. Make the stakes involve the cost of success. Thank you Mario Brothers and Jim Butcher.
[05:18] Negotiating the stakes between GM and the players.
[05:56] Using dice cups to prolong the suspense. Yup, we stole this from Sons of Kryos.
[06:51] Use several conflicts that create twists in the plot, still moving towards the final outcome.
[07:28] Scarcity of player resources (fate chips, action points, etc). Players investing their resources for success.
[08:24] Using physical tokens to represent resources. Players can see how they’ve got let.
Specific systems that have suspense building elements
[08:59] Gumshoe removes the rolling from investigation, but allows players to invest in their findings.
[09:58] Buying success in Wilderness of Mirrors. Betraying your fellow spies.
[11:27] Resource points also act a pacing mechanic by establishing the number of obstacles you’ll face.
[11:58] Another post of Vincent Bakers: Chalk Outlines, which uses concessions to create twists.
[15:23] Schauermärchen. A different take on pass the stick models.
[19:00] Polaris. Players creating twists for each other using a very ritualized format.
[20:34] Changes in the fiction are more meaningful than reducing player resources. Discussion of hit points in Dungeons and Dragons vs. Sanity Loss in Call of Cthulhu.
[21:39] A variation of the core Spirit of the Century rules for consequences instead of stress.
[22:25] Mouseguard has both conditions (which are meaningful in the fiction) or twists (which complicates the story)
[23:30] Shadow of Yesterday has the option of bringing down the pain to raise the stakes of a conflict.
Direct download: NC_Episode_030
Posted By: JustinEvansMe: Hey your character is 'Most Likely to Get Shot', you're probably taking the lead on busting into that house right?
Posted By: RobRendellIn fact, it makes me realize that you could actually do it directly, Chalk-Outline-style, in Fate: a player could be (self-)compelled in the process of trying to achieve something in order to get the FP they need to spend to succeed (rather than using FP that they'd built up previously), and that compel could be a complication on their task that's informed by one of their aspects.
Posted By: Minion_MindI listened to this, considered it, and applied it to my Sidereal game. Gentlemen, very nice job.It's like freaking music to my ears. That is great! Thank you.
Posted By: SeanNittnerPosted By: Minion_MindI listened to this, considered it, and applied it to my Sidereal game. Gentlemen, very nice job.It's like freaking music to my ears. That is great! Thank you.
Posted By: SeanNittnerThe power to self-compel is an interesting and amazing one. <snip> I think you've really struck gold here Rob.
I'm not sure that I'm not misinterpreting your response, but self-compels aren't my idea. The thought I was trying to share was that you could incorporate a compel into the narration of resolving a single action, rather than having a compel occur in one place in the story and then spending the FP from that compel on a later roll.
For example, with the cracking the safe example from the podcast, the player rolls and doesn't get quite enough to open the safe. In normal Fate, they could spend a FP to invoke their "more lucky than skillful" aspect to say that they accidentally stumble on the last half of the combination, gaining +2.
Using the Chalk Outlines complications idea, though, they could instead incorporate a compel into the resolution, say using their "why do these things always happen to me?" aspect: roll the dice, not enough, player says "I trigger the alarm as I open it, and the police will be here soon. Why do these things always happen to me?", and immediately convert the FP they get from that compel into +2 they need to successfully crack the safe. In fact, if I was the GM I probably wouldn't even require that they have an appropriate aspect to invoke to get the +2, because their compel complication would be sufficiently awesome :)
Apologies if I didn't explain my idea clearly enough the first time. Alternatively, apologies if you did in fact understand my idea, but I misinterpreted your response :)
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