Narrative Control Forums

Hey, guys. I thought I would write in a few thoughts on two aspects of this episode.

On The Dreaded Reset: A Proposal for the Fred Savage Versus Columbo Method

So somebody’s screwed up and a character gets put through the gears of the plot and like a resume through a paper shredder and no one is pleased about it. The GM didn’t want to do that to the player, the player wants to keep the character from being mangled or dead and the other players really need that character around. So, why the hell do you go along with it? There is this myth out there in roleplaying that you HAVE to always go by the rulings of the game system and the cast of the dice, it is god to some of us. But why, if it’ll screw up the game? Think of it this way, would a television series run this plot? Truth of the matter is that you are not sitting at that table to run the game, or to play by the rules. The game and rules are frames to hang the experience. You’re there to tell a story. And behind that frame of story you are there to have fun. Sure, you can’t Nerf dumb actions of the characters all the time, or else you’d never feel any danger, but if some anticlimactic dumb thing happens that you’d think was lame in a fantasy or science fiction book, arbitrary and weak sauce?

I propose the Fred Savage versus Columbo method. Character dies, or gets married to the evil prince zoom back into a frame story. “But grandpa can’t be what happened!”

The GM can, for instance, say one of the NPC allies is telling the story of what the players are doing in a tavern some years in the future, and is a little drunk and one of his friends calls him out that he’s Telling the Damn Story Wrong! It’s like Faramir wearing a leather diaper and an eye patch talking about the Battle of Thermopylae after the fact but the characters are still fighting the battle.


You Broke My Toy

You using this phrase provoked a strong memory of the second character I ever rolled up. I was in middle school and playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons with some friends in the late 80s sometime. My first character was a wizard who had died in his third room in the dungeon after seeing some nymphs bathe and being overcome by their beauty, which sucked but in my adolescent mind that was a pretty cool way to go. Actually, I still think that’s decent. So this time I rolled up a fighter using my sister’s copies of the rulebooks and read up on what he could and could not do, carefully logging down stats and choosing equipment.

Look at me there, so bright-eyed, bubbly and enthusiastic; ready for happy fun imaginary games.

I met the DM at restaurant for the next game session but none of the other players were there, which made him really annoyed. Since I had not joined the party yet or even entered the dungeon he decided to run a one-shot for me. This involved me standing who-knows-where when one of his fantastic NPCs with 19 in every stat flies down on some mystical creature, I don’t remember what, and propositions me to ride into glorious battle with him. I get on the saddle behind him and he flies over to a neighboring province where some sort of conflict is going on and proceeds to start taunting people on the ground below. So they shoot arrows at him. Lots of arrows. The beast’s magical hide and his legendary plate armor easily deflect the blows. But I get riddled by 1d4 arbitrary arrows every turn. And, I don’t have any choice about what to do about it since I’m on the back of this dragon. I keep waiting for some plot to happen when hey I’m dead. The NPC says something about “shedding dead weight” and shoves me off.

I never trusted that DM or the entire table again, and it forever tainted Dungeons and Dragons for me. I moved on to West End’s Star Wars and Shadowrun after that and today my favorite game is Changeling: the Lost. In fact, I wouldn’t have any D&D books but for White Wolf’s Third Edition version of Ravenloft (which for me was like Daft Punk doing the Tron soundtrack, I wasn’t super excited about each separately but when I heard that chocolate was getting together with that peanut butter I had to go all in).

So that’s my teenage gamer tale of woe and dumb storytelling wherein I got screwed over for no reason.


Keep it up,
-S.

Alan,

In reverse order here. I hope. I mean I really hope that they days of GM power fantasies of "look at my cool world and cool NPCs and cool stories" are, for the most part, a thing of the past. When the GM is given cart blanche power over a game (as he was essentially granted in D&D because they didn't know how else to resolve a million other situations) this can of behavior can, and did, present itself.

I like to think that even since 3.0 D&D has been putting the breaks on the GM, utilizing challenge rating and encounter levels to present fair (if somewhat predictable) challenges to the PCs. With 4th edition, the DM guide includes a lot of indie movements like "Consider yes" as well as some of the more evolved trad game guides like "what kind of player are you?"

So my hope that not only is the DM/GM/Storyteller/MC/Director/Producer of most games these days limited in what kind of lame moves they can pull on the players, but more importantly, they have also been given many toolboxes full of cool things they can do.

Regarding the “But grandpa, that can’t be what happened!” I think you're really onto something. First, allow the narrative to flow from an imperfect and biased source. I mean ever story is told by a biased storyteller anyway, so why not admit that the telling of a game is really the "re-telling" of the game, and the narrator (which includes both the GM and Players) is fallible, which means he can be corrected.

I've got this image of three dudes sitting around a camp fire telling stories to a group of children. One of them starts talking about the princess who was captured by the dragon and then eaten, when the second one says, "you idiot, you remembered it wrong. First, it was the prince that was captured and second, the dragon tried to eat him but his mother's magic protected him, the dragon swallowed him whole but then coughed him up immediately."

I believe the micro-micro-micro game (the entire thing is printed on one page) XXXtreme Street Luge had the Bullshit mechanic for interrupting a player when they were narrating. Montsegure 1244 has something like that as well.

Good gaming to you sir.

Sean

Alan... we thought a lot about your comments... and that turned into episode 62.. Retcon! http://is.gd/mtLVQf