Quote from: Manzanaro;882123Why are you even engaging me in this conversation? Seriously.

We have a drive to seek understanding, which does not evaporate immediately just because you act so hostile.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882085Like 'story' has less connotations? Narrative is the word that fits. An accounting of events. I think 95% of why people have problems with it is due to Edward's misuse of the word.

Story has more connotations so equivocation is easier with it, but many of those connotation refer to things as general as 'stuff that happened in the game yesterday'. The issue with narrative is it is very specifically tied to ideas about narrative play. Not saying you can't use it, but I think it is understandable that people in a discussion like this raise up their defenses a bit when someone gets insistent not just about using it, but about the idea that it is always present. I hear gamers use the word story all the time to just mean stuff that happened in game, or maybe to refer to more dramatic moments. But when I hear 'narrative' in the context of RPGs it is almost always coming from someone who is into story RPGs.

QuoteAnd scene framing is entirely valid to my mind, and any other way of talking about it is much more cumbersome. Scene framing may not have much bearing in a dungeon crawl, or any other situation where you are tracking time continuously, but there are many other premises for games that involve a lot of time skipping and deciding where and where not to focus.

I get that. But scene framing as a narrative device in play, as I understand that term to be used by people like Pemerton and other posters who invoke it, is very much a story game method. If you mean it some other way, that is fine, but do understand it is going to create confusion if you are using it in a new way.

If you want to argue about language we can do that all day. I am just explaining to you where I have issues with the words you are using. I am happy to ignore the language debate and focus on your overall points (which I did try to engage). But if you try to force language on people, particularly language around this subject, they are going to resist a bit.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882118Narrative isn't exactly obscure jargon. I'd think anybody with a 6th grade education would probably he able to decipher it.
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I first encountered it in college in an advanced history course. I am sure plenty of people my age (particularly people who were more into literature) encountered it before then (I may have just not paid attention to it before then), but I think it's widespread currency is fairly recent (and then usually around the idea of a news or political narrative---which is very different from what I originally learned it to mean).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;882048I think this gets at a fundamental divide though over approach. And this is why how we talk about it is so important sometimes. If you are treating the in game developments as acts of creation, as storytelling developments in the hands of the players and GM, that produces a very different experience than if you are approaching the events as if they are really occurring at that moment and immersed in that.

Treating the campaign as exercise in storytelling demands metagaming. Doing things as a player or referee for reasons other than what occurs within the game. In traditional roleplaying, metagaming it one of the few things you can do that is considered cheating in a roleplaying game.

This is what I consider the root of the animosity towards storygaming and treating RPGs as collaborative storytelling tools.

Traditionally metagaming resulted from the player or referee doing something for selfish reasons. Had a bad day at work, personal animosity, personal gain by acting on knowledge the character wouldn't have, etc, etc. With storygaming, metagaming is part of the package of tools the group is trying to use to create a story together. Basically how the actions of the characters and the referee work to create a good story.

I don't like metagaming when I referee a tabletop RPG campaign. However I been at this long enough to recognize there is rarely just one plausible outcome to any course of actions.  So out of that range of possibilities I will pick the ones that I think the players will find interesting and that fit the campaign I am running.

Careful use of this technique will give the campaign a sense of flow and direction. Of rising action followed by a climax. A sense that plot threads coming together into a grand finale.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882097Trust me, if I were to try to even say, here are some examples of narrative characteristics that belong in every game, what I would get is people shouting that they did not like those things and I should stop telling them how to play. And that actually is understandable, because there is no universal ideal that holds true in every imaginable narrative.

As the one who was shouting the loudest earlier in the thread, I'm rather confident that, if you were to say "here are some examples of narrative characteristics that I like to see in every game", phrasing it as your personal opinion/preference rather than as a "universal ideal that holds true in every imaginable [situation]", then I doubt that anyone would object.  I know that I wouldn't.

Le sigh.
Guys, non-fiction is still a book, as much as (I'd actually argue they deserve to count as books more than) "50 shades of grey" and other bullshit:p.
Biographies are non-fiction, and the closest to an immersive RPG experience IME:).
Manzanaro is asking everybody, "what do you feel is a good way to make a biography read entertaining, like a fiction book, without changing what happened in any way".
I think a lot of you are reading into the question "what's the best way to make fiction out of your non-fiction". Which would probably explain why you're giving the impression of wanting him to feel vigorously alive:D!

Quote from: Manzanaro;882062Here's an example of a technique I like to use. Let's say I am running a horror game and I am keeping track of all kinds of stuff going on in the background, but there is nothing really hitting the table in the next week. So I will say, "okay, I'm going to advance about a week here. Does anyone have anything they'd like to play out in that week?" And my players know that this is me giving them an opportunity to frame scenes themselves. This might be a discussion between the characters of recent events. It might be a character having dinner with his family. It might be a brief scene in which a character is shown in a different context than we see them at other times.

These scenes are rarely very long and they are generally gone into with a conscious intent of illuminating the character in some way.

And the thing is? As the GM I could not frame these kind of scenes and expect them to pan out. It needs to come from the players because it is their characters. And what I find this DOES is add some weight when we get back into the more typical horror stuff. Everyone knows the NPCs. Everyone has gotten a fuller glimpse of their fellow PCs.

Does this kind of technique strike you as out of place or unacceptable in a simulation oriented game? Or put slightly differently, would you find it broke immersion in some way?

No, assuming you do it at the start of the session, or call for a break while we think. And after all, we need some time to order pizza;).

Sorry. No. Reading a book is not role playing.

Quote from: estar;882147I don't like metagaming when I referee a tabletop RPG campaign. However I been at this long enough to recognize there is rarely just one plausible outcome to any course of actions.  So out of that range of possibilities I will pick the ones that I think the players will find interesting and that fit the campaign I am running.
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This come up on another forum in a similar discussion and I think it is really important point. It isn't always a choice between what is most interesting and what is plausible. Those two things often align and there are usually more than one plausible outcomes, more than one interesting outcomes, etc. I think a GM interested in preserving immersion and a real feeling of a world, won't shy away from interesting outcomes, they just don't only use interesting/dramatic/etc as the guiding principle of what happens (for me plausibility always takes primacy but if there is plausible and interesting outcome, I will go for it). As a player what will tend to get to me, is when the only thing guiding those kinds of decisions is making sure things play out interestingly or dramatically. I don't mind moments that hit that movie or novel vibe, especially if it involves an unexpected and believable moment of drama. What will tend to pull me out is when it feels too much like a movie or book if that makes sense.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;882264This come up on another forum in a similar discussion and I think it is really important point. It isn't always a choice between what is most interesting and what is plausible. Those two things often align and there are usually more than one plausible outcomes, more than one interesting outcomes, etc. I think a GM interested in preserving immersion and a real feeling of a world, won't shy away from interesting outcomes, they just don't only use interesting/dramatic/etc as the guiding principle of what happens (for me plausibility always takes primacy but if there is plausible and interesting outcome, I will go for it). As a player what will tend to get to me, is when the only thing guiding those kinds of decisions is making sure things play out interestingly or dramatically. I don't mind moments that hit that movie or novel vibe, especially if it involves an unexpected and believable moment of drama. What will tend to pull me out is when it feels too much like a movie or book if that makes sense.

I agree with that, personally:).

Quote from: Manzanaro;882062Here's an example of a technique I like to use. Let's say I am running a horror game and I am keeping track of all kinds of stuff going on in the background, but there is nothing really hitting the table in the next week. So I will say, "okay, I'm going to advance about a week here. Does anyone have anything they'd like to play out in that week?" And my players know that this is me giving them an opportunity to frame scenes themselves. This might be a discussion between the characters of recent events. It might be a character having dinner with his family. It might be a brief scene in which a character is shown in a different context than we see them at other times.

These scenes are rarely very long and they are generally gone into with a conscious intent of illuminating the character in some way.
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Does this kind of technique strike you as out of place or unacceptable in a simulation oriented game? Or put slightly differently, would you find it broke immersion in some way?

No, it doesn't seem at all off to me, although I personally wouldn't go into those scenes with any conscious intent beyond "here's some more stuff that happened and will likely be interesting in some way".

When I'm running a game I do the same sort of thing, but in a way that you might consider somewhat more "simulative".  Rather than saying "we're skipping ahead a week, do you want to do anything in that time?", I'm more likely to move forward one day at a time, telling the players about any major events that happened each day, and giving them a chance to respond or to initiate their own actions on that day before moving on to the next.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;882064I don't think it is unacceptable at all. I probably wouldn't call that a scene though.

Do you have an alternate term that you prefer to use for "the set of events which took place in a certain location at a certain time"?  I'm not crazy about "scene" for largely the same reasons you've brought up, but I've never been able to come up with a succinct alternative.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;882064So I think the term framing the scene is a bit loaded in this case (and scene framing has particular meaning in RPG discussions).

I'm not a fan of the "scene framing" concept, but, then, my first encounter with the term was a GM advice article which made a big deal about every scene being focused on a single "dramatic question", then ending immediately once the dramatic question has been answered/resolved.  Since that's not a way I generally want to play, it left me with a distinct (although perhaps unfair?) bias against the idea.

Quote from: estar;882147Treating the campaign as exercise in storytelling demands metagaming. Doing things as a player or referee for reasons other than what occurs within the game. In traditional roleplaying, metagaming it one of the few things you can do that is considered cheating in a roleplaying game.

This is what I consider the root of the animosity towards storygaming and treating RPGs as collaborative storytelling tools.

Interesting theory and I do think it has merit, but that's also dependent on how broadly you define "metagaming".

For example, I know there are some who consider it "metagaming" when a D&D party encounters their first troll and everyone breaks out the torches, even though their characters have no way of knowing about trolls' vulnerability to fire.  Others consider that appropriate use of player knowledge and not metagaming at all.  In my experience, this sort of player knowledge is usually accepted (sometimes even celebrated) in traditional gaming circles, regardless of whether the speaker considers it metagaming or not.

So, let me wade back in here. When I find myself getting tight over some abstract shit, it is time to back off for a while. But it happens. I'm a nerd, and getting tight over some abstract shit is what nerds do.

The thing is, this thread wasn't intended to be 20 pages of theory wank; it was intended to present what I felt like was an interesting area of discussion, where maybe a few people would read it and be like, "Oh! I get what he is talking about! Here is a technique or two that I use along those lines." And then you end up with a nice little thread full of a bunch of people's ideas for some interesting GMing techniques. Nice idea right?

Well, it seems like all I had to do was back off a bit and things have gotten a lot less confrontational. Awesome!

By the way, is there an easy way to reply to multiple posts with a single reply?

Here is one I wanted to reply to:

Quote from: estar;882147Treating the campaign as exercise in storytelling demands metagaming. Doing things as a player or referee for reasons other than what occurs within the game. In traditional roleplaying, metagaming it one of the few things you can do that is considered cheating in a roleplaying game.

I agree with this. But what I am interested in is more along the lines of bringing good narrative or story-telling principles to a game that remains simulationist at its core.

In other words it isn't about things happening because they are good for the story, it's about presenting the things that happen in a way that MAKES them good AS a story.

Is that too muddy to follow?

QuoteI don't like metagaming when I referee a tabletop RPG campaign. However I been at this long enough to recognize there is rarely just one plausible outcome to any course of actions.  So out of that range of possibilities I will pick the ones that I think the players will find interesting and that fit the campaign I am running.

Careful use of this technique will give the campaign a sense of flow and direction. Of rising action followed by a climax. A sense that plot threads coming together into a grand finale.

And this is exactly the kind of practice I am talking about! Looking deeper at these kinds of techniques is something I find very interesting.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;882264This come up on another forum in a similar discussion and I think it is really important point. It isn't always a choice between what is most interesting and what is plausible. Those two things often align and there are usually more than one plausible outcomes, more than one interesting outcomes, etc. I think a GM interested in preserving immersion and a real feeling of a world, won't shy away from interesting outcomes, they just don't only use interesting/dramatic/etc as the guiding principle of what happens (for me plausibility always takes primacy but if there is plausible and interesting outcome, I will go for it). As a player what will tend to get to me, is when the only thing guiding those kinds of decisions is making sure things play out interestingly or dramatically. I don't mind moments that hit that movie or novel vibe, especially if it involves an unexpected and believable moment of drama. What will tend to pull me out is when it feels too much like a movie or book if that makes sense.

Absolutely, we can all pick out bullshit moments in books and movies that don't feel REAL. I don't want the cavalry to arrive BECAUSE we are in trouble. But I DO want to be able to make an interesting narrative out of the cavalry arriving a day late, if that is what the rules of simulation tell me has happened.

I always want to be able to tell my players WHY something happened in game. And I don't want it to be bullshit. Why did the cavalry arrive when they did? Because before you even set off I determined that they would come looking for you if you didn't return in 3 days, and then I rolled 3d20 to see how many hours it would take them to find you and that is when they showed up.

Quote from: nDervish;882416No, it doesn't seem at all off to me, although I personally wouldn't go into those scenes with any conscious intent beyond "here's some more stuff that happened and will likely be interesting in some way".

Yeah that is understandable.

The only reason I tend to like some intent is because I want scenes to go somewhere. I have seen too many times where people want to play out shopping or drinking in a tavern, and it just ends up being meandering and tedious. I am not really into playing quirky innkeepers and shopkeepers and trying to keep people entertained on that level.

But even so, when I say I want there to be some intent, I don't mean in terms of how it turns out. Like, an example would be something like, "Okay, I want to do a scene where Bragnakh takes Melinor the Black to talk out on the docks and tells him, 'You almost got me fucking killed out there'". I don't know where that is going to go but I know it should be good.

EDIT: Oh, and in case that sounds too narrative game-y? Basically all that is is getting to the heart of the issue and cutting out the boring part. I know the player wants to do all the travelling and talking and other crap that it takes to make this thing happen, so we just consider that stuff to all get done and go to the part where it gets good.

QuoteWhen I'm running a game I do the same sort of thing, but in a way that you might consider somewhat more "simulative".  Rather than saying "we're skipping ahead a week, do you want to do anything in that time?", I'm more likely to move forward one day at a time, telling the players about any major events that happened each day, and giving them a chance to respond or to initiate their own actions on that day before moving on to the next.

Yeah, all pretty similar. I think quite a few GMs do this kind of thing, but it is, again, one of those things that can be hard to talk about because nobody knows quite what to call it outside of a term that has negative associations for a lot of GMs.

Quote from: nDervish;882416Do you have an alternate term that you prefer to use for "the set of events which took place in a certain location at a certain time"?  I'm not crazy about "scene" for largely the same reasons you've brought up, but I've never been able to come up with a succinct alternative.

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I just tend to think of it as what is going on at that moment. It isn't an allotted period of time the way a scene is to me. It is what is happening now (and we just elapsed through some mundane stuff to get there). I am thinking back to how we describe these moments in my games and I don't think we references them by word like that. I'm not sure having a label adds utility though unless you are structuring the game around those moments for some reason.

Quote from: nDervish;882416Do you have an alternate term that you prefer to use for "the set of events which took place in a certain location at a certain time"?  I'm not crazy about "scene" for largely the same reasons you've brought up, but I've never been able to come up with a succinct alternative.

It's just a chunk of stuff that happens at one place or as continuation of some action. "Scene" is about as good a thing to call it as anything else, and shorter than "a chunk of action".
Or maybe it's just that I don't associate "scene" with writing and only writing, so I don't have any reason to object, personally.