Quote from: SettembriniOnce you have interested & capable players, it´sall about preparation and thinking it through.

Or not. Don't get me wrong, I often do preparation but it usually doesn't look the same as preparation that is associated with GMs. Here's something that I posted on the subject a couple weeks back. It was on the BW board so you can replace "Beliefs" with "what the player wants his character's adventure to be about".

Quote from: blakkie, crossposted from a different board.... It is a different kind of preparation. I see that ability to adapt relying heavily on the breadth of the GM's knowledge of the "atmosphere". You can deftly create world on the fly if you are really plugged into the atmosphere. To plug into the atmosphere I, at least, read and study the different fictions and facts of the sources that were inspirations for the world to start with. Then refine the themes down to a fine point. Sort of like what you do with a character's Beliefs. Then I work to understand, in a Zen/big picture sort of way, how this links with the PCs' Beliefs.

The good news is that if you do this right up front it typically requires only small bits of maintenance from session. As well for me I can do it in "background" thought. I concentrate on it really hard for an 1/2 an hour or hour, then let it perculate in my sub-concious for the week.

But the preparation isn't that big a requirement at all. Now for yourself from what I've seen you do think of everything in terms of preparations.  Also I've maybe done prep before two SR sessions is the last dozen and that was only to tweak some house rules.

On the other hand IMO it is a requirement to be willing and ready to throw out every last scrap of prep if it is necessary for following the players down a path that hadn't occured to you.

Last night the SR team blew up and burned down a warehouse using an IED causing an estimated 10's of millions of nuyen damage (according to news reports and what they could find of the insurance claims filed)....which was the culmination of a spat that started as a throw-away sideline task of intimidating a slum housing tenant manager over the matter of a fist full of nuyen in the very first session of the campaign.  A task I had come up with on the spot looking for a simple way for the PCs to pay for gaining some info for the 'main' thread I had planned for the PCs based on the discussions prior to the first session, a plot that hasn't really seen the light of day since session #2. Because the players have just ignored it. It is barely background. Basically I had to throw away any planning prep I had and it's all new.  And it's all happened during the sessions.

Quote from: SettembriniThen you formulate their plans.

What do you mean by 'formulate'? As is drawing things out? Is the relationship diagram you mention further down an example of what you are talking about? Codifying the ideas you are given ahead of time?  So if they plan to knock over a bank, you draw a map of the bank? What happens when they decide to turn left in the middle of a session and declare they are going to knock over a bank?  Or decide the friends/enemies they had didn't excite them and go off to find new friends/enemies?

I'm curious what you do then?

QuoteTake a look at this pdf, there are pictures of it. It´s in german though, but you´ll get the idea (pdf):

http://hofrat.rollenspiel-berlin.de/The%20PrussianGamersSoundAdvice.pdf

For some reason that file comes in an the raw binary for me. I see the PDF 1.4 format version tag at the top, so everything is gibberish. I've got Adobe Reader 7.0.9 installed (likely the latest available version) and I have never seen this before. It's like the MIME is screwed up for it or something, which is wierd. Anyone else getting this?

P.S. I'll have some AP up in about an hour David.  I'm not sure it'll be a huge difference from what you are doing but there is one thing I haven't seen you mention before.

Blakkie,

I think by formulate their plans, he means the objectives of the major NPCs in the setting.  For example, Count Merguez plans to marry the daughter of the Duke of Burgundy and intends to place himself so as to become regent to the crown prince on the King's death.

ie. understand the objectives of the key NPCs so you can then understand what they are likely to do when the PCs do their thing.  It's an improv tool in that sense.  If a PC decides suddenly to woo the Duke of Burgundy's daughter then you know he just made a powerful enemy, even though he probably doesn't know it himself yet.

On an aside, the idea of you playing Shadowrun offends against my stereotypes of indie gamers.  Please stop at once.

QuoteWhat do you mean by 'formulate'?

Thinking a lot about it, and deciding upon a plan.

As in:
"What is the Sultan trying to accomplish?"
"How powerful is he?"
"What are the Jannissaries going to say?"
"How about the Eunuch?"

or

"The Serenissima tries to snatch Komnenos wife, to genrate a claim to Cyprus, which they want because of levantinian trade. The first attempt to do so is by hired mercenaries from a catholic country. Should that fail, they are not above supporting a bastards claim only to have him asassinated later, with his wife inheriting. Thankfully she has been placed and will surrender the island to Venice."

EDIT: So once you have formulated and fired up the model, you can improvise for years, as you are basically extrapolating and using the sub models for backing that up. The groundworks must have been laid, though. And bookkeeping is neccessary to advance the schemes and economies of all involved parties.

Quote from: Settembrini"The Serenissima tries to snatch Komnenos wife, to genrate a claim to Cyprus, which they want because of levantinian trade. The first attempt to do so is by hired mercenaries from a catholic country. Should that fail, they are not above supporting a bastards claim only to have him asassinated later, with his wife inheriting. Thankfully she has been placed and will surrender the island to Venice."

I'd play that game in a shot, sounds great.

Cool, I think we share many tastes.

The pdf opens good for me, does it work for anybody else?

Quote from: SettembriniCool, I think we share many tastes.

The pdf opens good for me, does it work for anybody else?

Worked fine for me, save for being written in foreign obviously.

I've used similar tools to that graph in the past, it works very well in my experience, I must do so again come to think of it.

Quote from: BalbinusOn an aside, the idea of you playing Shadowrun offends against my stereotypes of indie gamers.  Please stop at once.

It is part of my deep, deep cover. You know, the one where I don't even know I'm an "indie gamer". :cool:

In this campaign we've been using my convertion of BW Circles and Resources to SR4 mechanics. Does that help aleviate the damage to your conceived stereotype? I mean the players just tear-ass around beating people up, shooting the guns, and leveling property in massive explosions.  But there is at least a seed of "indie" there.

P.S. Last night they accidentally cut a whole in their bathtub (checking to make sure their monofilament chainsaw functioned underwater so they could use it to sink a boat) and found 4.5 kg of red orchid (magical heroin). The sociopath orc that's been driving the escalating circle of violence I mentioned decided to try it out and had a seriously magical carpet ride. It forces you to Astrally Project which is something that only mages can do. I have never, in over 10 years of gaming, seen this player play a mage before in any system.  Given the stuff in Street Magic book, and something the player made an offhand remark about earlier in the session before that, I think he is about to.

EDIT:  We'll see how far he takes it because red orchid is even more spooky than heroin. One of the PCs, a mage, saw a junkie OD and die from it. He was trying to determine how potent the junk they found is.  The guy died. Then a few minutes later, and the mage was viewing astral when this happend, something popped back into the body. The body then started nawing on his junkie buddies arm while his junkie buddie was on his own trip.

Shedim!

Quote from: blakkieIt is part of my deep, deep cover. You know, the one where I don't even know I'm an "indie gamer". :cool:

In this campaign we've been using my convertion of BW Circles and Resources to SR4 mechanics. Does that help aleviate the damage to your conceived stereotype? I mean the players just tear-ass around beating people up, shooting the guns, and leveling property in massive explosions.

That makes it far worse, by implying some kind of commonality of content between such different types of games.

It shows just how subtle your machinations are, first you introduce circles to Shadowrun, next thing your group are playing an rpg about exploring a middle aged man's crisis on being passed over for a promotion using a resolution mechanic based on searches of on-line job sites.  It's a slippery slope.

Sounds like a fun game though (your shadowrun one, my example one not so much).

Quote from: SettembriniEDIT: So once you have formulated and fired up the model, you can improvise for years, as you are basically extrapolating and using the sub models for backing that up. The groundworks must have been laid, though. And bookkeeping is neccessary to advance the schemes and economies of all involved parties.

See this is NOT what I think of with "proactive" players. You've determined and filled out all this background. You've shut the door on proactive play.

Proactive players tell me what the background is. They create NPCs and let the GM know [at least the main part of] what the NPC's motivations are. They define relationship links between NPCs. They write ancient history, they determine the existance of objects, they describe what the weather conditions are going to be on a give day. EDIT: They determine the state of the economy at a given point and it's impact on a given situation.

Quote from: blakkieSee this is NOT what I think of with "proactive" players. You've determined and filled out all this background.

Proactive players tell me what the background is. They create NPCs and let the GM know [at least the main part of] what the NPC's motivations are. They define relationship links between NPCs. They write acient history, they determine the existance of objects, they describe what the weather conditions are going to be on a give day.

Ah, that to me is coauthoring which is a different thing.

Proactive to me does not necessarily imply co-creation of content, the original essay I linked to is good on this.

I'm not saying co-creation is bad, but it's not what I was thinking about.  The point with proactive play is the feel of the PCs being active protagonists in the world, but for that feeling to be there for many of us the world has to be external to the players which means you need a GM creating it still.

Certainly that's my personal play preference.  I can enjoy creating backstory and NPC relationships and so on but I prefer the GM to do those things so I can discover them in play and so get a better sense of the game world as a real place.

Quote from: blakkieSee this is NOT what I think of with "proactive" players. You've determined and filled out all this background. You've shut the door on proactive play.

Proactive players tell me what the background is. They create NPCs and let the GM know [at least the main part of] what the NPC's motivations are. They define relationship links between NPCs. They write ancient history, they determine the existance of objects, they describe what the weather conditions are going to be on a give day.

I think this goes a bit further, than what I think of as proactive. I think this is more of story creation kind of play than the more trad stuff I'm used to.

Regards,
David R

QuoteSee this is NOT what I think of with "proactive" players.

You think wrong.

Quote from: David RI think this goes a bit further, than what I think of as proactive. I think this is more of story creation kind of play than the more trad stuff I'm used to.

Regards,
David R

I don't need the whole AP to demonstrate what I'm talking about here.  Situation is 3 PCs attempting to take a docked ship by force, playing BW.  One is a Dwarf in chainmail armor, and his on and only social skill is Conspicuous. He is a banner-bearer by trade. The plan is for him to act as a distraction on the dock near the gangplank. The other two are an Elf (generic Adventuring type) and a Rodin (basically Shredder from TMNT, only this guy is a Murderer by trade).

So they decide to try use cover of darkness so they can slip on board and slit throats without either of the spotters raising the alarm. But they know from recon that the ship has huge lantern fires burning at the ends of the ship to help thwart such attempts.  The Elf has Weathersong which is a divining magic. The player says, I think it's going to be foggy down at the docks. So we agree upon a Obstacle 2, the player rolls, and he meets that. He has earned the right to determine that it is indeed foggy providing them with good cover.  If he hadn't he would have predicted wrong and when they attempted to board it would have been clear skies with the moon shining down brightly.

So the character did not alter the world with weather altering magic. The player was able to choose the world state by using the character's divining magic. It didn't even have to be magic to do this. He could have used, if he character had had it, a mundane skill like Weather-Wise.

Yes, this is different from the idea of the GM as the keeper of all knowledge and secrets and divining and knowledge skills discovering those secrets.  The divining and knowledge skills define the secrets. It was a secret, an unknown, that nobody at the table knew prior. And the advantage is nobody needed to know what it was.

Quote from: SettembriniYou think wrong.

Yes, I'm a bad-wrong thinker.

Yeah, I thought it was something like this, blakkie. BW is Burning Wheel, right? This is a whole different kind of play. Would I be wrong in saying that what the player was doing was determining the "stakes" ? I think in more trad play, the meaning of proactive is different. Reading the article in the original post points to something else.

Regards,
David R