Choices, Decision Paralysis, and Story Recipes

[benlehman]

A short essay.



So Vincent and J have been having this great discussion recently which is about how, really, all the rules in most RPGs (conflict resolution, blocking and precedence, etc.) about about how to treat other's contributions, and they don't answer the big question -- what should you contribute? This has a bit to do with all that other stuff I was talking about recently, I think. Ron, of course, is way ahead of us, having already talked about this in his Narrativism Essay but, like Ron always does, he has decided that the standard GM-player model is a great solution to this, treated well. And, frankly, he's right. It ain't broke, so why fix it?

That's a different essay. For right now, let's assume that there is a good reason to want every player of a game to have real authority to give story-level input into the course of that game, and there is a good reason to divide up the standard judgment and filtering tasks that a GM has to deal with. Okay, good? Now I'm going ask you to imagine something.

Imagine that you go into a restaurant and sit down. The waitress doesn't bring you a menu. She just comes up and says "what do you want to eat?"

Now, sometimes, you really want your eggs and bacon, or your 糖醋鱼, or some other favorite dish. You just order it, they make it, no problem. But that is a very rare case.

Most likely, you stare at the waitress, and say "Uhm, well, what do you have?"
"Pretty much anything."
"What's good?"
"Eh, it's all pretty good. So what do you want? You're wasting my time."

And, for the life of you, you cannot think of a single thing you want to eat. Even if you do come up with something, it will be spoken hesitantly, and awkwardly.

This is why restaurants have menus. It isn't that the kitchen can't produce a much wider array of food than what's listed on the menu. It is simply easier to give you a much more limited set of options to choose from, rather than open things up to give you the full range, which is near-infinite. Too many possible decisions creates paralysis.

In the context of RPGs, Ron calls this the "Dead Ball Effect."

Okay, so we know it is there. How do we get around it?

A railroaded GMed game is like, there's the GM, and it is his responsibility to keep things going on all the time and, in fact, the players aren't even allowed to introduce new things if they want to.

A GMed game which is a little more fun, I think, might look like this: The GM introduces a situation, a player introduces their character's action, the GM responds with the changes in situation, the player acts again. Of course, there are sometimes multiple players (though not as often as we might think -- another essay), and in that case their actions are going to cross over and effect one another.

Another sort of GMed game looks like this: The players are taking most of the action and the authority, and riffing and having their characters compete and argue or whatever. The GM reaches in when things are boring and uses some bangs to spice things up. A well-run LARP is a lot like this, I think.

But then there are other games. A lot of things can take the place of the heavy load of GM prep and stress which is necessary to run all these games. Here are some thoughts:

Vincent, Emily and Meg's Improvised Ars Magica game seems to use a system where they all do a lot of prep for the game, so there are just a lot of things going on at the same time. Anytime that someone can't think of a new thing, someone else has something else that they can jump in with. Add this to a heavily structured relationship web, and you have enough juice to keep going for a while.

Polaris has a whole shitload of serious support mechanisms for this problem, and it isn't totally enough. First of all, the diagram provides each character with a "menu" of options for creating and sustaining conflict which has already been established as meaningful. Second, the two Moons help the conflict generator do his thing. Third, the unordered scene passing lets people who have a good idea do their thing and lets others sit back. Lastly, you can always rely on your Heart to frame a scene for you if you can't. Still, when we played last, we had a little dead air time.

Universalis doesn't have enough backup, I think. It uses the whole unstructured turn order of Polaris, I think, but I don't know what else.

The Game of Changes, when it hits, is going to have a Conflict Menu attached to each setting, so that when you are called to introduce a new conflict (which is just all the time) you can pick something from the list. See, the menu is the only thing that differentiates setting from setting. Isn't that awesome?

D&D has modules, so you always can have a good dungeon crawl without needing any help. Further, the 1st ed AD&D book had a random dungeon generator. How awesome is that? Random encounter tables help, too, and D&D 3 has a list of 100 adventure seeds, just sitting there. Yes, it is all for a GMed game, but that is serious support. Just goes to show that our ancestors were *way* ahead of us.

Anyway, J, that's my long answer.

Comments

[apollinax.livejournal.com]

This is why restaurants have menus.

I one went to a restaurant in Henley on the Thames that had no menu. A friendly Italian man asked you what you wanted, (e.g., "pasta and salad") and then talked about what ingredients you had and what you'd like him to do with them. He then wandered over to the kitchen (which was in the same room) and instructed his cooks on what to make, watching over them. The waiters would bring you the food, etc.

The salad he served was the first time I liked vinegar, and the first time I liked a salad. Still today, it's one of my favorite recipes: tomatoes with scallions, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, black pepper and fresh basil.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about how the 5 explorative elements can work as "lenses" or ways to focus and narrow things down, producing momentum in play. Consider D&D- "You fight monsters"- with that premise nailed, the menu options give you ways to approach that. Dogs? "You must save the good folk from themselves, as one of God's Watchdogs" and then it gives some options, but nothing to nailed down, as long as it fits within that range. Setting, situation, system, color, character, all of these can be focused or left open, accordingly. But I think it is utterly vital to nail some down, otherwise, like you say, people just go... uh...

[nikotesla.livejournal.com]

Just goes to show that our ancestors were *way* ahead of us.

Well, it shows that they considered randomness a valid alternative to plot. The point isn't merely to have conflict, it's to have meaningful conflict.

But of course, you know that. You're being facetious.

Here's what I've gleaned from PTA: as the Producer, you start out your game with something like 'Alex rides out of dark into camp with blood all over his face. He says "They've got Buck!" ... Cut to Buck, bloodied and tied in a chair.'

Do I know who got Buck? Not really. Do I know what they want from him? Well, they obviously like beating him up, but I don't know more than that. Does Buck's player know, by the time I'm done setting him up? You bet. He knows he wants out of there to exact his revenge, he knows (because he set up this town last game) that these are the people who killed his family and abducted his sister, and that he was asking questions about the Preacher Man when they jumped him.

I didn't make up the cult, I didn't make up the town, I didn't make up the Preacher Man. He made up all of that. What I did was throw dice for Buck's player's ideas. I made the conflict out of his props, kinda. I did little more than the other players. I acted as a disinterested party when tensions were high. That's round about it.

It's wicked late and I can't remember how to add you to my Friends list, but we'll discuss this more later.

[lordsmerf.livejournal.com]

Ben,

Do you just want to write my Push article on constraint? I mean you're basically way ahead on my with history, implications, and practical application... *wink*

Thomas

[iralith.livejournal.com]

>Game of Changes

Is that what it sounds like? 'Cause dang, I have to see that.

Uh, this is Matt, by the way. Hi. I think, um, the closest you and I have ever come to a real-life conversation was an exchange of cushioned blows at Aralis.