Scenes in RPGs

SCENES IN RPGS: BUT WHAT ARE YOU _DOING_?

The question that Josh said is crucial to playing is "What do you want to do?"

Lisa (playing along): Prepare for whatever weird thing is going to happen next -- you know, take precautions, make charms, set up magical defenses --

Josh: No, no! What do you want to -do-?

It's sort of an independent invention of E. M. Forster's take on novels and stories. As I recall, Forster said, "The king died, and then the queen died" isn't a story. It's history. "The king died, and then the queen died of grief" is a story. And, "The king died. Then, the queen died, and no one knew why. No one knew why, until it was discovered that the queen died of grief" is not merely a story; it is a mystery.

In the labcats livejournal blog, Josh commented: The basic concept is that if [a scene is] being played at all, you should be doing something -- you (if not your character) should have some dramatic, strategic, or whatnot goal served by a scene rather than it being there because "it's what happens next".

Now, in a face to face tabletop game, it isn't that this isn't a valid point so much as that table tops don't get edited so much. But, in a play by email, because one is writing, there is an element of editing. And, in the Strange School game, while it's okay to start a scene to see what might happen, there have been occasional scenes where nothing really does. I remember suggesting one such scene simply not get posted, but the player didn't like that idea, and I was not about to push. It wasn't slowing anyone down, and folks finding the scene not to their taste probably skipped it. Several times, I've ended a scene because it was the right line or note to end it on, and any unfinished business could either wait till another scene, or wasn't really that important. Realism gives way to better prose. This is especially true if I'm writing an NPC "cut scenes" or vignette. I'll skip the shelf life tangent for now.

Even in a face to face game, one should probably have some idea of where a scene might go. In Primetime Adventure, the conceit of the game being a television show is used to focus scenes. All scenes should either be character development scenes or plot advancement scenes. I use both in the Strange School game, and if I can mix the two, even better. In Notes Found in a Bottle, the letter format makes that easier.

In face to face games, it's trickier, and I think part of the reason that preparation time pays off for me and for folks like Brian Rogers is that it allows us to have set pieces in mind, like modules that can be snapped in wherever appropriate. The PCs are following up X logical lead? No problem -- I've thought about that, and we snap this piece in. The PCs are going in Y direction instead? Well, based on the other things I've worked out, that means I'll start here, and slot this module in this position instead.

This doesn't mean that there are no surprises, and it doesn't mean that players don't make meaningful choices. It means that the players aren't left twiddling their thumbs while the GM tries to figure out how to run with their choices. And, it means that a lot of us have been using the GUMSHOE principle for years before GUMSHOE existed: The PCs will get the clues they need for the story to unfold. But, the clues themselves will not mandate how the story unfolds. They simply allow the PCs to get to the story.

That last isn't entirely true, of course. How I give you a clue does influence the choices you're going to make. And, sometimes, I take full advantage of this. And, sometimes, I may handle the clue handoff badly, or at least, suboptimally.

I'm not sure if the way I handled Ox's journal in the Plus Twenty game was good or subotpimal. The PCs had acquired the journal of their enemy, Ox, and had planned to read it after a faerie market. The journal revealed Ox's Villainous Plot for market. I think I nudged at the players about reading it until Beth decided that, as Jay had to sleep, she might as well have it translated in the Dreamlands. But, really, I could have found other ways to get the information to the PCs. Okay, they might have had less time to stop the Villainous Plot, but that would have been fine.

Hm, I haven't given any actual examples of types of scenes in play by emails. This may need to wait until next month. I'll see if I can come up with different types of scenes from the Strange School game, the Notes Found in a Bottle game, and perhaps some of the earlier Cthulhupunk pbem bits.