Messages

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RPGs / Turning rpg:s into improv games?

« on: March 22, 2015, 10:51:02 PM »

Hiya guys!

I'm a lover of all forms of interactive entertainmen: video games, rpg:s and theatre. I'm going to hold an improv exercise with a gaming and competitive mechanics theme at my local theatre club, so I'm thinking of various ways of converting the systems of 'game' games into faster and looser improv games. Often the rewards in improv are simple, the laughter of the audience, getting to stay up on stage, guiding the direction of the story. In order to make challenges or settings a bit more rule-bound I think I could try to constrain the reward systems.

One exercise could be: three persons on stage, they have a character weakness each, there is a challenge in the scene such that only a strong effort of one or many players can clear it, as reward the players who cleared the challenge gets to overcome their weakness, they end the scene when the outcome is obvious.

A variant can use status as the placeholder for other weaknesses, letting them go from low to high or vice versa.

How could we gamify this a bit more? One way is to force a ranking, let the players feel who weighed in the most vs least and let their transformation be the most or least. Another can be to add some kind of points that they have to bet on their actions. We could also try to qualify the challenge somewhat more, like having a series of distinct requirements for it to be cleared.

Another exercise: three persons on stage, one is a game master and does not control a character but have the power to define the setting or outcomes of actions, the others are actors who only author their own characters, the GM defines some challenge and narrates the outcomes of the players actions, the scene ends when the challenge is cleared or they fail.

A gamification here could be that the players both win if they work together, but if one of them clears the challenge alone then s/he and the GM wins.

What do you think of ways to merge rpg mechanics with improv? Any input on my examples?

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General Chaos / Re: On adapting to others.

« on: December 04, 2010, 07:59:17 AM »

1. Bonk is much more sensitive to it than the others yeah, but on the other hand is also on the passive end of the axis of the varying interruption-behaviours exhibited in the group. We'll have a general talk about that next time, how it's ok in game but not off, cause there are a pair of players who are notorious for interrupting others more. Plus, bonk is being a bit of an ass yeah.

2. Thing is that in this game bonk is the only one interested in having secrets, and can't handle the pc/player divide; so it poses as an either or situation. But bonk responded seemingly accepting to my message. But in another game we played, where secrets were a main theme, bonk was genial.

3. Ok, thanks for answering.

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General Chaos / Re: On adapting to others.

« on: December 03, 2010, 05:14:40 PM »

It's practically impossible to reach bonk any other way than by mail. So I used mail, email. Assured I mean no accusation.

Wrote that bonk should decide what to do with the information and to inform me so I can plan accordingly, that we'll have a general talk next time about interruptions and how to avoid them between players and how to accept/cause them between characters, that I can try not to use open communication when bonk recieve or don't recieve information that someone else isn't or is but that I wont use this for the whole group or for all situations. I hope bonk will take it at least somewhat level headedly.
 
The reason I use bonk instead of a gender or a name is because I want to keep it at least relatively anonymous, plus avoid any gender or name related preconceptions. Plus at least lower the risk bonk would some day come to see this and recognize it, since that'd mean the end of my tenure here in this group. Bonk is as far as I know not a swedish name. Of course I could have chosen a more intelligent sounding name on second though. Hm, gosh dangit, excuse my censoring.

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RPGs / Re: Recurring Oddities

« on: December 03, 2010, 04:20:08 PM »

In a group of Eon players we continually made references to "The Baron's Finest" which was a sausage made from a relative to the Yeti, called Deti, that we had met/killed in an early adventure with different characters. It was apparently very valuable since it would mostly show up in royal palaces and captains rooms of pirate ships.

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General Chaos / Re: On adapting to others.

« on: December 03, 2010, 02:26:51 PM »

Thank you for answering Patrick!

In this situation it's sadly a bit too complicated for me to be able to excert any much pressure on bonk, since the two of rest of the group is very strongly friends with bonk and the other two are much more friends with those two than with me or bonk. I am a relatively new addition to this group. So in this case kicking bonk out will only result in me being left on square zero without a group again.

I fear that the only way to salvage this is for me to adapt completely to bonk's position since bonk is self incapable of adapting and only throws a fit while the others stare at the ground whenever bonk is critizised or overruled  

So that would mean imposing a strict regimen against metagaming or things that may lead to metagaming, it would mean training me and all the others to not interrupt bonk, ever, and it would mean none ever coming out as relatively uninterested in characterization or immersion. Otherwise the group will probably fall apart. Of course one idea is to split the group... Hm. I'll have to try that.

Hello AmishNinja!

I think your points about individualist and collectivist players are quite applicable to this. Bonk definitely plays like an individualist character but has one major difference one might not expect. Instead of like the kobolts being unable to take in information in character and therefore respect the character/player divide, bonk is unable to take in information as a player without also taking it in as a character; knowing secrets or information before hand ruins the experience for bonk.

It's like in some amateur theatre groups where the actors don't learns to act emotions convincingly but actually learn to aquire the emotions themselves instead.

Extra complicating this is that the last session broke up because bonk got too angry at the rest of the group for assuming that bonk would tell them a piece of absolutely vital plot information that bonk has no reason to hide from them but wants to anyway because otherwise bonks character is made obselete in some way. Well, now at least I know not to put bonk in that situation anymore.

Aside:

What do you think about ways to transmit secret information, like passing notes or talking in the other room, can it be done in such a way that it doesn't end up in the kind of who knows what games that AmishNinja mentioned?

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General Chaos / On adapting to others.

« on: December 03, 2010, 01:17:15 PM »

Hiya!

There is a person (bonk) in my group who have some quite severe restrictions on bonk's ability to enjoy the roleplay, to achieve immersion bonk needs the experience to be absolutely free from metagaming, the others players need to be totally secure in acting out their characters and bonk may never be interrupted even in character. If these are not satisfied bonk goes into a really bad mood and completely holds up the game and starts ranting out a lot of bad feelings toward the other players.

The other players, and me as a GM, have restrictions of our own; I am lazy with writing notes and other things that can help immersion and I'm generally intolerant toward people who are not flexible in their playing style in order for the game to progress, and several of the players assume that information gained by one character will always be shared with the others or have restrictions on their willingness to act out in character.

So you can guess what happened. Anyway, the questions are:

1. How far you as players and GMs prepared to change your styles in order to accomodate the other people in the group?

And

2. On which end of the axis from "My duty" to "Our duty" to "Their duty" do you place yourself when it comes to see who it is that should change to make things work in a group?

Of course question two may be circumvented by saying that "it all depends on who is actually factually right", but try for this case to specifically think of cases where it's primarily a matter of preference in gaming style rather than a conflict over which set of rules actually works or not or something else more determinable.

Edit: Hej Bonk! Om du hittar dig hit och läser denna tråden efter att jag tipsat om RPPR, försök att inte bli helt sinnessjukt förbannat, det här är mest en ögonblicksbild av uppdämd irritation efter första WoD-mötet. Visserligen har du varit ganska så jobbig även efter detta, men nu är det på en hanterbar nivå, och nu senast var du superbt integrerad i gruppen utan ett enda utbrott.

Anledningen till att jag inte bara tar bort texten är att jag är öppen för udda konsekvenser av handlingar som kan ge krydda åt tillvaron.

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General Chaos / Re: Introduction

« on: November 30, 2010, 11:39:49 PM »

A question though: I actually also had a mail friend many years ago, I think it must have been around 98, that I talked a lot to about various cock-measuring subjects. And he was from Arizona, just like you. This wasn't Age of Empires, was it?  

EDIT:

It can't be us though, on second thought, since I can't have talked about sports any back then before I got any interest at all. Plus, it'd be quite unsettling to bump in to him just like that, since he stopped mailing to me after throwing a religious moral tantrum over my sexuality.

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General Chaos / Re: Introduction

« on: November 30, 2010, 11:27:41 PM »

Well, yeah, that's quite a common thing swedes do. I mean, talking about our stuff as the best ever and looking down on others' stuff, especially yours, all the while talking about how we're so enlightened for respecting other cultures. So yeah. 

Interesting choice to come from an island in the middle of nowhere. One thing though, be a bit careful with who you call patriotic, because even though we may seem very proud of our nation just like americans are, we generally don't call that patriotism. Instead patriotism is a controversial word currently owned by national conservative wingnuts.

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General Chaos / Re: Introduction

« on: November 30, 2010, 10:33:05 PM »

Cool, why is he? And why the big surprise about the country, podcasts are getting really big here now.

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General Chaos / Re: Introduction

« on: November 30, 2010, 09:59:44 PM »

Hej! I found this place by googling for WoD scenarios, for inspiration on an upcoming campaign , and finding Candle Cove; loved it!

My name's Johan. I'm a 25 yo engineer with a 15 y background of game mastering, I live in Sweden and I'll post here a few times a year on various drama, mechanics or plot idea questions.