Re: (TFT) Developed logical settings, deadly risks, and motivation

["Jay Carlisle" <selfinflicted_wounds@boardermail.com>]

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: pvk@oz.net
> 
>  From the above ideas (yes, the quoted lines below are all relevant to what
> I'm suggesting),

Okay sorry bout the clutter folks. I get on-line only ocasionally and e-mail through a .com so I'd been leaving the stuff for my own editing purposes but that's an awfully selfish attitude and I didn't mean to offend anyone or cause any problems. I just wasn't thinking. To tell you the truth I'd be typing this stuff weather anyone was reading it or not. I suspose that kind of thinking leads you to forget sometimes that people actually MIGHT be trying to read it.

 consider that if you have a nicely
> detailed/complete/sense-making setting, and your players thought like
> Erol's quote, that then the situation would only lead the players and
> their characters into dangerous "adventure"-like situations, when there
> was a really compelling game-world reason for it.

Absolutely. Act or react.
It's the detailed/complete/sense-making that does it. IMHO if your campagne is well constructed then you yourself should be able to solo in your own world. Old Traveler worked this way. Old D&D isn't even a game, just some concepts.

 In fact, one of the main
> themes of the game could be "at what point does each player/character
> decide that the situation warrants risking his life on adventurous
> action?" 

Yep. And worth noting here is that not only can the motivation be that the PCs ignored a threat and now it's knocking at the door, it can also be as simple as a rumor that gold has been found in the orc hills.

I use a Timeline. Once players learn that they can build and harvest resources and such I found that they became VERY difacult to pry away from the maps I'd given them. I had a neat little model thing but we were playing Simcity. Everybody was living in Downtime. It bugged me. Everyone was playing. People were bringing friends but it wasn't role-playing. God knows I ain't one of the Vampire the masqurade guys (not that there's anything wrong with that) but once the players got meneons they stoped getting their fingers dirty and started playing on a more abstract level. Then I got it. No story. How can it be a good RPG without a story?
Here's what I did.
I got a boatload of regester tape and started playing around (anyone wanna see the Big Bang to the year 2000 laied out on 200 yards of regester tape?)
What I ended up doing was drawing a nice long timeline that had major events of the storyline scaled and listed as either cusp events (for future time-travel) fiat-acompli or Variable Dependent. Imagine the players suprise when inflation hit. 
Events were written 'headline' style and various events were mixed in so as to confuse the data. So when the players decide to take down-time we crank that amount of time on the Timeline and deal with any events arising as they occur.

That sort of campaign is far more compelling to me than
> "adventuring is a common pastime since it's so un-risky".


Yep. Where do all these orcs keep comming from? I mean really? What bothers me about the orcs outta thin air, gold out my @$$ style of GMing is it's so bloody arbatrary. The books used to call it FAIR GMing. Duh. I'm more intrested in GMing as little as possable. The thing should drive itself as much as possable.

 In my world the orcs are native populations of hunter gatherers. (there are always exceptions) I think of them much like Native American Indians. 


> This pattern describes many of the games I've played in as an adult. The
> GM introduces the players to the setting and society, establishes their
> relationships with each other and NPCs, and leads them through some common
> events and then starts adding more and more interesting leads and events
> for them to react to, and the characters are drawn one by one from casual
> actions that make sense and get the players familiar with the setting,
> into trying to enlist each other in more adventurous actions.


Don't forget henchmen much less followers. Of course you can't New Followers another PC but maybe this is why so many powerful people are so difacult to see personally? lol


 Even if the
> characters end up "becoming full-time adventurers" after this, it can be a
> far more effective way to get players into the setting and their own
> characters, than to start them off as generic "adventurer types" with a
> story and motivations that they haven't experienced themselves.


Still with ya my bro.
Also of note here is that there are times such as a Gold Rush when some unlikely people end up having quite the adventure. Bilbo springs to mind.



> Now, players with the sentiment Erol expressed may still revert to "I'd be
> crazy to keep sticking my neck out", but the GM can take that opportunity
> to do the same thing again. Down time between the next interesting
> situation, then build things up until characters have motivations. Maybe
> some characters SHOULD "retire" at least temporarily at some points. Etc.
> 


They also like the idea of playing their children as PCs. Of course Mr. Ott would imeaditly go about aquireing a harem and proceed to attempt to breed me off my own little world but of course then I'm gonna try and make a law against poligamy and if it passes and is enforced he might have to go live in the desert and..... well y'all get the idea.
It'd be lots of fun though.

Jay

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