(TFT) Story

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

Remember the first part of Melee?
There was a little Story about this Centurian and a Barbarian that it turned out was a re-hash of the example combat given later.
ITL (and AD&D DMG) had an example of play that read very storylike to me.

Now I'm not saying that the GM's Meta-Story isn't responsable for these smaller Storys, just that Play generates Storys.
It's just that these sort of storys arn't under any one persons direct control.

Idealy, I'm shooting for something like a "Computerised GM" where the GM sets up the Campaign before play begins, but is limited to the same interface as Players during play.
Layer a few of the various Strat/Sims together, call it Scale and set the variables as you will.

But what about another GM's Meta-Story?

I'll take a generic example.
Let's say we're doing Harry Potter.

So we've got a antagonist in the form of Voldermort, who has the simple goal of conquering the Wizarding World.

I think one of the roots of this is how he goes about realising his plan.

In a traditional narative, the reader/Player can follow a linier Story with the illusion thay they are "witnessing" the Story through the PoV of the narative (first person, etc.), when in fact, the Story is in the narative, i.e. the Story IS the writing.

In RPGs the narative is the interaction of the Player with the GM.
Total control of the narative by either side negates interaction.
The best I can fairly do is to set the Campagin up from the start so that Voldermort has specific Actions available to him at appropiate Scales, and that the Player running Voldermorts figure attempts to acomplish his victory conditions.
If the "computer" is controling Voldermort, then 'build qeues' and such should be set to acomplish Voldermorts goal of conquest.

All that's missing here is the big finish, and that's sort of built in via the nature of the conflict, but the how and when are products of the interaction.

I've ran/played in games where, no matter what, it all boils down to some big pre-written climax.
This makes me feal like all the play up to the climax was just to see weather or not the party gets a +1 sword in the final fight.

Rather that it being MY Campaign, I'm trying to advocate for the Groups Campaign.

I suspose it's that I think interactivity is alot more that the choice of which goblin to swing at, and should be as equal as possable, i.e. Player to Player rather than Player to GM.

Some thoughts.



Jay




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