Re: (TFT) Pitching game to newbies

[Jeffrey Vandine <jlv61560@yahoo.com>]

Brevity is the soul of wit.
--------------------------------------------
On Thu, 5/12/16, Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: (TFT) Pitching game to newbies
 To: "tft@brainiac.com" <tft@brainiac.com>
 Date: Thursday, May 12, 2016, 2:52 AM
 
 Yeah I see I'm My
 usual clear as mud there. I am most certainly speculating
 from My remembered experience and what's
 stuck in My head as what I recall
 from the
 more successful claims in that vein and what I've done
 Myself
 which has gone through stages of
 narrative driven story and winging it and
 in
 the final analysis it boils down to having an enjoyable play
 session
 which is job one of game
  which is why so many "educational",
 promotional, and similar ride the back
 of
 game games fall flat. They let educational (etc.) get in
 front of game
 as entertainment. I'll
 admit to pretensions to provide something that can
 be edjumacational as I try to use objective
 reference material in place of
 rules for
 everything which save Me a shite ton of writing and ughhhhhh
 the
 designing ughhhh  Niiiiice not many
 places in My own head I balk at
 broaching
 but I'll be Mr G You've done pointed Me at one.
 I'm leaving that
 door closed thank You
 very much. Could You Imagine Heinlein doing Middle
 Earth? What would a 100+ lb pull longbow arrow
 flight look like? The
 archers paradox in low
 g trace atmosphere? Hummmm ... Anyway its a shared
 imaginative experience I'm trying to get to
 and THAT kind of wheel redeux
 and do and do
 is NOT the most direct path to such an approach... seems
 more
 like vying for longest, most difficult,
 something on that end of the
 spectrum.
 I'm lazy and so I invoke a path of least resistance
 approach
 which the Universe smiled upon or
 maybe it was a subconscious thing idk but
 I
 answered stats as in what does 1 point of ? mean in terms of
 real world
 force and time in the phase
 system breakdown from Champions which scales to
 Movement (f/mps) and so onto Map (stride length
 @ pace into distance
 covered gives the steps
 or foot placement and blah blah real world info
 anamal tracking, Authur Murry dance charts,
 batting stances of players
 starting and
 after swing, running backs and wideout routes, robotics,
 that
 big piano in Big.... OH YEAH....
 Fencing. Stuff like that. Not too mention
 the more objective generally the better for
 communication for that
 imagination sharing
 to work which is also steeped in a ton of stuff
 that's
 beyond the ability of a mere
 objective ruleset to deliver. You won't get
 group chemistry through the system used to play
 but the rules can "get out
 of the
 way" by being an asset to the group in getting the head
 adjustments
 tuned into a similar picture of
 what's where, when, its dimensions, and if
 experienced with the type more detailed
 information like reach etc. the
 idea being
 the Player who's Character's Figure is choosing
 their Action is
 imagining at least the broad
 strokes of the same thing everybody else is
 working with. This is assisted by other
 components and computerized it goes
 great in
 basics in a voxel type setup using Lego as a primary tool
 personally but top of the layout scaling for
 terrain and train model pretty
 presentation
 people to fit their stuff into and have it play at any
 table
 using same or Google Earth at given
 altitudes as Earth is the example used
 again
 for as much objectivity as possible as opposed to the
 problems like
 the arrow flight on Mars or
 the Foundation books and idk call it a six page
 door to tag it totally off the top of My head
 the point is it's a ton of
 exposition to
 tweak much less invent something very new... Dr
 McCoy's
 instruments were salt shakers if
 I recall dug up by props as just that
 futuristic salt shakers but Mr R decided the
 audience wouldn't recognize
 them as such
 so got a shaker from the commissary and re-purposed the
 future
 ones as McCoy's flux capacitor
 plot advance magic box which was almost
 imagined then Flash Gorden'd into "Ie
 ca'n giv ya no mor pur C'ptn She'ill
 ter ersel appart" Jay Joyce I ain't.
 GM? I might better resemble that
 remark...
 then again these days I might not. The intranets have done
 a
 number on what's expected uniformly
 via youtube and etc and evolved meaning
 for
 some terms added terms from mediums like fps shooters and
 mmorpg's and
 of course D&D does the
 time to buy a new library edition release and new
 titles are dropped and I'm behind the curve
 on a lot of it... There's other
 knocks
 on Me as analyst of generally postured as designer and
 whatnot which
 is salting down speculation on
 the improv GMing here.
 I note that the whole
 wing it approach shares some traits with
 "hacking",
 stage magic,
 musicianship and similar fields of endeavour where the
 audience etc isn't given the full picture
 of what's occurring. Hacking I'm
 thinking omission where You keep lips zipped
 when speculation as to how You
 cracked the
 password gets going as the unknown is far better for the
 hacker
 image than the actual happened to see
 the thing jotted down and made a note
 of it
 lends. Magic is misdirection see this flashbang while the
 other hand
 is manipulating. Playing an
 instrument can be pulled off far from perfectly
 by owning ones mistakes and most will never
 know it wasn't intentional note
 for
 note. So when a GM seems to be improving why would they tell
 You the
 whole story so to speak? Which
 brings Me to another point, one generally
 doesn't wing what isn't well understood
 as a system. You fly by in a system
 You are
 fluent in which brings not only a grasp of the mechanics but
 the
 backlog of experience in various peeks
 and troughs of what worked well and
 what did
 not and that provides a bit of a grab bag of encounter
 kernels to
 tweek a group of random monsters
 around in order to fit a dynamic the GM is
 familiar with executing to good effect. I'm
 not exactly sure what Your
 seeing on
 "such a GM is forcing a story anyhow, even when they
 don't know
 what
 it
 is?" and don't mean to claim a blanket statement
 covering all instances
 of the concept.
 Assuming Your confident that the GM is say randomly
 generating encounters or whatever so that
 it's not just accepting the claim
 on a
 trust Me but clearly driven by some engine out of the direct
 control
 that's spitting the stuff then
 I'd say that generally the idea is to let
 story happen which play will do albeit not
 necessarily a very GOOD story.
 Mr Ward uses
 "light-touch roleplaying" along what seems similar
 lines where
 the idea is to take what Players
 are doing and offer choice informed from
 it
 allowing a feedback loop to build up that drives play rather
 than
 "force" narrative that
 isn't necessary to the style of play.  A string of
 random encounters won't be likely to make
 compelling reading in recounting
 but
 technically speaking it's story and forcing a narrative
 connection as
 GM isn't likely to do
 significantly better than feeding into what Player
 feeds to the GM light-touch roleplaying does.
 Mentioning that the reading
 quality of that
 random string depends heavily upon the pen it flows from
 points to the same in RPG's.and there's
 quite a few who are drawn into the
 GM seat
 that have real talent for preforming and groups with
 great
 chemistry that can be a very large
 part of what the participants are
 finding
 entertainment in. I'm not faulting any of this or making
 any
 judgements other than I find that
 I'm not going to get to what I'm striving
 for down that path. To get to sandbox play that
 is driven by play and
 generates story I need
 to be able to set starting conditions up in ways
 that provide potential for possible play
 direction a simple example being a
 war
 situation in which martial forces in opposition are present
 in quantity
 and there is one or more targets
 of some value that offer a focus or foci
 to
 contest which isn't a given but a reason for the forces
 to be present
 and if the Players are low
 ranked soldiers or basically order takers then
 the npc leadership has purpose to start off
 play which can then develop.
 With elements
 of constructive play Actions and non-combat focuses to
 add
 into the destructive play with combat
 focuses mix some interesting
 environments
 can be set up and in theory at least the thing can play
 solo
 much like the micros and to lesser
 extent Tollenkar's crib can with solo
 play a rather common back in the day feature
 but I'm still down Google
 Doc's.
 I've had to recover from having a couple of computers go
 foomf and
 relegating Me to craptop coblin
 currently and the plinking I've done has
 convinced Me that an example is in order to
 reduce verbosity and provide a
 hands on
 which I have fiddled with some video approaches that are
 just a
 bit much for these machines to munch
 smoothly and edit. And I can't imagine
 this is very clear at this point as I've
 got the nods and am taking the
 suggestion
 and crashin with a tag that there's reference to alot of
 this
 that believe it or not is pretty
 direct... may get to it afore the crash
 
 
 On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 3:26
 PM, Marc Gacy <marcgacy@gmail.com>
 wrote:
 
 > Not sure what
 you're getting at here, since "flying by the seat
 of the
 > pants" usually implies that
 there really isn't a story or agenda. Are you
 > saying such a GM is forcing a story
 anyhow, even when they don't know wha
 t
 > it is? If you are, then
 is the GM simply around to present a situation th
 at
 > players determine their
 characters should encounter?
 >
 > On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 2:41 AM, Jay
 Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com>
 > wrote:
 >
 > > The more the style
 > > is fly by the seat of the GM's
 pants the more likely it is they are rel
 yi
 > ng
 >
 > on a scene A to B to C progression which is the model
 most viddie's
 > > follow...
 > >
 > >
 > ᐧ
 >
 > Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
 > Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com
 with the message body
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 >
 >
 
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