Roleplaying writing styles

[Wretched]

@Sunny said in Roleplaying writing styles:

MAN. I was so clear, the clue was so obvious, but they didn't even LOOK at the newspaper. Why would there have been a newspaper in a high tech building?! Wouldn't they have realized everyone had a computer or whatever to look at the news???

Like, what? Yeah, in this case the assumption itself was very obviously faulty, but even if it wasn't, you just do not know what knowledge/information the players are coming to the table with. They might not KNOW that in places like this, newspapers are rare, for all that you think it's common sense. It's not, and not because your players are dense, either.

I was having a conversation about jsut this thing the other night. Well clearly this thing i keep adding to my poses would be obvious to /ME/, why aren't my players getting it, i'm like beating them other the head with it.

Alternately: Describing a scene and adding detail and players latching on to the most innocuous details, and then putting in jobs and asking to roll for prophetic visionary dreams just because you described a crack in the glass of a toaster oven. I am having to learn to just tell people that no, that is a dead end.

[Auspice]

@Wretched

Years ago, on a D&D MU*, I was getting my DM legs under me, so I was running one-shots.

I made it clear, up front, that they were one-shots. There was nothing special, nothing mysterious, no need to follow up. They were just to have some hack-n-slashy fun.

But on one of these, the players became so convinced that the dire wolf they encountered MUST MEAN something more that they put in jobs.

I closed the jobs, explaining: this was a one-shot, there is nothing else. You talk to the farmers, you comb the trails, there is nothing. You're exhausted and tired and there is nothing. That dire wolf must have been a freak of nature.

...so two of the players began submitting +jobs 'ATTN' other staffers to 'investigate' with them because they became absolutely convinced I was just being mean.

So I totally get that. I reeeeeally really do. This is where Perception checks, IMO, become valid. Because I try to customize what people notice. Three people met the difficulty? I will give them each a unique thing they notice. Person A might spot the flare, while person B spots someone nearby the flare waving their arms, and person C sees the zombies in the distance on approach.

That way everyone gets a unique thing to contribute (rather than 'whoever has the fastest fingers gets the glory') and I can do my damndest to make sure the legit clues get spotted.

[Sunny]

I used to think it was lazy storytelling to do things like 'hey, you know guys, don't forget you saw X at the last crime scene, too...' as a GM, but it's not. It's really, really not.

Anyway, the sum total of this is that you can pose a character being subtle without being subtle as a player. Being subtle as a player does you absolutely no favors, because people miss it and then you just never get to explore those things. And that sucks.

[NightAngel12]

@Sunny Hehehe, yeah. I figured out the not being clever part early on, so I tried to be a little more forthcoming with the hooks. In my example, the character would take a number of poses to express their discomfort and then begin searching for a way out. I tried to give adequate opportunity for others to RP with him without just posing a single "He bolts out of the room the minute So-and-so walked in."
I think more what I was trying to say was that these depths don't seem to be represented in a lot of the characters I've come across. The character seems to be a flat two-dimensional text based mote rather than a complex text-represented human being with unique-nesses in ways other players can barely imagine. (sort of, since we obviously imagine them at some point)
It's less about people reading into subtle or writing subtly, and more that I haven't seen deep characters with problems that run deeper than face value emotions. (As in: Strong female fighter type is strong because. vs. Strong female fighter type is strong because she was raised to be a meak woman, was betrothed to some jerk who beat her, got strong and became who she is.) Perhaps I'm not RPing with the right people, but those characters I've met that haven't led to ooc friendships that transcend the computer screen typically are just their face value character trope.

[Sunny]

@NightAngel12

Ah. Yeah, I think it might be the circles you're finding yourself in. While I agree that those sorts of folks are out there, I find them generally to be in the minority. That would get very old very fast.

[Ganymede]

@Sunny said in Roleplaying writing styles:

I used to think it was lazy storytelling to do things like 'hey, you know guys, don't forget you saw X at the last crime scene, too...' as a GM, but it's not. It's really, really not.

Sometimes, as a storyteller, you have to lead your audience a little. Otherwise, you and the rest of your fucking hobbits friends are getting fat off the Shire just before Sauron's Army razes it to the ground.

[Amanita]

@Sunny said in Roleplaying writing styles:

Ah. Yeah, I think it might be the circles you're finding yourself in. While I agree that those sorts of folks are out there, I find them generally to be in the minority. That would get very old very fast.

Funny, in my experience such people are in the majority, across wide swathes of genres. The subtlety-aware, depth-in-character type is the pleasant surprise. Maybe my standards are higher.

[Coin]

@Sunny said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@NightAngel12

I used to go with trying to be subtle. I felt it was fair, if I was posing whatever the same way every time, that I could expect other people to pick up on this and whatnot. Then I realized a few things.

• I am not as clever as I think I am
• I am really not as clever as I think I am
• If I can't remember the details of a scene last week clearly, how the hell do I expect anyone else to?
• Players are not characters, and stats like 'perception' and 'empathy' exist

What you think is a subtle explanation for something is likely just too obscure. They're not picking up on it because you are not actually making sense to anyone but yourself. You might think 'looking down' is a clear signal, but those two words in your entire pose have weight to you, not the people you're playing with. How do they know that they should be putting special emphasis on those words more than 'the table' or 'looks at the person who walks in' or whatever? In the example of the leaving the same way every time -- how do they know that isn't your go-to as a player for 'crap, I have to go OOC'? If you don't give the people you're playing with enough reason to suspect there is more there, they will never suspect it. It will not happen. You are entertaining yourself with how clever you are, but no one else.

I'm not actually saying you actually think you're particularly clever or anything, but it's an easy way to explain how seriously, people just don't do subtle in text very well. They don't write it well, they don't catch it well. When you try to play on subtle, you're shooting yourself in the foot. My RP has gotten so, so much more rewarding now that I straight up beat people over the head with things that might be 'subtle'.

While the character is what's important, the player has to at least understand the situation well enough to have their character react appropriately. Their character may not understand the situation as well as their player does, but for the player to be able to make that determination, they have to know that it's there for them to make.

This is essentially why I typically pepper my stuff with nice little metaphors or analogies that might help.

For example, if some guy pisses my character off, I could pose:

He gave [Guy] a look.

From this, you could interpret it is any type of look. Good luck.

However, I might choose instead:

He looked at the guy like he wanted to stick his fingers as far up his nose as possible and then wiggle them with the speed of blender blades.

If you're not sure what I mean by that, feel free to ask OOC, but I feel it's pretty clear.

Other people might choose the less graphic and more laconic:

He gave the guy a dirty look.

This is fine. Not as fun for me, but whatevs, sometimes I don't feel like typing. (RE: character voice vs. generic voice.)

@Miss-Demeanor said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@Auspice In part, you can also blame the asshole GM's of yesteryear for part of that. A lot of people that I know of, have learned to NOT chase down every little thing that seems 'out of place' or 'unusual', simply because of those sadistic fucks from the days of tabletop (and even earlier years of MUSHing) that would punish players for searching every nook and cranny for hidden clues/doorways/catches/etc. You learned quickly that if you 'wasted' the GM's time by investigating every little thing, you would suddenly incur the Wrath of Deus Ex Machina and find yourself facing some crazy shit like a Lich King in a dungeon full of kobolds and spiders.

This is why rolls exist in situations like those. Noticing that the newspaper is out of place requires a roll. You succeeded, so the ST pages you, "dude, that newspaper is way out of place". STs that don't do this are dicks.

@Wretched said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@Sunny said in Roleplaying writing styles:

MAN. I was so clear, the clue was so obvious, but they didn't even LOOK at the newspaper. Why would there have been a newspaper in a high tech building?! Wouldn't they have realized everyone had a computer or whatever to look at the news???

Like, what? Yeah, in this case the assumption itself was very obviously faulty, but even if it wasn't, you just do not know what knowledge/information the players are coming to the table with. They might not KNOW that in places like this, newspapers are rare, for all that you think it's common sense. It's not, and not because your players are dense, either.

I was having a conversation about jsut this thing the other night. Well clearly this thing i keep adding to my poses would be obvious to /ME/, why aren't my players getting it, i'm like beating them other the head with it.

Alternately: Describing a scene and adding detail and players latching on to the most innocuous details, and then putting in jobs and asking to roll for prophetic visionary dreams just because you described a crack in the glass of a toaster oven. I am having to learn to just tell people that no, that is a dead end.

Alternatively, you could decide that the crack in the toaster is a separate plot that they have stumbled into, which could be fun. NOT doing this doesn't make you a bad ST, though doing so does make you an involved one (with more time on your hands than many).

[Arkandel]

@Coin said in Roleplaying writing styles:

This is why rolls exist in situations like those. Noticing that the newspaper is out of place requires a roll. You succeeded, so the ST pages you, "dude, that newspaper is way out of place". STs that don't do this are dicks.

One exception: I don't do 'inception' rolls.

For instance in my last PrP a player specifically told me he was observing something and rolled on it; I gave him a pretty detailed description along with (what was supposed to be) a glaring hint about a story element there. He even specifically mentioned that story element afterwards but drew the wrong conclusion. I didn't give him a second roll on that - because I think when it's revealed later on it'll be a nice forehead-slapping moment.

Or I'm being a dick, dunno.

[Coin]

@Arkandel [shrugs]

At that point it becomes a matter of your personal ST style, but I'm usually of the mind that whatever is better for the story works. The problem is deciding who has the last say on what's better for the story.

in general, though, for me, there is a difference between "perception" and "investigation" (even if the former also uses the investigation Skill, in CofD or similar systems).

What your senses garner is perception, what you INTERPRET can fall under investigation/research and should probably be a longer, more thorough roll, with nuance and variety. If the character does well, you may give them a clue (or outright tell them) that their interpretation is wrong and that they discover it's a different thing. If they don't, well, then their wrongful assumption is kind of their drawback for failing.

[Miss Demeanor]

@Coin The whole point of my post is that dickish GM's are a part of why more people won't investigate the out of place newspaper. Its not that it went unnoticed, its that its such a small thing to be deemed 'out of place' that the kneejerk reaction of 'if I ask about this, I'll get punished in some fashion' still happens. So while a clever GM might go 'why didn't people look at the out of place newspaper?!? It was RIGHT THERE! It was SO OBVIOUS!'... that's why. Potentially, anyways. Its not that it wasn't noticed, its that some people are more afraid of getting smacked down for chasing after details.

[NightAngel12]

@Miss-Demeanor I have seen this happen many times when playing tabletop, and it isn't just dickish GM's either. A lot of storytellers tend not to take into consideration all possible avenues of exploration, so what ends up happening is that when clever players try to follow a thread... the GM panics and smacks them for not paying attention to this other thing they /have/ thought through.
If feel it's all sides that might need change, players should look into subtle things without fear of being attacked by the GM, and GM's should be encouraged to flesh out their stories with more than just one thread of play through and/or simply not get flustered if players don't pick up on their 'clever' thread hooks.

[Arkandel]

@NightAngel12 said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@Miss-Demeanor I have seen this happen many times when playing tabletop, and it isn't just dickish GM's either. A lot of storytellers tend not to take into consideration all possible avenues of exploration, so what ends up happening is that when clever players try to follow a thread... the GM panics and smacks them for not paying attention to this other thing they /have/ thought through.

Trying to preemptively think of all possible avenues a plot can take is an exercise in futility - if your players are worth a damn they'll come up with things you haven't thought of. That's basically the point of collaborative storytelling, else you might as well be writing fanfic.

Storytelling isn't something different than roleplaying... it's an extension of it. Ideally the lines between the two should be blurry. All you are really doing is extend the scope of the environment under your creative control and shaping it to tell a cohesive story. Punishment doesn't enter the conversation.

[Coin]

@Arkandel said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@NightAngel12 said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@Miss-Demeanor I have seen this happen many times when playing tabletop, and it isn't just dickish GM's either. A lot of storytellers tend not to take into consideration all possible avenues of exploration, so what ends up happening is that when clever players try to follow a thread... the GM panics and smacks them for not paying attention to this other thing they /have/ thought through.

Trying to preemptively think of all possible avenues a plot can take is an exercise in futility - if your players are worth a damn they'll come up with things you haven't thought of. That's basically the point of collaborative storytelling, else you might as well be writing fanfic.

Why fanfic and not... just... writing a story?

Storytelling isn't something different than roleplaying... it's an extension of it. Ideally the lines between the two should be blurry. All you are really doing is extend the scope of the environment under your creative control and shaping it to tell a cohesive story. Punishment doesn't enter the conversation.

This becomes super fucking annoyingly difficult when people are so worried about supposed "conflict of interest" and other bullshit and set up rules that don't let you have your own character in scenes you run, or come up with super defined ways an NPC can be used, limiting the stories you can tell and otherwise making what you say should be a blurry line into something very definitive.

I'm not saying the staffer who uses the NPC Prince to get virtual blowjobs from all the vampettes in the sphere shouldn't be fucking smacked until he's bleeding from the gums and then fired; I'm just saying often these sorts of rules tend to make shit difficult because game runners will overreact to avoid these situations.

[Arkandel]

@Coin said in Roleplaying writing styles:

Trying to preemptively think of all possible avenues a plot can take is an exercise in futility - if your players are worth a damn they'll come up with things you haven't thought of. That's basically the point of collaborative storytelling, else you might as well be writing fanfic.

Why fanfic and not... just... writing a story?

Because I was trying to be derogatory about it!

This becomes super fucking annoyingly difficult when people are so worried about supposed "conflict of interest" and other bullshit and set up rules that don't let you have your own character in scenes you run, or come up with super defined ways an NPC can be used, limiting the stories you can tell and otherwise making what you say should be a blurry line into something very definitive.

This is a symptom of lack of trust. Sometimes it's by staff toward the players ("no, I can't possibly release my precious NPCs to those Storytellers who might actually do something with them while I'm busy drowning in soul-crushing workload"), sometimes it's the attitude of players toward their peers ("you're going to use this to advance your nefarious agenda and get Sheriff for yourself, you plot-running asshole"), and I've even seen it be self-inflicted as well ("I've a crime alt, there are criminals in this plot, this is a conflict! sorry guys, I have to step out... it's for the common good").

I am not saying there aren't things coordination will make better - thematic consistency is a big one for example. But a little bit of handwaving can still allow for a lot of plot to be thrown at the starving masses, if they just allow themselves to be entertained.

[Coin]

@Arkandel said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@Coin said in Roleplaying writing styles:

Trying to preemptively think of all possible avenues a plot can take is an exercise in futility - if your players are worth a damn they'll come up with things you haven't thought of. That's basically the point of collaborative storytelling, else you might as well be writing fanfic.

Why fanfic and not... just... writing a story?

Because I was trying to be derogatory about it!

This becomes super fucking annoyingly difficult when people are so worried about supposed "conflict of interest" and other bullshit and set up rules that don't let you have your own character in scenes you run, or come up with super defined ways an NPC can be used, limiting the stories you can tell and otherwise making what you say should be a blurry line into something very definitive.

This is a symptom of lack of trust. Sometimes it's by staff toward the players ("no, I can't possibly release my precious NPCs to those Storytellers who might actually do something with them while I'm busy drowning in soul-crushing workload"), sometimes it's the attitude of players toward their peers ("you're going to use this to advance your nefarious agenda and get Sheriff for yourself, you plot-running asshole"), and I've even seen it be self-inflicted as well ("I've a crime alt, there are criminals in this plot, this is a conflict! sorry guys, I have to step out... it's for the common good").

I am not saying there aren't things coordination will make better - thematic consistency is a big one for example. But a little bit of handwaving can still allow for a lot of plot to be thrown at the starving masses, if they just allow themselves to be entertained.

This is why when I was on Eldritch I basically just didn't care? Like, honestly, if people thought my having a werewolf and running werewolf stuff was a problem that was just not the game for them.

I mean it turned out not to be the game for anyone, but hey. >.> Hahah.

[Ganymede]

@Coin said in Roleplaying writing styles:

I mean it turned out not to be the game for anyone, but hey. >.> Hahah.

The fuck you talking about, homie? I was there from the beginning.

[Coin]

@Ganymede said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@Coin said in Roleplaying writing styles:

I mean it turned out not to be the game for anyone, but hey. >.> Hahah.

The fuck you talking about, homie? I was there from the beginning.

.. in that I closed it.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Sunny said in Roleplaying writing styles:

I used to think it was lazy storytelling to do things like 'hey, you know guys, don't forget you saw X at the last crime scene, too...' as a GM, but it's not. It's really, really not.

I tend to do this a lot, it used to drive bug me but then i realized something from the other side, as a player my gaming either MUSH or TT is a fun past time and while I will remember things it is not life or death for the character it is frequently life or death and given scheduling there or often times when significantly more RL time has passed between scenes then has passed IC, so to me giving the reminders makes sense because while the players might forget a detail it is less likely the characters would.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Arkandel said in Roleplaying writing styles:

For instance in my last PrP a player specifically told me he was observing something and rolled on it; I gave him a pretty detailed description along with (what was supposed to be) a glaring hint about a story element there. He even specifically mentioned that story element afterwards but drew the wrong conclusion. I didn't give him a second roll on that - because I think when it's revealed later on it'll be a nice forehead-slapping moment.

I agree with you here, I will bend over backwards to make sure that the PCs get all the clues that are needed to continue, though if with all the info they decide to jump to the wrong conclusion I let them. i will work out another way to steer them to back to the plot as needed but to me there still has to be some parts where the players have to think. Characters can has the big brains and use skill the player does not have to find the clues, to notice things the player never would, etc but at some point the player has to be the one to piece it together to get to the end result.