I’m reading it as a reference to people ignoring what their characters would do based on their personalities and history and instead doing everything in their power to achieve their objective in the most efficient possible way like they were a highly trained and disciplined squad of soldiers. Considering the level of detachment not *actually* being in the heated, chaotic situation going on in the game allows you, it can be easy for people to fall into this mindset without thinking about where their character’s head would actually be in that moment.
Okay. I’m going to put two Quatloos down on the following:
>> Brett has known all along what could happen, and this is a pre-scripted “plan B”. <> All the NPCs looking just like Brett, is intentional … to mislead the players. <<
Much like an illusionist IRL, he's showing them one hand, very clearly, doing things they expect … so that they don't pay quite enough attention to what the OTHER hand is doing. In this case, yes, I expect the party is being set up, and led directly into an ambush.
…
Is Brett nervous? Unsure of himself as a GM? Yes and yes.
Is Brett UNPREPARED?
Good fucking grief, how could you even think that for half a moment. He is PLAYING the group, by ACTING in ways that are, for their experience of Brett, out of character.
PsychWar, man. 😀 This is PsychWar, to set them up for what I (and probably Brett) hpes will be an awesome adventure …!
Wow. A great big chunk of what I posted is just missing. Comments must dislike greater-than and less-than symbols.
So, here’s what’s missing, with the lines that bracket it for context:
** Brett has known all along what could happen, and this is a pre-scripted “plan B” **
After all the time Brett spent prepping statblocks, do you really think he didn’t know Annabelle has a +5 Insight? And, being that she’s out for Dwayla’s blood, do you really think he wouldn’t expect her to be hyper-suspicious of any conveniently-placed NPCs Brett put out there?
I think his hesitation and “give me a moment” act were just that – an ACT. 🙂
And I think he is using the appearance of uncertainty (accurate or otherwise) to lull the others into a false sense of security, so they won’t be looking for “GM gotchas” quite hard enough.
So, I’m going to place another Quatloo on this:
** All the NPCs looking just like Brett, is inentional … to mislead the players. **
To shill my own blog a little bit, the ‘unprepared’ bit, and flying by the seat of your pants was proven that it can work well when you talk about the Sprite comic ‘Bob and George’, as it has been said:
If somebody who read through Bob and George somehow managed to be oblivious to the heavy Leaning on the Fourth Wall, they might get the impression that the comic had a complex, carefully planned, intricately connected plot. However, by his own admission, Dave was just really good at making crap up on the fly, and then making up more crap to explain why the previous crap was significant
This is something I mention in https://drraagh.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/from-pulp-to-fiction/ From Pulp To Fiction, in talking about something Spoony from Counter Monkey mentions where you get caught in some inconsistency or the players get around something by their own genius, so rather than being defensive over a plot hole, instead make it into a plot element of that strange situation.
For example, Brett may be in a ‘well, how am I going to get out of this’ scenario with ‘How can I keep things moving without them getting this NPC and doing things that could spoil the plot, IE: torture information out of the NPC’. So, the NPC runs because he wants to prevent it. The party has more options and resources so they stand a good chance to catch them. So, he gives the NPC magic boots to outpace them. it keeps the game active, adds a bit of mystery in plan B.
When it comes to adventure design, that sort of attitude, coupled with a Schrodinger’s Universe where ‘unless the PCs directly observe it or otherwise go looking for it, it could be any state’, such that NPCs could be anywhere until they meet them, for example. To quote the TV show Leverage:
“You never count on the perfect plan. You know, the perfect plan, it has too many moving parts, and it’s… you got to expect the perfect plan to fail. I mean, that’s what I do. I count on the simplest and ugliest plan, not plan “A,†no, but, like, plan “G,†for example. I start with plan “G.†Now, the quick, simple, ugly plan that I know is gonna work if everything goes bad. I just pretty it up a little bit, add this and that.”
My only issue with the use of ‘Schrodinger’s Universe’ is that, once your players know you are using it, it creates distrust between you and the players as you are basically cheating (I want this thing to happen, so I give the NPC the perfect thing to make this happen). In addition, its a way to create railroading without informing the players that you want to create a game centered on a story (which is why most railroading exists, I believe).
Now, I don’t expect every GM to know everything about their Universe. But when in a situation like the comic above? Giving NPCs stuff so you can do what you want with the story is the easiest way to remove player agency. After all, why do the things the PCs do matter if it was all predetermined anyway?
My only issue with the use of ‘Schrodinger’s Universe’ is that, once your players know you are using it, it creates distrust between you and the players as you are basically cheating (I want this thing to happen, so I give the NPC the perfect thing to make this happen). In addition, its a way to create railroading without informing the players that you want to create a game centered on a story (which is why most railroading exists, I believe).
Now, I don’t expect every GM to know everything about their Universe. But when in a situation like the comic above? Giving NPCs stuff so you can do what you want with the story is the easiest way to remove player agency. After all, why do the things the PCs do matter if it was all predetermined anyway?
It’s not always a matter of the NPCs being able to do anything or remove agency, it instead becomes more about how things like foreshadowing or turning stories about when the PCs come up with a cool idea or otherwise take a weird turn. Like having NPC X being a prisoner of bandits when “the last time we saw him they were going the opposite direction”. Its the ‘plot twist’ moment in a movie where something that could be unexpected occurs and sends the story in a different way. Instead of your BBEG being this guy, perhaps Keizer Soze is actually this guy…
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Well, Sam is smiling, so I think that’s a good indicator. 🙂
“I’m in the room” got me
Same here.
Kind of the opposite of ‘Stop giving the GM ideas guys’.
I need an explanation on the “black ops” line.
Really hyper-competently thinking through and overplanning every action, I believe.
I’m reading it as a reference to people ignoring what their characters would do based on their personalities and history and instead doing everything in their power to achieve their objective in the most efficient possible way like they were a highly trained and disciplined squad of soldiers. Considering the level of detachment not *actually* being in the heated, chaotic situation going on in the game allows you, it can be easy for people to fall into this mindset without thinking about where their character’s head would actually be in that moment.
This exactly.
In the second last panel I briefly wondered whose voices were coming from the ceiling for a moment until I realized what a derp I was being.
Okay. I’m going to put two Quatloos down on the following:
>> Brett has known all along what could happen, and this is a pre-scripted “plan B”. <> All the NPCs looking just like Brett, is intentional … to mislead the players. <<
Much like an illusionist IRL, he's showing them one hand, very clearly, doing things they expect … so that they don't pay quite enough attention to what the OTHER hand is doing. In this case, yes, I expect the party is being set up, and led directly into an ambush.
…
Is Brett nervous? Unsure of himself as a GM? Yes and yes.
Is Brett UNPREPARED?
Good fucking grief, how could you even think that for half a moment. He is PLAYING the group, by ACTING in ways that are, for their experience of Brett, out of character.
PsychWar, man. 😀 This is PsychWar, to set them up for what I (and probably Brett) hpes will be an awesome adventure …!
Wow. A great big chunk of what I posted is just missing. Comments must dislike greater-than and less-than symbols.
So, here’s what’s missing, with the lines that bracket it for context:
** Brett has known all along what could happen, and this is a pre-scripted “plan B” **
After all the time Brett spent prepping statblocks, do you really think he didn’t know Annabelle has a +5 Insight? And, being that she’s out for Dwayla’s blood, do you really think he wouldn’t expect her to be hyper-suspicious of any conveniently-placed NPCs Brett put out there?
I think his hesitation and “give me a moment” act were just that – an ACT. 🙂
And I think he is using the appearance of uncertainty (accurate or otherwise) to lull the others into a false sense of security, so they won’t be looking for “GM gotchas” quite hard enough.
So, I’m going to place another Quatloo on this:
** All the NPCs looking just like Brett, is inentional … to mislead the players. **
To shill my own blog a little bit, the ‘unprepared’ bit, and flying by the seat of your pants was proven that it can work well when you talk about the Sprite comic ‘Bob and George’, as it has been said:
If somebody who read through Bob and George somehow managed to be oblivious to the heavy Leaning on the Fourth Wall, they might get the impression that the comic had a complex, carefully planned, intricately connected plot. However, by his own admission, Dave was just really good at making crap up on the fly, and then making up more crap to explain why the previous crap was significant
This is something I mention in https://drraagh.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/from-pulp-to-fiction/ From Pulp To Fiction, in talking about something Spoony from Counter Monkey mentions where you get caught in some inconsistency or the players get around something by their own genius, so rather than being defensive over a plot hole, instead make it into a plot element of that strange situation.
For example, Brett may be in a ‘well, how am I going to get out of this’ scenario with ‘How can I keep things moving without them getting this NPC and doing things that could spoil the plot, IE: torture information out of the NPC’. So, the NPC runs because he wants to prevent it. The party has more options and resources so they stand a good chance to catch them. So, he gives the NPC magic boots to outpace them. it keeps the game active, adds a bit of mystery in plan B.
When it comes to adventure design, that sort of attitude, coupled with a Schrodinger’s Universe where ‘unless the PCs directly observe it or otherwise go looking for it, it could be any state’, such that NPCs could be anywhere until they meet them, for example. To quote the TV show Leverage:
“You never count on the perfect plan. You know, the perfect plan, it has too many moving parts, and it’s… you got to expect the perfect plan to fail. I mean, that’s what I do. I count on the simplest and ugliest plan, not plan “A,†no, but, like, plan “G,†for example. I start with plan “G.†Now, the quick, simple, ugly plan that I know is gonna work if everything goes bad. I just pretty it up a little bit, add this and that.”
My only issue with the use of ‘Schrodinger’s Universe’ is that, once your players know you are using it, it creates distrust between you and the players as you are basically cheating (I want this thing to happen, so I give the NPC the perfect thing to make this happen). In addition, its a way to create railroading without informing the players that you want to create a game centered on a story (which is why most railroading exists, I believe).
Now, I don’t expect every GM to know everything about their Universe. But when in a situation like the comic above? Giving NPCs stuff so you can do what you want with the story is the easiest way to remove player agency. After all, why do the things the PCs do matter if it was all predetermined anyway?
My only issue with the use of ‘Schrodinger’s Universe’ is that, once your players know you are using it, it creates distrust between you and the players as you are basically cheating (I want this thing to happen, so I give the NPC the perfect thing to make this happen). In addition, its a way to create railroading without informing the players that you want to create a game centered on a story (which is why most railroading exists, I believe).
Now, I don’t expect every GM to know everything about their Universe. But when in a situation like the comic above? Giving NPCs stuff so you can do what you want with the story is the easiest way to remove player agency. After all, why do the things the PCs do matter if it was all predetermined anyway?
It’s not always a matter of the NPCs being able to do anything or remove agency, it instead becomes more about how things like foreshadowing or turning stories about when the PCs come up with a cool idea or otherwise take a weird turn. Like having NPC X being a prisoner of bandits when “the last time we saw him they were going the opposite direction”. Its the ‘plot twist’ moment in a movie where something that could be unexpected occurs and sends the story in a different way. Instead of your BBEG being this guy, perhaps Keizer Soze is actually this guy…
Brett: “I’m in the room!”
Yeah, Brett, that’s why Charlie said it.
The thing I’m most curious about: who is Charlie playing in this little one-shot? We have yet to be introduced to his character.
Good call-out! I’m betting we find out soon.
For anyone curious what happened to his PC (Deyla) check out the Vault of Deknar arc! Here’s where Charlie gets into some deep stuff in that arc.
If you want EVEN MORE (holy shit there’s so much more), you can start with the One Night in Xag arc that begins with character intros.
I think Charlie may have taken over Brett’s character for this arc. 🙂