Autore Topic: [Inglese] Raccolta link e approfondimenti su AiPS  (Letto 4808 volte)

Moreno Roncucci

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Ciao a tutti!

Segnalo un thread interessante su Avventure in Prima Serata (Primetime Adventures) oggi su the Forge, in cui sia Edwards che l'autore, Matt Wilson, parlando di diversi errori comuni nel giocarlo. E in fondo Edwards posta il link a diversi altri thread d'interesse sul gioco.

Consiglio a chi sa l'inglese di leggerlo, è difficile riassumere in poche righe un intera discussione. Per gli altri, riassumo a grandi linee gli argomenti trattati: sono quasi tutte cose già dette molte volte in questo forum, ma è comodo trovarle tutte riunite

- Non bisogna pre-narrare i conflitti
. Non ci sono contro-poste
- rispettare la divisione delle autorità sul manuale

A questo proposito, cito il brano:

[..]
It looks to me as if you were playing as follows:

Player asks for scene. Player describes scene. Player introduces conflict. Player and Producer draw cards. Player succeeds or fails. Someone narrates.

This is ... well, it's not going to work. A long time ago, Paul Czege articulated a key point that it is extremely not fun to propose one's own adversity and then resolve it oneself, and even less fun after that if you have to narrate it. For events in role-playing to be enjoyable, there must be some kind of back-and-forth which is not based on consensus somewhere in the start or middle of the process.

You are probably familiar with the extreme opposite which is widespread in role-playing:

GM states scene. Players state (minimally) preparations. GM introduces conflict (or at least crisis). Players state tactics. Players and GM roll dice. Players succeed or fail. GM narrates.

Despite certain flaws or pitfalls, this is actually more functional than the sequence I laid out above. At least in this case various people have to listen to one another establish actual content and then respond with actual content of their own. This not only makes the creativity social, it introduces time into the fiction as they do so.

PTA doesn't do either of these, actually. I have seen a number of people fall straight into the trap you and the group fell into, because they think it should run like the first sequence. That sequence is not actually what the book and rules describe. I think the book is a little bit light on the details of what to do so that that sequence doesn't happen (which is not to criticize it particularly; no author can anticipate all the ways to misunderstand, especially ways he or she never dreamed of).

The functional sequence for PTA goes like this:

Player requests a scene. Producer frames scene. Producer and Player develop scene. Conflict arises from both or either's action(s). Producer and Player draw cards. Player succeeds or fails. Someone narrates.

Do you see the crucial difference? The Producer does not sit mutely while the player is forces to generate everything about the scene. The player is not forced to create a whole scene, conflict, issue-relevance, and character actions alike.

The back-and-forth is different from the traditional sequence, and far more oriented toward generating emotionally-relevant conflict rather than a threat to the characters' lives, but it is the same in the sense that it's still back-and-forth as the fiction proceeds.

Basically, you guys are storyboarding. You're not creating a shared imagined space in which characters move around, enter and exit, do things, say things, react to one another, and otherwise "be." The conflicts are not forming organically from interactions and situational features, but being imposed in the abstract.


Notate come la necessità di questo "back-and-forth" si ricolleghi agli articoli di Baker su come far sì che la narrazione "conti"...

E' interessante anche la descrizione di Edwards delle cose che il giocatore può determinare ad inizio scena:

Focus = development of character vs. advancement of the plot. This can throw people badly, especially when they think advancement of the plot means saying right now what that advancement will be. This statement signals whether we "hang out" with the character vs. "something happens to or around her," and that's all. All you have to do is say which, and nothing about it.

Agenda = general description of what the scene's about, what the likely conflict is. If I had my way, this would be removed from the rules. I know what it means because I've been so close to the design and play from its outset. But textually, it throws people off cliffs. What it means is: don't have your character sitting and doing something totally boring. Propose something that lets us know why it's interesting to see her here now, but ... and importantly, not what happens.

Location = where it is.

None of these pre-set the contents of the conflict. I say again, none of these pre-set the contents of the conflict. That is left to play itself. Look at the scene creation example on page 57. Pretty minimal, huh?


Quindi, anche se chiedeve una scena di "avanzamento della trama", non potete dire da che parte avanza. "Agenda" indica cosa il personaggio stava facendo ad inizio scena, non il conflitto.

Altri errori:

Never, ever draw cards in PTA regarding what someone feels or wants in the absence of a concrete, shared set of directed actions in the fiction. Same goes for "noticing things" too - the #1 top way to stop a PTA session in its tracks.

My answer is "valid, insofar as picking his teeth or scratching his ass is valid. But not even close to an actual contribution to play, and light-years away from requiring a card draw."


Tutti i quote di prima sono di Edwards. Questo qui sotto è di Matt Wilson:

I think people sometimes confuse agenda for conflict. Agenda is just what you're up to. It's useful material for the producer to create the conflict, but it isn't the conflict.

Like, say, Cara wants a scene where Nicola's in the lab examining this strange thing she found, and she wants it to be a plot scene.

I'm the producer, yeah? So we don't just say, "okay, draw cards to see if you can figure out what it is."

And Cara doesn't say, "okay, there's something wrong with my microscope. that's the conflict." Cara can introduce that as an interesting detail, but no way is she going to just sit there and be the author of the story.

Say she introduces that detail. Maybe I say, "great, so that slows you down and you're there later than you want to be, late enough that your love interest, the cute lab worker shows up."

"Oh no," says Cara. "He can't find out about this strange thing."

Now we've both agreed on a conflict. There's a pretty defined yes/no question in there, but there's lots of room to fill in details in the narration.


Per quella che è la mia esperienza, praticamente tutti i problemi di gioco che ho sentito riguardo ad AiPS derivavano dall'aver commesso uno di questi errori (o non aver ascoltato gli avvertimenti riguardo a questi errori)
« Ultima modifica: 2009-06-19 07:51:49 da Moreno Roncucci »
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Luca Veluttini

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[Inglese] Raccolta link e approfondimenti su AiPS
« Risposta #1 il: 2009-06-19 09:02:00 »
Letture interessantissime. Grazie Moreno.

Moreno Roncucci

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[Inglese] Raccolta link e approfondimenti su AiPS
« Risposta #2 il: 2009-12-26 23:56:37 »
Segnalo soprattutto gli ultimi due link citati da Edwards, che chiariscono molti dubbi frequenti su Avventure in prima Serata:

[PTA] Players wanting their PCs to fail?  che chiamo spesso "il thread definitivo su Pimetime Adventures" tanto è esauriente, e
[PtA] How are the narrative authorities working in this scene? che ne è il seguito

C'è anche una discussione aperta qui sul primo di quei thread, questa:  [AiPS][link, in inglese] Far fallire il proprio personaggio?
« Ultima modifica: 2009-12-26 23:59:27 da Moreno Roncucci »
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Emanuele Borio

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[Inglese] Raccolta link e approfondimenti su AiPS
« Risposta #3 il: 2009-12-29 10:11:19 »
Ti... Amo ò_ò
Un enorme grazie, quando ho letto gli errori comuni che si possono fare, mi sono accorto che nell'ultima sessione li abbiamo fatti TUTTI ò_ò.
Ciao, sono Meme! - Fanmail 64 - DN=2 - Ingegnere delle Scienze Agrarie, Contadino, Nerd di Professione.

Chris

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Re:[Inglese] Raccolta link e approfondimenti su AiPS
« Risposta #4 il: 2012-01-20 16:52:18 »
Ovviamente il mio inglese è più che penoso...

Mi puoi illustrare meglio il concetto di "non ci sono contro-poste?
Perchè credo di aver avuto un problema a riguardo nell'ultima sessione, ma non ne sono certa
Gaia Lattanzi

Leonardo

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Re:[Inglese] Raccolta link e approfondimenti su AiPS
« Risposta #5 il: 2012-01-21 00:26:48 »
Penso che con "contro-posta" si riferisca alla dichiarazione anticipata (rispetto alla risoluzione del conflitto) di quello che accadrà nel caso in cui il personaggio del giocatore perda il conflitto stesso.

Ci sono giochi (come Burning Wheel e, se non sbaglio, anche The Shadow of Yesterday) in cui prima di risolvere un conflitto il giocatore è tenuto a stabilire chiaramente cosa il suo personaggio intende ottenere in caso di vittoria (la posta) mentre il GM, in risposta, è tenuto a decidere in linea generale (cioè senza entrare nel dettaglio della narrazione) cosa accadrebbe qualora il personaggio fosse "sconfitto" (o anche solo cosa i suoi PNG vogliono a loro volta ricavare dallo scontro). Questa è la "contro-posta". Il processo di accordarsi su posta e contro-posta è un meccanismo utile a "bilanciare" il conflitto, facendo in modo che rischi, scala e benefici derivanti dal conflitto siano esteticamente soddisfacenti per tutti i giocatori coinvolti.

AiPS *non* prevede un simile meccanismo. Quando scatta il conflitto il giocatore è tenuto a stabilire la posta, ma il Produttore non deve assolutamente proporre una contro-posta. Nel caso il giocatore ottenga un punteggio inferiore a quello del Produttore l'unica cosa meccanicamente certa è che il giocatore non ottiene la posta precedentemente dichiarata. Cosa succeda esattamente nella fiction tuttavia non è stabilito a priori e viene determinato dal giocatore che riceve il diritto a narrare l'esito del conflitto. Stabilire una contro-posta in AiPS priva il Narratore della piena libertà di decidere come si sono effettivamente svolti gli eventi per quei personaggi i cui giocatori hanno perso il conflitto.

(Nota: nel caso questo non corrispondesse a quanto Moreno intendeva, cestinate pure il post onde mantenere pulito il thread).

Moreno Roncucci

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Re:[Inglese] Raccolta link e approfondimenti su AiPS
« Risposta #6 il: 2012-06-20 06:45:05 »
Dal thread [PTA] Driving Towards Conflict (quoto l'intero post di Ron perchè mi sembra abbastanza comprensibile anche senza aver letto i precedenti, ma l'intero thread è interessante)

-----------------------------------
Hi David,

My goal is to stay concrete, but given limited time, I might fail a bit. Let me know if anything I write here slips away from exactly what people do.

What I'm seeing from your account is that in traditional/railroady terms, the GM had to do ... well, nothing. Which is part of the AW design or more accurately, that of the family of games it's drawing from (The Riddle of Steel, Sorcerer, others). You played Smith, you provided his motivations, you had Smith take action, you drew upon previously played material, and so on. At first glance, it looks like the AW GM is much like an interlocutor in the later works of Plato, the kind whose "argument" is generally limited to repeating, "Yes, Socrates."

But that's not true. The GM is Moving too. He's not doing so because he's secretly guiding and tracking the plot. He's doing so as something else. I could go into that "something else" at length, but that's not your question, is it? Your question is how.

OK, it's simple actually. Character actions are made of both scene framing and narrated events. Both are much more distributed across GM/player/other players that anyone likes to think about. You wrote that "Earlier Smith had the chance to use deep brain scan on Traffic," and I say, look closely. "Had the chance." How exactly, exactly did that happen. Did you have to traverse dangerous adversity to get that chance. Did you move Smith to get near Traffice at all? Did the GM place Traffic there? In fact, did the GM place Smith there?

You don't need to answer those questions for me, only for you. My point is that there are many ways to have found those two characters, doing the actions they were doing, in that location, such that in retrospect you can now say, "Earlier Smith had the chance to use deep brain scan on Traffic. Those many ways are all variations on who framed the scene(s) and how, and on what the characters were initially doing as assumed/said by whom. In that sentence, both "who" and "by whom" can include both player and GM at different times and in different ways.

PTA rules are very, very well made to get many of those ways into play ... if you use them exactly as written, which is a tragically rare phenomenon.

1. Scene framing is all done by you, the GM. I don't recommend using it to make character's decisions for them, e.g. framing right into the middle of a character's wedding when no such event had previously been involved (not a serious consideration anyway, I trust). I do recommend using three concepts.

i) What the character ordinarily does - job, habits, hobbies, necessary personal time, et cetera.
ii) What happened recently, if anything, which implies the character might be doing something different.
iii) Whom the character would really rather not deal with at this moment - unexpectedly/expectedly, likes/doesn't like, whatever, doesn't matter. For whatever reason.

Bear in mind that you are really and actually playing the character in framing the scene, however fleetingly and tacitly, but quite concretely. Be sure to validate and appreciate him or her in doing so, in such a way that the player knows you get the character. And don't ever, ever share the task of framing that scene in PTA. The rules give it only to you.

2. The best way to do conflicts in PTA is not to. Or rather, not to engineer, discuss, plan, or set them up, as a committee. That is horrible ass and it's not what the rules say, although God knows why people read them that way so often. Instead, given a scene framed according to the points above, go with these points:

i) Everyone says what their characters say and do, including you as GM
ii) You then make sure everyone at the table knows what now looks different: changes in character's locations and body language, anything in the environment which joins in, relevant bits or points of the scene's location
iii) Repeat (i), then (ii)

Now, presuming we're talking about a Conflict Scene in the first place, sooner or later some character will do or say something that another character wants to stop, subvert, or retaliate against. There, that's the conflict, and it's time for the cards.

What I'm saying is that just because it's been designated as a Conflict Scene does not, not, not ever mean anyone has to know what the conflict is at the start!! When Matt says "Drive toward Conflict," he really means "Find it in what's happening when it happens," and nothing else. Not "engineer it" - rather, "don't miss it."

Annndd, drum roll, my final point - Stakes are actually a minor subset of the bigger issue of "conflict." I'm saying that if you do #2 right (which entails #1 sometimes doing the heavy work even before then), then the Stakes for a given conflict will be so obvious and easy that you'll wonder what the big deal ever was. People fuck this up constantly, calling conflicts then debating Stakes tediously, or yelping out Stakes in the absence of interesting conflicts.

Rim-shot! And the skills for #1 and #2 are very, very much the same things you'll find listed as the GM's Moves in Apocalypse World.

So you're really all set, already. Go to it. Do not ever pre-plan or storyboard or shoehorn ... or God help us all, get into those horrible bad-PTA planning/chat/not-play muddles. Frame as stated, thinking of it as Moves. Play the NPCs as makes most sense, thinking of it as Moves.

Let me know if that helps or makes sense.

Best, Ron
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