A Constant in a Sea of Flux
Something I've often found in the games that I've run is a need to balance rigidity and flexibility. Order and chaos. If I'm going to run a game in a clearly defined and highly detailed world, I'll prefer to give the players free rein in that world, letting them set their own goals and agendas while exploring and revealing the unknown. If I'm going to run a game with distinct scenes and elements that follow a specific narrative to their conclusion, I'll tend to give the players more room to describe the setting and the world leading up to that conclusion.
A defined world with a defined narrative feels too "railroady", unless the players have some other outlet to express their creativity. Perhaps the setting and the over-riding narrative arc are just a framework for play, while the dramatic tension and creative outlet come from the interactions and relationships between characters. Such statically framed relationship games have been a fertile ground for indie game design over the last two decades.
An undefined world, with undefined characters, and undefined goals, leads to players unsure that their goals will be relevant. The stories need something to latch onto in order to give them gravitas.
A miniatures game typically doesn't have this issue because it doesn't usually try to tell a story. It just reveals a snapshot of time in the setting, In many games, the skirmish's outcome has no real effect on the overall setting, and if it has too much of a negative impact on a specific character in the events played out, it often doesn't matter because during the next game everyone just resets to baseline stats. There are no real stakes in traditional miniatures games... especially in tournament play. But in more recent games, story elements have been added, and that means providing players with an opportunity to add their own meaning and stakes as specific scenes are interconnected into a longer narrative form.
Too much order... resetting characters to their baseline... not applying changes to the world or feeding the output of one session as an input to the next...reduces significance of the games just as much as too much chaos. I understand that there are people who don't want their games to be full of meaning, or interconnected as a part of a complex wider narrative, but I want there to be the potential for that meaning to be connected into the game for groups of players who do want it. A bit like the way Legend of the Five Rings card game allowed for casual play, but if you participated in tournaments your actions were aggregated globally with others and fed back into the next expansion set. I'm certainly not aiming for something that grand, but the idea is there.
I resisted it at first, but I'm going to tie this 'Bring Your Own Miniatures' system into the Voidstone Chronicles project that I was working on a few years ago. This way our wide array of potential characters can be pulled into a solid narrative, and can explore a specific (but changing) world. This world gives characters a chance to find goals and groups with agendas that they can link in with, it also gives them ways to improve their character through the objects they find and the potential allies, companions, and adversaries they meet.
Still a work in progress... and it's taking far longer to get it right in my head than I'd hoped... but it's getting somewhere.
A defined world with a defined narrative feels too "railroady", unless the players have some other outlet to express their creativity. Perhaps the setting and the over-riding narrative arc are just a framework for play, while the dramatic tension and creative outlet come from the interactions and relationships between characters. Such statically framed relationship games have been a fertile ground for indie game design over the last two decades.
An undefined world, with undefined characters, and undefined goals, leads to players unsure that their goals will be relevant. The stories need something to latch onto in order to give them gravitas.
A miniatures game typically doesn't have this issue because it doesn't usually try to tell a story. It just reveals a snapshot of time in the setting, In many games, the skirmish's outcome has no real effect on the overall setting, and if it has too much of a negative impact on a specific character in the events played out, it often doesn't matter because during the next game everyone just resets to baseline stats. There are no real stakes in traditional miniatures games... especially in tournament play. But in more recent games, story elements have been added, and that means providing players with an opportunity to add their own meaning and stakes as specific scenes are interconnected into a longer narrative form.
Too much order... resetting characters to their baseline... not applying changes to the world or feeding the output of one session as an input to the next...reduces significance of the games just as much as too much chaos. I understand that there are people who don't want their games to be full of meaning, or interconnected as a part of a complex wider narrative, but I want there to be the potential for that meaning to be connected into the game for groups of players who do want it. A bit like the way Legend of the Five Rings card game allowed for casual play, but if you participated in tournaments your actions were aggregated globally with others and fed back into the next expansion set. I'm certainly not aiming for something that grand, but the idea is there.
I resisted it at first, but I'm going to tie this 'Bring Your Own Miniatures' system into the Voidstone Chronicles project that I was working on a few years ago. This way our wide array of potential characters can be pulled into a solid narrative, and can explore a specific (but changing) world. This world gives characters a chance to find goals and groups with agendas that they can link in with, it also gives them ways to improve their character through the objects they find and the potential allies, companions, and adversaries they meet.
Still a work in progress... and it's taking far longer to get it right in my head than I'd hoped... but it's getting somewhere.
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