I’ve been running a game using Story Engine for a couple of months now. We’ve had some scheduling bumps, so it has only really been three or four sessions.
The setup involves an idea I’ve had for years that I casually describe as “Frank Miller’s Three Musketeers”. Essentially, a kind of neo-noir underworld game set in 17th Century-ish France. Weirdly, I found nearly the exact kind of geographical and political features I was imagining in 14th Century Avignon. Specifically elements of the Avignon Papacy and the Avignon Exchange. So, I said, okay we’re just going to bring all that forward three centuries and work with that.
Briefly ,there’s an Anitpope in schism with the Vatican who basically runs a river trading port with heavy influence from three Italian merchant families. Across the river is a french Duke itching for an excuse to annex the city properly for the King of France.
One player is playing a spy and information broker Fernand. At the start of the game he had himself situated with the church, but made it clear that’s just what he was currently up to because he’s really a play-all-the-sides grifter basically in it for himself.
During the game it has come to light, that the Anitpope is responsible for a series of serial murders, and has been granting political favors to one of the houses to help him cover them up (and possibly frame The Duke across the river). Upon discovering this, Fernand’s general strategy has been to try to get the three merchant houses to turn on each other and possibly the Antipope. So far he seems pretty ambivalent about whether this will trigger an invasion by The Duke’s forces across the river.
While running the game, I found myself in very familiar territory with this kind of social manipulator character, which is to say frustrated and exhausted. I know more than one person who loves to play the Iago. They love lying, spin-doctoring and goading NPCs into action. In the past this has always felt like a get-out-of-jail way to play the game. “If I can, provoke the NPCs into crisis among each other then I can safely sit on the sidelines.”
This time I have decided to take a step back and take an “it’s me, not you” approach to solving the problem. Afterall, playing Iago seems like a perfectly fine kind of character. So I asked myself, WHY do I get so frustrated with this kind of character. It’s because it plays directly a weakness I have when running games. I don’t really think enough about NPCs who aren’t immediately in the scene with the players.
We have talked about the frozen room problem in dungeon design where encounters in rooms basically don’t “turn on” until the players open the door. This is basically the same issue. My NPCs basically turn into statues when the PCs aren’t looking at them and only come to life when the players show up to confront them about something. The social manipulator character requires me to not do that.
This is a problem I’ve always been aware of and try to work on but social manipulator characters force me to work on it faster and harder because the character can’t function without “off screen” development of the greater situation. They can’t plan their next move if there’s no consequence from their first move.
So, now, especially between sessions I’m trying to take more deliberate stock of what the NPCs have been told, by whom, when, and what they think about it. Most importantly I’m trying to develop concrete action plans for what they intend to do about it. The Anitpope believes he has been exposed and has sent an assassin to kill one of the merchant princes. The most scorned merchant prince is provoking a riot with the Antipope’s private guard. The Duke is preparing to move his forces in response to this escalation of violence.
We’ll see if this clarity of thought eases up some of the stress I feel when playing with one of these characters.
3 responses to “GMing For Iago”
It’s great to read this. In addition to whatever happens in this game, I think you’re providing an important example for a lot of others.
I wanted to complete your final self-recommendation, or at least, complete it as I perceive it. You wrote,
Which is great, as the first cognitive response, so here’s what I see as the necessary completed response: the specific in-play content in terms of the next scene.
(Story Engine is helping me make this point due to its explicit scene-to-scene procedures and per-scene resource procedures.)
“Next scene” = where, who’s there, what’s immediately happening, what’s present but not immediately happening or perceived, and what just happened … that’s a good enough rough approximation for the concept. But how is it made, absent the theatrical/literary feature that a scene includes its entire content and especially its closure? Even the term “frame” is misleading because it implies both beginning and ending. “Open” is better.
How does a GM or whoever “open a scene,” absent those conventions/qualities of other media? That’s what these diagrams are for, although showing the second as a closed box leans perilously toward those other media. Let’s pretend that second box is drawn to be open on its rightward end, i.e., when it’s opened (framed), no one has any idea of what it’s closure will look like.
In the second diagram, it’s about the blue arrow and the new gold arrow, each punching into play so that the next scene is absolutely necessary to play right now. The blue arrow includes whatever already-played effects have changed anything about or for the player-characters and anyone we saw in that previous scene. The gold arrow includes whatever entities were not in the previous scene, including those who may be bigger in scope than anything which really appears in scenes, but also anyone who could have been played but happened not to be in that last one. It’s useful also to consider that many entities are composite, e.g., if there’s a god, it has priests, if there are priests, there are temple people, if there’s a temple, there are worshippers.
OK, given what you wrote, the GM or whoever is indeed utilizing the big gold arrow extending “up” from the prior scene. You’ve described it perfectly. But what does that mean for the little gold A arrow? How do those changes affect (often profoundly) whatever the characters are looking at right at this time?
Because that solves the understandable frustration right there. If the dude scams Noble X and Merchant Y, and if you are aware of the deal they were supposed to be cutting, and now the deal’s off, then Some Other Guy Z may well be taking action directly toward the person who fucked it all up, i.e., our little player-character. I mean, that’s the most direct effect, and it may be too direct given the fiction as it stands, but it’s not too direct if Guy Z is really savvy. In some games, there’s even a procedure to see whether he figures out what’s caused the problem, i.e., any relevant skill roll; but if there’s not, well then, it’s your job to decide whether he does or doesn’t (yet), and not like a pacing show-runner, but like a guy playing a guy.
Even indirect effects matter too, like a lockdown or curfew based on sudden strife, or a misplaced action which made sense to the entity who did it or instigated it.
What I’m saying is that the impact lands lots of places, especially including those in which the player-characters are located, and often concerning them specifically. Little gold arrow A. That’s your expression of the effects you were talking about. And if you keep in mind the open rightward end of this scene at its beginning, then it has nothing to do with shutting down the player-character for poking the hornets’ nest. It’s merely a changed situation, for them, for you, for everyone in play.
Let me know if this makes sense!
This is pretty helpful for me, thanks!
Thinking back to the big Marvel Super Heroes game from a few years ago, I remember feeling reluctance to open scenes with an NPC directly taking action.
I spent a lot of energy keeping track of everybody’s state in relation to what the PCs were doing. I also agonized about whether the NPCs would know about it or not. Many things were happening in my head that never entered into a scene. I was always waiting for the PCs to seek out a character so that I could play them.
Jesse, if you have any other observations about Story Engine, I would love to hear them. I have wanted to play Maelstrom Storytelling and Story Engine for a long time.
I was really hoping this would be helpful and illustrative to others which is why I carved it out specifically to highlight.
Also, everything you said makes total sense!