Someone Stole My Pen
I should have written it down when I thought of it, because now I can't recall what I had come up with.
Too much on my mind, too much stress: everything that comes with buying a house and moving, pushing myself with the illustration contract, trying to get a handle on the IP issue, trying to maintain too many discussions with too many people, constant equipment break-downs at work (I've been here every damn night this week for three to four hours each time to fix either something new or something new on equipment I'd fixed another night), weird work hours because of personnel issues, and all the usual, normal family life and kids-with-health-problems stresses.
Now a page I was going to throw into the tweak document for ORX -- as another additional/alternative rule -- has floated into the ether because I couldn't hang on to it long enough in my mental space.
Of course, it would have been easier to write it down if someone hadn't lost my writing pen I keep with a notebook by the foot of the bed. I'm thinking one of the kids thoughtlessly grabbed it for personal use and never put it back. Grr-sigh. It will hopefully turn up while we clean to move, but that doesn't help right now.
At least I still recall the rules-bit I wanted to provide exposition on:
In the rules section, I talk about Stakes and how to proceed with narration when a player fails the roll. Such a roll doesn't necessarily indicate outright failure -- the orc may succeed at whatever they are trying to do -- but in such a case, achieving the goal becomes more complicated and dangerous or another problem crops up they need to deal with before the Scene resolves.
One of the unspoken ways the gamemaster can use the results of failed rolls is to use each failure as a guideline of whose story to follow for the moment, as well as as way to single out which orc to focus/spend resources on for the time being (rather than simply choosing at random or by fiat, as normal).
This tweak provides a number of benefits, such as a narrative structure by naturally focusing Scenes around attempts at resolving specific conflicts, and the increasing tension found in good narrative, as well as more mechanical tension over the impact of failed rolls. It also adds more structure to play itself, helping to avoid situations where the gamemaster could be accused of playing favorites by not (or seemingly not) harshing on any particular player's orc.
As an additional bit of advice for dealing with the narrative: if the conflict isn't resolved, it can be treated like a cut in visual entertainment, with the conflict resumed in media res in another Scene, whenever the action next returns to that particular set of events. Or the conflict can be ended in narration at the end of the Scene. Whichever seems most appropriate to the narrative.
Any questions or necessary clarifications to any of the above before I post it over on the WHS forum?
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greyorm) wrote,
