Wow! Praising White Wolf Writing

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

When I first started reading the original Vampire: The Masquerade, first edition, which I still own, I soundly mocked a lot of the prose. This continued to be part of my love / hate relationship with White Wolf's World of Darkness. I think, for me, at least, the worst offender was a section from the prologue to both first and second editions of Changeling: The Dreaming. (Yep. Looking up my old review on rpg.net, I see that I was not the only one mocking the prose.)

Last night, I read a section of Equinox Road, for Changeling: The Lost, blinked, then read it aloud to mnemex, who started nodding vigourously in agreement.

From page 58 of Equinox Road:

Epic, disastrous things immediately inspire visions of and fragmentary scenes, but a story is more than an image of dragons lumbering up Miami Beach, of Fae gods turning skyscrapers into huge trees, or changelings uttering the secret words that bind the Wyrd. The worst thing you can do is confuse these impressions for developed stories, use brute force to make the scenes happen and hope that some rationale will stitch them into a good story. Epic stories often fail because this thought process worms its way in. Players talk about fighting an aerial battle on gryphon-back to defeat the army of Fimbulwinter, armed with oaths the rot-elves have beaten into weapons of power. They get pumped up ready to play -- but for some reason; the chronicles that actually work tend to be a lot humbler. Why is this? Why can't enthusiasm alone carry your epic aspirations?

Hype is exciting but it isn't play. If you build a story by boosting the extreme side of the game and brain-storming half-finished scenes, you're doing the opposite of designing a chronicle. In a roleplaying game the rules, setting and protagonist are all tools that create a narrative during play. But enthusiastic speculation creates the story first and expects game play to catch up, falling into place to produce what the players demand. So it's no surprise that when the big moment comes, groups struggle with the vast, epic edifice they've created in their imaginations. It intimidates the Storyteller and makes players anxious about character portrayal.

You can build an epic, but you have to do it by playing the game. Your time at the table is the epic -- it leads the story. This is what makes roleplaying a distinct activity. Instead of passively witnessing the build-up, make it happen through the medium of your changelings, your World of Darkness and the themes you've put at the heart of your chronicle.

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Wow. An explication of "no play before playing" in a White Wolf book!

Mind, there is a certain paradox of gaming, both on the player and on the gm level as far as prep work goes and avoiding play before playing, but that is a subject for a different post. Right now, I'm grinning in delight at how far we've all come.

Comments

[selki.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting analysis. Thanks for passing it on!

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Sure!

Mind, the authors then lose a few points with me for tossing out interesting ideas without what I consider sufficient analysis.

For example, they suggest that in the endgame, it's okay to change how the Changeling magic system works. Well and good -- but I want at least the obvious sentence or two cautioning against screwing with your players who may not see this as a signal that things are changing, but as a breach of the implicit contract that the rules are something they can trust to be stable.

Similarly, there's a suggestion about using character journals, also known as "blue booking", something that I've never quite gotten how to do well, and don't get now. Oh, I understand that it can add another dimension to the game, but I've got two reservations.

First, they've just said that "your time at the table is the epic". If the gm and the player are doing blue booking via live journal or email, some discussion of the potential issues is crucial. I've done both good and bad things with 1-on-1 face to face and play by email sessions in between full game sessions, sometimes pulling it off and sometimes making mistakes, that I know about some of the potential pitfalls.

The example given is of a PC journal entry about going to an estranged wife to forgive her for not knowing the PC is the real person and loving the fetch. The authors say that the gm has long ago decided that the wife actually knew the fetch wasn't the PC, sensing something off. And, they say, the gm can bring this out in a comment on the blog entry, sort of playing by blog.

Hm. Okay, so first of all, you're risking telling the player that all the effort put into the journal entry is useless, because, ha-ha, the gm pulled a switch. Yes, you can pull it off so that this isn't an issue, but if so, it's because you're already good enough you don't need a lot of the advice in the book, because there's sure as heck no advice on this as an issue. Next, the fact that this could be pretty intense has me saying, "But, why can't we have it in the main game? Why is this person's PC's issue being relegated to an online supplement?"

The gets to my second reservation about blue booking. Okay, so, there you are at the table, and things are dull. The gm isn't sure what to do for you, as you aren't in the scene. There are a number of possibilities, but blue booking is one of the ones that I've heard suggested that makes me go "Huh?"

I mean, I'm not playing, so I'm being told, "Go play with yourself and write this journal thingy so that the gm doesn't have to worry about giving you air time."

I know that this is oversimplifying and probably doing an injustice to the concept. But I have yet to see sufficient explanation of how and when the technique works, how and when it doesn't, and how to get the player to do it when / so that it works.