Tricks for getting unstuck? In my Scarlet Heroes game, the PC has stumbled on an outpost of heretics of some sort. but even after patiently making one roll and then another on oracular tables and story cubes, I'm having trouble figuring out what the heck this place is about. What do you do when the oracular guidance is ambiguous and the proverbial light bulb isn't going off?
Related: sometimes it's not hard to find a suitable interpretation to fit whatever oracles/muses you've consulted in isolation but not in a way that fits the story so far. Obviously not everything that happens needs to keep to the same storyline, but ping-ponging between unrelated events seems like a potential pitfall for randomly driven solo systems. Tips for keeping things semi-coherent in relation to the pre-existing narrative?
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Tricks for getting unstuck? In my Scarlet Heroes game, the PC has stumbled on an outpost of heretics of some sort. but even after patiently making one roll and then another on oracular tables and story cubes, I'm having trouble figuring out what the heck this place is about. What do you do when the oracular guidance is ambiguous and the proverbial light bulb isn't going off?
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One thought - is it necessary to find out details about why the heretics are there or what they are up to? Can you keep moving without making too many decisions at this point, and let the details fill in later?
ReplyDeleteOn a small scale, if one result doesn't work, I discard it. If none of the results work, I usually take a break and let it percolate a little -- sometimes it'll hit me an hour later, "oh, of course!".
ReplyDeleteIf I want to keep going at the time, sometimes swapping tools will help; other times it's just a matter of saying "eh, my character doesn't know, it's okay if I don't!". I find rolling up a random event often helps -- "well, something awful just happened, I'll figure out if my hero survives it".
And, of course, sometimes I'll feel stuck because what I want to have happen/feel must happen fictionally is unpleasant, messy, or racy, but instead of just going there I find myself fishing for oracular confirmation to somehow make it "ok". Then I just fiat it. It's for my enjoyment after all.
You could also try asking the human oracle -- provide what you find interesting about the situation in a post here with "HALP! What happens next?" at the end and you'll be inundated with suggestions. :D
As far as keeping things semi-coherent goes, well, I've experimented with this a lot. The most effective is a prefab scene structure patterned on one of the classic story structures -- Act 1, Scene 1, "status quo" and so on. But it's a bit too structured for some folks.
If you want something looser, you could try motifs (Swords Without Master inspired). For the first few scenes, whenever something strikes you as interesting or worthy of a callback later, jot it down. When you have five or six elements on your list, start working elements back in. When you run out of elements, be done.
You might also like the Free Will adjunct to Mythic, Perilous Intersections, and Scarlet Heroes' urban adventure framework!
Keep rolling.
ReplyDeleteI don’t prescribe to any method that forces me to use oracle results that don’t spark the imagination.
Now the caveat to that is a rock solid context to filter random prompts through. So if you find that multiple prompts never make sense it might be worth taking a step back to make the setting and context more detailed.
Seems to me part of the issue might be that you don't have a solid enough grasp of the setting to have a basis for improvisation in a consistent way.
ReplyDeleteIf you can answer Q1 in Jeff's list then you can come up with a heresy or two. Then you can figure out what the heretics are plotting. http://jrients.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/twenty-quick-questions-for-your.html?m=1
Take it at face value, the character doesn't know what is going on. The heretics are impenetrable, their ways mysterious, and it is creeping the protagonist out. :-)
ReplyDeleteIt's been a bit since I read through the full Scarlet Heroes text, but if you're sticking to the game's 'Red Tide' setting, think of where on the map you're adventuring. Definition of 'heretic' from Dictionary.com: anyone who does not conform to an established attitude, doctrine, or principle. So if you're near the borderlands, maybe your heretics are going against the local religious beliefs and engaging with the enemy (the Shou) to learn more about the witchcraft used by their leaders. Or maybe you're in a more "sane" section of the human map and finding heretics practicing blood magic...
ReplyDeleteMaybe you find there's an NPC who's not supposed to be there, and finding you makes them realize they're on the wrong side of things...
Try grabbing one of the Red Tide setting guides to give you more background into the world in which Scarlet Heroes is set. More info = more ideas! Just because you're using an oracular driver for the game doesn't mean you can't randomly inject "flavor" into the game! :D
Take a look at 'Black Streams: Cults of Ruin', which is made to work in the Red Tide setting. It's free at DriveThruRPG: drivethrurpg.com - Black Streams: Cults of Ruin
clarification: not asking for help on this particular sticking point (thanks though!). curious to hear about more general strategies for making things work.
ReplyDeleteIt has been said already, but I feel it is worth repeating: forge ahead! In real life, we sometimes don't get all the answers. Why should it be that way in the game?
ReplyDeleteAlso, as you get more things to work with (characters, interactions, locations, etc), a story may evolve.
[Edit because of clarification]
Another fix is to find a generator for the specific question that you want answered. For example, if this is a cult you want around for a while, check out the Silent Legions cult generator. It delves into nitty-gritty, such as motivations and resources.
Let me try to reframe. You're playing out a scene. You already have some established facts, both from prior adventures (in this case, this is the fourth for this wandering adventurer) and other oracular results during this scene. You start trying to flesh out the moment at hand and the results have some vague potential connection to some elements of the story/scene, but are also somewhat contradictory/vague/inappropriate. lI feel like the tough spot is when the results are neither easily interpretable nor obviously discardable.
ReplyDeleteTaking a break, thinking about something else for a bit, usually works for me. If not, I'll sometimes strike a few paragraphs or scenes and go a different route or set it aside and play something else.
ReplyDeleteThere's a blurb in Scarlet Heroes (re: campaign building) that has you ask 1. will you use this thing you're working on or 2. are you enjoying working on it. If both are No, then stop. This could similarly be applied to your solo game.
If a result feels ambiguous and I can't decide if it should be entered as "canon", and my first instinct isn't strong one way or another, I'll often roll to confirm. But honestly, just making the call to incorporate what makes sense, keeping what doesn't in the back of my mind just in case it does later, and, more importantly, keeping the rolls coming and fiction building is fine for me most of the time.
ReplyDeleteI think we all have different tolerances for going strictly by the rolls vs. going with the fictional impetus. Just a matter of finding your own preferences there.
Gajus Miknaitis Thanks for the clarification, it helps a lot (as you've discovered)! Tam H has a great point about our individual tolerances for going by rolls vs. random spurts of creativity. I have definitely seen that not all of us view our games as stories (and vice versa), so we all treat what the oracles dish out with different weights.
ReplyDeleteIf it were me, and the oracles weren't being sensible, I'd get a bit frustrated, then dig deep and introduce a new nemesis and see how fast my character could run away to regroup. Tons of new oracular questions would pop up, and I can worry about pieces fitting together nicely later in the game/series. But again, that's me; I'm very story-driven, and have found rules-light systems to be a great match for the stories I want to play out! Good luck in your search for that balance; you'll find it!
Hi Gajus Miknaitis, I don't know if this is your case, but it happened to me to get stuck because I made excessive use of "idea generating" oracles.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote that
You already have some established facts, both from prior adventures ... and other oracular results during this scene
In such a situation, you likely are in a position to go "Bivius": you define the most obvious situation (A) based on the established facts; then you roughly sketch a completely different (bizarre) alternative (B). You just make B the opposite of A, using context. E.g. in a medieval Europe setting, A could be that the heretics are devil-worshippers; B could make them catholic fanatics that want to replace the Emperor with their own Pope.
You then ask a binary oracle if you go with option A or B (likely, giving option A an advantage). You can do this without an idea generator (just a binary YES/NO oracle). You can even postpone the definition of B to after that A is rejected.
In my experience, idea generators are useful when things settle down and you are in a "blank sheet" situation - e.g. you have achieved a major milestone and must decide what to do next. When you are in the middle of action, I find that going with the flow and yes/no questions is what works best for me.
I rely a lot on random generators & oracles, but when I get results that are uninspiring or impossible to work with, I just re-roll.
ReplyDeleteSometimes no matter how many times I re-roll, nothing makes sense. At that point I will sometimes just ask myself what would be the most fun/cool/interesting thing, and use that.
If I feel too uninspired to do that, I'll either take a break and do something else (nothing is more inspiring than the thing you aren't supposed to be working on) or back up to before I got stuck and start afresh. I don't use it to reverse the results of bad PC-decisions or to bring back the dead; it's for when the oracle & generators have gotten things off track. I certainly don't use it very often, but as a last resort it has served me pretty well.
Thanks again. The last few comments resonated with me. Taking a break is a good option, except that it feels disappointing if you've finally set aside some time to game and suddenly feel blocked. I guess in that case I need to press ahead and ignore some of the oracular info. Part of my problem might be that, as a left-brainer, I'm not as good at the on-the-fly associations that are required for this as I wish I was. I think sometimes that leads me to feeling frustrated by interpretive roadblocks. I like this hobby, but sometimes it feels like a lot of work.
ReplyDeleteGajus Miknaitis I can totally understand your last comment! Yes, sometimes it can feel like the game is driving YOU (there's a Soviet Russia joke in there, I know it...), and when it stops driving, you're left holding the wheel wondering where to go next. Being a daydreamer definitely helps with these games, just imagining where things COULD go if only... Dare to be different! Get random, clean up later! :D
ReplyDeletePS on the specific wtf cult issue, I remembered that the Red Tide sourcebook has a set of tables for quick cult creation. Abandoning prior rolls and starting with that!
ReplyDeleteAlso see what John Fiore wrote in his comment here: plus.google.com - I finally made good - kinda - on playing through my solo game of Untold: Adve...
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