Chapter Three

From before:

Chapter Three - How to Use the System

• When to use the mechanics or not
  
• Genre specific mechanics (changes depending on the book)
  
• Whatever lists are needed by genre

Previously:

Another archive find! This one occurred before No Myth Gamemastering, so those modifications will be necessary first.

The Game in Outline:

Mechanix ("->" means alternatively "begets" or "influences"):

1. Players (inc. gamemasters) -> Personae -> Interaction -> Play -> Narrative -> History
   
2. Context: Persona versus (Relationships and Circumstances) before (Background and Props) create Sequences via Mechanix
   
3. Ownership: Proprietorship, Gamemaster, Player, and Speaker
   
4. Play: Solo, General, Specific, and Mechanical
   
5. Systematic: Detail, Question, Challenge, and Contests
   
6. Ratings: Numeric (Magnitude, Invoked, and Resource), Direct (Advantage, Disadvantage, and Character)
   
7. Action Phases: Opportunity, Decision, and Application
   
8. Resolution Cycle: Circumstance -> Modifiers -> Resolution -> MIB number -> Adaptation -> Play
   
9. Modifiers: Time/Extent/Opportunity, Props/Consumables/Workspace/Labor, Scope/Duration of Subject, Engagement (En Guard/Focused), and the UE Chart
   
   1. Scope: Individual, Squad, Mob, and higher
      
   2. Duration: Immediate, Involved, and Scenic
10. Obliged: Critical Juncture (Epic Threshold), Telling Blow, and Catastrophic Failure
    
11. Contesting: Deliberate, Latent, Residual, and Modifiers
    
12. Circumstance -> Initiative -> Turns -> Following Actions (Flurry/Interruption) -> Combat Advantage
    
13. Rewards: Keepers, Gimmes, Freebies, Loaners, Payback, Buy Back, and Development (and Plot Device/Deus Ex Machina)
    
14. Mechanical Complication: Hands-Free, Basic, Intermediate (Tournament), Advanced, Collectible Card Game

Style:

1. Approaches: Avatar, Swashbuckler, Joueur, and Auteur
   
2. Commitment: Ambitious, Intentional, and Passive
   
3. Internal Reference: Self-Conscious versus In Context
   
4. Sharing: Self-Sovereign, Referential, and Gamemasterful

Techniques Thus Far:

1. Sine Qua Non (Adds to Ownership) - Your Persona: Keep It Simple, Share
   
2. Genre Expectations (Adds to Context) - Know what you're playing
   
3. Mystiques and Intrigue (Adds to Sine Qua Non and Genre Expectations) - Where to focus; how to engage
   
4. Who's in Charge? (Adds to Ownership: Speaker) - How to play together
   
5. Challenge (Adds to Systematic: Challenge & Interaction) and King Solomon's Auction (Adds to Ownership & Who's in Charge) - Avoiding fights; good gamesmanship and alternatives
   
6. Creating Detail (Adds to Play & System) - Mechanix only when you need them
   
7. Suspense is Killing Me (Adds to Creating Detail & Mystiques and Intrigue) - Spare the dice and save the Play (Spoil the Players)
   
8. Experience Dice and Genre Expectations (Adds to Genre Expectations & Context: Genre Expectations): Style (Adds to Style: Approaches, Commitment, Internal Reference, Sharing), Central Concept, Metaphor, Motif, and Running Gag - How to organize the expectations beyond the 'Portable Elements'

Upcoming Emergent Techniques:

1. Genre Expectations (Adds to Genre Expectation) - Genre Expectations are composed of the 'Portable Elements' (and are often listed by them), but grow out of expectations of 'mood,' 'atmosphere,' 'tone,' or et cetera, that 'filter' all of these:
   
   1. Personae: The active elements or 'vehicle' that connects players to the play
      
   2. Mechanix: Establishes a player's 'right of way' (Adds to Genre Expectations: Speaker), provides explicit 'tools' to create play (Adds to Systematic & Resolution Cycle), and reinforces Genre Expectations (Adds to Rewards & Context) 'when all else fails' (Adds to Play: ...Specific, and Mechanical)
      
   3. Props: Further empowerment for actions as abilities (Adds to Modifiers & Systematic: Challenge), descriptions (Adds to Players: Interaction & Context: Props & Systematic: Detail), or goals (Adds to Context: Sequences & Rewards: Plot Devices & Mystiques and Intrigue)
      
   4. Relationships: Simultaneously the representation of active elements and the networking that exists between them within the game; makes the game 'more than the sum of its parts' (Adds to Ownership: Proprietorship, Gamemaster...) and creates some of the realms to play in (Adds to Context: Relationships & Mystiques and Intrigue)
      
   5. Sequences: 'Expectable' chains of events as guidelines that are both abstract and ordered (Adds to Context: Sequences), providing both a way of reinforcing Genre Expectations by enticement for following them (Adds to Rewards: Keepers...Freebies...Payback) and inspiration for moments of quandary (Adds to Mystiques and Intrigue & Creating Detail & Suspense); often given in fragments or abstracted into general 'story' structures
      
      1. These 'chunks' reach down to where Involved and Scenic Actions reach up to; for example, the 'Romance Novel' CCG supplement will be Scenic-Action/plot/whimsy cards
   6. Background: Simultaneously the representation of the passive elements and their value 'in the scheme of things,' waiting to be brought into play and/or acted upon
      
      Setting, History, 'scenery,' 'bedrock,' 'can be in-motion/undirected,' 'available to be used'
      
   7. Circumstances:
      
      Connects Personae to Background 'field of play' 'avenues'
      
      not just the relationships between the elements, but sometimes their relationship to the Self-Conscious narrative (like tension, being crucial). 'scenery,' 'site/startpoint,' 'Dynamic Status Quo: redux' [prior to "Starting a Game"]

Game Flow:

1. Challenge (Redux) – Mechanix (get into die rolling situations, "Hey, I'm not gonna let you...")
   
2. Playering/Gamemastering [prior to "Rewards..." and "Group Persona..."]
   
3. Starting a Game (or a Session) [prior to "Negotiating..."]
   
4. Who the Speaker is & Spotlight Time (Who's in Charge Redux)
   
   1. Sharing the Responsibilities (Having a Ref and Such) - Techniques
      
   2. Live-Action Role-Playing 'Logistics' (and Missing Players) - Problems
      
   3. When Approaches Contrast (Using Them in Play) – Problems
5. Warm-Ups

Gamemastering:

1. Gamemastering/Playering [duplicate to show relevance to "Playering..."] – 'sharing play,' 'it's not really real,' 'all roads don't lead to Rome if Rome doesn't exist,' 'faking an inspiration/improvisation,' 'you could control, but why?'
   
   1. Good gamesmanship – spotlight issues/problems (gamemasters too)
2. Gamemastering Mystiques (Yours and Others)
   
3. Rewards Mechanix [after "Mechanix"] (Adds to Genre Expectations: Mechanix)
   
   1. Keepers, Gimmes, Loaners, Freebies, Payback, Buy Back
      
   2. Giving, Receiving, Sharing, Lending, and Borrowing
4. Using Experience Dice (activating Props, plot devices, development, and et cetera) – Mechanix [after "Props"] (Adds to Props)
   
5. Handling Advantages/Disadvantages - Mechanix [after "...Really Ambitious..."]
   
6. Genre Expectations as 'the Hammer' - Techniques [prior to "Advanced Analysis"]
   
7. Background Creation/Maintenance [after "Relationships"] (Adds to Genre Expectations: Relationships...Backgrounds)
   
   1. Dynamic Status Quo/Ecological 'Leveling' – using Circumstances
      
   2. Gamemastering K.I.S.S. (stay close to your GenEx and Approaches, c. f. Transition) [after "Transition"] 'more sharing'
8. Breaking Up is Hard to Do – Problems

Scenic Breakdown:

1. What's a Scene For and When Does It End? [after "Sequences"] [after "Who is the Speaker..."] (Adds to Genre Expectations: Sequences)
   
   1. Pacing, Pacing, Pacing (do it by the Approaches)
      
      1. The Tension Spiral – always appropriate (watch the clock)
         
      2. Making 'a Story' (Thematic and Climactic Ambitions)
         
      3. Sharing the Spotlight (...with the Background/gamemaster too)
         
      4. 'The Opposition' (the illusion of the Ambition of Competition with the gamemaster)
         
      5. Fusion (Portable Parts)/Emulation (dangers/joys of copying)
         
      6. Transition [prior to "...K.I.S.S..."]

Playering:

1. Origins, Precipitating Events, Drives, and Direction for the Persona or Game [after "Persona"] (Adds to Genre Expectations: Personae)
   
2. Negotiating Sine Qua Non (and Genre Expectations) [prior to "Advanced Analysis"]
   
3. Group Persona Creation (and Individual) [prior to "Getting Really Ambitious"]
   
   1. Persona Development - Mechanix
      
      1. Finding an Approach Compromise – Techniques

For the Connoisseur:

1. Write your own GenEx [after "...as 'the Hammer'" and "Negotiating..."] - Central Concept, Metaphor, Motif, and Running Gag then Background, Props, Relationships, Circumstances, Sequences, Personae, and Mechanix
   
2. Getting Really Ambitious
   
3. Advanced Analysis (of other games)