In our Skype-based Nine Worlds game (which I spoke of recently) Matt uses a simple method for determining what happens in the next scene. It is basically the Primetime Adventures solution: each player, including the GM, frames a scene in turn.
Players, to date at least, have invariably framed scenes involving their characters, and Matt has been pretty evenly distributing his scenes among the characters. Since the Nine Worlds advancement system (not to mention character effectiveness levels) is tied to Muses. Bigger Muses make you more powerful in play and have bigger payoff when they resolve than smaller Muses. Since Muses can only be increased when you win in conflicts you want to be in as many conflicts as you can manage to get into. Since multiple any conflict can take a theoretically unlimited number of participants, you can get in on conflicts started by other players if you are able to come up with a good set of stakes related to the conflict (though, interestingly, they do not have to be related to the stakes set by the original participants, just something relevant to that). With a tendency of one to two conflict phases per scene, the more scenes you are in, the more conflicts you can be involved in.
From our play last night, Ben and I worked together to attach our characters to one another. I think we were both working, at least partially, with a metagame concern of linking up character interests. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Nine Worlds in no way requires party play or anything like that, but it doesn’t discourage it either, overall it’s pretty neutral to it. Anyway, Ben would frame a scene that I happened to be in and I would get to participate in a conflict, and then I would frame a scene with Ben, and he would participate. Doing this we were getting roughly twice as many conflicts each as Fred was getting.
On top of that, since we were both getting some spotlight whenever either of us framed a scene, we both got more spotlight time (thought it was shared time, I did not mind).
It is important to point out that this is not actually an emergent property of Nine Worlds itself. This method of scene framing is not, as far as I remember, in the rules of the game itself. Instead this is just a way of doing scene framing (the order of which is, again as far as I remember, not addressed in the rules). When this specific method of determing scene framing authority is combined with the rules of Nine Worlds you get this interesting (and cool) incentive to keep the characters working together.
(I am actually hoping to have another article up this afternoon. I’m talking about Emily Care Boss’ super-cool Breaking the Ice.)
Thomas
Tags: Applied
Thomas, the “round-robin” scene framing we’re using is suggested as a technique on page 151-152 of the Aristeia edition (current version) of the game. I’m amazed at how well it’s working out, and I find it really interesting that, as you suggest, players can help each other out with more screen time, and hence more potential Points to accrue.
The saddest thing about the Hecate scene was that it split us up! I was really looking forward to more points per scene, especially now that I need to max all my Twilight Plague related Muses. :-(
yrs–
–Ben