I finally bought Unframed, and it’s pretty amazing thus far.
After reading the first essay, the one on improvised dialog by Robin Laws, I’m thinking about making an AW playbook. I’ve played with the idea a bit after reading Hamlets Hit Points, and then again after Hillfolk. I’m thinking something along the lines of The Silvertongue. Each playbook in AW amplifies an aspect of the game, zooms in on it, by giving that character more things to do in that space. The idea here would be to give the character more play room in dialogues, to amplify the parries and cut-and-thrusts of dialogues.
The only move I’ve actually thought out thus far is something along the lines of,
To The Point
When someone engages you in dialogue, you may ask them what they are petitioning you for. You begin the conversation at the point where you suss out the what the petitioner wants you to grant. If the person engaging you in dialogue has no petition for you, then you may dismiss them as you quickly deduce that they know not why they are here, and you time is too valuable to babble.
I would assume that there would be lots about contracts and such as well, but the core premise would be combine the elegance of the DramaSystem, with AW. I think they would work well married together into a playbook.
My petition to you, PbtA, is one for information; do you think this idea has merit?, what moves would you add? Any thought is welcome. (Also, I was kinda wanting to just write down my initial thoughts, I figured I could post them for others to see and maybe play with as well.)
So you want to skip all the roleplaying to get to the point? I think someone having Hot highlighted could be enough for that since they will want to manipulate you and get to the point.
This move seems like a bad idea because it shortcuts a lot of interesting conversation.
NEW BASIC MOVE: Get To The Point – When you say “Get to the point” out loud, whether in character or not, roll + your highest stat and ignore the total. The other person might decide to get to the point. Or they might not. Hope they do.
Tim Franzke the conversation is only interesting when something is happening (the point); the rest of it is sitting around jerkin off to how cool we all are. That said: this idea’s real problem is that, with aggressive scene framing, every scene should be immediately getting to the point on its own.
Alfred Rudzki Disagree with the notion that any conversation without an immediate goal is ‘jerking off’. It’s a good way to establish what the characters are like, what they want, what they are likely to do to get it.
Eric Nolan all of that is easily wrapped into conversation with an objective; set dressing conversation with no climax is, by definition, masturbatory. You want to know what a character is like, what they want, what they’ll do? Apply pressure and get to that point. Yes, elide the action occasionally and ramble (like the book says, occasionally) but 9 times out of 10, hit the throttle and get to the point.
This is heavily discussed in Hillfolk, which is pretty relevant to the conversation since that’s what the OP referenced.
Good point Tim Franzke. Both of them. This was just an initial thought about five hours past my bedtime. Lol I was just looking for a way to force my players into better framing habits, which is a bad idea.
Alfred Rudzki, anytime the games I gm have a player framing a scene things do tend towards not being very aggressively scened. I know that part of this is my fault as a gm, but I Hillfolk does a good job of encouraging good framing habits in players, and that’s what I was wanting to summarize with a move here. I know I did a bad job with it. Lol I guess I really just need to work on my gming skills.
Anyway, thanks for the replies to my silly idea. Lol
Joshua Bailey I hope you don’t take offense at what I was saying! I didn’t mean any of it as a statement on you or your GMing. I really just meant that, in terms of best practices, aggressive framing skips the need for this kind of mood. Now I am intrigued by the idea of a character who can cut right to the chase and know what’s going on — I think that’s a good avenue to pursue, and there are good moves inside that idea.
I didn’t take offense. I just know that I have lots of room left to grow as a GM, and as such figured I just needed to reevaluate the way I handle player framed scenes. I didn’t mean to sound offended; I’m sorry if I did. It’s just that, in the light of day, my idea, as stated, does kind of seem a bit silly, as it’s already covered by Read a Person, Read a Sitch and Seduce or Manipulate.
I may roll the idea of the Silvertongue around in my head a bit, and let it mature. I still kinda like the idea. I guess I need, in order to make a playbook like your talking about, to make a playbook that really focuses on expanding out those three moves and does more fun stuff with them.