Question regarding MC moves with low-NPC games!
Basically, how do you do it? Pasión de los Pasiónes (my telenovela-based PbtA hack) is a low-NPC game. The focus of telenovelas is almost always upon a small group of characters that are radically interconnected.
What this means for the MC is kind of strange. Normally when I’m running PbtA games I rely pretty strongly upon NPCs for MC moves (hard to do a nice strong ‘you get separated’ when they are standing in the middle of their living room with a wonderful view of the setting sun behind). That may mean a lot of moves looking like bringing other PCs into the scene, but I’m not 100% satisfied with that. I definitely need to get a list of ideas down (because this is going to have to look like a game at some point), but I think this is one of the biggest questions around Pasión de los Pasiónes.
Any advice/reading/experience in games with REAL low NPC counts for MC moves?
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Hmm thats an interesting question. Is there room in the rules to reveal something and require another PC to take the bait? I’m unfamiliar with telenovela so I’m using soap operas as a guide: is there a way to reveal an evil twin brother as a GM move in a way that another PC can declare “IT IS ME, I HAD RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY AFTER MY FISHING ACCIDENT!”
Soap opera is a great place to come at it from! I’m finding so far that people have a sort of ambient cultural knowledge to get at the general ideas!
Generating/Revealing some secrets (though El Gemelo/The Twin is an existing playbook!) may be an excellent way to do that. I’m unsure so far how many plot reveals are going to go down in a single regular length session (currently testing was at Metatopia with 2 hour session including character creation/recap).
Reveal A Secret sounds like a great move to have on that list though! Thank you!
“Alright, Catarina breaks eye contact and turns from Marco, finding some papers on the table… Papers that show he’s meaning to sell the hotel! And to her arch-enemy, El Generalisimo!”
Very cool!
Ok, do you have a relationship web of all the characters, PC and NPC? The telenovela I am most familiar with had three brothers as the main PCs, maybe also the oldest brothers love interest. Then there were about 12 to 20 other named people they interacted with regularly. I’ve run games with about the same, sometimes an even tighter ratio of PCs to NPCs. So, a relationship map, preferably with movable parts either in digital layers or using sticky notes and paper, is going to be a big help.
Next, think abstractly. “Separate them” could be physical, sure, but could also be ideological or emotional or mental. Same with “lose hold of something” and “lose track of something”. Misunderstandings, sudden reversals of feeling, distraction by one’s inner thoughts, new meaning given to something in the scene but previously insignificant – all good stuff.
If there’s anything I’ve learned from Fate, it’s that everything can be a character. It’s called the bronze rule. That should hold true here as well.
Do you have a complicated relationship in the cast? That’s an NPC. A love triangle? NPC. Iconic job? NPC. Quirky hobby? NPC.
Look for the most likely places that might influence or inconvenience the characters outside the rest of the cast and you’ll have a good source of non-people-NPCs.
Paul Kießhauer Wow, I like that a lot. Maria, Uncle Julio, and the family’s villa are in a triangle!
Meguey Baker
, One of the first steps is figuring out how the PCs are connected to each other! I’d originally conceptualized the game as kind of GM-Fluid or GM-less with essentially no NPCs, but in playtesting that got kind of chaotic and unstructured in ways that I didn’t think worked. I’ll admit, this game is in it’s first stages (ran pretty successfully 3x at Metatopia, but other than that hasn’t seen play!) so there are definitely things and steps I need to do to play with it.
During those tests I didn’t test making a relationship web, but it’s definitely something I want to add to the game because man-oh-man, do things get confusing. We’ve had essentially “casts” of 6-8 characters who are basically everybody in the game, with occasional roles for ‘bodyguard standing in the background’ working as a prop for the evil older businessman (El Jefe). Within the three brief playtests, I think a total of 3 NPCs were used, almost exclusively as drivers of vehicles that fancy people stepped out of. I’m a little bit hesitant to flesh out the roles of NPCs simply because things have been running really tightly and quickly (though one major suggestion from playtesting was extending from a one shot into several sessions, so there’s definitely building to be done).
I really like the idea of the abstracted versions of separating them! Is it “appropriate” to use those sorts of things between two PCs or does that take away too much self determination from the person who DIDN’T roll? ‘Frederico attempts to show his love, but his desire for you sounds like an attempt to control, what do you do, Marta?’ or ‘Pablo catches Angel’s arm and for a moment, Angel can see nothing but his father?’
Paul Kießhauer
, Hmmmm, that’s quite an interesting take. I’ll admit, my Fate-knowledge is basically completely lacking. I’ll have to ponder over that… That 6- comes up and El Caballero (the cowboy/gentleman) gets a call from the precinct or the third member of the triangle shows up.
I hope I’m not too rambly with these! Kind of piecing ideas together, mulling them over!
Brandon Leon-Gambetta Yes, those examples should work nicely. Or you could turn the “themes of the season” into NPCs that throw around moves. Like “Monica and Chandler’s secret relationship” or “WE WERE ON A BREAK” or “the yellow umbrella” and so on. You can use their moves to push the storyline, add new twists, keep the PCs in acting with the themes, etc.
I find that asking questions is key to keeping things moving with a small cast. “What do you want to accomplish here?” “How are you going to do that?” Turn to another player “How do you feel about that?”… “Are you going to interfere or help with that?” Turn to the other player “How do you feel about that?”… “Are you going to interfere or help?” Sooner rather than later someone is going to kick something off that the other players want to react to.
I like the idea of thinking about the game in terms of soap opera sensibilities. That’s what makes Monsterhearts so successful, the drive to be popular, selfish and have sex mean there is a constantly stewing cauldron of melodrama to tap into and that makes for a great game.
Daniel Steadman One thing I haven’t struggled with too bad is getting people involved in other people’s plots! Definitely needling them and asking if they’re going to just let that happen a good amount as well though, probably good to codify in Agenda for non-Brandon-MCs!
Maybe you can look to the tilt tables in Fiasco as well. Announce that they’ve been involved in a crime of passion or whatever and let them justify its nature.
I would be tempted to take a look at Cortex Plus Dramatic (used in Smallville) which is designed for this sort of game and uses a relationship map. I’d also be tempted to use relatively short scenes so you can frequently change the PCs combinations in a scene.
In terms of actual moves I would heavily use having people show up at random, it’s the sort of thing that happens frequently in those sort of shows. I’d also have a hard move of “End scene” and use that even when events in the scene haven’t been resolved. Sure in real life they would probably get resolved before people left to go elsewhere but in a drama it’s only what is shown on scene that is important and such a cut means people enter the next scene with something still being an issue.
I also feel like you need something along the lines of a tension score in place of Hx and allow it to change over the course of the session. Then you could add in some specific moves such as “When you lie to a loved one +1 your tension.” Plus you could then have some GM moves to introduce twists when two peoples tension reaches a certain limit.
That is an interesting take, Christopher Wargo ! I imagine there are countless soap opera Fiasco hacks as well to page through.
Craig D Short scenes has definitely been a focus of the game, even within the 2 hour slot we made our way through a good handful of scenes (and there is a rule that if a scene is left with one person it immediately ends, the production crew doesn’t have adjoined rooms for this shooting). End scene definitely makes sense as an MC move as well though, I wouldn’t have thought of swinging the camera around like that. Also, gives a moment to think about whether there is some other thing that should be revealed in the character’s next scene.
Currently there essentially is not any score for Hx! In my initial imagining of the game, it was intended to be a light, quick one shot and I’m now trying to work out some extension to the game towards short campaign play based on feedback. I /do/ have an essentially fan-mail mechanic whereby audience members (the players not actively in a scene all play a small Latino family watching the show, a mother, a teenage daughter, a little boy, their abuela, and the father who missed the previous episode) help players build ‘plot twist points’ towards a playbook specific twist (think Moment of Truth from Masks). I’m a little hesitant to get too complicated with it, Hx may be a bit much to keep track of.
Just a quick note on your Spanish title (if you don’t mind me meddling in): “Pasión” sure needs accent marker, but once you make it plural “Pasiones” it looses the accent marker. And the definite article “los” should be “las” because “pasión” is a feminine noun. So your title should be “Pasión de las Pasiones”.
Now, meddling even further, I would suggest changing to “Pasión de mis Pasiones”, this is more personal (passion of my passions), and it plays a little with the common “amor de mis amores” phrase.
I don’t mind you meddling at all and I am smacking my head HARD for screwing up that plural!
I initially wasn’t bothering to put in the accent while I was just writing for myself (unfortunately I’m on an English keyboard on a chromebook which is a PAIN to do accents with) so when I started correcting Pasión, I must have just automatically in my mind assumed it was the same for Pasiones!
As for la/el, I straight up just didn’t know that one! It occurs to me that I probably should have!
So straight up definitely going to fix that accent and swap to ‘la’ because that’s me screwing up my grammar! I’ll also consider the Pasión de mis Pasiones title, though I kind of like how silly the title feels as ‘Passion of the Passions.’
Thank you very much, azlath ! I appreciate it very much! Also, if you have interest in seeing it, let me know! I’m interested in getting as many other Latinx eyes on the game as I can to ensure I’m doing a good job representing theme and genre!
Brandon Leon-Gambetta no problem! I sure would love to see it. I’m striving myself to capture my Mexican culture in my #NahualRPG , so I know how hard it is.
Yeah, absolutely! I just downloaded the Nahual beta! Looking forward to reading through it after seeing all of the various postings about it!
Thanks Brandon Leon-Gambetta! That Beta would soon be outdated by the one I’m working on. The biggest changes will be the playbooks! But check it up, as you I also want as many eyes to check it and get as much feedback as possible.
Isn’t that the way of things! I’ll check it out! I’ll admit, I don’t know much about Nahuales, but the game sounds fascinating and awesome.
/subbing and later reading and discussing