Page 121 - World of Darkness

Chapter 6:
Chapter 6:
Dramatic Systems
Dramatic Systems
No passion so effec-
No passion so effectu-
tually robs the mind of all its
ally robs the mind of all
powers of acting and
its powers of acting and
reasoning as fear.
reasoning as fear.
— Edmund Burke, “A “A
— Edmund Burke,
Philosophical Inquiry into
Philosophical Inquiry into
the Origin of Our Ideas
the Origin of Our Ideas of
of the Sublime and Beauti-
the Sublime and Beautiful”
ful”
120
Chapter 6- DRAMATIC SYSTEMS
A Storytelling game is primarily about people getting together with char-
acters, and with a plot to be explored. Your troupe — your gaming group — is
prepared to tell a story, and everyone involved works together to do it. But
what happens when your character wants to do one thing and another char-
acter tries to accomplish something different — or directly opposed? Who
wins? Who loses? Who gets his way? In a sense, Storytelling goes back to the
games of Cops and Robbers that you played as a kid. Now, as then, you need
some means to decide who shot whom. The major difference is, Storytelling
games take such questions to complex degrees. Did my character crack the
safe? Did she perform the incantation correctly? Can she stab that night-
crawling creature in the heart with a stake?
That’s where rules come in. All games need rules. They’re the founda-
tion on which players understand the events that happen. If the complexity
of that safe, incantation or attack is true for one character, it’s true for an-
other. About the only factors that may help one character over another are
talent and good fortune. The means of attempting the effort and the rules for
resolving it remain the same.
All that said, rules can be as subtle or as overt as you like. Some troupes
prefer to resolve as many matters as possible through roleplaying alone. If a
character’s act seems reasonable or convincing, the Storyteller allows him to
do it. The events of the story carry on without game mechanics getting in the
way.
Other troupes prefer to resolve most actions through dice rolls and rules
references. They ensure that the story unfolds “by the book,” with all tasks
performed according to regulation so that all possible factors are considered,
from talent to chance. This approach to Storytelling is as valid as the first. It
simply defers to rules — the foundation of the game — to determine the
legitimacy of story developments.
Ultimately, most troupes fall somewhere between these extremes. Events
flow uninterrupted by rules checks when things happen fast and loose. But
when events turn high-tension, such as when driving a car at 100 mph down
a busy highway or when a bomb is deactivated, rules are referenced to see
how well characters fare and how the story unfolds.
Time
Time flies when you’re having fun, or so they say. In a Storytelling game,
time not only flies, it slows, crawls and warps. During the course of your
game, you’ll find that time does some strange things. How you control the
passage of time affects the smoothness of play. You and your players imagine
events as they transpire, talking them out and rolling results. Thus, real time
and your game’s imaginary time differ. When your characters enter combat,
it may take many real-time minutes to roleplay mere seconds of game time.
Alternately, you may wish to cover weeks of game time in just a few real-time
minutes, assuming nothing worthy of attention occurs in that period. As in a
novel, the authors of the story — you and your players — can gloss over
intervals between important events or slow the progression to a crawl when
detailing critical moments.
Six basic units describe the passage of time. Like puzzle pieces, these
small units combine to form larger images until you can see the big picture.