Sourced from Ginny Di
I think this is a fascinating idea.
I haven't read the book (but I will). That said, the first thought that popped into my head was, 'this would work brilliantly in Gumshoe.'
Why? Because Gumshoe has Drives.
The whole system is practically already part of Gumshoe's DNA.
Altruism: You got into the game to protect innocents from terrorists, or disease, or war, or tyranny. (NBA, Trail)
Thrill-seeker You joined up thinking of Rambo or James Bond. (NBA)
Greed: You know what’s wrong with poverty? Everything. (Bookhounds)
Fraternity Man is born to serve his fellow man, an effort best carried out through collective action. (Dreamhounds)
It was honestly a little surprising to see Gumshoe settings (Mutant City Blues, eg) that don't explicitly have Drives. Even in those, there's usually some reference to Character Concept (a cynical philosopher from ancient Greece, Timewatch, eg) which fulfil the same function but aren't as clear-cut.
But!
Consider: the Drives system is basically there to encourage roleplay in a certain style. You're Altruistic; that's why you want to go on the adventure. Or down that dark, dank hole. Or this, that and the other. This idea is proposing that you use the Drives system to establish Goals for your character - short term, medium, long - which you, as Keeper, then weave into the narrative.
Let's say that the drive is Altruism. The player then specifies three goals - short, medium, long - connected with that drive. It doesn't matter what those goals are, so long as they're reasonably achievable and narratively appropriate. 'Destroy Cthulhu' is probably off the menu; 'destroy the Cthulhu cult' might not be. Those goals then become plot.
Remember: conflict creates plot. God knows I've said it often enough. Except here it's the player deliberately creating conflict by saying "this is the kind of conflict I'm seeking out."
Or, as the video mentions, "I no longer need to worry which path they'll pursue because they (or their stated goals) tell me where they're going."
I've talked about Rome and said:
The cultist, the innocent victim, the peculiar item - all those roads lead to one Rome. Make sure that is forefront in everyone's mind.
What does this idea mean for Rome?
It means that, to a certain extent, the players choose what Rome is going to be - or perhaps more accurately, they choose which road they take to get there.
Rome is the end point. It's where all this madness is going. That's the bit that lives in your head until the magic moment when you make your reveal. In the Bookhounds example that I've used before:
What is Rome?
Cthugha
“For this shape was nothing less than that which all the world has feared since Lomar rose out of the sea, and the Children of the Fire Mist came to Earth to teach the Elder Lore to man.”
Through the Gates of the Silver Key
From the Trail main text: Cthugha is a neutral force, a repository of energetic information. The race known as “fire vampires” established their own caches of Cthugha on many worlds, including Earth. Under the guise of the Magi, the ancient fire-priests of the Aryan Persians, they created the Elder Lore of fire-magic, the infrastructure to access Cthugha on our world.
Additional Stability +3 Additional Sanity +1
Keywords: energetic information; Magi, the ancient fire-priests; Elder Lore of fire-magic.
I then divided it up by Arabesque, Technicolor and Sordid because those are the three plot types that Bookhounds uses. I shan't go over that old ground.
What I will say is this: if Rome is Cthugha, then this new idea is the road (or one of them, at least) by which you - and the players - get to Rome.
You already know that there are Four Things connected to everything in the game environment. The Three Bucks Pub, say, is identified by Four Things, and one of them is the Fourth Thing that links to Cthugha - Rome. Same for everything else in the setting. Those are the highlight points and, as I describe in the Many Mansions post:
Four things. Four leads to chase up. At this point you don't need to know a great deal about any of the four beyond the details given above, since the whole point of the ground-level OPFOR is to delay the characters and give them something to think about before the characters encounter the primary movers-and-shakers ...
[ground-level OPFOR] The Rowdy Yates gang of loafers and bullies have a hate for [pick a character] and follow them around like wolves haunting sheep. What is their problem, and is there anything [character] can do about it?
But if there are Four Things and one of those things is chosen by you as the Rome marker, then there are three other things to consider. Under normal circumstances you, as Keeper, would identify those things.
With this idea, what's basically happening is that the player gets to pick one of those remaining Things and make it their own, through their Drives. This, they say, is the Altruistic thing that I shall use to access plot. The In The Blood thing. The Revenge thing. Whichever. For each of those things they define short, medium and long-term goals.
Those goals can then be adapted as one of the Four Things that define, say, the Rowdy Yates gang. Or the Three Bucks Pub. Or whatever.
You might respond 'but that means dropping one of the things that I designed.' Yes! Yes, it does. So what? Nobody's ever going to know it but you. Moreover, if doing this gets the players to pay more attention to the other bits that you designed, that can only be a good thing. A benefit to the campaign as a whole.
Let's say we were talking about a character defined by the In The Blood Drive, which says:
Quite frankly, you’re not sure why you keep coming back to the moldering graveyard, or poring over those antique texts. But queer behavior runs in the family, apparently. Outsiders wouldn’t understand.
That character then defines, say, a short-term goal as 'I want to honor my family's memory by cleaning up the family tomb.' Fine. Why is the family tomb in disrepair? Because the Rowdy Yates gang has claimed it as a clubhouse. Or using it to store bootleg whiskey. Or one of the gang is related by blood to the character and hates the family connection, so the gang takes every chance it can get to harass the character by damaging the tomb.
That player goal becomes one of the Four Things that defines the Rowdy Yates gang. This in turn drives the character into conflict with that gang, and conflict, (sing along with me now, folks) creates plot.
By using that goal to get the character involved with the Rowdy Yates gang, the character then discovers what connects the Rowdy Yates gang to Rome - Cthugha, in this instance. What element of the Rowdy Yates gang links up with the keywords energetic information; Magi, the ancient fire-priests; Elder Lore of fire-magic?
In short, by using Drives as suggested in the Ginny Di piece, you're saving yourself a lot of work by allowing the players to plot out one of the Four Things that you were going to use anyway. You already knew what the Fourth Thing was - Rome - and now you know what one of the other things is.
You just need two more.
Easy. Right?
That's it for this week. Enjoy!
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