[Glorantha] A scenario is not a story

[Jane Williams]

Tim said much good stuff, and then...
 
> Finally back to Jane...
> > But if you feel differently, there's a lot more stories out 
> > there than there are scenarios! Go for it - I'll be fascinated 
> > to hear how you manage to play them.
 
> Which would make a great intro to a thread about Heroquesting...

And it did! But it also brought home to me a difference between players
playing a scenario, and PCs doing a HQ. Yes, in both cases, they're playing
parts. But the HQers know what the basic story is before they start, and
they're deliberately trying to stick to it. The players don't, and probably
aren't. This gets particularly important when the "plot" requires that they
"fail". For instance, if told to go off to market and get something valuable
instead of the cow, players are very unlikely to get fobbed off with a
handful of beans. If they do, they may well do something other than planting
them. You need to start feeding them cues and limitations that weren't in
the story.

Yes, you can base a HQ on a story, with some work. With a lot more work, you
can sometimes base a scenario on a story. But they are not the same thing.
Not at all.


Of course, that's only considering the straightforward action-result type of
story. The sort you tend to find in myths, fables, fairy-tales, and so on.
How about the ones where the story is about what's going on in the
protagonist's head and how she's growing in response to her experiences? Or
about delicate interplay between two personalities?

Off to "Mything links" to find some examples...

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Realm/5545/stories/bathhouse.html
Great setting, the interest is in the differing reactions of the characters
to it.

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Realm/5545/stories/oldage.html
A conversation between two characters. Great story. Nothing like a scenario.

I seem to be finding a lot of stuff by Oliver.

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Realm/5545/stories/mine.html
All inside one guy's head.  Who may well be a PC looking back at his
adventures, so this might be the result of a scenario (or twenty), but it
isn't a scenario itself.

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Realm/5545/stories/song.html
Same comment.

There's got to be something here that's acutely non-scenario-useful that
isn't by Oliver....? A lot are myths, not stories, that's the trouble.

Ah well, if I must - Oliver's are better, but...

http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/stories/walking.cfm
A PC navel-gazing. It's a story, if not a very good one. Like with the last
two of Oliver's, it's all inside one person's head.

And then there's this one.
http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/stories/captured.cfm
Warning - that's a bit longer than the rest I've mentioned so far. Plenty of
action, but still most of the interest is inside people's heads.
People have asked me about using it as a scenario, and I still think it
would need a huge amount of work. As it is, it's very dependent on certain
contests getting extreme dice-rolls (there's a vital 1 v 20 roll near the
start), and certain characters being gently persuaded into making just the
right decisions (or delaying making them). There's a "bang" (in what I hope
is Forge terms) in the middle - a character has to choose between her
loyalty to two different ideals. If she chooses the "other" way, you have an
entirely different story. In fact, if you let go control of almost any of
the characters in the story enough for them to be PCs, it would all go
completely differently, and probably be over very fast. It might, just, be
useable as background. It reads, I hope, something like the story of what
happened in a game. But it is not a scenario itself.