@Rust – Excellent questions. In order:

- He mixed presenting scenes as needed with letting us describe what we were doing to kick off a scene; I liked that mix.

- We had a lengthy (and highly enjoyable) discussion before the game about what kinds of issues we wanted to explore during the chronicle, so that never came up during play. Individual scenes were largely a surprise, and figuring out where they were headed was half the fun.

- We didn’t roll very often; when we did, it was generally for crisis moments where the outcome could dramatically change the course of the scene. We also rolled for some minor stuff, mainly because we like rolling dice and it’s a good way to test-drive a character.

For example, someone tried to break into my PC’s house, and after fleeing to my car I discovered that he’d blocked my driveway. Freaked out, I said I wanted to back up far enough to hit him if he ran in front of the car, and he did; hitting him was a Drive roll. I killed him, and the fallout from that is going to rock.

- The original plan was for us to play each full prelude in sequence, with everyone taking NPCs during the other players’ preludes. Our GM changed his mind about this, and I think it was a good decision; he was concerned about developing NPCs that, due to our actions, never came up.

I’m not sure if he’s read this article, but I’ll let him speak more to that question; he comments here from time to time.

Now for some questions, machine gun style!

What kind of scene framing techniques did your GM use?
Since everyone knew the ultimate outcome, how did you communicate which issues were at issue? Did the GM and player kind of talk it over before framing the scene, or did the GM imply what was at issue by framing the scene?
When the dice did hit the table, what typically did you resolve?
Did anyone get a chance to play an NPC when it was not their spotlight?

Because these preludes are much alike to what I had in mind and I’m practically forced to use round-robin (5 PC’s with no common background), this post is spot on for me. However, I am still thinking of some decisions I would have them make and how I can have those affect their current characters. I’m actually thinking of granting them some bonus (or penalty) to their current stats depending on how they handle their “prelude”.

So now I’m wondering if there are some generic choices I could present to them, and how much it could/should affect their current characters. Any advice would be more than welcome!

PS: I finally registered because of the metal dice contest (resisted the one for the fancy dice bag, natural 20 on my will save). But now I can finally thank the gnomes for the heaps of advice and ideas that were posted here! Thank you!

Once the game begins, round robin still works– as you point out, it is concentrated spotlight, which at least partially makes up for the time waiting. Some games are mostly played round robin– Primetime Adventures and Sorcerer are two games that emphasize that style. Glad you had such an enjoyable evening!

While it seems obvious with roleplaying it also works well in combat situations if you have a mind for it. Once in a while a character would get into combat while other characters were on their way to save or stop the other character (or other crazy situations but this the one on the top of my head). I still use the round robin method from round to round making sure to describe the action in an over arching way & bouncing from one persons scene to the next in real time, much like movies will. (ie: After a player makes a dodge roll ‘as Terressa lunges away from the werewolf elsewhere only 3 blocks away Kevin is running full sprint for the meeting place to help Terressa who went off on her own’ – then ask Kevins player how he wishes to accomplish it etc etc).

Sometimes when everyone was psyched up and on point they would shout out their actions the moment I pointed to them – rolls are made descriptions are said and then the next person would declare what they were doing the moment I pointed to them.

I try to ask the players how they would handle the situation as it drops in front of them. I’ve found that some of my players even appreciate the extra few minutes to think of what their next combat action will be while everyone tries to react to the situation at hand. This lets my more roleplaying oriented players get just as much action in as my more combat oriented players, & vice versa.

Glad there are others having fun with the style.

In an only slightly related note on occasion I took the TV analogy a step further and present recaps in the tv serial speak. Such things as “Previously on SettingNameHere” & even offer previews of the next “episode” @ the end of a game session to get people day dreaming about what they want to do next game. I find it helps to keep everyone in the same story – even if I can’t keep my roleplaying oriented players in the same scene.

Similarly, the waiting time was never boring. Often, when a particular scene had absolutely no relevance to ANYTHING our character was doing, the “off-scene” characters would still be in the same location, elsewhere. So there was a lot of minor roleplaying that went on the background.

This suggests a decentralised way of storytelling, which is the main source of my interest in LARP. (Never played it in the fantasy setting, though I’ve played school simulations that could be classified as such). No one felt compelled to make their character follow along with anything, everyone could explore the setting (and in doing so reveal things to other players, though not always their characters), and people made actually “individual” choices, though obviously within DM-created and -mediated content.

On a side note, I played a goblin fighter/rogue. I maxed out my climb, tumble, hide and move silently skills. I had been DMing for a long time, and this was the first time in about six months I got my hands on a character. I was eager to power-play and futz around in the environment in the ways that as a DM you perceive so readily (and watch all your pretty little monsters and villains get mashed).

So I snuck into a tenement room (climb +a million), robbed and murdered the inhabitants (sneak attack and weapon focus), leapt out the two-story window (tumble), and snuck off to hide in a garbage heap (move silently and hide). My character was totally mini-maxed, but in a sneaky and evil way. Bwa ha ha ha ha…