Scenes within Scenes
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I feel like there were a few games – Star Trek games, maybe? Back in the Days of Yore that had where you could spectate scenes in viewing rooms - like watch an Away Team get into wacky adventures. I wouldn’t mind that sort of set up for the Big Scene People Need To Be At…but honestly, traditional places are more flexible.
You can get up from one place and find another. You can choose to pose to the ‘bigger’ scene and so can other people at other places, so it’s not really posing to an empty room. It honestly works pretty well, even if it’s not 100% ideal.
In Ares, some games tried to emulate it with having multiple rooms per scene that represented areas you could move to, which isn’t a horrible workaround, but still a bit clumsy.
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@Roadspike said in Scenes within Scenes:
If it’s a one-way scene that again, can’t be interrupted? Don’t make it a scene! I’m sure we’ve all been in plenty of scenes where we thought, “This didn’t need to be a scene, it could’ve been a post/vignette/scene-set.” So don’t make them scenes. Have the GM post up their too-important-to-be-interrupted scene as a Vignette, and then have the actual scene be everyone’s reaction to it afterwards. You know, when people can actually interact with each other without interrupting.
Shouldn’t the solution be to find a way to make it more interactive? Like, if the King is making a proclamation that affects all the PCs, wouldn’t you want that scene to be something people show up to?
Even if they know they can’t stop the speech, can’t they RP trying? Throw the ST a curveball and bring a rotten tomato and wind up getting arrested?
It seems like the assumption of “all the PCs show and watch like good boys & girls” may make it easier for the ST, but it’s not giving characters much room to maneuver.
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@Roadspike said in Scenes within Scenes:
@howyadoin said in Scenes within Scenes:
But the real purpose of table talk is to isolate the inane peanut gallery chatter from the actual important shit going on.
And also to make mostly one-way scenes (such as sermons, lectures, ceremonies, giant meetings and concerts) less boring.
Again, this seems like a code solution trying to fix a social problem.
If there’s “important shit” going on that the peanut gallery can’t interrupt? Don’t have the peanut gallery at the scene. Have them in their own side-scene, either happening at the same time as the “important shit” scene that they can watch freely, or RPed after the "important shit* scene but ICly taking place at the same time.
If it’s a one-way scene that again, can’t be interrupted? Don’t make it a scene! I’m sure we’ve all been in plenty of scenes where we thought, “This didn’t need to be a scene, it could’ve been a post/vignette/scene-set.” So don’t make them scenes. Have the GM post up their too-important-to-be-interrupted scene as a Vignette, and then have the actual scene be everyone’s reaction to it afterwards. You know, when people can actually interact with each other without interrupting.
what if some players like it, though? like, we all have different experiences here, and i very much recognize that plenty of the experiences being talked about here are indeed very unpleasant. but also there have been people talking about how this scenario has been enjoyable to them. i have been in big scenes about Official Stuff where maybe my character present wasn’t a part of the Official Stuff, but i was able to discuss it while it was happening, and sometimes there would be in fact be reason to respond to things publicly in the scene.
a wholesale hatred of all large scenes of all types isn’t actually universal. if you’re coming from the assumption of “everyone hates this,” then yes, it will look like just trying to solve a social problem with code. but instead, you have to accept that you have a population of people who are actively interested in these scenes and just want it to be more easily parseable.
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@KarmaBum said in Scenes within Scenes:
@Roadspike said in Scenes within Scenes:
If it’s a one-way scene that again, can’t be interrupted? Don’t make it a scene! I’m sure we’ve all been in plenty of scenes where we thought, “This didn’t need to be a scene, it could’ve been a post/vignette/scene-set.” So don’t make them scenes. Have the GM post up their too-important-to-be-interrupted scene as a Vignette, and then have the actual scene be everyone’s reaction to it afterwards. You know, when people can actually interact with each other without interrupting.
Shouldn’t the solution be to find a way to make it more interactive? Like, if the King is making a proclamation that affects all the PCs, wouldn’t you want that scene to be something people show up to?
Even if they know they can’t stop the speech, can’t they RP trying? Throw the ST a curveball and bring a rotten tomato and wind up getting arrested?
It seems like the assumption of “all the PCs show and watch like good boys & girls” may make it easier for the ST, but it’s not giving characters much room to maneuver.
Honestly?
No. Please don’t do this. It’s not fun for anyone but the troublemaker, and as much as large scenes with announcements can be trying, they become five thousand times worse when people decide they want to make it “exciting” by acting like dipshits so that maybe Leader Daddy/Mommy will spank them and justify their hate boner.
It’s a bit different if a PC has a real stake/influence in what’s going on - if someone announces that they’re going to be taking over X business or attacking Y faction, then obviously I expect X and Y to raise an immediate ruckus. But keep the edgy tomato-throwers as far away as possible.
Or be as snarky as your heart’s content…at a place where the rest of the scene doesn’t have to deal with it.
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@Pyrephox said in Scenes within Scenes:
I feel like there were a few games – Star Trek games, maybe? Back in the Days of Yore that had where you could spectate scenes in viewing rooms - like watch an Away Team get into wacky adventures. I wouldn’t mind that sort of set up for the Big Scene People Need To Be At…but honestly, traditional places are more flexible.
One of the really early MUSHes I played, a Harry Potter game called Alere Flammas, had a ‘viewing room’ where you could watch events or classes even if your PC wasn’t in them. IIRC this was pretty common on the BSG games, too. It’s not really what anyone’s talking about here, since the watch parties were OOC, but it was neat.
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In my experience, it’s not even the case that the code is used to avoid people interrupting; it’s to avoid people having to keep track of fifty people’s poses to find the people their PC is closest to. If there are twenty or so people in a scene, it’s legitimately difficult for some of us to keep track of what’s going on, with places the ‘main’ scene turns into a bit of a pantomime, and the places scene is where we actually do the bulk of the RP—occasionally stopping to shout ‘he’s behind you’ to the main stage.
It’s a surprisingly elegant solution to that problem.
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@Pavel said in Scenes within Scenes:
In my experience, it’s not even the case that the code is used to avoid people interrupting; it’s to avoid people having to keep track of fifty people’s poses to find the people their PC is closest to. If there are twenty or so people in a scene, it’s legitimately difficult for some of us to keep track of what’s going on, with places the ‘main’ scene turns into a bit of a pantomime, and the places scene is where we actually do the bulk of the RP—occasionally stopping to shout ‘he’s behind you’ to the main stage.
It’s a surprisingly elegant solution to that problem.
Yeah, this is what I like places for. I do not mind large scenes; I can actually really enjoy a large scene, even an announcements-and-meeting scene! But I want to have a sense of being able to RP with a smaller group WITHIN that space without having to always worry about missing poses or spamming the greater room (since a small conversation is likely to go faster than the larger scene).
Places help keep me engaged and on track. I’d want any replacement for them to be able to tick those boxes. (I get why Ares can’t, and I can’t even imagine the nightmare it’d be for logging.)
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@Pyrephox flippant example, as that’s usually all I have, but I see your point. Replace “throw tomato” with “smuggle in a weapon, ask a salient question, etc.”
The idea that the whole scene is impervious to characters feels like lazy storytelling.
Which I’ve totally been a lazy storyteller and just put a scene on rails or slapped a post up because I didn’t want to deal with curve balls. It happens, but if it happens often, I should probably tell a more interactive story.
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@KarmaBum said in Scenes within Scenes:
The idea that the whole scene is impervious to characters feels like lazy storytelling.
Well, it’s less that the scene is impervious to interaction and more that people find it really annoying when people interrupt. At least in my experience. Sure, it could still involve lazy storytelling, but it’s typically an OOC cultural thing rather than strictly a matter of scene design.
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I see both ways on the issue of scene disruption. Sometimes a scene should be disrupted because there’s a story reason to do so and it absolutely makes sense to Aragorn those doors open and smash your way in to what’s going on for drama and impact, and other times, I’m officiating a three-legged race for silly prizes and someone has shown up to be very angry at me because my planned event scene that has been calendared for weeks tonally clashes with a GMed emit from two hours ago where someone died.
I think it can absolutely be fun to do tabletalk about a large event scene, I do think that speaking in low voices about what is happening in the broader scene can have value and develop story in and of its own right, and I don’t want to either spam the main scene with my amazing jokes OR feel compelled to try and throw a grenade in order to disrupt the flow of what’s going on. I’ve had a lot of fun playing a smaller scene inside a larger scene! I would have been super self-conscious being on my bullshit in front of all 50 people that were in the room as opposed to the 7 who were at my bench!
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@KarmaBum said in Scenes within Scenes:
@Pyrephox flippant example, as that’s usually all I have, but I see your point. Replace “throw tomato” with “smuggle in a weapon, ask a salient question, etc.”
The idea that the whole scene is impervious to characters feels like lazy storytelling.
Somebody once told me that if a story can’t survive contact with the people it’s being told to, it’s probably better just being written
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@Pyrephox said in Scenes within Scenes:
But I want to have a sense of being able to RP with a smaller group WITHIN that space without having to always worry about missing poses or spamming the greater room (since a small conversation is likely to go faster than the larger scene).
But if you’re not interacting with anyone outside of your little group, and you don’t want to spam other people or be spammed in return, why does the room actually matter? What is the tangible advantage of keeping everyone jammed together rather than in separate rooms / separate scenes?
You can do the same big “announcement” emits to multiple rooms in a variety of ways to keep a shared context. It doesn’t even require any special code or tools, just some coordination among a few staff alts / NPCs.
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Anything that requires a massive scene attendance but no one but a couple people have anything to actual do. This is absolutely something that can be done on their own and then have the log posted to a wiki and the +bb system.
This could have been an email. In Scene form.
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@Faraday said in Scenes within Scenes:
But if you’re not interacting with anyone outside of your little group, and you don’t want to spam other people or be spammed in return, why does the room actually matter? What is the tangible advantage of keeping everyone jammed together rather than in separate rooms / separate scenes?
Because one can interact with people outside of their little group, should they choose. They can ask the salient question, smuggle weapons, throw fruit-but-vegetables. There are more options.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
I don’t have a strong feeling about them one way or another. I remember back on Metro (I’m old, okay?) if you had super hearing you could listen to what was happening at table talk. I learned so much stuff and some stuff I wish I could un-learn.
I appreciated it when on Arx I was walking around in a mask at the blood moon giving people their futures and their destinies. I mean sure I was making them up on the spot when they failed their dice game with me, but it was private to their table to share or not share, but the room knew I was bartering secrets for futures.
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@Pavel said in Scenes within Scenes:
Because one can interact with people outside of their little group, should they choose.
Theoretically I guess, but in my experience this almost never happens. (see the comments above regarding interruptions, being yelled at for spam, etc.)
The only poses I ever saw going to the main room were the static announcements or the “oops I forgot to use tt command” nonsense.
But to each their own.
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@Faraday said in Scenes within Scenes:
@Pavel said in Scenes within Scenes:
Because one can interact with people outside of their little group, should they choose.
Theoretically I guess, but in my experience this almost never happens. (see the comments above regarding interruptions, being yelled at for spam, etc.)
The only poses I ever saw going to the main room were the static announcements or the “oops I forgot to use tt command” nonsense.
But to each their own.
Irritatingly true, but I feel that might be a misapplication of the idea. If one is being loud and rambunctious at their table then it should be part of the main scene as well.
But I have no llama in this race, I don’t have the attention span for a 90-minute movie without checking my phone, much less a 90-minute “look how great I am” romp with fifty other half-dressed participants.
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@Faraday said in Scenes within Scenes:
@Pavel said in Scenes within Scenes:
Because one can interact with people outside of their little group, should they choose.
Theoretically I guess, but in my experience this almost never happens. (see the comments above regarding interruptions, being yelled at for spam, etc.)
The only poses I ever saw going to the main room were the static announcements or the “oops I forgot to use tt command” nonsense.
But to each their own.
raises hand i saw it happen a lot on places like arx. depending on the event, it would be a mix of posing to the room and posing to tabletalk, people would pose indicators of reactions that would be notable enough for others in the scene to see, move between different tabletalk areas, react to something happening outside of tabletalk, etc. these weren’t rarities, they were things i’d see at nearly every event scene of any size.
she/her | playlist
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@Roz I fear any time we speak of generalities in MUing we’re going to have to have “Except on Arx” as a meme—like Crash Course World History’s near-infamous Except The Mongols crash-cut (as they are the exception to so many of history’s expectations).
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I definitely had some very cool interactions at those giant Arx scenes where a lot of the RP was in tabletalk and then we interacted with what was going on in the wider scene. Not just on Arx either. And one time at a hatching an impression from the stands that wasn’t me but was very cool to interact with that would have been impossible without the places.
Or like-- party scenes where stuff from flows smoothly from tabletalk in and out, can totally happen. I can remember a couple of cool things like this from olden times. It just requires people not to be assholes.
