Saturday, February 17, 2007

Scene Framing and Afraid

My first post is a pretty short one. I recently read Vincent Baker's playtest documents for Afraid and, to me, the most impressive thing about it (among a laundry list of impressive tidbits) is what he does with scene framing - specifically the way Circumstances are logical values that help to determine the nature and content of that character's next scene. It's ... intriguing, and inspirational, and an area with lots of unexplored space.

I really hope it's an area that more story games start to explore in the (near) future.

2 comments:

Anders Sveen said...

Hi Dan,

I followed the link here from your Story Games profile.

I'm enjoying a little break from GMing at the moment but as soon as I want to run something again, Afraid is on top of the list.

As for scene framing, that's something I think about a lot and try to improve. Have you seen the ideas that Vincent had for his game The Dragon Killer? There were some very cool "toggles" that look like they have evolved into Afraid's circumstances. A great idea.

Anyway, I've stumbled across your posts here and there and it seems to me that we share some interests and tastes in games so I just wanted to say hello.

Dan Riley said...

Hm, I must have missed Dragon Killer. I love reading Vincent's stuff, but I find Anyway kind of hard to navigate, so I mostly just pop in every now and again. It sounds interesting, though.

Also: people at Story Games having similar tastes? No way!