Manyfold and Framing (and side bits on Prep)

This post assumes you’ve got at least a vague grasp of the material in both Fundamentals For Tabletop Roleplaying and in Manyfold Theory.  If you don’t, you can probably muddle through anyway, but might miss a bit of something.

A whole mess of advice for running RPGs centers on the idea of framing the action more assertively (or even "aggressively").  Strong, assertive scene framing cuts down on the amount of time spent on low-interest material, and keeps play from floundering in terms of pace - that is, just kind of meandering.

Most such advice is relatively loose, giving a starting set of rough guidelines on what to frame a scene around, and some general idea of what to crop out, both of which are then refined in play.  For example, the framing advice in Fundamentals says any scene should be framed to include at least one of:

• An obstacle - from a fight to a calm bargaining situation.
• A significant choice to be made about what to do next.
• Something important to the situation the characters would know.
• A chance for the characters to acquire something that they might want, or get closer to achieving a goal.

Which is pretty good advice in general, but if you have a really good grasp on both your game and on what your players are interested in in the context of that game, you can tighten the framing and the focus even better.  If you don’t have that really good grasp and you try to frame things as tightly as possible, there’s a good chance you’ll end up cropping out stuff that people actually would get something out of pursuing, glossing over scenes people would have wanted to play through, that kind of stuff. Also, notably, some player interests can be served almost entirely by framing the right stuff, with very little prep work and very few particular mechanics, while other interests really need prep and mechanics, with the framing component just as “make sure this is visible”.

Which is a bit vague, so let’s get a specific example, and move into the Manyfold stuff.

Let’s say the game is D&D 4th edition, and the overall group playstyle tends to the tactical, leaning right into the strengths of the system. So, lots of Ludus, Agon, Fiero, and Venting, all built in.  The DM will want to focus on the fights, and ideally prep to make many of those tough enough for the good Fiero, tactically interesting to get the Ludus up there, play the enemies hard for Agon, with a few “use up resource” minion-smasher brawls to Vent on.  All of which is more about prep work than framing, but it’s prep the DM will want to put up front and center when framing the scenes. 

But there are also players at the table who, when they’re doing this kind of action-fantasy, are pretty big on Dramatics, Schadefrude, and Alea.  Specifically, a couple of them love to ham it up, though they’re not stressed about the roleplay being deep or intricate; pulp, larger-than-life good and evil kinds of stuff.  Most of the players love to be the good guys and see the bad guys get theirs, and one of the players loves the big gambles.

This means it’s important to set up the bad guys as bad; it needs to be built up for the payoff, and to let the characters have big reactions.  So, any event that shows how terrible the enemy is definitely needs to be made into a scene.  If a village is going to get burned down in the opening, put the characters on the street afterward, arriving too late - now the bad guy is bad.  Plus, the survivors can make pleas for help, asking for action (and those reactions again).  Consider: You are late, Knights.  My parents are dead, the town is lost.  You can give us nothing now but justice.

That’s a bit of space for Dramatics, gets the bad guy nicely ensconced in their role for later Schadenfreude, and also commits the characters to the action.  If space can be set up and framed out at the beginning or end (or in the middle) of any or all combats for a bit of Dramatic posturing, that’d likely be a good time, too.

Leaving the Alea, which means highlighting “big risk for big payoff” and “do you want to push your luck” moments, annnnnd…  We’re back to needing some prep work, because while D&D 4e serves up a slice of gambling fun just on the dice, it’s not a main strength.  For that, you want little presentable snippets you can put into play, and in the context of a tactical action game, that means you want to prep stunts. Consider: As you stand on the balcony, the ravaging monstrosity turns down the street; it looks like it’s going to go right past you and below you. (Do you want to try and jump onto it?)

In this case, the prep is important, and so is strong framing; the prep builds things to risk it all on, and the framing actively offers the risk.

Much as with the general advice from Fundamentals, these decisions and practices would just be starter notes, to be expanded on and tinkered with in play until they hit note-perfect, but it’s possible to get a lot more specific once you’ve got those pursuits in mind, especially the ones that lie just outside the main cluster of stuff the overall group playstyle and the mechanics have on offer.