Player Scene Framing

Session six was most notable to me for the players insisting on a scene, taking on the role of scene framing usually reserved by the GM.

I had imagined that the fastest way towards resolution of the story as a whole would be to escape the guards somehow and cut straight to a scene in the hanger, and was prepared to engineer a situation with the Slave Race (so oppressed they don't even have a real name in our story) in the corridor.

But, the players were adamant that we should have an Evil Genius Monologue scene, and were actually disappointed that I hadn't pre-prepared the speech. So much so that I felt obliged to put a detailed monologue in the write-up to sew up the loose ends in the speech I used. That element of the write-up is really an exercise in Story After, but one that feels right in this instance.

Interestingly, I couldn't have properly prepared the speech anyway, because the actual NPC used was only settled as a Martian by Oriole's player using a fate point to declare that the bad guy wasn't a Nautiloid just as I narrated the swivel chair turning to face the PCs. That in itself is a demonstration of the massive shift towards narrativist play that we have taken whilst playing Spirit of the Century. So much of a shift in fact that I feel we now have issues of how much of the game should be dedicated to plot construction and associated meta-play as opposed to exploration of situation. I believe that Meta-play element is a key reason that Phantom's player decided to sit out of this and remaining sessions, stating that he isn't enjoying this style of game.