Re-writing the Story

#1

In one the Discern Realities episodes, Jason Cordova spoke about keeping in mind that an adventure is a conversation. As facilitator of that conversation, a GM might ask the players, “I everyone OK with how that scene went?” and the like, essentially asking for feedback.

My question is: when a scene has played out in a way that everyone is dissatisfied, has anyone simply gone back an replayed the scene, changing or adding elements to rewrite it? I’m not talking about replaying a scene to avoid a character’s death or the loss of a quest item. I mean, even the best authors rewrite thier work to satisfaction.

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#2

The only time I’ve had that happen was in X card types of situations. In fact, I X-carded myself once: got halfway thru a thing, said “this is not going in an appropriate fashion” and apologized, then backtracked and restarted. The NPC just got creepier than expected, and not in the fun way.

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#3

Would you consider redoing a scene for other reasons?

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#4

This doesn’t really come up for me other than safety-related do-overs. My feeling is that when you are collaborating with others not every creative contribution is going to sing for you but you need to trust that everyone is paying attention to each other and doing their best. So even if a scene is lukewarm for a few of us but really engaging for a few others, that’s cool, and we never (other than safety-related do-overs) have scenes that everybody just hates. I think if we did it would be a sign that trust had eroded temporarily or there were other issues and that we should stop and talk about it.

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#5

I have never done this but thinking back I would if the scene came out of a major misunderstanding. For example, the first time I ever GM’d, I ran a Marvel FASERIP scenario where X-Factor was controlled by electronic chokers. My best friend thought that I meant that this meant they were robots and rolled to tear off the robot head of Havoc. I asked him 3 times if he really wanted to do this, if he wanted to try a perception check first, or what not. He rolled a critical hit which meant he completed a called shot chopping off Havoc’s head. That spiraled the supers game into a very odd place. I would totally do a do-over now if I were in that situation or one in which the player did not understand the consequences of their action.

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#6

I did it once back in my pathfinder days, said it happened in a dream vision as a warning from a deity

then to keep that flavor, I sent the character two more dream visions later on, the deity trying to push them in a certain direction, but the choices were still the players. So the revision became a theme.

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#7

I’ve never fully replayed a scene, I don’t think. I’ve made revisions or retcons to things after the fact, usually if there was some sort of misunderstanding about something that had been described. We’ll just say “oh, well, you found THIS thing instead of the thing I said,” or whatever. Even in the rare and extreme cases where we all felt like things didn’t go very well during a session, the idea has always been more “okay well, we’ll keep that in mind for next time,” and just move on.

This seems easier and less time-consuming than having everyone actually redo an entire scene or session. I don’t think there’s ever been a misunderstanding or sticking point in my games that couldn’t be retconned in this way. I also think for most people, replaying a scene they’ve already been through isn’t as interesting as continuing to move on to new things, even if the intent is for the scene to play out differently.

When you say, “even the best authors rewrite their work to satisfaction,” I take it you mean sometimes you feel like a scene could just sort of be better, regardless of any major misunderstandings or comfort issues? I feel some sort of regret over my RP choices or in-character dialogue just… every scene I’m in ever, really, so I get that feeling… but even then, that’s another point where I’ll just kind of take the liberty of retconning things in my own head-canon version of the game. Like “ugh it would’ve been so much better if I said THIS instead of that awkward thing I said at the time…” as long as it’s not something that would really change the direction of the scene. Again, I think it’s generally best to just move on to new experiences and not go back to try for a more perfect take. Tabletop games are messy and in the moment in a way that any script, book, whatever that you can freely edit is not.

And it’s already been mentioned above, but I’ll include the obligatory: absolutely edit, retcon, replay, whatever you need to do if it’s a safety or comfort related issue.

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