Gaming with a story

I'm going to recommend a gaming style here. Some might think its controversial. Some might think it can't be done. I'd like to point out that it is done by everyone, it's just a matter of quality.

Everytime you play an RPG, you are creating a story. Anytime you tell somebody about your character's past exploits, you are refining and confirming that you created a story in an RPG.

What I propose, is that there is a way to play the game, such that when you are done with the session, the player feels that they were a participant in the story, and not just a bystander or victim of the GM's story.

Even better, is that a retelling of what happened during the game sounds like a story, and less like a series of random encounters.

To get this story-telling gaming to work, you're going to need to study some story-telling in action. Read some fiction books, and watch some TV and movies. Notice the difference between the typical D&D adventure as told literally, compared to how a story gets arranged in TV or books.

One of the key differences, is books and TV seldom spend time on any scene that doesn't do one (or more) of the following:
advance the story
reveal a twist or complication
setback the protagonist
show a reaction to the last scene

Jim Butcher (an author I read) has a blog series on this stuff, you can read that, too.

Compare that to the standard dungeon crawl or overland journey. When you count how many "fight" scenes occur in a D&D session, compared to a action-hero TV show, movie or novel, it's rather ridiculous how many fights we go through.

As a GM, I suggest that you first streamline your adventures. Cut to the chase, as it were. If it's not fun, just tedium, then hand-wave it. Unless you really want to do a dungeon crawl, this would mean killing the traditional room-by-room dungeon crawl.

This means when the party gets hired to find a missing girl, the do some research which pans out to a witness, who mentions a place, and the party goes there, with no problem, and when they get there, the sneak, fight or talk their way past the guards, get to another set of guards holding the girl, free her, just in time to face the BBEG who just got back from checking on another of his fiendish plans.

That's 3 fights, a couple of talking scenes, with a few sneaking scenes in-between, and maybe a skill check to see which "clue" to follow (which all clues are good, because on the NPCs find the useless clues).

What you've got then, is a game session that's faster, and makes for a better retelling. It's also likely to be fun, because you're not wasting time on the boring stuff, like drawing maps, and random encounters.

Once you get used to the format, you'll also think it's a bit simple, and like writers of fiction, you'll change things up by introducing twists and setbacks, etc. If you actually do it the "follow the standard" first, you'll train your players for "normal" mode, so that the twists and setbacks work.

As a side-note, you can't have every plot hook be a devious double-cross or the players will trust no one. That results in some un-fun game play, and kills your ability to use the double-cross.

In the same vein, you've got to balance how you use setbacks. Most stories should have them, and generally, they are there to make what seemed easy, be scaled to the actual party skill level. It's not about stripping the party down and flogging them every chance you get.

I suspect that this style of gaming can be applied to any campaign. The real crux of it, is to cut out time-wasting activities, and get to the real challenges sooner. By doing so, you'll have better pacing, and keep the players involved.

And as a side-effect, your adventures will make better stories.