Choose the Illusion: Dungeon Mastering

Hussar said:

Granted, it's easily possible to fail to organize the barbarians - that would also be part of the matrix. But, "abandon all efforts and go and be pirates" probably wouldn't need to be part of the matrix unless your group is very fickle.

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That would be fine in a sandbox campaign, including any of my current campaigns - though it would be a bit of a surprise in the Loudwater Forgotten Realms one, I could certainly see the Yggsburgh PCs as River Pirates, or the Wilderlands PCs as corsairs. In fact in the Wilderlands case future conflict with the trading nation of Antil could well conceivably lead the PCs to become pirates, I'd put it at around a 20% possibility.

Sorry about the multiple quotes.

Hussar said:

Even a straight up dungeon crawl is exactly a "specific story & plot". Well, I suppose for a given value of specific.

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It can be if you prep Dungeon X and the PCs have to go do dungeon X for there to be an adventure tonight. But in my sandbox games there are a bunch of dungeons nested in the environment, the PCs can go delve any of those, or do something completely different. In that case I don't see any 'specific story and plot' other than what is generated in play.

This can certainly result in prep that goes unused. Eg in my Wilderlands game I created the Neo-Nerathi 'Fortress of Thulseus Doomfire', but the PCs did not go there. An hour or so of mapping & design went unused! Likewise I might take 15 minutes to read over a bit of the Yggsburgh book that the PCs might get involved with, but in the event never get to.

Even unused dungeons can enrich the campaign though. The Wilderlands group likewise has not gone to the 'Tomb of the Demon Empress' (Tomb of the Tiefling Empress, Dungeon Delve #5), but its existence and the events around it (Neo-Nerathi Necromancer engaged in long-term research) create a backdrop to actual campaign events.

Fanaelialae said:

I think you're spot on.

Your sandbox comment did give me an odd notion though. It could be interesting to create a sandbox using this method. You'd need more than 11 cards (unless it's a very small sandbox), but each card would represent an area (akin to a hex on a sandbox map). The DM would start with a starting area card (the town or camp or whatever), and deal three cards in front of it (the adjacent areas). When the PCs enter those areas, new cards are dealt to adjoining areas, and as a result the map grows during play. I'll grant you, I can't see much practical use to it aside from perhaps challenging the DM's improvisational skills (since the map would grow as the players explored), or some kind of journey into a chaotic fae realm where areas constantly move about.

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You're right: and thinking about it I say this sort of thing could be useful to sandbox play as well. I'm thinking of having the cards be encounters rather than strictly terrain. If the GM develops the different creatures around the area, he could place each of them on a card in positions that correspond to the local map. As time goes by, he could develop some movement rules for how they would drift, and then as the group moved into an area, he'd know what danger would exist in the area at the moment. The bandits might have a camp in the nearby woods, and move periodically from that camp to one of the roads out of town, where they'd be waiting for passers by and be a potential encounter at that point.

The end result would be a high level picture of what was going on in the game at any one time. It would be a lot of work, but it would be more satisfying to me then using a random encounter table. Interesting!

SteveC - I've often thought that a "Campaign matrix" would work well for campaign design.

I've also seen people ([MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] IIRC) advocate using a random dungeon generator to create that matrix. Set the interstices very high, and you get a nice layout to create your content.

Matt James said:

I put up a post on D&D's official blog and I wanted to share it. It is applicable to more than just D&D 4e and I hope it helps DMs in developing their next campaign or adventure.

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I wanted to extrapolate more on the process in the blog, but I didn't want to cloud the message too much.

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I like the idea of using cards to flow one scene to the next and deal with other potential outcomes. I personally use a flowchart though with loops so that an adventure "stays on the rails" without it seeming like the players are being railroaded.

Hussar said:

What are the three elements of a story? Plot, character and setting. Any given RPG, during play, will generate that.

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And that, right there, is the difference: Are you generating the plot? Or are you pregenerating the plot?

Everything in life generates a plot. Everything becomes a sequence of events. The question being discussed here is whether or not those events are being predetermined.

Hussar said:

But then you run into the problem of DM workload. If you design your adventures to the point where you can possibly have so many outcomes, you're pretty much required to do a heck of a lot of heavy lifting that will never see play.

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That's only because you insist on prepping plots. Don't prep plots, prep situations.

Also: Node-Based Scenario Design, which sounds like it would be a more effective and less restrictive method of achieving what James is trying to achieve with his note cards. (You could even use the notecards in accord with the node-based methods.)

Rogue Agent - what difference does it make whether or not you are pre-generating plot?

The fact is, you are generating the plot. Playstyle will dictate whether it's done mostly by the DM before play or mostly by the players during play, but, at the end of the day, plot still gets generated.

While, yes, life generates plot, that doesn't change my point. Just because life generates plot does not mean that RPG's don't.

To me, the level of sophistry that people are willing to engage in to avoid saying, "RPG's are collaborative story telling games" is amazing. I mean, earlier in this thread we have a lengthy post quoting a dozen or so different RPG's saying EXACTLY what I've been saying here - including some versions of D&D. The intro paragraph of virtually every RPG includes something along the lines of "What is an RPG? An RPG is a game where you and a bunch of your friends come together and create stories through play."

Everything else is just variations on the theme.

It doesn't change my point WHEN the plot is generated. It doesn't change my point WHEN the story is generated. Nor does the intent of the players change my point either. The fact of the matter is, when you play an RPG, you will create a story. It's 100% completely unavoidable. Whether you create it in the most lock stepped railroad, or in a completely ad-libbed improvised game is irrelavent. It just doesn't matter.

During play of every single RPG on the market, you and the people at the table will, collectively, through play, create a story with character, setting and plot.

Again, the fact that no one, not one single person, not even the most ardent, "MY GAME HAS NOT PLOT" pundit can give a single, solitary example of play that doesn't generate a story proves my point. EVERY single RPG out there does exactly the same thing - generates a story through the group effort of play.

People can keep pointing to other things that might also generate stories all day long. That doesn't change the central fact. It's not like there is only one way to create a story after all. There's many, many ways to create a story. And RPG's are certainly one of them.

Just added a thought - what is the difference between Node based design and Matt James' matrix design? I saw Matt James' example and thought that the two were virtually identical. I guess presentation is everything.

Hussar said:

Rogue Agent - what difference does it make whether or not you are pre-generating plot?

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Well, as you said yourself, it's incredibly difficult to prep the branching structure necessary to deal with divergent player choices if you're trying to pregenerate those plots. This leaves you with two options:

(1) Don't pregenerate plot.

(2) Negate player choices.

Negating player choices has a few consequences:

(1) It negates the defining point of playing a roleplaying game. Roleplaying is, after all, the process of making choices as if you were your character. If you negate those choices, you are negating the very process of roleplaying. (The open question, of course, is whether or not the benefits you're theoretically accruing from negating choices outweighs the penalties.)

(2) For similar reasons, you are negating the group creativity of the table. If you can't figure out why that's a bad idea, I can't help you.

(3) It reduces the spontaneity of the game experience. This is usually noticeable by the players (even when GMs fool themselves into thinking the players haven't noticed); it is always known to the GM.

Some people have effectively zero tolerance for this sort of degradation of the roleplaying experience. Other people have a very high tolerance for it, particularly if it brings with it other benefits that they value. But there is a clear and distinct difference of experience.

If you have honestly never experienced a non-railroaded experience while playing an RPG and are honestly incapable of imagining what that would be like, I feel a little sad for you.

To me, the level of sophistry that people are willing to engage in to avoid saying, "RPG's are collaborative story telling games" is amazing.

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You have an unfortunate tendency of talking to the crowd instead of actually talking to individuals. This is not a habit conducive to positive interactions on a public forum.

With that being said, my personal agreement or disagreement with your statement would depend largely on your definitions of "collaborative", "story telling", and/or "story telling game".

This may, or may not, have anything to do with what I'm discussing.

Hussar said:

Again, the fact that no one, not one single person, not even the most ardent, "MY GAME HAS NOT PLOT" pundit can give a single, solitary example of play that doesn't generate a story proves my point. EVERY single RPG out there does exactly the same thing - generates a story through the group effort of play.

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Consider two games of Chess.

(1) For the first game, the rules include a list of moves. You and your opponent must make the moves on the list in the sequence they're listed. Other moves are not allowed.

(2) For the second game, you're simply playing Chess. You and your opponent can take any moves you want (within the normal rules of the game).

At the end of both games, you have a list of moves. You claim, therefore, that the games are identical. The "my game doesn't have a pregenerated plot" pundits, OTOH, are pointing out that the games are significantly different.

Rogue Agent said:

If you have honestly never experienced a non-railroaded experience while playing an RPG and are honestly incapable of imagining what that would be like, I feel a little sad for you.

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There are players who believe all games are railroads, and see walls/tracks where they don't exist.

Here's a post where a DM discusses running an improvised game, one of the players spent the session searching for the rails, and was only happy once he thought he was 'back on track'. In fact the rails he thought he was on, did not exist.