D&D 4E Pemertonian Scene Framing and 4e DMing Restarted

[Storminator]

I find it very tricky to pull off, actually - done it a couple times recently where I had a cool scene/interaction in my head, rather than start with the NPC organically and see what happens. I think it's really difficult to have the scene in your head come out effectively in play, whereas stuff that just develops organically, I find flows a lot easier. So, I don't have much advice, but I'd say: better to start with the cool NPC, not the cool scene.

I definitely don't have a scene in mind. That way lies madness. I'm thinking: because of the way the PC backstory was built, this was a topic the player wanted to address. So I'm creating the NPC with the idea that he personifies that topic, then I throw him out there. I don't know where it's heading (death for the NPC is certainly one possibility! That's an exploration of the topic as well . . . ) but I just want to see where the player takes it.

PS

 

[S'mon]

I definitely don't have a scene in mind. That way lies madness. I'm thinking: because of the way the PC backstory was built, this was a topic the player wanted to address. So I'm creating the NPC with the idea that he personifies that topic, then I throw him out there.

Yeah, that seems reasonable.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah - you have to have an internal aspect on your PC to play your PC as more than a playing piece. Players who treat D&D like a board game and their PC as a pawn... - I really don't like being at the table with those guys, especially as GM - it sucks out all the fun for me. You have to play the role - it says so on the tin.

I just started a new campaign with six strangers, and I was worried I might get one of those guys, but no - all my players seem great, they know who their PCs are and identify with them. I have to say that I have never had a big problem with this in 4e though, only one player has ever been like that, and he's a longterm regular at the Meetup who plays all his PCs as pawns. I think 4e is very good at giving you pointers on 'thematic weight' for your PC - who are you, what do you care about, etc. I don't have a problem with pre-3e or Pathfinder Beginner Box either, but I have found some players with 3e or full PF kinda get lost in the crunch and see the character as very much a sort of purpose-built tool, rather than a person. Usually this is only a problem with experienced players, though - one reason to prefer newbies.

Well, I remember A LOT of 'cardboard cut-out' AD&D characters and earlier. Gygaxian play certainly encouraged the "don't bother to name him till 3rd level" sort of play. Gygax in fact never ever mentioned anything about establishing background for PCs beyond the most basic "here's where we met" sort of thing. I remember being considered unusual in asking for more than a name (and a jerk for asking for more than "Joe III"). I remember many characters named "Mufmul" and "Triborb 5" and etc.

2e definitely changed the tone some, and added enough options to make mechanical uniqueness start to be an option, plus by then every other game was far beyond D&D in that regard, so it was kind of more expected. 4e certainly has some nice fluff attached to character options and I've found that my players nowadays tend to make fairly decent backgrounds. The worst I've gotten in 3 sentences of modestly boilerplate, but even that character's background turned out pretty rich and his whole family ended up part of the story. I have no opinion on 3e, I'd assume it is equally rich in options, though maybe they lack the close tie-in to suggested thematics that 4e and 2e have?

 

[pemerton]

I think 4e is very good at giving you pointers on 'thematic weight' for your PC - who are you, what do you care about, etc.

I've been saying this for a long time! I think it's one of the subtle strengths of 4e.

It's also why I, personally, disagree with those who say that the cosmology, lore etc changes were just changes for changes sake. I think they kept a lot of the classic D&D ideas more-or-less in place, but tweaked and polished here and there to give the whole thing a more dynamic, pro-active feel, especially from the players' point of view (ie it's not just that the GM knows all this cool backstory and gradually feeds it to the players, but the players choose how to invest in it just by building their PCs).

Now all that said, in my own 4e game I included two additional character-creation rules: your PC must have one loyalty; and your PC must have a reason to be ready to fight goblins. But 4e still made it easy to answer these questions - eg the warlock was loyal to his patron; the wizard was a former acolyte of the Raven Queen (cleric multi-class feat) etc. The build elements make it easy rather than hard to make answers to these questions a straightforward part of your PC.

I have found some players with 3e or full PF kinda get lost in the crunch and see the character as very much a sort of purpose-built tool, rather than a person. Usually this is only a problem with experienced players, though - one reason to prefer newbies.

Your last sentence is very sad but I've found it to be true as well. It seems that there is a cross-section of the gamer populace that becomes almost "nihilistic" (if there can be such a thing) in their gaming philosophy. I don't know if they've had their "heart" beaten out of them or if they are just bored with the prospect of investing creative effort; like they just consider it gratuitous foreplay or something. Newbies don't suffer from this.

I thnk this relates somewhat to the "turtling" discussion upthread - ie I think the two phenomena are related.

Expaining the relationship is more controversial - as I've indicated in the past, I'm fairly sympathetic to the Forge/Ron Edwards diagnosis - it's about an approach to play shaped by bad experiences of excessive GM force in action resolution and enforcing the "story", which have taught these players to focus on a different part of the game over which they (i) have more control, and (ii) can use to push back against the GM.

But I'm sure others have interesting and equally - perhaps more - viable theories!

 

[S'mon]

Well, I remember A LOT of 'cardboard cut-out' AD&D characters and earlier. Gygaxian play certainly encouraged the "don't bother to name him till 3rd level" sort of play.

My 1e games were never really 'fantasy effing Vietnam', even though we had a high death rate sometimes, we tended to start at high level. So I didn't really have this experience. My most recent 1e campaign was running Yggsburgh last year, a Gygax-written setting but the game was very high-roleplay, all the PCs had strong personalities.

I'm very much a develop-in-play advocate BTW, I don't like much more than a paragraph of background for a new PC. That's enough to tell me who they are.

 

[pemerton]

I'm about to make a couple NPCs for my game. In previous times I'd have started with the NPC's description, motivation, and some way to make the NPC memorable at the table.

This time I've decided that I really want to have a scene involving an NPC and one of the PCs, motivated by the PC back story and in game play. I'm thinking of the NPC as a prop or part of the scene frame. Has anyone else done this? If so, how did it go?

I definitely don't have a scene in mind. That way lies madness. I'm thinking: because of the way the PC backstory was built, this was a topic the player wanted to address. So I'm creating the NPC with the idea that he personifies that topic, then I throw him out there. I don't know where it's heading (death for the NPC is certainly one possibility! That's an exploration of the topic as well . . . ) but I just want to see where the player takes it.

This reminded me of the following from Paul Czege (which I also quoted in the original thread - it's one of my single favourite bits of advice for scene-framing play):

I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. . . the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.​

I do this quite a bit in my game - I will have a basic conception of the NPC (eg priestess of Torog; Vecana-ite; burier of long-dead bodies) but will work out the details of the NPC, and their relationship to the PC and campaign backstories, in the course of resolution as seems best to maintain interest and pressure.

Am I talking about the same technique here as you?

 

[S'mon]

Expaining the relationship is more controversial - as I've indicated in the past, I'm fairly sympathetic to the Forge/Ron Edwards diagnosis - it's about an approach to play shaped by bad experiences of excessive GM force in action resolution and enforcing the "story", which have taught these players to focus on a different part of the game over which they (i) have more control, and (ii) can use to push back against the GM.

Well... I think that's an edition-independent issue with Adventure Path type play. I ran into this playing Rise of the Runelords (the updated, Pathfinder version) recently. Basically we get told we have to do the set encounters in order to progress the plot. So our PCs have to be tough enough to win the encounters. So we have to focus on charbuild, on min-maxing for combat. We're not really allowed to go 'around' the encounters - and even if we were, we wouldn't get the XP, so future encounters would become impossible. It's an issue I'm facing converting Curse of the Crimson Throne to 4e; I don't want it to feel linear, I think there's a lot of potential there which can be brought out if I can avoid railroading the adventure. One thing I've done a lot of is think of alternate ways scenes might play out.
I think 4e adventures can suffer from this just as much as other editions, if 4e is better at all it's just that the fights are less swingy, so you don't need to min-max as much to win pretty reliably (pace Irontooth). My impression is that some of the Paizo AP boss fights run by an impartial GM will TPK all but the most min-maxed parties.

I don't think min-maxing stops players from 'adding colour' to their characters via roleplay, though; it doesn't necessitate pawn stance.

 

[Storminator]

Am I talking about the same technique here as you?

That sounds the same. I've been thinking of making scene openings for a while, and letting the scene resolve itself organically. I hadn't considered (until now) doing the same with NPCs. I'm basically making the NPC introduction, and letting his personality/goals come out in play.

Now I'm wondering how many other game elements I can just leave open.

PS

 

[pemerton]

I don't think min-maxing stops players from 'adding colour' to their characters via roleplay, though; it doesn't necessitate pawn stance.

Agreed. I've played with some aggressive optimisers who also have very rich PCs. My view is that in a mechanically strong system these two things will (on the whole, if not at every single point) synergise rather than conflict.

Your comment on 4e adventures is also true, if you mean the published ones. For me, I treat them as sources of scene ideas, backstory and maps. The mechanical details of the encounter (eg levelling up or down, or sticking an X demon in play of a Y demon) I sort out myself as suits mood and level, using the adventure text as a guide.

I've never played or tried to run an adventure path of the sort you describe, unless you count G1-3 back in the mid-80s.

 

[Manbearcat]

@pemerton I'm certain that explains a generous portion of them. Its intuitive and if you have exposure to the evolution of a player (and insight into their mental framework) you can find it out to be true enough. I've had discussions with multiple gaming prospects (almost universally dismissed after a trial run) who have had their creative reservoir and pro-activity (within the confines of playing to genre) operatively conditioned out of them due to consistent application of GM-force over the years. When they came to my games it was exceedingly noticeable. I spoke to them at length and made it clear that I demand, and reward, creative, proactive play from my players (and I made it explicit to them after hearing their bad prior experiences). Nonetheless, they still were unwilling to accept the cues (but surely able to decipher them as we would talk about it afterward) that I provided. They were still unwilling (oftentimes antagonistically averse) to accept the emboldening call for them to be proactive and propel the narrative forward. Inevitably, their Machiavellian ways ended up being their undoing (at least in my group). It was very dog to dinner bell like; an implacable force. Unfortunate. The culture of the White Wolf, metagame averse, brunt force, beating folks over the head "story-gaming" "techniques" of the 90s has to take its share of the blame.

Beyond that, I'm certain that there are plenty of gamers out there (I've known 2) with just patently dysfunctional makeup who like to use the shared imaginary space of a TTRPG as their personal playground for mayhem and discord (LOOK WHAT I HAVE WROUGHT!). I suspect there are control elements there as well (the sense of the direction of their lives being out of their own locus of control).

Its considerable exposure to enough of those chaps that has made me circle the wagons around the people I play with such that I'm extraordinarily reluctant to even consider another player. It seems we have an enormous pool of dysfunctional gamers out there who are either extremely jaded/cynical and/or have absolutely no idea what they want out of gaming nor know how to get there.