Player-driven campaigns and developing strong stories

[hawkeyefan]

It seems as though a table at which it's the GM's responsibility to bring at least most of a world suitable to play in might qualify as the participants agreeing on the world. This is the way the tables I've been at recently have done it and there's been no shortage of player contributions to the world or character-driven play.

I think this all depends on how the setting is approached.

In most of my recent games, as both a GM and player, the setting of the game pre-exists to a large degree. It's not one of the GM's own making. As such, the players have access to information beyond just what the GM shares with them. I think in such cases, it's much easier to not think of the world as "the GM's world". In these games, the GM likely still has a lot of input on how the game world takes shape, but the players also have a lot of input as well. Most of these games have involved a significant session zero type beginning where we collaborate on a lot of the elements of play. Blades in the Dark, Spire, Stonetop, Galaxies in Peril... all those games involve collaboration at the start of play, and continually throughout play.

I think that tends to not always be the case when the setting is one of the GM's own design. Often when that's the case, there's a default feeling that the world belongs to the GM. A lot of times, and I say this from experience, the setting is something the GM is creating entirely on their own... not during play, but on their own time in preparation for play. I did this for years. And while there's nothing wrong with that approach in and of itself, it doesn't easily lend itself to player directed play. The GM is doing the vast amount of work on their own!

There also tends to be a lack of knowledge of all the ins and outs of the world and its people and institutions and the like that may, in my experience, lead to players feeling like strangers in a world that their characters are supposed to inhabit. I think that lack of knowledge and how it's handled is the primary concern. If I can only know what the GM tells me, then how proactive can I be as a player? The GM either needs to offload a significant amount of information ahead of play, and I have to actually absorb it, or else there needs to be some other means of allowing me to not feel like an alien exploring an unknown land.

There are different ways these things can be addressed. I tend to agree with @pemerton though, that a good default approach is to think of the world not as the GM's but as the group's. It seems like a solid first step toward the kind of play that @Yora is looking for in the OP.

 

[pointofyou]

I think this all depends on how the setting is approached.

In most of my recent games, as both a GM and player, the setting of the game pre-exists to a large degree. It's not one of the GM's own making. As such, the players have access to information beyond just what the GM shares with them. I think in such cases, it's much easier to not think of the world as "the GM's world". In these games, the GM likely still has a lot of input on how the game world takes shape, but the players also have a lot of input as well. Most of these games have involved a significant session zero type beginning where we collaborate on a lot of the elements of play. Blades in the Dark, Spire, Stonetop, Galaxies in Peril... all those games involve collaboration at the start of play, and continually throughout play.

I think that tends to not always be the case when the setting is one of the GM's own design. Often when that's the case, there's a default feeling that the world belongs to the GM. A lot of times, and I say this from experience, the setting is something the GM is creating entirely on their own... not during play, but on their own time in preparation for play. I did this for years. And while there's nothing wrong with that approach in and of itself, it doesn't easily lend itself to player directed play. The GM is doing the vast amount of work on their own!

There also tends to be a lack of knowledge of all the ins and outs of the world and its people and institutions and the like that may, in my experience, lead to players feeling like strangers in a world that their characters are supposed to inhabit. I think that lack of knowledge and how it's handled is the primary concern. If I can only know what the GM tells me, then how proactive can I be as a player? The GM either needs to offload a significant amount of information ahead of play, and I have to actually absorb it, or else there needs to be some other means of allowing me to not feel like an alien exploring an unknown land.

There are different ways these things can be addressed. I tend to agree with @pemerton though, that a good default approach is to think of the world not as the GM's but as the group's. It seems like a solid first step toward the kind of play that @Yora is looking for in the OP.

My point was mostly that if the people at the table agree that bringing the world to the game is primarily the GM's responsibility, that's not fundamentally different from the people at the table agreeing to play in Greyhawk or Duskvol. I don't see anything about that sort of arrangement that actively specifically prevents proactive play. The recent tables I've been at where the GM was mostly responsible for the world have all had highly player-driven play and I've noticed a distinct lack of Michael Valentine Smith types at those tables.

 

[pemerton]

I tend to agree with @pemerton though, that a good default approach is to think of the world not as the GM's but as the group's. It seems like a solid first step toward the kind of play that @Yora is looking for in the OP.

This post is prompted by yours. It contains some reiteration, and some responses to other things posted in the thread.

The OP sets out a particular goal for RPGing, based on a particular sort of critique of some "mainstream" approaches. The goal is to avoid RPG adventures and campaigns that overwhelmingly take the form of a more or less complete script being written that covers all the relevant plot points and sequence of scenes before the players even enter the picture, to avoid the PCs being pawns for other NPCs, while also avoiding stories that are short and not very much interlinked with each other such as sandbox-y dungeon crawling to hunt for treasures or explore the magical wonders of old ruins. The OP wants ongoing conflicts with regular antagonists that takes place on a grand stage and revolves around the PCs struggling in an ongoing conflict against groups of NPCs, and also wants the players' ideas, plans, and decisions determining what path the story will ultimately take.

So suggesting dungeon-of-the-week sandbox play is not helping the OP get what they want. Nor is suggesting a GM-authored world or timeline, in which the players', in play, acquire information about the world and/or the goals of the antagonists that drive the timeline and thus potentially alter the timeline. I think the reasons for both these assertions are obvious: the former is a version of the stories that are short and not very much interlinked with each other which the OP wishes to avoid; the latter is not a game in which the players' ideas, plans and decisions determine what path the story will ultimately take because the GM's ideas about the world and antagonist timelines play a huge role in that respect.

The OP asks "What's been happening out there in the world of player-driven narrative games?" and the answer is the techniques for achieving precisely the goals that the OP asks for were developed around 20 to 25 years ago, and are readily available in a variety of published RPGs. The systems I think of are HeroWars, Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World and MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic. Torchbearer might also do the job, although it's not quite as obviously suited to the "grand stage". I'm pretty sure Dungeon World could do the job, though I'm not as familiar with it. I don't know exactly what direction Cortex Prime takes that system in, but it's probably suitable too. Fate can also probably do what the OP wants it to. You (@hawkeyefan) have pointed to other systems that I'm even less familiar with - eg Spire - that are suitable. No doubt there are dozens, even hundreds, of others, which apply various versions of the techniques that (as I've noted) are now a couple of decades old.

TL;DR: The OP asks a definite question, and there is a definite answer available. The answer is not relative to "playstyle preference" or "here's how I do it". It's a perfectly straightforward matter of fact.

 

[pemerton]

My point was mostly that if the people at the table agree that bringing the world to the game is primarily the GM's responsibility, that's not fundamentally different from the people at the table agreeing to play in Greyhawk or Duskvol. I don't see anything about that sort of arrangement that actively specifically prevents proactive play. The recent tables I've been at where the GM was mostly responsible for the world have all had highly player-driven play and I've noticed a distinct lack of Michael Valentine Smith types at those tables.

I can't comment on Duskvol.

I use the World of Greyhawk a lot as a backdrop for play. When I do so, the maps are public, the backstory is public, etc. So - to give an example from actual play - when a PC is stuck in the Bright Desert, the player of that PC can confidently state "Everyone knows that Suel Nomads are as thick as thieves in the Bright Desert!" and make a Circles check to try and meet some.

This is consistent with the OP's goal of having the players' ideas, plans and decisions determine what path the story will ultimately take. On the other hand, every time the GM refers to some pre-authored detail of a world or setting to explain why some player-suggested course of action is not feasible or can't unfold as the player suggests, it is the GM who is determining what path the story will ultimately take.

Whether any of the above is good or bad is a matter of taste. But how these things stand in relation to the goals set out in the OP is a matter of fact.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have a campaign that's been running (via play by post) since 2006, with off-shot campaigns and live games as well.

I started in a sandbox fashion, with a player-facing wiki, and created a hometown with some problems, sitting at what looks like a pivotal moment in its history, and sprinkled about six to eight interesting locales around town, some of them ruins, some actively inhabited areas, some big question marks. I knew what each of them had going on, in broad strokes, and let the players go.

They bit on the simplest hook I put in front of them and then, in the second adventure, stumbled across a hook for another area, which they bit on and things immediately snowballed, forming a coherent campaign arc that ran for many levels. Once things snowballed, there was a very clear story arc laid out for everyone, even if the stops along the way were surprises to all of us.

They're now on the other side of the continent, following up remaining threads from the first arc and the original mystery I put in front of them, but I have at least one player who still wonders about a question mark area outside their home town. At some point, I expect some of the PCs to return to check it out, or next generation characters to follow up on it in a subsequent campaign.

So, I'm not sure I could replicate this success again, but it worked very well the first time, and is probably the model I'd use if I was starting from scratch again.

 

[bloodtide]

I think this all depends on how the setting is approached.

There are a small number of hard core player gamers that want to side table DM and run and create the game world. And such player have a grand fun time making a pile of creation.

However, that is not all players. At least half of all players want to put zero work into a game. Wrok, effort, is not fun, as the players would say, so why would they want to do it.

Even most of the players that do want to add stuff to the game, don't really want to create stuff. They just want the power to handwave that it's there. "Wow...I say there are ninja drow dragon riders!". Of course even suggest that the player might write up a history, backstory, lore and game stats for their ninja drow dragon riders...and they will flat out refuse. That would be work and takes effort. Sure, sometimes they might scribble down something like "history-um, a year ago the drow and dragons joined forces. The end." Suggest a player write some 50,000 words and they will refuse to even consider it.

 

[pemerton]

There are a small number of hard core player gamers that want to side table DM and run and create the game world. And such player have a grand fun time making a pile of creation.

However, that is not all players. At least half of all players want to put zero work into a game. Wrok, effort, is not fun, as the players would say, so why would they want to do it.

Even most of the players that do want to add stuff to the game, don't really want to create stuff. They just want the power to handwave that it's there.

Suppose these claims are all true. So what? How are they relevant to the goal stated, and the question asked, in the OP?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Suggest a player write some 50,000 words and they will refuse to even consider it.

If a player came to me with 50,000 words of suggested background they had written up, I would fake my own death.

 

[hawkeyefan]

My point was mostly that if the people at the table agree that bringing the world to the game is primarily the GM's responsibility, that's not fundamentally different from the people at the table agreeing to play in Greyhawk or Duskvol. I don't see anything about that sort of arrangement that actively specifically prevents proactive play. The recent tables I've been at where the GM was mostly responsible for the world have all had highly player-driven play and I've noticed a distinct lack of Michael Valentine Smith types at those tables.

It is different, though, that was my point. I can read about Greyhawk or Duskvol. I likely already have. I know things about those worlds that don't require the GM to tell me... I can and should have expectations about what will be present in the setting. Much like my character would have such knowledge. I don't need the GM to be a cypher for everything about the setting.

With a GM's world... where the creation of the world has been deemed their responsibility... that's far less true. Yes, they can provide some kind of primer or something. But there are simply going to be gaps. There's also likely to be reluctance to allow things to play out as a result of play. I know I've done my fair share of villain-protecting hijinks because the bad guy didn't live up to be the threat I saw them to be. There can be an impulse to protect the things we've created. As I said, I know I've done this and I expect I am not unique in that way.

Agreement is needed for functional play. But I think getting to something that's more player driven as described in the OP takes more than just agreement.

 

[pointofyou]

I can't comment on Duskvol.

I use the World of Greyhawk a lot as a backdrop for play. When I do so, the maps are public, the backstory is public, etc. So - to give an example from actual play - when a PC is stuck in the Bright Desert, the player of that PC can confidently state "Everyone knows that Suel Nomads are as thick as thieves in the Bright Desert!" and make a Circles check to try and meet some.

This is consistent with the OP's goal of having the players' ideas, plans and decisions determine what path the story will ultimately take. On the other hand, every time the GM refers to some pre-authored detail of a world or setting to explain why some player-suggested course of action is not feasible or can't unfold as the player suggests, it is the GM who is determining what path the story will ultimately take.

Whether any of the above is good or bad is a matter of taste. But how these things stand in relation to the goals set out in the OP is a matter of fact.

Sure. I haven't prepped what will happen in nearly twenty years. I played in AD&D 1e games where the DM didn't do so. It's not something outre by any means.