Players building v players exploring a campaign

[Neonchameleon]

But the problem with providing the possibility of failure is that the timing of failure in a game serving the aesthetic doesn't always - and usually doesn't - well serve the timing required of narrative. One problem that you run into trying to recreate narrative in a game is that in narratives the protagonists can't fail unless it serves the story for them to do so. But in the game, characters just die off at random leaving plot threads dangling unfinished.

That depends on the story. In Fantasy Vietnam you absolutely can kill off characters to enhance the mood while leaving dangling plot threads unfinished. Look, for example, at Game of Thrones - or possibly the most tightly plotted TV of the 90s, Babylon 5. They wrote the intended protagonist out there.

But fundamentally you are making a spectacular mistake regarding narrative when you consider the only possible failure of the protagonists to be death of the protagonist. Unfortunately the D&D character sheet only really has options for death and equipment loss. I've cared more about whether my character became Prom Queen in Monsterhearts than whether my character died in D&D, and because it wasn't a matter of life or death the narrative for that character worked whether or not she succeeded at becoming Prom Queen.

Because one of the most certain facts regarding such well told narrative is that the author knows what is going to happen and writes in such a way that they make that vision true. If you look at authors with great narrative structure - Victor Hugo, JK Rawlings, Vernor Vinge, Lois Bujold - they often begin with the ending they've envisioned and plot their story backward from that point. But why should this process be an exciting experience for a collaborative group? It may be satisfying to write a good story, but it's not the same sort of experience and pleasure that comes from playing a good game.

One of the most certain facts regarding storytelling is there is more than one way to do it. Bujold also often begins "What's the worst thing I can do to this character and have them survive" and has it go forward while Rowling herself has admitted that actually sticking to that final chapter she'd pre-written was a mistake.

TV Tropes talks about the sliding scale of character vs plot - and the question of character driven vs plot driven stories is very much something sorted out on an author by author basis (or even in Bujold's a book by book basis; Memory is clearly character driven while A Civil Campaign clearly started with the dinner party and worked outwards from there). In the paragraph I quoted you seem to exalt plot driven stories over character driven ones while most such shared narrative games are character driven.

There are very few RPGs I'd regard as mechanically leading to plot driven stories; even Montsegur 1244 uses its narrative as a framework. The only ones that actively come to mind are My Life With Master (master mistreats minions -> minions get pissed off enough that one rebels -> fight to the death), Fiasco (the five act structure), and Grey Ranks (although even that's veering into Montsegur 1244 territory), and from memory Robin Laws' The Dying Earth in the worst ways .

But the whole point of simulating a story is that the players all want to be those heroic figures even if they aren't, and it's not clear to me how you can deliver on this while still giving them free will in the story.

What are hit points but plot armour?

 

[Neonchameleon]

I don't dislike the style at all. I just don't think it actually accomplishes what it was initially (and still frequently) billed as accomplishing.

I don't think there are many followers of GNS these days at all. It was useful to get things kickstarted however.

But that being said, many of the Indy game inspired mechanical innovations are Good Things, greatly to be lauded and seriously to be considered or leveraged when designing a system. Just don't expect them to solve every problem any more than 'Realism' was the solution for every problem when it was fetishized in the mid to late 80's.

On this we can agree. Of the crooked timber of humanity was no straight thing made - and RPGs are very much made of humanity.

With respect, please consider that "believable" is an aesthetic concern entirely and completely different from the aesthetic of narrative. A great many well constructed narratives are not "believable" in the sense you seem to be using it here, and often we find that we must choose between a story that is believable and one which has a tight narrative structure. For example, I am an huge massive fan of Victor Hugo, but why should it be believable about Jean Val Jean scaling a random wall in Paris, only to land practically in the lap of a random stranger whose life he saved in an entirely different city years before, and for that random stranger to now offer the perfect sanctuary that Jean Val Jean needs for the young child Cosette. To find that 'believable' you must agree that the real world is one of providential mercy as the fictional story suggests. "Believability" isn't the point of that narrative structure, and what is "believable" is a subjective aesthetic. The point is to fire off a plot point setup unnoticed and unsuspected in the scene where Jean Val Jean rescues the man from the cart leading to the experience of wonder and joy in the reader.

And this is why I find Chekov's original statement of Chekov's gun to be problematic. I find the reverse on the other hand to be very good advice If you're going to fire a gun in act 3 you should have shown it in act 1. This doesn't mean that I need to fire every gun in the gun rack, merely that the gun shouldn't come from nowhere.

I'm not sure we share enough language to meaningfully communicate with each other on this. Your response to me seems to continually go off on tangents and into areas that I wonder what you are thinking. I can only assume this is because you had the same response to my earlier writing. Let's assume for the moment neither of us understands the other at all, right back to your assumption I don't like the style. Then maybe we can reset and try again.

That sounds like a plan. We're clearly talking past each other.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think just about any successful campaign would have elements of both. The degree may vary depending on the group's collective expectations, but I'd expect there to be at least sone trace of player authorship even in the most GM authored campaign. And even more so, vice versa.

 

[S'mon]

Please don't talk about "at best" for a style you dislike. Everything you are talking about does happen at average. And all the things appear at average in DM driven campaigns - indeed I find the insistence that Chekov's Guns must be fired to be somewhat harmful to a believable world unless you're moving at breakneck speed; it implies that the entire world is a facade put up for the PCs.

Certainly when sandboxing I throw out tons and tons of stuff and let the players follow up on
whatever they're interested in. Ignored threads (by players) may either be ignored (in-world), turn into massive catastrophes, or anything in-between.

 

[S'mon]

Of course the entire world is a façade put up for the PCs. Only by artifice do we disguise our artifice.

No, that's not right I think. The world/setting is created for the mutual enjoyment of players &
GM. But in a world-sim type game the world is definitely not a facade for the PCs, it has a simulated existence independent of them.

 

[S'mon]

Of course the entire world is a façade put up for the PCs. Only by artifice do we disguise our artifice.

It exists for the audience & creator(s) as a whole, but not for any particular characters within that world.

 

[Redthistle]

I believe Mr George Banks said it best back in '64 when he said

A D&D campaign is run with precision
A roleplaying group requires nothing less
Tradition, discipline and rules
Must be the tools
Without them: disorder, catastrophe, anarchy
In short, you have a ghastly mess!

"... back in '64 ..." and the meter of the poem displaying its "ghastly mess". This, Sadras, is satiric, sly, and delightful.

 

[Sunseeker]

No, that's not right I think. The world/setting is created for the mutual enjoyment of players &
GM. But in a world-sim type game the world is definitely not a facade for the PCs, it has a simulated existence independent of them.

But a human-powered simulation has limits, and short ones at that. A computer can do a far better job running a simulation than a human can (until we connect brains to computers or build digital-brains, but I think we'll have more pressing concerns then). At best a sim attempts to make the world look alive when the players are around those parts of it. The DM isn't (or at least, probably isn't) running calculations on the migratory patterns of the birds on the other side of the world, or tracking deep-sea currents while the part is currently climbing a mountain-peak.

It's still a facade. But now we've moved from "the puppets only move when the story calls for them to move" to "the puppets go about their day-to-day regardless". We've gone from James Bond where the timer only ticks when the camera is watching to Westworld where the robot-cowboys dream of electric sheep.

 

[S'mon]

But a human-powered simulation has limits, and short ones at that. A computer can do a far better job running a simulation than a human can (until we connect brains to computers or build digital-brains, but I think we'll have more pressing concerns then). At best a sim attempts to make the world look alive when the players are around those parts of it. The DM isn't (or at least, probably isn't) running calculations on the migratory patterns of the birds on the other side of the world, or tracking deep-sea currents while the part is currently climbing a mountain-peak.

It's still a facade. But now we've moved from "the puppets only move when the story calls for them to move" to "the puppets go about their day-to-day regardless". We've gone from James Bond where the timer only ticks when the camera is watching to Westworld where the robot-cowboys dream of electric sheep.

Crpgs certainly do not simulate that stuff either. Currently they simulate a lot less than a good simulationist GM does! Even sandboxes like Elder Scrolls are pretty pathetic. Quests just hang around waiting for player action whereas a simulationist GM would have eg the Skyrim civil war progressing in the background whatever the PCs did. It is why rpgs can be so much more immersive than crpgs.

 

[S'mon]

Crpgs certainly do not simulate that stuff either. Currently they simulate a lot less than a good simulationist GM does! Even sandboxes like Elder Scrolls are pretty pathetic. Quests just hang around waiting for player action whereas a simulationist GM would have eg the Skyrim civil war progressing in the background whatever the PCs did. It is why rpgs can be so much more immersive than crpgs.

I think having multiple groups in a world can be very useful for subverting the facade issue. There is no possibility that the burnt out town of Sandpoint is a facade for my current group when it is the result of campaign play by a previous tpk'd group. Or taking my Wilderlands and Mystara interlinked campaigns there are currently at least 4 separate groups active and a 5th about to start. When I get my Skull & Shackles game going I will have at least 2 groups generating content in my Golarion campaign world that may well impact each other.