Players building v players exploring a campaign

[Sunseeker]

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.

Skyrim isn't a sim though. It's story-centric sandbox. You're also talking about a measure of time happening without actually mentioning it. Sure, if you stand around for days (since Skyrim has that) nothing will actually happen, because Skryim is still a story-centric sandbox (yay shades of gray). You can play around in the sand all you want, but the world itsself isn't going to change until you start playing through the main story.

I wasn't attempting to point to any specific game though. I was simply pointing out that a computer can track and calculate more things faster than a human. A better comparison would be research simulations on whether patterns, stellar phenomenon, migratory patterns of birds, etc.

Either example is still a facade. Neither are actual living, breathing worlds. I don't think computers or people have the processing power to simulate all that. But "tracking if the civil war is moving forward" is exactly what I mentioned. The DM isn't tracking each individual soldier until the party shows up (and still might not even then!) they may not even be tracking major players in the war, specific military divisions or whatnot, they may simply be rolling two die and deciding that "Red Side" rolled higher than "Blue Side" so Red Side has gained 1 point towards victory (requiring say, 100 points). The simulation only comes to life when the players get close enough to it.

It's basically the "view distance" on a 3D graphics setting. If you're too far away to see it, it doesn't stop it from being there, it just stops you from seeing the details.

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.

Maybe, since you're essentially adding living beings to an artificial world (i'm assuming "groups" in this context means IRL players, not fancy AI NPCs). But now we're talking compounding interest. Sure, eventually you could put enough real people in a simulation to make the outside viewer question if it's a simulation but it still relies on smoke and mirrors and when all those people go home and go to bed, the game world "pauses" until they return (since play time does not always translate into real-world or in-game time), you might finish turning some gears, but even you too will stop and thus the game will stop.

 

[S'mon]

Skyrim isn't a sim though. It's story-centric sandbox. You're also talking about a measure of time happening without actually mentioning it. Sure, if you stand around for days (since Skyrim has that) nothing will actually happen, because Skryim is still a story-centric sandbox (yay shades of gray). You can play around in the sand all you want, but the world itsself isn't going to change until you start playing through the main story.

I wasn't attempting to point to any specific game though. I was simply pointing out that a computer can track and calculate more things faster than a human. A better comparison would be research simulations on whether patterns, stellar phenomenon, migratory patterns of birds, etc.

Either example is still a facade. Neither are actual living, breathing worlds. I don't think computers or people have the processing power to simulate all that. But "tracking if the civil war is moving forward" is exactly what I mentioned. The DM isn't tracking each individual soldier until the party shows up (and still might not even then!) they may not even be tracking major players in the war, specific military divisions or whatnot, they may simply be rolling two die and deciding that "Red Side" rolled higher than "Blue Side" so Red Side has gained 1 point towards victory (requiring say, 100 points). The simulation only comes to life when the players get close enough to it.

It's basically the "view distance" on a 3D graphics setting. If you're too far away to see it, it doesn't stop it from being there, it just stops you from seeing the details.



Maybe, since you're essentially adding living beings to an artificial world (i'm assuming "groups" in this context means IRL players, not fancy AI NPCs). But now we're talking compounding interest. Sure, eventually you could put enough real people in a simulation to make the outside viewer question if it's a simulation but it still relies on smoke and mirrors and when all those people go home and go to bed, the game world "pauses" until they return (since play time does not always translate into real-world or in-game time), you might finish turning some gears, but even you too will stop and thus the game will stop.

Ok we have incompatible definitions of 'facade' I think. I definitely don't think the viewfinder graphics issue makes the simulation a mere facade. It just means it's a simulation. Whereas the Skyrim civil war is a mere facade, a backdrop for player action, the conflict between NPC factions in a Total War game is not a facade; it is actually being played out at whatever appropriate level of detail.

A metaplot war between opposing nations in a 1990s RPg like Heavy Gear meets the facade definition to me. Even moreso is the threat in a linear Paizo AP if it is simply there to give a backdrop for player action - one reason I felt my Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign never reached the potential of the setup. Whereas the Nerath vs Altanian war in my Wilderlands sandbox has a life independent of the players and is not a facade, no matter what level of detail I resolve it at.

 

[S'mon]

To put it another way - if there is no loss of detail in a simulation it is not a simulation. It is an actual world. Your definition of facade makes all simulations facades. Unless maybe they are on a computer server that never turns off - not sure why that is important.

 

[GMMichael]

In the old days the DM built the campaign and the players explored it. . .

Some of the newer rpg stuff (well not that new now) suggests that the players and Gm together build the campaign . . .

what do you do and what do you see as the benefits of each method?

I'm with (most of?) the rest of the posters here: the GM should write the story and world. However, that's a really big job, and players can't have a lot of investment in a world that treats them as external events.

So I've been toying with what I'll call, for lack of a better term, the Wheaton approach: let the players contribute where it would fall into their realm of knowledge. Don't hand over plot rights to the players, but let them color the world in ways that make their characters feel more at home there. That saves the GM from extra work and gives the players more investment.

 

[Lanefan]

So I've been toying with what I'll call, for lack of a better term, the Wheaton approach: let the players contribute where it would fall into their realm of knowledge. Don't hand over plot rights to the players, but let them color the world in ways that make their characters feel more at home there. That saves the GM from extra work and gives the players more investment.

And the DM retains veto rights if something a player comes up with clashes with DM material? If yes, and with the right group of players, I could see this working just fine.

Lan-"the heaviest lifting for me in world design is the detailed town-region-world-etc. mapping, but it goes against the exploration and discovery model if I get the players to do this for me"-efan

 

[cmad1977]

Both.


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[Vaslov]

Both. In only the earliest games I played was it ever completely GM created. These were little more than when it was a map and a few pregenerated characters. Once players started making their own character it became a shared story with the bar on what the GM vs. players owned changing.

I play in a Ravenloft game where the GM keeps a very firm hand on what players can define. She restricted races, rules and even story elements we can use in making characters. That said, when I wanted to make an organization that collected knowledge we hammered something out over several games together levering her vision for the game.

Towards the other extreme the Dresden game I run went so far off the "Dresden" story track I was convinced we were insane. It all started when in game 0 a player said he wanted to play a Klingon. As in Star Trek. Instead of killing the idea we ran with it and ended up with a Court of Psi-Phi, a bar called the Neutral Zone and all sorts of Science Fiction tropes running through the story lines. Afer sharing the tale a few times at different conventions I've come to find it isn't all that strange for a Dresden FATE game.

What rpgs are going for is a level of emergent game play where everyone involved is invested in the "awesome". Once we left the basics of map/treasure/next level of the dungeon and moved into character narratives the only thing left to do was figure out how to draw the lines so everyone could find their place. Gamers want that moment of awesome. The games that deliver that awesome are the ones that stick around. How much story input the players vs. GM give is more like a flavor of wine. Some wines go better with some dishes. In the end, to each their own.

By chance this reminds me of a recent conversation I had when discussing a similar trend with video games. I see many of them trying to catch the elusive emergent gameplay, as opposed to a fixed narrative. There are a few examples out there, like the Dwarf Fortress tale of Boatmurdered, RPGs like Torment, Pillars of Eternity and still others like Crusader Kings, Civilization.... We are still in the nascent stages of the technology. I cannot wait to see what happens over the next few decades to see what will happen in this space. It's a very exciting time to be a gamer.

 

[Asatania_GM]

Campaigns get too complex, too quickly, for me to keep all of the NPCs, relationships, factions, towns, cities, and events straight unless I've thought about them ahead of time.

Once I have thought about them, I can set players loose within the scaffolding I've created and be confident that I can handle whatever they throw at me. I can create new NPCs, locations, and even encounters to handle situations I didn't expect because I've put in a lot of thought ahead of time.

It isn't uncommon for B and C plots to develop based on unexpected actions from the players and we'll pursue those in the context of the larger campaign. The main plot, though, is something that's larger than the players. In my mind, it happens whether there are players are not. The players get to alter what happens - maybe even change its course, but it doesn't flare to existence through their actions.

By the end we have something that is our shared story. It isn't mine any more, but it also isn't completely theirs. Its ours.

 

[Jhaelen]

Creating campaigns or campaign settings is a lot easier if you collaborate with someone. One of my favorite settings was the result of a brainstorming session when we kickstarted our Ars Magica campaign. However, we used the troupe-style, so every player also was a part-time storyteller. Once we had agreed on the basics of our setting, we distributed the workload by assigning each player one or two important aspects of the setting, e.g. one would take care of the nearby faerie forest, one would design our nemesis, a covenant of demon worshippers, etc.

If I'm the only GM, I prefer to have control over all the main aspects of the setting/campaign, but I don't mind letting players develop anything that isn't crucial, e.g. organisations or their hometowns.
But I've also found that not all players are really up to this: For many the real incentive isn't to contribute to the campaign/setting, no matter what they claim. What they're really after is to trick you into granting them some special advantages!

 

[pemerton]

Mysteries, a la Gumshoe seem, to my mind, to require being prepared ahead of time. (I suppose you could leave room for some Mad-Libs input form players, does it matter what the Drive-Through attendent's name is?) At least, that's been my experience.

I don't really run intricate mysteries. But I don't think simply mysteries need to be prepared ahead of time. (Which isn't the same thing as players providing input, of course.)