D'karr
Adventurer
Don't feed them.
D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E
Don't feed them.
D'karr
Adventurer
Of course quests can be initiated/imposed by the DM. Whether a player wants to engage with the quest or not is still their decision. That is why it is better for the quest parameters to be "negotiated" up front between the players and DM.
In my current game Major and Minor Quests have been initiated by both players and DM. The differentiation between Major or Minor is simply one of effort (game time). For our group a Major Quest usually takes 3-5 game sessions (30-50 hours), a Minor Quest can be handled in 1 session or less (less than 10 hours). So when the tiefling warlock was infected with a major curse and she wanted to find a cure (minor quest player initiated), we spent about one session on stuff dealing with that side trek. When the group was hired to rescue the daughter of an influential NPC (Major Quest DM initiated), we spent about 2 sessions on the investigation, travel, complications, and rescue. The discovery of a major slave trading organization triggered a second Major Quest also DM initiated. However, at the same time the party had made a major enemy during the minor quest for the cure, and now there was a second major quest on the table that was player initiated. They decided to go for the slavers (about 2 sessions), and made more enemies along the way. One of the enemies turned out to be the sister of one of the PCs (backstory work between DM, and player), and she was one of the Slave Lords that was able to escape obliteration. Now there is a major quest to destroy her (completely player initiated).
Quests are much better when they emerge naturally from play. Sometimes the DM puts the initial premise on the table, and sometimes it is entirely up to the players. The point is that someone has to get the ball rolling. As DM I view it as my responsibility to not "hide the fun." Meandering around the vastness of the world looking for something to do with nothing happening is a surefire way to boredom. We don't play together to be bored. Thankfully my players never disappoint. I would say my games are about 10-25% my ideas for quests and the rest is all player decided. Usually when we start a campaign most of the ideas rest on me as I'm getting the ball rolling, but once the players have gotten comfortable with the campaign premise, the other PCs, and the world around them it totally shifts, and most of the inspiration for things comes from them.
In my current game Major and Minor Quests have been initiated by both players and DM. The differentiation between Major or Minor is simply one of effort (game time). For our group a Major Quest usually takes 3-5 game sessions (30-50 hours), a Minor Quest can be handled in 1 session or less (less than 10 hours). So when the tiefling warlock was infected with a major curse and she wanted to find a cure (minor quest player initiated), we spent about one session on stuff dealing with that side trek. When the group was hired to rescue the daughter of an influential NPC (Major Quest DM initiated), we spent about 2 sessions on the investigation, travel, complications, and rescue. The discovery of a major slave trading organization triggered a second Major Quest also DM initiated. However, at the same time the party had made a major enemy during the minor quest for the cure, and now there was a second major quest on the table that was player initiated. They decided to go for the slavers (about 2 sessions), and made more enemies along the way. One of the enemies turned out to be the sister of one of the PCs (backstory work between DM, and player), and she was one of the Slave Lords that was able to escape obliteration. Now there is a major quest to destroy her (completely player initiated).
Quests are much better when they emerge naturally from play. Sometimes the DM puts the initial premise on the table, and sometimes it is entirely up to the players. The point is that someone has to get the ball rolling. As DM I view it as my responsibility to not "hide the fun." Meandering around the vastness of the world looking for something to do with nothing happening is a surefire way to boredom. We don't play together to be bored. Thankfully my players never disappoint. I would say my games are about 10-25% my ideas for quests and the rest is all player decided. Usually when we start a campaign most of the ideas rest on me as I'm getting the ball rolling, but once the players have gotten comfortable with the campaign premise, the other PCs, and the world around them it totally shifts, and most of the inspiration for things comes from them.
I'm tackling these two together, because the "theory" you state here is not really part of OtE, and nor is it part of 4e.
(See eg the stuff on player-created quests in the DMG p 103, Wyatt's sidebar on p 28 of the DMG, then big chunks of chapter 1 of the DMG2.)
OtE was innovative in emphasising the role of player authorship, of the GM framing scenes in a way that speaks to the PCs' keywords/descriptors and hence leads to player-driven scenarios, etc.
4e picks all that up - even its approach to paragon paths and epic destinies owes more, in their relationship to the dynamics of play, to OtE or HeroWars/Quest style free descriptors than they do to prestige classes and the old immortals rules: because PrC and immortality have to be earned, through play, and are ultimately under the GM's control; whereas Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies (and, later, themes) are under the players' control and thereby let the player dictate (in part) what the focus of play will be.
If 4e had come out in 1990, with its "say yes" and player authorship agenda, all these devices for allowing players to take control of the content of the gameworld, player-authored quests, etc, it would have been regarded as an innovative game.
Heck, in 2008 many regarded it as an innovative game simply because they're not familiar with all the prior design that influenced it. (Just as I've seen many people describing backgrounds and one unique thing in 13th Age as innovative, because they're not aware of Tweet's free descriptor game from 20 years ago - Over the Edge - that really was innovative.)
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Say 'yes' actually IS stated several times explicitly, but it still doesn't qualify as a RULE, unlike saying something like 'Roll or Say Yes' would be, or FATE where the player expends a fate point to invoke an aspect. The mechanics encourage stunting, but they provide a LOT of 'integration points', though without hooking most of them. For instance APs can act as a more general plot coupon, and there are a few feats or racial abilities that leverage that in a small way (and PPs often in a limited form), but its never developed. It was more latent with HS, rules-wise they're more of a passive resource that gets attritioned, but the potential is always there. The disease track is pretty much latent as well, though it was developed in the BoVD into a more general tool for 'curses'.
Not sure what reskinning opens up in terms of abuse, but I distinguish two separate procedures here. There is 'reskinning', which is purely narrative, calling an axe a sword for instance, in which no mechanical alteration is made, and then there's customizing, where keywords are altered. The latter can be abused, you can put the cold keyword on a power and use it with Frost Cheese, etc. The question is whether in general even that does much. I mean there are plenty of cold powers in the game at this point. Early on it was more of a concern, but with something like 13,000 published powers now?
I actually never assumed that quests were a player directed thing. I always assumed they were basically a way for the DM to say "Oh, that would be interesting, I'll give you some XP if you do that" or to just set them out there as XP-worthy goals. I think KOTS actually lays them out this way, suggesting several initial plot hooks the characters could be using when they travel to Winterhaven, and what quest XP each is associated with.
TarionzCousin
Second Most Angelic Devil Ever
Because he didn't buy any of it. diaglo is perhaps the world's best known proponent of OD&D.
diaglo
Adventurer
the poll asked a personal/anecdotal question. what are your favorite 4e elements?
i picked other. it saved me money. i tried it but didn't buy anything. so i figured by not completing my collection of D&D it saved me tens of thousands of dollars.
does that answer your question?
I deliberately used the word "covert". As in, not apparent to the observers (in this context, the players). Deception (eg lying) is one way to do this, but often not explaining your reasoning and methods can be enough.
More context is required to diagnose a playstyle. (That's partly why I think actual play examples are more useful than hypotheticals.)
If the lieutentant is there before the fact, but the players don't know, and realistically couldn't have known - if the lieutenant is an instance of secret backstory - then I think it GM driven play, yes. At that point whether its illusionistic in some strict sense is a secondary concern to me as a player.
What additional context would lead me to characterise it as illusionistic? The GM knows that the players are planning to have their PCs take down the leader; the GM knows that they don't know about any lieutenant, and are not planning around any such contingency; the GM has various opportunities, in the course of play, to make the existence of the lieutenant known, or at least easily knowable, and doesn't take or develop those opportunities; so that, when the PCs do take down the leader and the lieutenant then emerges from the shadows, it's as if the players' efforts to shape the narrative were for naught.
There are more or less skilled ways to flag stakes and manage the resolution of declared player actions; and there are different criteria of fun.
If what is fun for the players is finding out whether or not the GM has in mind a lieutenant who will pick up the scheme once the PCs kill the leader, then the scenario I've described, whether handled illusionistically or not, will probably be fun.
If what is fun for the players is defining their PCs in orientation to some goal or endeavour in the fiction, and they have played through to what they regard as the culmination of that, then having the GM spring a fail-safe on them will probably not be fun, and it will not be very relevant whether or not the GM wrote the notes for that failsafe then and there, or two years ago when prepping the campaign.
I can give concrete examples from my 4e game.
The players set out to have their PCs destroy Torog's soul abattoir, and then kill Torog. They succeeded in destroying the abattoir, and in the course of that the invoker/wizard had to choose whether to send the flow of souls to Vecna or the Raven Queen. He chose the latter. It was a high stakes moment - at the table between me and the player, because the issue of his simultaneous loyalty to the Raven Queen and to Vecna had been percolating away since the beginnings of paragon tier, and now he finally had to choose; in the fiction, because the rise-and-rise of the Raven Queen at the hand of the PCs has turned out to be one of the core themes of our game.
It would completely invalidate that choice for me to subsequently declare that Vecna had a back-up plan whereby he could steal the souls anyway, so the PC's decision to uphold the Raven Queen over Vecna didn't really matter.
Another example:
The paladin of the Raven Queen had developed a rivalry with Ometh, an exarch of the Raven Queen whom she had inherited from Nerrul when she overthrew him to become god of death. Eventually, Ometh appeared to challenge the paladin (and his friends). In the ensuing fight, when it seemed that Ometh was going to lose, he tried to open negotiations, warning the paladin that only a pact that he, Ometh, had reached with "beings from beyond the stars" was keeping the Raven Queen's true name secret.
When the PCs went on to kill Ometh, the consequence was that those beings from beyond the stars tried to reveal the Raven Queen's name (to an angel of Vecna), and the PCs then had to stop that from happening (in so far as at least half of them wanted the name to stay secret).
Again, having laid the stakes on the table, and the players then having made decisions in relation to those stakes, I have a duty (as GM) to honour those outcomes, and not to pull out secret backstory (whether authored on the spot, or months/years earlier) to retrospectively change those stakes.
It's actually completely trivial to foreshadow the existence of a lieutenant who might pick up the scheme - the most obvious way, and not necessarily a bad one, is to have the lieutenant present in the final confrontation, and to have the leader hand over the baton and the lieutenant then try to escape while the PCs are locked down with the leader plus minions.
This reveals the stakes to the players, and permits them to make choices about how they respond. (Mechanical design becomes relevant here. 4e is well-suited to this sort of thing, in a way that (say) RuneQuest is not, because 4e gives players plenty of options to step up their efforts and make last-ditch attempts eg by spending action points, deploying their dailies, etc).
The question is whether the stakes are supposed to be covert.
In player-driven play the stakes, by definition, should be known to the players, or at least knowable. I've got nothing against surprising the players - but the surprise is delivered in the course of framing and/or resolution, not as part of the narration of the outcomes and consequences.
The threshold for knowability is obviously fuzzy, but "you missed a clue two years of play ago and never had another chance to pick it up" falls well below my personal threshold. "You could have easily got the information in the current scene but didn't" is about where my threshold sits - an example is the sample skill challenge in the 4e DMG, where the players don't automatically know that the duke can't be intimidated, but can get that information easily with an Insight check - and even if they only learn it the hard way it doesn't end the encounter with an auto-loss.
Here's a relevant example from my own game: due to a confluence of circumstances, the PCs ended up agreeing that a cleric of Torog whom they had taken prisoner would be imprisoned rather than executed. None of the PCs (or players) was happy with that outcome, and there were mutual recriminations. The dwarf fighter-cleric blamed the others for making a promise in his name; the others blamed the dwarf for turning up and learning what had been done, rather than keeping his nose out so that they could finish the business (including not keeping the promise!) in secret.
At the end of the whole affair I twisted the knife a little, pointing out that, as a powerful priest of the god of jailers, it seemed unlikely that the NPC would spend any more time in prison than she wanted to. That extra bit of consequence hadn't been stated at any earlier point in the scene, but everyone know she was a cleric of Torog, and everyone knew that Torog was the god of jailers, so the dots were there to be joined at anytime - it was just that I, as GM, was the one who ended up joining them, as I said to twist the knife.
That satisfied my standards of knowability - it didn't introduce anything new to the narration of outcomes that the players didn't already have access to.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Ah. You were threadcrapping. Understood.
Tony Vargas
Legend
OK, so some innovative DMing advice if it came out 2 years before OTE. Fine. Next time I'll set my hypothetical Time Machine for '95...
Well, sure, it was innovative /for D&D/, which was kinda the point. D&D stagnated for a long time until 3e, which paradoxically, marked a leap forward for D&D, and a sort of weird collapse-and-rebirth of the rest of the industry, as d20 just engulfed it.
Nod. It's funny seeing Tweet hyped as the 'old-school D&D guy' to Heinsoo's 'indie guy.'
The Crimson Binome
Hero
Please bear with me, but this entire concept of 'stakes' is quite unfamiliar to me. I know that Burning Wheel uses it, and people are using it to discuss 4E (and 5E!), but I've never actually sat down and read a rulebook that discussed its use. As a DM, I don't sit down and plan the stakes one way or another; it's not something I've ever consciously had to acknowledge.
It sounds like a bunch of meta-game stuff that I don't like, though. It sounds like it's the DM talking to the players, about what's going on in the game, and the potential outcome to actions that the PCs might take. I can see how it makes sense when you're discussing something like a skill check, in order to better describe a situation that the PCs should be able to understand ("because of the wind blowing across this rock-face, a failure by more than 5 points will mean that you fall and could die"). What I don't see is, in your hypothetical example with Vecna stealing the souls, how would the PCs know if that plan was in place?
Is the DM beholden by social convention to include some foreshadowing, such that all important choices are made with (reasonably) complete knowledge of the outcomes? Is it like how the DM is encouraged to make things exciting for the PCs - less of a rule, and more just a guideline for how to make the game more fun?
My issue here is that I don't plan out the story very far in advance. I can't foreshadow that there might be a lieutenant left to carry out the evil plot, because I don't know what the players are going to do leading up to that point. Obviously, if they take out the lieutenant before moving on to the boss, that lieutenant won't be around to pick up the pieces. Or maybe they'll meet that lieutenant in town, and convince her to betray the Big Bad? Or convince her to pursue some other agenda, and abandon the Big Bad before the final fight (possibly without even knowing who the lieutenant is, but just treating her like any other random NPC).
What if there's an evil lair, and the left wing leads to a library full of incriminating documents, but the right wing heads to the actual goal for the PCs? If they go right first, and never investigate the left path, then they'll never find the information. If there's an important document - say that it's a list of people who are on the Big Bad's payroll, and the PCs can use that information to learn that the mysterious stranger at the inn is secretly working for the Big Bad - should I contrive to make that available to them?
Because that seems like Illusionism, to me. If I did that, then I'm saying that the player's choices don't matter, and I'm going to make sure they reach my chosen outcome either way. Or does that not count as a real choice that I'm subverting, because it wasn't a choice made with knowledge of the stakes?
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