Why we like plot: Our Job as DMs

[Doug McCrae]

CR, you prefer what you prefer and we prefer what we prefer.

I suspect the play styles are less divergent than they might appear. The internet has a tendency to exaggerate differences, to polarise opinions. Really, it's a crappy communication tool.

WotC's market survey shows that all dedicated rpgers have the same basic requirements in a game, including "Strong Characters and Exciting Story", "Requires Strategic Thinking" and "Mentally challenging". To me, this demonstrates that everyone wants a bit of game and everyone wants a bit of story. The balance obviously varies quite a bit from player to player, but less than that filthy lying whore, the internet, makes it seem.

Even in the classic modules, one can see elements of plot/story. Descent Into the Depths of the Earth is a story. Progression of bigger giants, deeper drow. Leaders such as Nosnra and Eclavdra are story climaxes. Sure the PCs' actions determine when the climax takes place, maybe it never does, but the point is - the significance of the encounter is there in the text, these encounters, as written, are more significant than a run-of-the-mill 4 hill giant scullery maids.

Likewise when Gary put Scrolls of Protection from Plants in Temple of Elemental Evil, knowing that there are plant monsters, including the BBEG Zuggtmoy. That right there is a story. Maybe the scroll is never found. Maybe the plants are never encountered. It doesn't matter. All a plot is, is a connected series of events. The scroll and the plant monsters form a plot. We don't have to wait until it comes out in play, we can see it in the text. When Gary put that scroll in - he was imagining it being used against the plants. When the reader learns that both elements exist, he also imagines it. He sees how the scroll could be used. At this point, the reader, the GM, has conceived a plot.

 

[Gentlegamer]

It's like choosing to redefine "circle" as meaning the same as "square", and then being baffled that people are not rushing to buy your four-cornered wheels.

Another, when men make a name of two names, whose significations are contradictory and inconsistent; as this name, an ‘incorporeal body,’ or, which is all one, an ‘incorporeal substance,’ and a great number more. For, whensoever any affirmation is false, the two names of which is composed put together and made one signify nothing at all. For example, if it be a false affirmation to say ‘a quadrangle is round,’ the word ‘round quadrangle’ signifies nothing, but is a mere sound. So likewise, if it be false to say that virtue can be poured, or blown up and down, the words ‘inpoured virtue,’ ‘inblown virtue,’ are as absurd and insignificant as a ‘round quadrangle.’

 

[Ariosto]

Doug, I still don't know what, if anything, does not "look like a story" to you.

The folks who insist that a lot of DM manipulation is necessary to produce "story" obviously do not believe that whatever happens to emerge in a more wide-open campaign qualifies.

I'll bet your intentions are benign, but perhaps the styles are at least divergent enough to be acknowledged on their own terms rather than whitewashed into "if we close eyes then it doesn't exist" dismissal.

Even in the classic modules, one can see elements of plot/story. Descent Into the Depths of the Earth is a story.

Most of the classic modules -- certainly that one, and indeed all of the G and D series -- were tournament rounds. An even greater majority of modules, "classic" or not, are (at least by default) limited scenarios.

Where do you get the notion that such contrivances, utterly divorced from any campaign context at all, have anything necessarily to do with a D&D campaign?

For my kind of campaign, the apparatus of a rigidly programmed scenario must be stripped away and replaced with a situation. I need a dynamic environment, not a relatively static sequence of events.

Likewise when Gary put Scrolls of Protection from Plants in Temple of Elemental Evil, knowing that there are plant monsters, including the BBEG Zuggtmoy. That right there is a story.

See, you are taking your definition so far out into left field as to make it useless. If everything is a story, nothing is a story.

I say that the scrolls are game elements. We play a game, and depending on the choices of the players and the luck of the dice events happen. Afterward, we can tell a story about what happened.

The Loyal Opposition says the scrolls are story elements -- not "a story" in themselves. There is a limited set of sequences of events (not necessarily just one) that by prior criteria constitute the story that it is the DM's job to produce. The DM eliminates the remaining non-story (or at least bad-story) possibilities to keep players on a "right" path until they arrive at a "proper" outcome.

 

[underthumb]

Nevermind. This is off topic.

 

[howandwhy99]

removed by user

 

[CharlesRyan]

The question, though, is why should the DM care if the pcs leave the path? That's why the 1e DMG had procedures for getting lost and wandering monsters.

Some time ago--maybe a year--a guy posted a thread about an event in his campaign. The players were approaching a castle. There was a drain that appeared to go into the castle. Some of the players decided to explore the drain. The party was split, the adventure was sent off the rails, and an entire session was wasted--because the drain was irrelevant.

The GM was frustrated with this outcome. He insisted that the drain was appropriate, because it fit his design for the castle. But he was frustrated because his players reacted as though it were more significant than that.

That's why GMs care about the path. Because they know, from their position behind the screen, that in one direction the game is fun, and in another direction it isn't.

Perhaps you find a session or two of exercising the getting lost rules and fighting random encounters to be fun. More power to you, and to your gaming group.

But many people do not. They would consider that wasted time, especially if there are courses of action that are more meaningful to them.

I'd like to point out that this is a simplistic example, with a slate of very simplistic solutions offered. As plot-oriented as I am, I'd like to think that I rarely create a situation where a successful game relies on the players sticking to such a prescribed course, or that I couldn't roll with the players' unexpected choice and find a way for my storyline to progress without undoing their choice.

 

[Ariosto]

I'm playing in a campaign right now that is way too linear for my taste. It's almost as if I had gone back to RPGA 4e, except it's more coherent.

"Lo, yon passage down which the MacGuffin's twail yet leads -- to fay-you hence is not foe you but foe me!" So quoth the allegedly mighty mage we third-level adventurers had just rescued. At least we did not end up twiddling our thumbs while playing audience to a Mary Sue's exploits. "Go west, young men, but wetune to my woom tonight! Then tune back east, whence ye came. Seek ye the Plot Coupon of Humbuggewee in The City beyond The Mountain, along The Wive-ah, just past The Foe-west, left at The Shwubbewee ... Ah, you can find yo-ah way, then?"

Not that this group has ever been all serious business, but I think we're spending more time on cross-talk during encounters. <cough, cough> "Oh, yeah, the game ...".

The thing is, the fight after fight may as well be a bunch of wandering monsters when they're just served up by the DM as "what's next on the program". Being reactive feels a lot more like being passive than does being proactive.

"There's not enough buy-in, then." No kidding -- but I think that's why there's not enough buy-in. Someone else wanted to do Champions, but that got shot down and I don't think "It's too complicated" was the only issue. The complication that's really interesting in a superhero shtick is not in combat but in soap opera. (IMO, YMMV)

The set pieces are fine enough, but we don't turn to D&D to be an audience. (I think one new player got stuck on the sidelines far too long in his first session.) We want to instigate, not just investigate. So we instigate a lot of silly incidental stuff that does not take us "off stage" but ends up being rather a distraction from the DM's saga.

And that's the fundamental problem: It's the DM's story.

Sheer lack of skill or poor preparation can get in the way a bit, but I think the biggest DM problem is too much egotism. That can manifest in any style, but the rub is that the DM-as-novelist style depends somewhat more on the "Author's" egotism in the first place just to be successful.

The social gathering is still enjoyable in its own right, and even if we end up having more fun playing a board game afterward -- or just in holding up the combat round with palaver -- then we've still had fun.

 

[CharlesRyan]

The sandbox-oriented GM does not think in terms of [. . .] steering the PCs (apart from ensuring that they have, or can reasonably obtain, information in order to make viable choices).

This is a good point, and it made me think a bit. I certainly don't want to think that I "steer" my players excessively, nor do I feel, in the story-oritented campaigns I've played, like I've been "steered."

I think a good story-oriented GM also doesn't think in terms of steering the PCs. He thinks more in terms of steering the world around the PCs.

I've mentioned once or twice the technique of going back to the outline between sessions, reviewing notes, and seeing how the plan needs to be tweaked (or overhauled) going forward. Doing that is not a case of saying "the players circumvented Encounter A. How can I steer them back into Encounter A?" Instead, it's a case of saying "the players are now headed for a new encounter. How can I ensure that the plot objectives served by Encounter A are now served by this new encounter?"

 

[CharlesRyan]

"To work from an outline for a game" appears to mean making things turn out a certain way.

Only if you assume "outline" is synonymous with "script."

 

[Ariosto]

That's why GMs care about the path. Because they know, from their position behind the screen, that in one direction the game is fun, and in another direction it isn't.

Well, if something is not fun, then we can choose not to spend our time at it. When the D&D game is a Hobson's choice, either the DM's prepared "adventure" or nothing, then we can still choose to spend time at the table on stuff other than the D&D game.

Certainly the most fundamental problem is one of getting everyone on the same page: communication, "social contract", all that good stuff. It may take a while -- yea, even more than a couple of sessions -- for people to digest the dynamics and come up with a good way to broach the subject. It may take longer to sort out and set up a more satisfactory arrangement.

The next most basic problem in that drain case seems to me (based on memory) not just passive but passive-aggressive reliance on the DM, counting on an entitlement that makes a mockery of the game. It might in the event have been for the best for the DM to entertain the fools by entertaining himself, even if it meant killing a few. But I suspect they would have complained about such "interesting times" as well.

That ties into the concept that "an entire session is wasted" when the players spend it actually playing the game, that only the delivery by the DM of something from a particular limited set of outcomes is worthwhile -- regardless of what course of action the players choose to pursue.

The DM's job, one might fairly say, is to entertain his players. There is this caveat: That need not mean just any players! And this: The DM is entitled to be entertained, too. If, as a player, I am not satisfied, then I am entitled to a refund of the full price of admission!

If I cannot get back my time and energy, neither can the DM -- and who has invested more?

DMs need players, and players need DMs, but it does not follow that you must be my DM or that I must play in your campaign.

Only if you assume "outline" is synonymous with "script."

It's based on the assumption that what you wrote is accurate: that the kind of foreshadowing you had in mind is impossible in Raven Crowking's game.

It's a case of saying "the players are now headed for a new encounter. How can I ensure that the plot objectives served by Encounter A are now served by this new encounter?"

That looks to me like the old "floating encounter" (sometimes a.k.a. "flying nun") routine in drag. Go north, south, east, west ... it doesn't matter! You're still going to encounter the Sole Survivor of the Sacked Nunnery, only it'll be a Sacked Monastery, Manor or Mine instead. Or the Ambush by Orcs/ Leathery Winged Avians/ Apelike Cannibals/ Mutant Nasties. Or even the [fill in blank with entry from TV Tropes].

Now, that is a great labor-saving device! In a weaker form, one might file away an encounter to draw upon whenever meeting it would be appropriate -- as the DMG suggests for parties of NPC adventurers, which could slow play considerably were one to generate them on the spot when tables consulted in play indicate them.