Why we like plot: Our Job as DMs

[Raven Crowking]

Okay, I think I understand your intent now, and I can see how most of your points are still consistent with your stated preferences.

Yeah. I tried to be clear in the first post, but was perhaps not as successful as I would prefer.

For players, how does this feel any different than the aforesaid example of walking off a railroaded path into a forest and being told that there's essentially nothing there?

Well, in the example as given, there is literally nothing in the sewer but a straight tunnel and some muck. There are not a lot of decision points to gloss over.

In a forest, there are going to be decision points that prevent the same easy level of glossing, but one can still gloss a little:

Player: We head off the trail, going north.

DM: What are you trying to do? Do you head north for a bit and turn, head north for an hour? A day?

Player: We'll head north until nightfall, unless something happens first.

DM: Okay. You head generally north through an area of rolling pine country. Occasional boulders and small rocky outcrops break from the ground -- some of these are so large that you must find a way around them -- and there is an undergrowth of thick bracken. The forest seems quiet, but there are a few birds and squirrels about......

Player: Hold on. What kind of birds? What kind of squirrels? I remember the black squirrels from the 1e Monster Manual 2!

DM: Red squirrels mostly. This is pine country, remember! The birds are mostly nondescript....small and brown. Wrens, maybe, or sparrows. There are a few more colourful birds. You see a crow or two, and it sometimes seems as though the crows might be watching you as well.

Player: I don't like these crows. They may be familiars!

DM: True, but the ranger and barbarian know well how crows sometimes follow folks hoping for carrion.

Player: Okay. But we'll keep an eye on them.

DM (rolls for wandering encounter): The rest of the march goes uneventfully enough, and a sliver of a moon rises in the sky well before the sun sets. (The DM rolls for wandering encounters, and discovers a monster lurking nearby -- two dozen orcs!) There is a smell of wood smoke on the area, and up ahead to your right, maybe 30 yards away, more or less, you can hear voices raised in boisterous song. From the sounds of them, they're goblins of some kind.

etc.​

The very perfunctory treatment of the area by the GM begs for metagaming on the part of the players and can feel like active restriction. It might even inspire player stubbornness. IIRC, that is what happened in the famous drain example: the drain was objectively difficult to bypass, and this just resulted in more player effort.

Well, to be fair, if there was a secret door down there, and nothing else, I would treat it the same way. So, there's your consistency. In both cases, I would roll a couple of dice behind the screen. With a secret door, to see if they found it, without, to ensure that they weren't completely sure.

I would also be very happy to elaborate on anything the players found interesting. Perhaps by opening the grate at the far end, and securing a rope, the PCs can have a sneaky getaway planned! It isn't my job to tell them what they find interesting!

If the players decided for sure there was a secret door down there, and wanted to look more thoroughly, I would ask "How much time do you want to spend doing that?", make any appropriate checks, and move the game along.

If they wanted me to describe the passage foot-by-foot, I would do that.

What I would not do is describe the passage foot-by-foot if the players didn't insist upon it. Any more than I would describe chewing food mastication by mastication at the inn, or force the players to haggle when buying equipment if they are willing to pay the asking price.


RC

 

[The Shaman]

I would also be very happy to elaborate on anything the players found interesting. Perhaps by opening the grate at the far end, and securing a rope, the PCs can have a sneaky getaway planned! It isn't my job to tell them what they find interesting!

That was what I was thinking as I read the example: how can my character use this in the future? Do I need someplace to hide? Can I lure something in there and trap it? Will it work as a supply cache?

I'm always looking for novel ways to use the environment.

 

[Ariosto]

And maybe explain why pointing at this "instructed method" isn't a case of One True Wayism?

Because I have pointed at it either and only:
(A) to point out that the One True Wayers are absurdly insisting that I must bow to rules not in fact included in the "rule book" of the game I am playing, nor intended by the designers; or
(B) because the text at which I point explains (helps explain) the method most clearly, for the sake of those who do not understand how I play; or
(C) to point out that the actual True Way of old D&D is to make YOUR game however YOU like it, and to ask folks simply to refrain from bashing me for making MY game as I like it.

Even though the seminal works has such advice in it, how does that invalidate other advice given by many other RPG authors over the 30+ years following that original advice?

I don't see that it does, except where logically it must. The advice is probably best when it comes to playing those designers' own games as the designers intended. Designers, as much as anyone else, can also acquire expertise in playing games others have designed: Gary Gygax has a lot of sound advice on playing Rail Baron. (I'm not sure he ever even placed in a D&D Invitational tournament, but he knows his own design intent better than anyone else.) However, I would not consider him more an expert on HeroQuest than Robin Laws!

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Fair enough. I may be suffering from the same missing tone and intent in your posts. I appreciate the greater elucidation.

I'm interested to learn how much your style does or doesn't diverge from others here. You mentioned setting up a situation for your players to react to. Can you explain further and/or give an example?

 

[Ariosto]

I'm not about to try to find and read through that old thread again, but I don't think the exploration of the drain took more than half an hour in real time, however much imaginary time it supposedly occupied.

The real-time-consumer, if I recall correctly, was that the players split the party and the other bunch got into a fight. This was WotC-D&D, I'm pretty sure, and 20 minutes real is considered fast for what probably lasts less than a minute imaginary. That "event horizon" holds even if you've got a second DM, unless the drain boys are Time Lords.

You can't absolutely prevent players from doing dumb things unless you take away their ability to decide what their characters try to do.

Whether or not it was "the problem" here, it is indeed easy for the DM to give players wrong impressions about the environment they are exploring. In this case, I'm pretty sure the players who went up the drain were just pulling expectations from their asses along with rope.

The rest of the party thought it a fool's errand, and voted with their feet. Was that perhaps more sensible considering the information at hand? If so, then why blame the DM for the other players' choice? Why blame the DM for the choice to split the party further? I can see -- but not necessarily agree with -- blaming the DM for even giving the rest of the party an opportunity to get into a fight, and the drain boys none.

In the "game" style, that's how it goes. In Contract Bridge, The Russian Campaign or Snits' Revenge, I reap what I sow. I expect no less in Dungeons & Dragons.

Now, sometimes people get stuck in a mental rut about "rules", and maybe some games make that easier. I'm thinking of a DM whose party was crossing the equivalent of Russia while being harried by native irregular horsemen. Assuming they survived, it was going to be a really long trip -- and a repetitious one. That DM needed a reminder that it need not take a lot of real time to get through those imaginary weeks, which would be boring.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The WotC-D&D combat speed is the #1 thing that got me off the habit.

I am really enjoying the faster combats of RCFG......And any retro-clone will give you (much) faster combats than WotC-D&D with a lot less complexity than RCFG combats.

If a group chooses to use a slow-as-molasses engine, that isn't the GM's fault. I file this directly under "System Matters".


RC

 

[Ariosto]

You mentioned setting up a situation for your players to react to. Can you explain further and/or give an example?

How about the real world, for a start? When Hussar, for instance, goes off on his strange vectors, part of what makes them so strange is the seeming dismissal of real life as "lacking depth", or whatever. That could, of course, reflect a religious world-view, but even in such a case I think it unusual.

Of course the game-world is not the real world, but I do not think it should be too hard to see the difference between taking the real world as a model and taking Walt Disney World as a model. Even in fantastic fiction, there is a perceptible difference in quality between Howard's Hyborian world, which seems indeed to have weathered ages since the sinking of Atlantis, and the landscape John Jakes provides for Brak, which has all the solidity of a painted canvas backdrop erected just in time for the latest scene.

Such questions of verisimilitude aside, by "situation" I meant a state of affairs that simply is as it is and shall be as it shall be in accordance with cause and effect -- whatever relevant effect (including none) the players may cause. By "scenario", I meant in this case for instance the common "dungeon module" default: a mise en scène locked in stasis until such time as players arrive, upon which the place and inhabitants suddenly lurch into clockwork motion.

Ah, but is it not a waste of effort -- even if made practical in the first place, say by computer program -- to simulate continuously events in every acre of Secondary Creation as a sort of solitaire game, just on the chance that someday a player might pass through? Yes, indeed; that is certainly not what I do.

However, there is a long way between those extremes!

Suppose I were to set down the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief in my world. Is there really any reason I must, or even should, "run the adventure" as if I were a DM in the Official D&D Tournament back whenever? I see none. The context is totally different, most significantly that the Steading is now part of my campaign.

I treat it as a place with inhabitants pursuing their own objectives. Do they "have plots" in that sense? Yes. Can I "plot" the probable course of events based on what I know of them and other NPCs, and of other processes I have set in motion, hypothetically assuming that players' actions do not interfere? Yes, although I am likely to incorporate probabilistic elements that call for periodic checks (standing in for the mass of cumulative little uncertainties that Von Clausewitz called "friction" and some others call "chaos").

That, however, is the limit of my "plot" creation. The players naturally have "plots" of their own, in the same sense as the hill giants and their allies. I am not interested in determining the outcomes of the intersections of those plots; the choices of players, the luck of the dice and the rules of the game shall do so in due time in actual play. My only concern is to referee the process fairly.

Whatever happens is "the story" we shall discover, and the grist for the mill that shall produce however many stories we will tell when we, "Remember that time when ...".

 

[Ariosto]

What is the point of "letting things stand" even though an arbitrary change could (so one might imagine) make a particular thing at a particular moment seem more exciting -- which in such speculation usually means more "successful" in terms of immediate player goals -- and in that sense more "fun"?

The point is to let the players actually play, not simply "get played". A baby may delight in the illusion of "playing" a video game when in fact the machine is flashing "Insert Coin" and running on automatic. An older child may feel emotions associated with victory and defeat while "playing" Chutes and Ladders -- just as an adult may when gambling on the output of a slot machine or Pachinko or lottery ticket.

For some people, such an illusion is enough in a session of D&D, and they willingly suspend disbelief in the DM's disinterest at least until it's time to complain that he or she was not biased enough in their favor.

Might we sometimes make reasonable arguments that the choice of Door #2 was too arbitrary for want of adequate information? Certainly, taking into account any reasonable opportunities for investigation that the players passed up. Maybe the consequence was too harsh? Maybe, but what if another group -- that took a "common sense" precaution -- was barely inconvenienced?

What is unreasonable, if one really is at all interested in playing a game, is to demand that options should be so close to equally satisfying as to make choice trivial.

The more a DM "fudges" in secret, whether "for" or "against" the PCs, the sooner he or she is likely to get caught. If it's all in the open, then of course the players know and (to the extent they trust the DM not also to have done some on the sly) there is at least no question after the fact as to whether this or that particular "little" thing was due to the DM's interference.

What remains in doubt is how things might have gone without that interference -- including the bigger things that from small things someday come. Are the players' victories really their own? What of their losses?

The answer often comes quickly enough when they find themselves in a game without such a "nanny" DM, a game that instead tests their skills.

The DM can get into a Catch-22. "But if you don't change that roll, then my character is dead, and it's only because you wanted to kill my character! You're mean!" The DM who has not yet so changed a roll can honestly deny the desire while enforcing the outcome impartially.

The DM who gives in and so "saves" a character ensures that the accusation will indeed be valid whenever he or she fails to do so and allows a PC to perish.

So it is with letting players spend as much (or as little) time as they choose in poking about here or there. "No secret doors in those walls, either. What will you do now?" "How much longer do want to go down this passage? Okay ... you still have encountered nothing of interest when you stop for your next rest break."

 

[underthumb]

The more a DM "fudges" in secret, whether "for" or "against" the PCs, the sooner he or she is likely to get caught.

-snip-

What remains in doubt is how things might have gone without that interference -- including the bigger things that from small things someday come. Are the players' victories really their own? What of their losses?

The answer often comes quickly enough when they find themselves in a game without such a "nanny" DM, a game that instead tests their skills.

I think we all agree that "fudging" can negate the significance of player actions. But let's walk this reasoning back a bit.

Let's say, for instance, that I, as a GM, create an encounter with 6 orcs in it. However, let's also say that in doing so, I make a kind of error. It's not that I get the math "wrong" in some simple sense, but rather that I forget that certain weapons are capable of this or that action, and orcs have this or that power, and that these things, in combination, create an encounter that is far more deadly than my original intent. I only realize this when my PCs start dropping fast. (Who knows, maybe I made this encounter under time pressure or lack of sleep.)

So here's my question for you, Ariosto. Let's say I agree with your perspective on things and I want to avoid being a "nanny" GM. Are the orcs as I originally created them sacrosanct, players be damned? Is it time for a TPK? Or do I fudge things in the middle of the encounter when I realize the error I made originally?

I think my larger point is this: it's all well and good to advocate against fudging in the abstract, but it seems to assume little or no error on the part of the GM, both in preparation and in actual play.

 

[Ariosto]

I forget that certain weapons are capable of this or that action, and orcs have this or that power, and that these things, in combination, create an encounter that is far more deadly than my original intent.

Did the players forget? Did they know in the first place? On what basis are they choosing to risk such such an encounter, and how to respond in the event?

If you, the DM, really don't know your own creation, then how do the players? "I know this dungeon like the back of my -- say, when did I get that freckle?"

But seriously, folks, the great thing about getting old and overdrawn in the memory bank is the opportunities for surprise and discovery. If you're playing with friends, then I think you should be able to work it out. "Oh, yeah -- you would have noticed that heavy blaster cupola when you first looked. Belay that, then!"

Don't ask me a loaded rhetorical question like that, daring me to knock some chip off your shoulder. It's your game, and I'm not in it! I'll bet your friends will respond better if you handle the situation with some maturity and common sense, too.

If you're playing with a pack of rabid rules lawyers, then ... I'm sorry. But it's not even in my power to "fudge" that choice for you!