Why we like plot: Our Job as DMs

[Ariosto]

So, if the campaign doesn't change in the slightest depending on who plays in it and what they happen to play, how do you gain any sort of depth?

How do YOU gain any sort of depth in the real world?

 

[Raven Crowking]

I find nothing bizarre about CR's posts, and any belligerance therein seems to be reciprical.

Is it really suprising that he tried to come up with a "worst case" no-plot-elements example to counter a worst-case "plot-elements-devour-player-choice" example?

By all means, I understand that the position of having an RPG be anything other than an AP has come under a lot of fire -- from the day Gygax was booted from the TSR building onward, AFAICT. But this is, IMHO, a pendulum swinging back and forth. And, like any pendulum, it describes an arc between two sides of the same ground.

Stories arise from game play spontaneously, but they arise from game play because the GM and players have included elements that are fun to interact with. The Company of the White Hand can have a rivalry with the Group of Seven in the loosest sandbox, and what happens is a story, even if it is not foreordained.

I don't believe that CR is suggesting that what happens be foreordained, but rather that the GM consider tossing the Group of Seven into the mix. I.e., many of his "story elements" are what others would refer to as "game elements".

Now, I certainly agree that CR has mused about whether or not actual player freedom is important if the illusion of player freedom isn't tested. But, in the very post he posited the question, he also answered it in the affirmative. Player freedom is important. You are both agreeing on this point, AFAICT.



RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

How do YOU gain any sort of depth in the real world?

Doesn't matter. The question is based on a false premise (that no matter what you do, the sandbox doesn't change).


RC

 

[Ariosto]

Is it really suprising that he tried to come up with a "worst case" no-plot-elements example to counter a worst-case "plot-elements-devour-player-choice" example?

No; it is surprising that he apparently did so in the absence of said example. His demand for a special warning label was not initially directed at me; I simply did not see (and I gather neither did he) any great difference in the way I referee and the way that other person does.

He very clearly laid out that his requirement was based on our considering the game in fact a game rather than a story-telling enterprise. Story as a well-attested emergent property of the undertaking clearly did not count. To be "normal" in his view, we must lay down a structure on the same principles as a stage-play or other "fiction" in that sense -- in particular, on the principle of economy of elements. We break the rules by including people, places and things not directly related to "the plot".

Screw that. Who is that guy to dictate such "rules" for playing D&D? It's tiresome.

I'm tired of dealing with it, too, because I have experience with limited scenarios as well as with more open ones, and suspect that I might have gleaned some wisdom worth sharing.

 

[Ariosto]

Doesn't matter. The question is based on a false premise (that no matter what you do, the sandbox doesn't change).

I took that as merely infelicitous phrasing ... but considering the source, you might well be right!

My thought was that Hussar meant that the imagined world does not suddenly "morph" into conformance with each player's "character concept". From what I have read, he has a set of expectations rather more in line with a campaign of sharply limited scope and duration -- one that begins and ends with a particular set of characters and slice of their careers. Thus, his "worlds" are as essentially disposable as stage sets peculiar to a specific production (or, at the most, equivalent to a studio's back lot). The persistent world evolving over years as players and characters come and go is not his thing.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well, something is wonky here, because we're both reading the same words, but we are both getting very different content.

And I hope you don't take this is "picking on" you. I've a lot of respect for your postings in general. I just think that, in this case, you are reading the worst possible meaning, and in error in doing so. One of us isn't understanding what CharlesRyan is saying.

Of course, it could be me. (shrug) Wouldn't be the first time, or (I feel confident in saying) the last.


RC

 

[Ariosto]

(1) It is not a fictional environment; it is a game environment. That's no startling, fish-out-of-water change from the normal expectation of a board game or card game.

(2) The spooky castle is significant in some way. (It's "spooky", anyhow.) That way just does not necessarily happen to have anything to do with Chimal and Jommy's quest for the Potent Pampooties of Prehistory.

That was my response to CR's "fiction" spiel directed at The Shaman. What invidious comparison is there?

Then there was Vivyan Basterd's snark based on semantic bait and switch.

In acknowledgment of the various potential meanings of the word, I posted:

If boards set up for a Squad Leader scenario are a "fictional environment", then fine. That Stone Building on a Level 2 Hill is scary because of its LOS to ground you'll probably want to cross. Chekov's gun? That's your SU 122; it's up to you to bring it to bear, or not.

Quite simply, there are a whole lot of games -- really, the majority! -- in showing up to play which one does not expect to get told a story.

Now, if someone wants to backpedal all the way to, "Well, playing out that scenario is all the 'story telling' I really mean," then so be it. If you're not busy beating me with a thesaurus, then I have no need to disarm you, eh?

Go back and read the assertion to which I was responding. Recall that Squad Leader hit the shelves the same year as the blue-cover (Holmes) D&D rule-book. Neither one exhibits any concern with a supposed norm of expecting a game to be a "fiction" in the story-sense in which CR uses it. Like the original D&D set (but more clearly), the Holmes text simply explains how to play the game. Unlike far too many later works, it does not burden the reader with some weird definition of "role-playing", any more than Squad Leader burdens the reader with such vacuities as to "war gaming". SL does, however, start with:

SQUAD LEADER is a very detailed, and therefore very complicated* game. In fact, SQUAD LEADER is more of a game system, than a game. Having mastered this system the player will be able to simulate (or "game") any comparable scale action of WWII in Europe.

Now, the "game system" was pretty much par for the course in the miniatures hobby from which D&D emerged. The key point made in the original set was that its scope need not be limited to the medieval.

Plot, fiction, story, drama, narrative -- whatever such term you want to use -- simply did not figure. At best, it was superfluous; at worst, it would be needlessly confusing. You don't get a load of such art-school chat in Axis & Allies, do you? Just play the game, and "drama" takes care of itself!

"How many times have you played cops and robbers with friends? ... Well, when you're playing cops and robbers, you are role playing." If you feel it necessary to offer a definition, then that one from TSR's 1985 Conan game seems about as useful as it gets.

*The rules-book was all of 36 pages, a magnum opus back then! There was also a two-sided "quick reference data card" for each player, and there were 12 one-page scenarios. By comparison, the "basic" D&D book was 48 pages and Dungeon Module B1 alone was 34 pages (32 pp. plus maps).

 

[Raven Crowking]

I am not saying that the fault is completely one-sided.

But you have to allow a person to rethink and rephrase if you want to make meaningful progress in a conversation.



RC

 

[Hussar]

Ariosto actually has the right of it.

My point was that in a sandbox, such as been outlined here, the existence of in game elements are not in any way dependent on the players or the characters they create.

Whether I have a group of hack and slashers all playing FyTor and Indiana Elf, or I have a completely different group, that castle on the hill is going to be there and it's going to be spooky.

So, again, how do you gain any depth when nothing in the world is actually tied to the characters?

While Ariosto phrases it in a very negative way, I most certainly create campaigns based entirely on the players playing and the characters they create. The campaign world changes to accomodate the party. Thus, the characters are already embedded in a network of elements, relationships and backgrounds, not just with each other but with the game setting itself.

So, back to my original question, when the game setting is carved in stone and does not change in any way for the players or their characters, how do you gain any depth to play?

 

[Hussar]

RC - on your interweb shuffle.

It "how much beer can I drink while playing chess" was a game, then "the player(s) must have a goal related to the outcome of the game itself, and that the outcome of those goal(s) must be unknown".

How does this make "how much beer can I drink while playing chess" not a game? There is a goal related to the outcome of the game (amount of beer consumed) that is unknown (dependent upon the length of the game and the speed with which you can drink).

Hang on. Are you saying that "how much beer can I drink during Chess" is a game?

Earlier, you stated that it wasn't a game.

Originally Posted by RC
A player can have any goal he likes when he sits down to game. His goal can be to drink as much beer as humanly possible. However, that goal is not the goal of the game, and it matters not one whit whether his beer capacity is known or unknown when he sits down when determining whether or not he is playing a game while drinking beer.

Now, if you accept that "how much beer can I drink during chess" IS a game, then game goals can be defined by the players, rather than by the game itself. Or rather, to be perfectly pedantic, players can add goals to a given game, thus changing the game into a new game.

Which is what I've been saying all along.

Now, if we agree that player goals can define the parameters of a game, then how is what I originally talked about - a game where the player goal of exploring philosophical points - not a game?

So, to ask very directly, can player goals be added to an existing game to change a game into a new game?