What a great storytelling DM looks like

[Umbran]

Yeah I agree that it's not good labeling at all.

Also agreed here.

I think the New/Old School terms and discussion has been too strongly influenced by (of all things) advertising. Necromancer Games is a fine company, but I don't think I want our analysis shaped by the dichotomy they put forth for marketing purposes.

I prefer terms that are at least related to what is actually happening in the style. "Old School" is not descriptive of the contents of a style, while "Proactive GMing" is.

 

[Ariosto]

And while there are some GMs who do that, by and large, that's not what storytelling in RPGs is about.

That's what it's about when it's about that. I have never encountered any bitching about "evocative description" in the Dragonlance modules! It's the getting pushed around like hired hands in some director's production that irks folks who showed up expecting to play a game of AD&D.

Theme and dramatic timing, though? Yeah, those sort of take a back seat to the extent that it's not the umpire's job to play the game for the players. But then, old-style D&D is not Professional Wrasslin'.

If folks expect something more like the latter when they pay the price of admission, then you're golden.

Newer editions become more new-school specifically because people want a lean-forward storytelling style that older editions left room for, but weren't ideally designed to facilitate.

No kidding. I mean, they were about as "ideally designed to facilitate" that as Strat-O-Matic Football was, or Squad Leader, or Diplomacy. In the 1970s, we broke out a game to play a game. Want someone to tell you a story? Switch on Marlin Perkins or Rod Serling.

D&D, T&T, etc., dovetailed naturally with the temperament that gets into, e.g., making up "fan fiction". That's probably a usual component of the inducement to do the work of a Game Master. The GM role, though -- like a lot in D&D -- originated in the war-game field. The scope of the early campaigns was more like Tony Bath's Hyboria than like the constrained affairs taken for granted these days.

(I don't know when that started, but it sure seems tougher to manage a big campaign now I'm of a certain age. Maybe the change is a sign of the 'graying' of the hobby, or at least of the business?)

Anyway, I see the successive sprouting of different branches of development:

wargames+Braunstein --> RPGs --> story-telling games

... with a roughly parallel but diverging (and perhaps re-converging) evolution in the field of computer games. The line there that goes back to D&D is now a much bigger phenomenon! It is probably less a case today, especially for a newer generation of gamers, of computer games riding on D&D's coat-tails than of vice-versa.

... the convention game of his I played in at Gary Con last year had like 100 rooms spread over 6 levels ...

Just 16 or 17 rooms per level seems remarkably cramped to me. Then again, you're talking about a convention scenario.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

Just 16 or 17 rooms per level seems remarkably cramped to me. Then again, you're talking about a convention scenario.

You may be right that there were more than 17 rooms per level - I only got a quick glimpse of the map when diaglo won the auction for Tim's tournament module and let me sneak a peek. What I know for sure is that we descended down six levels, passed up a lot of doors, and spent so much time* exploring empty halls that my 3E-trained approach to playing a high-level caster (throw my ten-minute-or-more duration buffs as soon as you enter the front door) was totally invalid, much to Tim's amusement.

*In-game time, that is; out-of-game this exploration proceeded quite briskly, but just covered much more ground inbetween encounters than my experience of new-school dungeons led me to expect.

 

[Umbran]

That's what it's about when it's about that.

Which is rather circular. And "expecting to play a game of D&D" includes implicit assumptions - D&D is amazingly flexible, so there is no one well-accepted set of expectations there, and I've seen no evidence that there ever were.

Theme and dramatic timing, though? Yeah, those sort of take a back seat to the extent that it's not the umpire's job to play the game for the players.

Yes, but it is the umpire's job to impose penalties for delay of game, to use your own analogy.

Railroading is not intrinsic to using storytelling techniques and being a proactive GM, any more than high-sticking is intrinsic to hockey. Does it happen, are fouls committed? Sure. But high-sticking is not the point of the exercise, nor even a particularly effctive technique.

 

[Thunderfoot]

There is a very, very fine line between railroading and plot line. It takes years of playing to understand the difference and the how to of opening up the plot to be fluid instead of static.

I've mixing the proactive/reactive styles of DM'ing for about 25 years now. I always balk at hearing people say that having an ultimate goal is railroading... not true, railroading dictates the every movement of the players, you will go here and then go here and then go here and then do this and ta-dah, you win.... (The Dragonlance mods are infamous for this).

It's more work, true, but far more fun to know that ultimately the players will need to do something or meet someone, but drop subtle hints and then let them run around doing whatever. I've never been able to just run a game completely on the fly (it never has that "feel" I'm looking for) but I try to never say, you have to do this that or the other thing, I give the players choices and they always have the option of going "off the board" so to speak. I have had occasions where groups didn't take the bait and went other places, for me, the one aspect of the sandbox method where it doesn't exist until the players find it is just bogus (IMO), I like for the world to move on. For example I had an outline where eventually the player would meet a certain BBEG after they secured an item in order to defeat him - they caught a boat to a different land and decided to adventure there instead. Cool, I can deal with that, but when they decided to return to the land, the BBEG had found the item and secured ultimate power in that land and was ruling as a tyrant. Now they had to defeat said BBEG, but without the aid of the item - action; consequence. Proactive and reactive combined.

This method is what I find very successful, at least for me, combining the methods. I think the trick is as a player allowing a DM to learn how this done and being patient enough to reap the future benefits. I didn't get there over night to be sure, it took a long time to learn these lessons and, sure, there are some folks that are just naturals, but it can be learned/taught. And the trick for the DM is learning where you are currently and what you to do in order to get where you want to be.

But ultimately, it comes down to that perfect combination - a DM that runs the style of campaign you want to play in the way that makes it interesting to you as a player and a group of players that interacts first with each other and then with the DM in order to perpetuate campaign greatness. It's what separates the string of one shot modules into a great campaign arc without shoehorning or railroading people into a pre-determined set of actions.

 

[SkidAce]

Want someone to tell you a story? Switch on Marlin Perkins or Rod Serling.

+1 reputation for Mutual of Ohmaha's Wild Kingdom reference...

 

[Ariosto]

Which is rather circular.

Yes -- -- but circling back to the original context, namely "The Gospel of Papers&Paychecks". If you mean to dress that up as a celebration of wooden description or aimless floundering, then you do it a disservice. The Hickman Railroad and successors are in the bullseye.

Yes, but it is the umpire's job to impose penalties for delay of game

Certainly. That is no contradiction. It is rather an art to know when to apply pressure to get things moving and when simply to let players reap whatever their time-management sows.

To call that "story telling" may needlessly muddy the waters.

 

[Ariosto]

And "expecting to play a game of D&D" includes implicit assumptions - D&D is amazingly flexible, so there is no one well-accepted set of expectations there, and I've seen no evidence that there ever were.

There appear to be some false implicit assumptions on your part, as to the place of sweeping generalizations.

It's the getting pushed around like hired hands in some director's production that irks folks who showed up expecting to play a game of AD&D.

Namely me, Tom, Mike, Clayton, et al ... and, as I stated ...

I have never encountered any bitching about "evocative description" in the Dragonlance modules!

Maybe you have. I, however, was speaking whereof I know.

If people are not irked at all by the Dragonlance modules, then obviously they are not irked by the railroading. Or at least it seemed obvious to me.

Returning, however, to your contention: It appears to me to have been a well accepted expectation among AD&D players of that time -- not an eccentricity of my circle -- that their choices should shape the course of events. Indeed, I am most curious as to whence you would expect people to get the contrary expectation. To get "played by" the game would be such a radical departure from every precedent that comes to my mind, that it seems just the sort of thing to have been addressed rather prominently in, for instance, the Players Handbook.

 

[awesomeocalypse]

I've never been able to enjoy storyless games--I don't like the idea of simply being one of a bunch of dudes, just doing going around doing a bunch of stuff (either in a dungeon, or a more expansive sandbox). I've always wanted to be a protagonist, one of the main characters, whose actions are central to a real story. I like narrative tools--when the DM busts out a flashback, or cleverly foreshadows an event, I've always really enjoyed that (even though many players would see that as the height of railroading).

This is probably because I started playing with 2nd edition, which as an edition was pretty infatuated with storytelling. Which was odd, because in hindsight I don't know that as an edition it was really that well designed for storytelling in that sense--it essentially maintained a lot of the basic design of prior editions, while slapping a whole lot of flavorful but often poorly implemented rulesets on top of it in an effort to accomodate a playstyle that previous editions were never built for.

Unsurprisingly, I love 4th edition. Its perfectly constructed for the type of story-driven, highly cinematic games I most enjoy.

 

[Ariosto]

I've never been able to enjoy storyless games ...

One might find old D&D (even 2E AD&D) pretty darned frustrating from that perspective.

I don't think that was by accident, at least prior to 2E (which looks a bit like a train wreck to me, taken altogether and by itself, for reasons on which you touched).

I've always wanted to be a protagonist, one of the main characters, whose actions are central to a real story.

The basic idea in old D&D was that first one went out and dared deeds worthy of the telling. Sort of like a certain Corsican whose name otherwise would probably be obscure -- or a certain exile from Atlantis, or a more famous Cimmerian.

Or, for that matter, like attaining a victory in almost any game from Asalto to Zaxxon.

This radical difference in perspective between two "schools", as to what's a cart and what's a horse, seems to contribute to much misunderstanding.