What a great storytelling DM looks like

[The Shaman]

The idea that a "sandbox" and a good story are opposed to each other is, perhaps, a fallacy.

All one needs to create a good story is characters who want something and characters who will resist that.

"You must spread some Experience Points around before giving to LostSoul again."

 

[Ariosto]

Games are inherently stories.

That line demonstrates a really, really big gulf in basic premise between generations/ subcultures/ whatever.

Ignorance is bliss. If one has never played Chinese Checkers, Contract Bridge, Cosmic Encounter, Diplomacy, Junta, Rail Baron, Victory in the Pacific, etc., then the gulf may not be apparent.

Bring this "tell me a story" expectation to pretty much any old game other than "let's tell a story", though, and -- no surprise to a lot of old gamers -- one is in for disappointment.

Oh, well. I guess it's just a matter of time before a "storytelling game" is billed as the new and improved Chess. "But of course White always beats Black; that's the story!"

 

[Ariosto]

The idea that a "sandbox" and a good story are opposed to each other is, perhaps, a fallacy.

Depending on what you mean by 'sandbox', that is precisely what the "Gospel of Papers&Paychecks" says -- only without the waffling 'perhaps'.

The whole thrust of this thread, though, has been to assert just the opposite -- through the roundabout method of pretending that P&P 'really' meant any number of completely different things.

 

[Starfox]

Ignorance is bliss. If one has never played Chinese Checkers, Contract Bridge, Cosmic Encounter, Diplomacy, Junta, Rail Baron, Victory in the Pacific, etc., then the gulf may not be apparent.

Just to show how muddled the terms are:

• Cosmic Encounter is the story of the fight for interstellar domination.
• Diplomacy is the story of an alternate-history WW1.
• Diplomacy is the sad story of corruption and deceit in a banana republic.

Etc...

What I'm trying to say is not that these games are storytelling games, only that the concept "storytelling game" is so muddled that each of us can mean a different thing when we speak about it. And I think much of the conflict comes from this.

Oh, well. I guess it's just a matter of time before a "storytelling game" is billed as the new and improved Chess. "But of course White always beats Black; that's the story!"

If white always has to beat black for a game to be a storytelling game, then I am not a storytelling GM. To me, being a storytelling GM means I tell a dramatic story, not that every twist and turn is predetermined. It IS predetermined that there will be a grand conflict at the end, but not how it goes or even what kind of conflict it will be.

 

[Ariosto]

Just to show how muddled the terms are:

Well, of course they are as muddled as you decide to make them! It is generally very easy to wreck things, relative to constructive works. There is obviously no way for anyone to engage with you in a conversation to which you refuse to be a party.

However, that refusal to understand (or at least to acknowledge understanding of) a message is not the same as an absence of message. Neither does a refusal to make an effort to communicate clearly 'prove' that the attempt, if in fact made, would be futile.

There is meaning in what P&P wrote, meaning upon -- and with! -- which many other people agree.

You can disagree. However, that calls for something other than a determined effort not even to understand the proposition in the first place. To 'disagree' without knowing what it is with which one is disagreeing is really just disagreeable balderdash.

It IS predetermined that there will be a grand conflict at the end, but not how it goes or even what kind of conflict it will be.

You are drawing a fine point, methinks, for "pre-" is "pre-" regardless of degree! I can premeditate for months, or act on a moment's impulse, but in either case if I push you off a ledge then it is my choice that you should fall.

 

[Starfox]

My point is that I'd rather debate for a playstyle than defend a term. I consider myself a storytelling GM, but if Storytelling = Railroading then I am not a storyteller. That is why it can be more constructive to try and define the terms than to fight over which one of them is "best".

I guess i could come up with a definition of sandbox that is so unfun that no-one would want to associate with it, but what would be the point? It would be a definition from the outside, a wall built to keep sandboxing out. I'd rather that sandbox players themselves defined what their playstyle entails. The same goes for storytellers - as a storyteller I resent when my playstyle is defined in a way I don't want to associate with.

If you define sandboxing and I define storytelling as a list of elements that make up each subgenre, It is more than likely that my storytelling and your sandboxing has many elements in common.

 

[Ariosto]

I guess i could come up with a definition of sandbox that is so unfun that no-one would want to associate with it, but what would be the point?

As those who routinely do just that (such as a certain Messrs. J. and H.) are quite aware, it is a great rhetorical trick. As we have seen here, it can be quite successful in turning real people and real persuasions effectively into "straw men" to throw down and stomp upon at least in figurative terms.

After enough of that, some -- such as myself -- weary of it enough to stop using what was once an effective tool of language. Deprived of means with which to express thoughts, conversation gets constrained. Deprived of that commerce in ideas, thought itself gets constrained.

Fortunately, I can press into service other terms than 'sandbox' -- but it is a matter of building a new dike before a new flood of determined obscurantism tears it down and drowns potentially productive conversation yet again in mud.

 

[S'mon]

Independence Day vs. Signs.

Set aside how good or bad you think the movies are for a minute, and look at how they tell their stories. They're both about aliens coming to take over the planet, but Independence Day is plot-driven, lean-forward DMing. Aliens come, do stuff, and the PC's...er...protagonists...need to stop 'em, or Everyone Will Die Forever. Signs is character-driven, lean-back DMing. Aliens come to do stuff, but this is more about how individual PC's...er...characters...use the event in their own conflicts, than about the event itself. It doesn't demand an instant resolution.

Independence Day says "Aliens are coming! React!" There's a clear BBEG. Signs says "There's aliens out there. Tell me what you do." There's aliens, but Mel Gibson has more conflict within himself than with them.

Many thanks for this! Your comparison gives me a lot to chew on re the direction of my own campaign. I think I GM Signs a lot better than I GM Independence Day, and your analogy is giving me thoughts about how I can turn a plot-heavy linear approach into something more Sign-ish. It helps that I was thinking about an invasion plot anyway...

 

[Barastrondo]

In my experience a good sandbox referee does the same thing.

For me the real difference is, who comes up with the 'plot' (by which I mean the sequence of events that play out over the course of the game)? Does the referee develop a sequence of events that adventurers are expected to follow (and no, I don't think this is inherently demands railroading or strong coercion of the adventurers to achieve), or does it arise as a consequence of the players' choices for their characters as a response to those larger somethings-going-on?

Little of both, sometimes. I tend to start some plots running, and see which ones the players are likely to meddle in. If they ignore a given plot, it will probably affect things later on. However, I'm careful not to have a plot that nobody's interested in turn out to mean Very Bad Things if they ignore them. In my experience, players don't particularly enjoy being punished for pursuing the plots they're more interested in by having to go back to the plots they're not, now with higher stakes. So to some extent there's story guidance rather than strong simulation, because I do want the players to pick the style of adversity they enjoy most, and scale that up accordingly.

(I am also not above the old trick of, when the players become excited about a plotline and visualize it as more far-reaching and dangerous than I had originally planned, quietly stepping it up to meet their expectations. Villains modify their plans as the players get involved, or maybe their ambitions were cleverly hid even from me! Sometimes a mountain can turn out to be a molehill, but I also think it's best to avoid players ending up disappointed that something is less exciting than they'd hoped.)

The setting I'm working on is rife with conflicts, from the machinations of powerful nations to the intrigues of courtiers and criminals and cavaliers, pretenders and prelates and pirates. Yet I have no particular plot for the adventurers to follow, only a world where lots of stuff is going on at many different scales, stuff which the player characters may attempt to influence or may, as a consequence of the players' decisions, sweep up the adventurers in turn.

Very neat work! How would you frame an opening play session in this setting? I'm curious about the ideal new player experience you'd have in mind. (In an entirely positive way, mind; don't let the featureless tone of text misconstrue this question as some sort of challenge.)

 

[I'm A Banana]

Bring this "tell me a story" expectation to pretty much any old game other than "let's tell a story", though, and -- no surprise to a lot of old gamers -- one is in for disappointment.

Oh, well. I guess it's just a matter of time before a "storytelling game" is billed as the new and improved Chess. "But of course White always beats Black; that's the story!"

Well, the maxim was "all games are stories," not "tell me a story."

The games = stories thing is just down to the definition. Games resolve conflict. Stories also resolve conflict. The difference lies mostly in that games are meant to involve the audience and risk failure, while stories are meant to be passive, told things, where the only risk is the sympathy you feel for the characters. D&D games are stories, too, just like a football game, a game of monopoly, or a game of poker. It's just a matter of what drives the action.

And that doesn't have much to do with success or failure. Stories have the White failing pretty requently, and, in order to be a game, you need to have that chance for failure (FFZ actually does its best to risk TPK in every encounter, and explicitly recommends meaningful failure as an option in every encounter).

The difference is mostly between character-focused action, and plot-focused action. In one, the conflict comes to get ya, in the other, the characters choose to go to the conflict (or not, dealing with other conflicts).

Many thanks for this! Your comparison gives me a lot to chew on re the direction of my own campaign. I think I GM Signs a lot better than I GM Independence Day, and your analogy is giving me thoughts about how I can turn a plot-heavy linear approach into something more Sign-ish. It helps that I was thinking about an invasion plot anyway...

Glad ya like it! Seriously, next time you're in a big-box book retailer, check out their writing sections (usually next to the test prep, past the sciences). There's a lot of good DMing advice encapsulated already in writing advice, and a lot of the more recent books even give nods to "interactive fiction" and the like, given the rise of videogames in the last decade or so.

I'm more of an Independence Day kind of GM, so I try harder to sit back and let my players take over, without bombarding them with some sort of Michael Bay explosion or something.