Keeping the sense of wonder alive

[Merkuri]

I admit to being one of those jaded players in whom a DM might find a hard time evoking a sense of wonder. I want to experience it, but I've just seen too much. I've read fantasy books out the wazoo and have been playing D&D for years. Very little is new to me.

The trick in getting me to experience that sense of wonder is to make something truly unique and unexpected within the setting. If I play in your campaign and I find out that dragons have long been extinct and this fact is reinforced time and time again through NPCs, books, dungeon wall pictures, etc (without making me feel like you're whacking me over the head with it) then I will be suitably in awe should we come upon a living dragon.

This cannot be pulled off in the short term. I need to be drawn into your setting over multiple sessions and probably months of real-world time. The reality of your setting needs to fully sink in for me. I need to have fully bought into it. Then you need to turn it on its head.

The Song of Ice and Fire books are a good example of the last time I felt a sense of wonder at "normal" fantasy stuff. The author spends a very long time crafting his world that seems on the surface to be a fairly non-magical, grimy, pseudo-medieval realm, then once you've grokked the reality of the setting at the end of the first book he produces a thing that would be old-hat in many fantasy books, but is truly a thing of wonder in Westeros.

For me to have a sense of wonder you need to give me a sense of the mundane, first.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Also, don't use published scenarios, especially not the classics, they're far too well known. And create your own world.

I'm not sure I've had a true sensawunda moment in D&D since my first few sessions. D&D is particularly bad for sensawunda because there are so many published monsters, magic items, etc, that DMs are expected to, and do, use them. If you didn't use any of them at all the players could legitimately complain it's not D&D. Many players probably don't even want sensawunda. They hate new things. They hate the unknown. They like the familiarity of the 'good old monsters'. And they like the power that knowledge brings. This is not a new problem.

In one campaign I knew the DM was using MM3 a lot so I never got that book, or looked up the monsters, and that helped sensawunda somewhat. The greatest sense of anticipation and excitement I think I've ever had in an rpg was in a superhero game when my PC was on the roof of a warehouse, just about to engage a supervillain team inside. The GM was very good so I knew his supervillain creations would be good stuff, but as a player knew nothing about them at that point. I feel that supervillain teams are about as good as it gets in terms of opposition in a rpg. So damn colorful and interesting. And unknown.

Make up monsters like they are a supervillain team. All individuals, all freaky powers, all unknown.

Classed NPCs kind of suck too, particularly in old school D&D. All clerics are pretty much the same, for example, as are all fighters and thieves. This was one of the criticisms of the original ToEE, that the clerics didn't have any elemental powers, they were just standard book clerics.

The other time I really had sensawunda strong was in a homebrew rpg called the dream game, run by Paul Mackintosh, one of the best, and certainly the most workaholic, GMs I've ever had. Everything was an unknown in that campaign. We were fighting beings that invaded dreams and after 20 sessions or so, we still had no idea what they were - demons, spirits? - or where they came from. They were pretty damned unforthcoming with information. That has to be the pinnacle for my experience of sensawunda. In the dream game even the way dreams and dream intrusions (this was long before Inception) worked was something we gradually learned, and had many competing theories about.

You couldn't do that in D&D, the rules are all known. It's the crappiest game for sensawunda there is.

 

[Doug McCrae]

My most sensawunda-puncturing moment was in a Call of Cthulhu game (which started out as Over The Edge but that's irrelevant) where one of the players kept talking about the monsters and their stats. If that kind of thing is bad in D&D, it's fatal in horror.

Cthulhu Keepers! Never, ever, ever use the monsters from the book. Horror requires that the opposition be unknown. Make up your own. In fact personally I think Cthulhu is better if you don't use the Cthulhu Mythos at all.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Not when you're describing the fifteenth flying mountain that the player has seen over the years.

God, yeah, bits of rock that float in the air are so cliche atm. They were played out even before Avatar.

<- Jaded

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Everybody just wants to get on with the adventure and not have to be burdened by minutia.

What do you do, as a GM or as a player, to keep the sense of wonder alive? What do you do to strike awe in the hearts and minds of your players when you confront them with things that are "ordinary" aspects of fantastic game worlds but which are clearly not of the world that we know?

Your first sentence in the quote above? That's kind of the answer. Everybody just wants to get on with things.

As a GM, I don't think it's my "job", nor my responsibility, to "keep the sense of wonder alive". My job is to help the players craft an interesting story featuring their characters.

If you think about it, a lot of the "sense of wonder" sorts of stuff stem from the fact that the player has never encountered [whatever] before. So for example, a new setting. If the setting itself has a number of premises that the player hasn't come across, or integrates certain mechanical aspects of the rules into the setting in a clever fashion, then the player may (it's not guaranteed) have a sense of wonder. It'll last as long as it takes for the player to feel they've "mastered" the setting and then it's business as usual.

And of course, once a person has been exposed to the idea, it's in the back of their mind and they'll fall back on it once they see that idea pop up again, even if it's in a different context/setting/rule system/whatever.

This is one reason why some games can struggle for a GM/player/group. "Oh man, we totally had this awesome campaign that lasted for a couple of years. But when I [played/ran] it [the setting/the game] a couple of years later, it completely fell flat. What's wrong?" is something I've seen a number of times over the years. One of the answers that usually doesn't occur to people is, "The second time around it wasn't new to you." Never played Earthdawn before? You're mastering a new system and being introduced to a whole new setting (and maybe grooving on some links between it and Shadowrun). After a couple of years, you've moved beyond the "show the players the world and have cool things happen as they see new parts" and you're back to the usual, "What sort of adventure do I ran for them now?" that happens in many settings.

Horror rpgs have this problem. It's why so many GMs do the whole "try to scare the player" thing, which I personally consider completely unacceptable. But GMs want to try and have "fear" and "dread" and "horror" in a so-called horror rpg, so they resort to tricks to try and invoke those emotions in the player.

I don't consider it the GM's job, responsibility, or right to try and manipulate their players emotionally. If you present a story and the players _engage_ with that story and emotions connect? Groovy. That's fine. It's fine because the _player_ has made the choice to engage and their reaction is a product of their engagement and choice.

Sense of wonder is just like a drug or a lot of other stuff. First hit, awesome. Next several hits are probably going to be pretty good too. As time goes on though, the law of diminishing returns sets in.

Or hey, it's like falling in love and being in a relationship. When it first hits, it's awesome. As time goes on though, that "falling in love" thing goes away (not _being_ in love, but that initial "falling in" stage) and you're confronted with the reality of the work to maintain a relationship.

Personally, I'd say take a breath and step back a bit. Figure out _why_ you're running a game in the first place. If you're a frustrated novelist, make sure that the players you've got are actually interested in being the ... guided?... characters of your story. If you want to explore a cool new setting, then make sure the players you've got want to actually play the "explore the world" game and aren't just looking for something to beat the stuffing out of.

If you're dealing with non-gamers that are starting to dip their feet in playing rpgs for the first time, figure out _why_ they're there in the first place. Chances are that they've shown up with some sort of idea of rpgs being an "interactive story" or "collaborative story" of some sort. The critical information to find out is "what kind of story are they looking for/expecting". Know what kinds of movies/books they enjoy is pretty critical, because they're going to have that in the back of their mind for what they expect out of rpgs.

The thing is, a lot of folks expect to be the _active_ focus of the game. They might be shy in terms of how they speak up in the game or whatever, but that doesn't mean they're expecting to be lead around by the nose. New players are frequently just trying to figure out how to _do_ what they want to do.

I really can't stress this enough: make sure that _your_ idea as a GM (of what the game is about and what the point of playing/running it is) matches up with the player's ideas of what's going on and why. I've known a fair number of people turned off to rpgs because they wanted to do some of the cool actiony stuff they've seen in the movies (like Indiana Jones) only to be introduced to rpgs by a long-time GM that wanted to train them in the way that rpgs are "supposed" to be played. And it killed the newbie's interest right there.

Note: Obviously, all this is my opinion. Feel free to disagree with it if you wish, that's part of being a GM. I'll also admit that my ideas aren't necessarily "commonly accepted" or anything like that either.

 

[S'mon]

And your players don't do this? Really? QUOTE]

No. No they don't. Why would they set aside a Sunday afternoon and travel an hour to the game, just to do that? And why would the GM tolerate it?
IME, after a bit of settling-in time and chat before the game, the players focus entirely on the game for 4-5 hours, with no goofing off. That's equally true both for old friends and people I've just met. It's true for 18 year olds and 45 year olds. It's true whether I've played at my/another's house or in the pub. Over 26+ years playing RPGs I've never experienced what you describe.

 

[Kerranin]

I just started running Wednesday Encounters at my FLGS, and 2 of my 6 players are new to tabletop rpgs, with three of the others new to 4E/4EE.

They are like auto mechanics under the hood of the game. I'm cool with it. It's a public game to introduce people to the hobby, and I'm not going to tell them that they're doing it wrong.

When I started playing D&D (in the days of yore) I just told my DM what I wanted to do in the encounter, and he applied the rules and told me what dice to roll, until I learned how to translate these things on my own. If a 4E player tells me they want to stab the monster with their dagger, there are multiple options that may have varying degrees of tactical soundness. I'm not saying those options should be removed, but I think that the more robust the ruleset becomes the more difficult it is for the DM to "hide" the engine.

Like it or loathe it, 4e is designed to hand-off a large portion of DM interpretation to the players. Giving a tighter set of rules means that players often don't have to ask the DM.

 

[S'mon]

And your players don't do this? Really? QUOTE]

No. No they don't. Why would they set aside a Sunday afternoon and travel an hour to the game, just to do that? And why would the GM tolerate it?
IME, after a bit of settling-in time and chat before the game, the players focus entirely on the game for 4-5 hours, with no goofing off. That's equally true both for old friends and people I've just met. It's true for 18 year olds and 45 year olds. It's true whether I've played at my/another's house or in the pub. Over 26+ years playing RPGs I've never experienced what you describe. While I'm sure it's happened, the only person I can even recall answering their phone in the game is me a couple times, in case it was an emergency with my young son. I've used jokes in games as part of the game - "My name is Inigo Minotaur..." - but I've certainly never seen anyone deliberately interrupt an intense/wondrous moment with an inappropriate OOC joke.

 

[S'mon]

For me to have a sense of wonder you need to give me a sense of the mundane, first.

I agree - the GM needs to give players a sense of what is mundane and routine within the setting, and what is rare and wondrous within the setting.
There needs to be mundanity, whatever that means in the context of the setting, or there can be no wonder.

Eg: In Star Trek, giant interstellar spaceships are mundane. Time travel and god-beings are wondrous. Human-like aliens are mundane; intelligent non-humanoid aliens are wondrous. In a different sf setting the reverse might be true.

The usual way to accomplish this in D&D is to establish a baseline quasi-medieval society in the Gygaxian mold, with most magic and monsters lying beyond the threshold of adventure. But you can also have a setting where certain magic and monsters are part of the baseline, commonly encountered by and accepted by the populace. In that case it's deviations from the baseline that can evoke SOW.

 

[S'mon]

One thing - I find it much easier to evoke SOW in an online text-chat game, where I can take more time to be descriptive, but I think the same tactics can work in tabletop.

One thing I do is take standard game elements and describe them the way the PC would experience them. So the first time the PCs meet an Orc (note use of capital), it's a hideous, pig-faced, foul-smelling abomination. A charm person spell is Magic that Controls the Minds of Men. Present the world as wondrous from the perspective of the PCs.

Of course if the PCs have encountered umpteen flying mountains, then flying mountains are mundane to them and should be presented as such.