Why is it a bad thing to optimise?

[S'mon]

And, since it has a reason for happening at this point in time to these people, it's plot, not setting.

A roll of "landslide" on the d% 'Mountain Random Encounters Table' is plot?

 

[Pilgrim]

A roll of "landslide" on the d% 'Mountain Random Encounters Table' is plot?

Agreed.

Plot, IMO, is the reason behind the PCs traveling to or through the mountainous region. If they're seeking the hermit living at the top of a summit, or looking for the entrance to the dwarven stronghold, those are the plot. A randomly rolled landslide on an encounters table, that is just a random encounter that in the end becomes a part of the story, but not the plot.

 

[Kobold Boots]

These are not the only two approaches to running an RPG.

1. Never said they were, but thank you for elaborating.

On your other methods, burning wheel etc.

2. Games need new gimmicks to differentiate themselves from D&D and they need to do it in a very direct way to be noted. There's no real difference in my mind between framing a scene and letting the players determine the outcome and what could happen in a sandbox or less sandbox-y game.

So while I completely understand your point and accept it at the level of granularity you're coming at it from; I was operating at a higher abstraction level for the purpose of my post.

Best,
KB

 

[Hussar]

A roll of "landslide" on the d% 'Mountain Random Encounters Table' is plot?

Yes, absolutely.

Why is that on the Mountain Random Encounter Table? Why are the PC's IN the mountains in the first place?

The mountains? Those are setting. That's where the action takes place. Several tons of falling rocks slamming in the party, killing their horses, sweeping them off the cliff face, forcing them to get lost - how is that not plot?

 

[ExploderWizard]

The Overlord of Ultimate Suffering devises a scheme to do something? That's plot. That, right there, is plot, not setting.

I know people seem to think that plot is a bad four letter word, but, that's only because people equate plot with railroad. Any time you have events in your game that occur with the idea that maybe your players will want to engage in those events, that's plot.

Plots are not bad and are kind of required if there is anyone at all in the campaign world with any goals or motivations. My point about the Overlord's plot was that it does not require the involvement of the PCs at all to remain a valid plot.

Plots only become bad things when the DM tries to use them to usurp free agency. If a plot involves "having the players visit X" or "having the players do X" from a DM/authorial standpoint then the plot belongs in a novel not a game.

 

[Hussar]

Plots are not bad and are kind of required if there is anyone at all in the campaign world with any goals or motivations. My point about the Overlord's plot was that it does not require the involvement of the PCs at all to remain a valid plot.

Plots only become bad things when the DM tries to use them to usurp free agency. If a plot involves "having the players visit X" or "having the players do X" from a DM/authorial standpoint then the plot belongs in a novel not a game.

Oh, totally agree. Although, to be fair, your first example, "Have the players visit X" isn't always such a bad thing. Often it's a fairly predictable result of play. The players choose to go to town X. It's a sandbox game and something they're likely going to need at some point (such as resurrection magic) is in town Y. Having events keyed off of them visiting town Y isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Unless, of course, the DM deliberately whacks one PC just to force them to go to town Y. But, again, it's all about degree. Having something useful in Town Y is not railroading. Nor is it really railroading to have the Macguffin in Town Y. Not necessarily. Linear yes, railroading no.

This is where I get bogged down in the whole sandbox vs railroading thing. I can railroad every bit as easily as in any other style of game. The other side of the fence from sandbox is linear, not railroad.

A linear adventure is not a railroad, any more than it is impossible to railroad in a sandbox.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Personally I dislike this approach, I don't think the DM should be designing around the precise abilities of my PC. As DM I prefer *not* to know what individual PCs are capable of. If I tailor, it's to a general encounter level, not to individual PCs. I find the game a lot more satisfying that way - the world feels more real, the challenge feels more genuine.

I think I didn't elaborate enough and you misunderstood me. I'm not saying a DM should tailor around precise abilities of the PCs necessarily. You should use whatever method you wish to set the DCs of specific tasks. You could have predetermined in your setting that deciphering that particular ancient script was a DC 30 task. When the time comes and you decide to use that script and you see that the best Arcana in the group is +10, then you should be aware that there is a 95% chance the characters will fail and be at least mentally prepared for common courses of action they may consider taking at that point.

Well, I don't run a game with a pre-written story, it's up to the players to create a story.

I have to agree with others. I think we're crossing hairs with the terms "setting" and "story." I think we'd find that our styles of play are much more similar than it seems in this discussion. You make it sound like you plop down the setting map in front of your players and ask "Now what do you do?" I'm sure you don't actually do that. I'm sure you present your players with events occurring around them and then ask "Now what do you do?"

While it seems you think others sit down with a Paizo AP and force the players to follow the tracks all the way to the end. I've run APs before and it starts much the same as I imagine your campaigns do. I present the players with what is going on around them and ask "Now what do you do?" Usually, as a group, we've already expressed interest in the AP before play began and it would be very unlikely for the players at that point to change their mind and not take the hook. But if they didn't I would let events unfold around them based on their actions.

Um, well I'd say "stuff happens" not "story happens". Factions are in conflict, various things are going on, but traditionally I'd be more likely to resolve stuff by random die roll than by pre-scripting.

My point is that "random die roll" is just as scripted as "pre-scripting." Even if you use tables from a published book or those of your own creation, you are scripting possible events in your campaign world with an element of randomness thrown in. It still boils down to the DM deciding how events unfold in his world.

It might have happened because these things just happen in that environment sometimes. No sinister intent.

I don't think anyone is implying sinister intent. I believe Hussar is merely trying to point out what I said above. That rockslide occurred because of DM input, whether planned to occur 100% of the time or as a random mountain occurance on "environmental table M." It didn't happen because the players made their own story.

Not because of the setting, because of themselves. Have you never had players undertake adventures for reasons of thier own?

For reasons of their own? Yes. But there usually has to be some thing or event or location in the seting that the party sets their sights on. Without some kind of cue from the DM, the players are in the vaccuum that Hussar mentioned.

A roll of "landslide" on the d% 'Mountain Random Encounters Table' is plot?

I wouldn't say plot. But it is story. Story only made possible by the DM choosing to use the d% 'Mountain Random Encounters Table' or another method of his choice.

 

[pemerton]

I know people seem to think that plot is a bad four letter word, but, that's only because people equate plot with railroad. Any time you have events in your game that occur with the idea that maybe your players will want to engage in those events, that's plot.

It might seem to be a minor point, but I think it is helpful to distinguish the GM's influence over situation - that is, events occurring with the idea that maybe the players will want to engage with them - and what, for lack of a better phrase, I'll call the GM's influence over plot - what happens as a result of the players' engagement with those situations.

The reason I think it is helpful to distinguish these things is not for any sort of fundamental reason to do with literary theory, but a more practical reason to do with satisfactory RPGing: where they are not distinguished, the game can have a tendency to degenerate into GM-controlled railroading (in my view 2nd ed AD&D has a lot of rules text, and many modules, that tend in this direction).

So "The PCs are struck by a landslide as they climb the Mountains of Doom" is, in this terminology, not plot, but situation. It gives rise to the question, "What do they do?" Answers might range from "Take shelter under an overhang and rope themselves together" to "Sacrifice a mule to the god of the earth in supplication!" In my experience, it is when GMs try to take control of the answer - or to thwart those groups of players who do not select the GM's preferred answer - that concerns about "pre-scripting" or railroading arise.

Furthermore, once the GM allows the players to choose how to respond to the situation, then the parameters for framing the next scene change. Perhaps the PCs no longer have a mule. Or, having roped themselves together, perhaps they are all swept down the mountainside! Another cause of railroading is GMs not being prepared to deal with the (potentially wide-ranging) consequences of player choices in engaging situations. GMs who assert control over these consequences (eg by suspending or ignoring the action resolution mechanics), in order to maintain some pre-determined sequences of situations and their parameters, give rise to concerns about pre-scripted plotting.

From my point of view, I want to ask: if the sequence of situations, and the general parameters of their outcomes, have been predetermined by the GM, then what are the players contributing to the fiction in the course of play? Not much more than a bit of colour and some details of narration ("I use my sword" or "I use my bow"), as far as I can see.

There's no real difference in my mind between framing a scene and letting the players determine the outcome and what could happen in a sandbox or less sandbox-y game.

I wonder, are you saying this based on play experience, or on the basis of theoretical speculation?

My own view and experience is that there is a significant difference between a sandbox, in which the players exercise authority over the situation, and the style of play in which the GM exercises authority over the situation. To put it crudely, in a sandbox, players have to seek out trouble for their PCs (as [MENTION=66434]ExploderWizard[/MENTION] points out with his example of the evil overlord's scheming going on independently of the PCs). In the approach that I described, the GM frames scenes so that trouble comes to the PCs.

And the tools needed by each approach are quite different. A sandbox needs world-buidling, for example - whether in the literal sense, or random tables and charts that "encode" a world (like random landslide charts). [MENTION=26473]The Shaman[/MENTION] has lots of interesting ideas about how this can be done.

Whereas the sort of approach that I am talking about doesn't need world building or random landslide charts. Whether or not a landslide takes place won't be determined by a random chart - it will occur either because the GM deliberately chooses to frame such a scene (for the reason that it will engage the players in some fashion), or as a consequence of action resolution, in which case it won't be determined by a random landslide chart, but rather by something more like failure on a skill check or skill challenge.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I wouldn't say plot. But it is story. Story only made possible by the DM choosing to use the d% 'Mountain Random Encounters Table' or another method of his choice.

It might become part of some story later but story has no meaning during the event in actual play. The PC's are not participating in a story about a rockslide, they are experiencing one.

 

[Hussar]

It might become part of some story later but story has no meaning during the event in actual play. The PC's are not participating in a story about a rockslide, they are experiencing one.

Sorry, but the PC's never experience anything. Ever. They are fictional creations.

OTOH, the players are most certainly participating in a story about a rockslide.

Unless your games have a much higher mortality rate among players, none of your players is actually experiencing a rock slide. They are pretending to experience that. And, as such, they're creating a story about a fictional character being in a landslide.

And, that landslide is still plot.

It might seem to be a minor point, but I think it is helpful to distinguish the GM's influence over situation - that is, events occurring with the idea that maybe the players will want to engage with them - and what, for lack of a better phrase, I'll call the GM's influence over plot - what happens as a result of the players' engagement with those situations.

I don't want to split things quite that far to be honest. What is a "situation" if it's not a plot? Plot is quite simply the events that occur in a story. In an RPG, the outcome of those events are not pre-determined, but, they are still events that occur in the ongoing story.

Whether the players engage with a given idea or not, it's still plot. Or, at the very least, it's not setting.

I really don't see the need to cloud the issue when plot is a perfectly serviceable word here.