Choose the Illusion: Dungeon Mastering

[pemerton]

I know that I don't enjoy pre-plotted games, even with a pretty good GM. I know this because I just played in one for several months, about 6 sessions, but eventually I couldn't take it any more. I tolerated it in the opening 'intro' adventure, but when we got to the point where things should logically have opened up, yet we kept chugging along the rails, I couldn't take it anymore.

Was this the "Sellswords of Punjar"(?) game that you mentioned earlier this year, where (in a post on these boards) you reached the conclusion that perhaps all you were getting to do as a player was add colour?

 

[S'mon]

Was this the "Sellswords of Punjar"(?) game that you mentioned earlier this year, where (in a post on these boards) you reached the conclusion that perhaps all you were getting to do as a player was add colour?

No, it was War of the Dead, a zombie apocalypse campaign for Savage Worlds. Sellswords of Punjar is a pretty good intro adventure, and the GM did a nice job making it more dynamic. Unfortunately the sequel, Scions of Punjar, was pants, and we eventually dropped that campaign.

Where the Punjar Saga is Dungeon A - Dungeon B - Dungeon C, War of the Dead felt railroaded down to the individual scene level. Also, Adventure Paths have the premise "You will play adventure A, then B, then C", which allows for player buy-in, but War of the Dead doesn't have that - the premise is very open - you're survivors of a zombie apocalypse - and there are a million different potential ways you might try to survive a zombie apocalypse. But the campaign only allows for one track. There are all sorts of ways it could have been constructed differently to allow for player buy-in, eg PCs could have been created as being local to a particular community with an investment in defending it through the campaign, and the understanding that that was the campaign goal. Instead I just felt interminably pushed around by the plot.

 

[Fanaelialae]

No, it was War of the Dead, a zombie apocalypse campaign for Savage Worlds. Sellswords of Punjar is a pretty good intro adventure, and the GM did a nice job making it more dynamic. Unfortunately the sequel, Scions of Punjar, was pants, and we eventually dropped that campaign.

Where the Punjar Saga is Dungeon A - Dungeon B - Dungeon C, War of the Dead felt railroaded down to the individual scene level. Also, Adventure Paths have the premise "You will play adventure A, then B, then C", which allows for player buy-in, but War of the Dead doesn't have that - the premise is very open - you're survivors of a zombie apocalypse - and there are a million different potential ways you might try to survive a zombie apocalypse. But the campaign only allows for one track. There are all sorts of ways it could have been constructed differently to allow for player buy-in, eg PCs could have been created as being local to a particular community with an investment in defending it through the campaign, and the understanding that that was the campaign goal. Instead I just felt interminably pushed around by the plot.

To me that just sounds like a subpar game (FWIW though, I'm unfamiliar with War of the Dead). In a good story game (IMO), the players ought to have plenty of input. While certain events are "destined to be" by necessity in this style, many ought to be quite mutable, especially if a player has an awesome idea that makes for an even better story (the best possible story is the goal of this style, after all). The players should feel like the shining stars of the show, not sailboats perpetually pushed about upon the stage of a stormy sea.

Put another way, that doesn't sound like something I'd enjoy, despite that I like a good story game. You can build a railroad without chaining your players to the one train of your choosing. The problem becomes more acute the less collaborative the storytelling is. Sucky story games arise most often (again, IMO) when the DM decides that the story game is going to be "my" story instead of "our" story. (In this instance it sounds more like it's "this" story rather than "our" story, but same difference.)

 

[Hussar]

IMO: Story and 'plot' are fine when they're dynamically generated in play, visible only in hindsight. However, attempts to create a specific story & 'plot' by the GM or adventure author pre-game tend IMO to be highly deleterious to the play experience for any but the most passive players. The nadir of this approach was in the 1990s, with worst of all being the published 'metaplot' - plot centred on official NPCs, with no possible player input! But it still casts a long shadow over today's gaming. So you get people like me who are a bit touchy about terminology.

Edit: I remember doing some terrible railroady campaigns in the mid '90s. They were disastrous, and led to me leaving the tabletop hobby for about five years. I still see a lot of DMs who see it as their role to provide a 'story' for the PCs to play through. As an approach, it sucks.

But, the DM always has to have some idea of a "specific story & plot" in order to prepare something for tonight's session. You know that the players want to organize the barbarians, so you prepare situations in which this can be brought about.

Granted, it's easily possible to fail to organize the barbarians - that would also be part of the matrix. But, "abandon all efforts and go and be pirates" probably wouldn't need to be part of the matrix unless your group is very fickle.

Even a straight up dungeon crawl is exactly a "specific story & plot". Well, I suppose for a given value of specific.

The term I think you're looking for here is a proscriptive story and plot where player choices are immaterial. However, I still think that it's people's pre-conceptions that are getting in the way here. The fact that Jameson Courage feels the need to start playing dueling dictionaries proves that.

Can "Collaborative storytelling" be defined in a narrow way which leads to railroad campaigns? Sure. But, that's no different than saying that a sandbox must be defined as a rowboat campaign where the players simply have no direction or focus, ever and row around in circles accomplishing nothing. That is a definition of sandbox, but not a very good one.

Collaborative storytelling means exactly what it says on the box - a group of people coming together in order to create some sort of narrative. Which is exactly what we all do when we play an RPG. That might not be the goal of the players, but, it's still what you do. Catch a ball is not really the goal of a baseball team playing baseball. But, it would be pretty difficult to play baseball without doing it.

 

[pemerton]

Collaborative storytelling means exactly what it says on the box - a group of people coming together in order to create some sort of narrative. Which is exactly what we all do when we play an RPG. That might not be the goal of the players, but, it's still what you do.

OK - if "collaborative" means something like "resulting from a collaborative endeavour" rather than "the goal of a collaborative endeavour".

But what about "story"? Not every sequence of fictional events is a plot or a story in the conventional sense - with an aesthetic rationale, a climax, a resolution etc.

 

[Hussar]

What are the three elements of a story? Plot, character and setting. Any given RPG, during play, will generate that. Most of the time, you will also generate build-up and climax as well (a game without any climaxes would be pretty boring). The design of most adventures follows the rough outline of a story as well.

While I'm sure you could play endlessly without achieving any climax, I'm thinking that that's not a particularly interesting way of playing and a far enough outlier to be safely ignored. Players, through their characters set goals, work to achieve those goals and either succeed or fail. Sounds like a pretty classic story to me.

Granted, the actual story isn't finished until after play is done. That's true. But, actions taken during play can be seen as a group effort (collaborative) towards creating a resolution that is enjoyable by all participants.

That's close enough to a story for me.

 

[SteveC]

In a (probably vain) attempt to turn this topic back to the original issue, I've been thinking about this system, and I think Matt is definitely on to something for adventure development.

For me, one of most difficult things to get right is to pace an adventure correctly. In the course of most adventures, there are natural moment where it makes sense to pause things and have a bit of downtime, where characters can rest and recover resources. With this system, a GM could take those moments and use a different color card (since many 3x5 card sets come with multiple colors).

That way the GM can make these major plot points obvious as he's developing an adventure and properly pace scenes out. That way he can more easily see how the adventure might be expected to consume party resources, and make sure that the different stopping points both make sense and are also useful.

In the same light, you might use a third color card to represent optional encounters that you can include or remove based on how the group handles issues and how beaten up they've been.

I would think this would be especially effective for a convention game (something that I'm working on at the moment) but it could be a useful tool for a certain kind of more traditional game.

Now, obviously this isn't the sort of thing that would be appropriate for a sandbox game, so if that's your thing... I get it, you won't like it. Any other thoughts or comments?

 

[JamesonCourage]

I think it's like the nitty-gritty details of any specific term as used by a subset of a subset of people. The finer details give more nuance to those in the know, but don't mean the same thing outside of that subset. If I discuss 1970s L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry among poets, they'll understand what I mean in that specific context.

tl;dr

I think you're right that the term has loaded meaning, but only within the small subset of gamers actually interested in game theory and terms like Story Now and "gamist" or "simulationist."

I agree, which is why I pointed out that when you talk about RPGs on an RPG board and use a term with a specific game theory meaning, you should understand why people disagree. I don't disagree with Hussar's notion that playing an RPG will result in story, I'm just trying to clarify why people are disagreeing in this thread.

You mentioned talking about poetry terms among poets; we're talking about RPGs amongst RPGamers. To that end, I was trying to clarify for Hussar. As always, play what you like

But, the DM always has to have some idea of a "specific story & plot" in order to prepare something for tonight's session. You know that the players want to organize the barbarians, so you prepare situations in which this can be brought about.

Does it surprise you that I never prepare like this? I never think, "the party will be going here, best to flesh this out?"

However, I still think that it's people's pre-conceptions that are getting in the way here. The fact that Jameson Courage feels the need to start playing dueling dictionaries proves that.

See, I always get slapped down for definitions

I'm using definitions because you're saying something that is contrary to their colloquial use, and then saying "I don't understand why people are disagreeing" when they disagree. I was more trying to clarify for you than to disagree with the thrust of your point (in that I agree that all RPG play will produce a story).

Can "Collaborative storytelling" be defined in a narrow way which leads to railroad campaigns? Sure. But, that's no different than saying that a sandbox must be defined as a rowboat campaign where the players simply have no direction or focus, ever and row around in circles accomplishing nothing. That is a definition of sandbox, but not a very good one.

Oh, totally. I wouldn't define "collaborative storytelling" as inherently railroad in the slightest. I think it's different from "all RPGs" or the like, but it's still nowhere near inherently railroad.

Collaborative storytelling means exactly what it says on the box - a group of people coming together in order to create some sort of narrative. Which is exactly what we all do when we play an RPG. That might not be the goal of the players, but, it's still what you do.

This is where you and the colloquial use diverge, I think. That's your definition, but don't be surprised when English majors and game theorists disagree (and for justifiable reasons).

If I am not explicitly intent on creating a story, I cannot collaborate on it. That rules out collaborative storytelling. I might be intimately involved in my friend's life, and yes it will produce a story (watched too much How I Met Your Mother, perhaps), but unless both of us explicitly intend to create one, I'm not participating in "collaborative storytelling". The same is true of RPGs, in my mind.

Again, not trying to argue with the thrust of your point (playing an RPG results in story), but promoting your definition over the colloquial usage when it's also wrong from an English definition standpoint seems odd, to me. As always, play what you like

 

[Fanaelialae]

In a (probably vain) attempt to turn this topic back to the original issue, I've been thinking about this system, and I think Matt is definitely on to something for adventure development.

For me, one of most difficult things to get right is to pace an adventure correctly. In the course of most adventures, there are natural moment where it makes sense to pause things and have a bit of downtime, where characters can rest and recover resources. With this system, a GM could take those moments and use a different color card (since many 3x5 card sets come with multiple colors).

That way the GM can make these major plot points obvious as he's developing an adventure and properly pace scenes out. That way he can more easily see how the adventure might be expected to consume party resources, and make sure that the different stopping points both make sense and are also useful.

In the same light, you might use a third color card to represent optional encounters that you can include or remove based on how the group handles issues and how beaten up they've been.

I would think this would be especially effective for a convention game (something that I'm working on at the moment) but it could be a useful tool for a certain kind of more traditional game.

Now, obviously this isn't the sort of thing that would be appropriate for a sandbox game, so if that's your thing... I get it, you won't like it. Any other thoughts or comments?

I think you're spot on.

Your sandbox comment did give me an odd notion though. It could be interesting to create a sandbox using this method. You'd need more than 11 cards (unless it's a very small sandbox), but each card would represent an area (akin to a hex on a sandbox map). The DM would start with a starting area card (the town or camp or whatever), and deal three cards in front of it (the adjacent areas). When the PCs enter those areas, new cards are dealt to adjoining areas, and as a result the map grows during play. I'll grant you, I can't see much practical use to it aside from perhaps challenging the DM's improvisational skills (since the map would grow as the players explored), or some kind of journey into a chaotic fae realm where areas constantly move about.

 

[S'mon]

But, the DM always has to have some idea of a "specific story & plot" in order to prepare something for tonight's session. You know that the players want to organize the barbarians, so you prepare situations in which this can be brought about.

No, I think we still have a fundamental disconnect here. I don't prep 'story & plot' (except the rare occasion where I'm GMing a published linear adventure), I prep the environment. The PCs interact with the environment however they wish.

In my Wilderlands game I had no idea the PCs would want to rally the barbarians; when they went to the first barbarian camp, I had nothing prepped other than the knowledge there were Tigerclaw clan in that area. I didn't break the game so I could create a 'rally the barbarians' plot; it all happened in-game. You could say I improvised it - I didn't even have names for that clan's war-chief & wise-woman, so the whole thing was improvised/adjudicated at table, based on my general knowledge of the clan, some skill checks etc.

In my Yggsburgh 1e game which I am running for a month over Dec-Jan, I prep by reading the Yggsburgh book, again it's an environment, having that environment be reactive to the PCs, and having things happen as suggested by the book. If you have awhile you can see how it works, the campaign is online here: S'mon' s Yggsburgh Blog
I only run the setting, plot is generated dynamically in play through the actions of the PCs and an element of random chance - eg one sub-plot is a PC courting a young noblewoman, this was generated through (a) his dashing behaviour towards her, and (b) her infatuation with him - which was generated by a random roll of "100%" on the d100 reaction table, higher the better. Likewise plot hooks are discovered/uncovered by the PCs' activities - they went to the Gaol looking for rewards posted for wanted outlaws, so I went through the books, found likely candidates, and set appropriate rewards for them. Going after each of those outlaws will generate a different adventure, but I don't know much about what that adventure will look like; it will be generated in-play.