bedir than
Full Moon Storyteller
... and don't rest very heavily on narrative.
Wait, what? What's non-narrative about having characters live and die?
... and don't rest very heavily on narrative.
Wait, what? What's non-narrative about having characters live and die?
I rely heavily on narrative when I DM. But the actions my players take within the game should add to that narrative and it is up to my players to make the most of their deaths. Even in narrative though, sometimes deaths are meaningless.
But then I suppose there room to debate what sort of narrative you fancy, as Game of Thrones is just as much a narrative, full of often meaningless deaths as is Lord of the Rings, in which deaths are only ever heroic.
I think in RPG play in normal D&D, the characters are the protagonists. I would say that in Game of Thrones, this is not as true -- the protagonists are more typically families, not individual members. Game of Thrones isn't about a person, it's about a lineage, an era, something bigger than the characters that participate in it. Those kinds of protagonists are not as common, but it's not a fundamentally different way of thinking about narrative as it is an unusual way of thinking about what a protagonist can be. Were I to make a game based on a GoT-style experience, I'd not have the players control individual characters as much as I would have them control a family, which is pretty far removed from normal D&D play.
1.) The power disparity for heterogenous levels in 5E isn't usually as bad as you portray it. You picked an extreme example (one 1st level guy in a 20th level party) but how likely is it that the very first death in the party, ever, would happen at level 20? More likely you'd have one 20th level guy, some 14th-18th level guys, a 9th-level guy, and the 1st level guy. The 1st level guy will level up pretty quickly due to the shape of the XP table, and if you think 2nd level guys can't contribute in important ways I guess you've never run into a Diviner.Even a simple Bless from a 1st-level cleric can be really nice.
So now instead of playing a 5th level guy, he's playing a 1st level guy (now 2nd), in a party of generally much higher level--but it makes perfect sense from a roleplaying perspective, and the player doesn't view it as a punishment.
I agree and disagree. You're right that in the big picture, the story as a whole, the houses are the protagonists/antagonists. You rarely see someone rooting for a single character who doesn't also root for the faction that character represents. But like many stories the "big picture" is told through a series of smaller stories. A story within the story so to speak. Within those more focused, lets call them "episodes" the characters themselves are the protagonists/antagonists.
The players are the focus of the story and insomuch they can be the protagonists and the antagonists of the story, depending on their objectives, but occasionally they will discover that they are not the only actors within the story.
I don't think I would have my players play houses in a GoT-styled story. I think I would either have them create multiple characters that they may end up competing with themselves to represent the multitude of internal stories within the "series" itsself, or as I have done before, I would run all those alternative groups and between sessions determine what the outcomes of their adventures were and how that might affect what will happen to our "focus group".
I rely heavily on narrative when I DM. But the actions my players take within the game should add to that narrative and it is up to my players to make the most of their deaths. Even in narrative though, sometimes deaths are meaningless.
And that's cool, but its something you worked out with the players and you all bought into it which is the key thing. Its not you the DM saying "All of you now have to play these characters whether you like it or not."