That sounds like Chekhovian roleplaying!
I think I could get into it with a like-minded group, but it would be challenging.
It's not for everybody, but I seriously love maps, not just for the artwork but for the imagined exploration they inspire, and I think you have to have that sort of outlook to enjoy exploratory roleplaying. It follows from that that whatever is proffered to be explored must be something you find inspiring.
I also think the GM would have to pay some regard to dramatic need in narration of outcomes/consequences, wouldn't s/he, if the whole thing is not to stall?
Not necessarily, no. I think of it as the roleplaying equivalent of high-energy physics. This is not because it's "explosive" (which high-energy physics isn't, really, either), but because you select the particles/characters/situations and send them accelerating around the ring, then pick the place you expect them to collide and just sit back to watch
. Remember that the moment-to-moment aim in play is to explore - to imagine yourself in the position of the characters/inhabitants/bystanders and experience events from their perspective and while assuming what you imagine to be their outlook. As GM you might almost "immerse" yourself in the perspective and outlook of the world to watch how things unfold. It's undeniably a bit odd, but it can be enjoyable when it works well.
Honestly, how likely is that event? Would it have happened, if he was not the protagonist? A lot of the DM's job, in that mode of thought, just goes down to saying that the thing which happens is the thing which is most likely to happen. If I was playing in a campaign, and an NPC introduced herself to me under those circumstances, then I would probably roll my eyes at the sheer improbability of it.
Here and elsewhere I think you make the mistake of adopting the Illusory Consensus heuristic. You assume that everyone has a model or picture of the world that is broadly similar to your own. Trust me - this is not the case. Specifically, here, you seem to misunderstand the nature of probability.
In the real world (and most others I can imagine), improbable things happen
all the time. By a delicious irony, in fact, a world where only the
most likely things ever happen would be indescribably improbable! "One-in-a-million" people, for example, are not rare. There are thousands of them, just because there are so many people. The world - any world - is a stupendously big place; it thus contains all manner of improbable things. By selecting where these improbable things happen, a GM unavoidably affects any resulting story profoundly. I think the only way to handle this is to accept it and allow for it in your game setup.
At the same time, I don't think that "player control" is the be-all and end-all. You (@Saelorn) made a comment upthread (couldn't find it to reply to, sorry) about players making interesting decisions that, I think, really hits an important nail on the head. I think the interest and engagement in playing most RPGs really does reside in making interesting choices. The key questions, then, are "what kinds of choices do I/we find interesting?" and "how do we set up a game that will tend to generate such choices as a requirement of play?"
All of which brings me to:
Getting off-topic, Pendragon (own it, not played or GM'd it) seems to be a sim system (BRP) drifted
over to dramatist play - or at least, it ought to work well that way? What do you reckon? This is a type of game I'd like to run fairly soon (thinking 'manor' type play, or 'Game of Thrones' at a lower level of
world-power) - a group of PCs with ties of blood & loyalty, central set location (Deadwood/Castle Stark sort of thing) and a focus on character. I've been struggling with what system to use - considered using 4e D&D and Fallcrest, considered the Song of Ice & Fire RPG, considered Dragon Warriors, considered BRP
(generic) or BRP-Pendragon.
While I agree with earlier comments about "Pendragon Pass" and possibilities to play Pendragon in non-Arthurian settings, I think Pendragon does adopt a very particular approach to player agency and decsion making, at least in its later incarnations (3rd Ed. on).
The personality trait and passion mechanics in Pendragon engender a very interesting play dynamic, and one that, I think, illuminates one aspect of the "player empowerment" issue; they allow the player to effectively exchange some control over their character for character power. The more extreme traits and passions you develop, the less control you have over your character. The player of a moderately chaste, moderately lusty character will generally be able to choose whether to follow the enticing maiden into the castle, but an extremely chaste character may not be able to and an extremely lusty one might have to! These extreme traits, in turn, are a major source of Glory and renown - from which character power and prominence derive.
Not only is this an interesting arena in which players get to make decisions, it's also evocative of the Arthurian/Romantic themes AND it gives the GM hooks and levers with which to get the characters into trouble - which enables entertaining stories (which can also bring Glory and yadda yadda...)
Going a level deeper, though, the specific traits and passions the players decide to develop in their characters also guide the sorts of trouble the characters will get into - another way for the players to affect the direction and theme of play.
I see echoes of these means of "player empowerment" in newer games, too. 13th Age, notably, has its Icon relationships and "One Unique Thing". These both add power to the characters and add hooks that both bring the characters trouble and influence the kind of trouble they get into. One difference here, though, is that they are selected up-front in the character design, whereas the Pendragon ones are developed, for the most part, through play. This, I think, is a non-trivial differentiation; some people seem to much prefer one of these over the other - what used to be called "Develop At Start" (or DAS) and "Develop In Play" (or DIP) on RGFA.
I am reminded, too, of Burning Wheel and the way it encourages players to get into interesting trouble by failing rolls - because that is how character advancement is driven. Again, the players may trade some measure of control for character power. Is this "player empowerment"? I think so - but done in such a way that interesting (read: PCs struggling) situations develop.
Trading, exchange or parlaying of this sort can be found in very different kinds of games, too, and I think that resource exchange is a topic well worth exploring for any game system.
Universalis, in particular, has an interesting take. This is a roleplaying game with no GM. The players have explicit currency ("coins") with which characters, "facts", places, objects and even rules can be created according to a precise and comprehensive set of rules. Conflicts among the
players (as opposed to the characters) are resolved by bidding, with the wrinkle that bids to retain unchanged things that are already "established" in the setting count at double value. Players that find their ideas opposed are encouraged to negotiate, working to find a compromise that will not be bid against - or at least will not attract so many counter-bids.
The trick with all of this, though, is that it generates no new coins. Such unbridled creation and/or manipulation can only last so long before the players run out of resource; to get new coins, you need to generate conflicts among the
characters. These are resolved using dice pool mechanics such as would be familiar to any player of Shadowrun or the World of Darkness games - with the added feature that traits that add to the pool can be created by the players on the fly (and, even mid-conflict, all players may pay coins to directly add "circumstances" to the resolution pools).
All this brings about another, different, type of decision concerning resources, characters and stories.
"Immersive" play, I think, fits this "decision type" model, too. The desire to make "in-character" decisions, typically meaning decisions made while imagining the situation from the perspective of the character and adopting what the player has decided is the character's outlook and world-view, is just another specific type of decision to be made. The question, it seems to me, is always what sort of decision the players wish to make. Finding (or making) a system to enable such decisions is generally fairly easy, once this first (and incredibly hard!) step is made.
Final section of this over-long post (sorry) for [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION].
Here are some notes I made recently on some added structure for Skill Challenges - how to make them more explicit in form for the players. The idea is that the GM decides on a level and complexity for the challenge and the players then describe a plan and propose skills for the required "actions". The GM can/should negotiate over the skills to use, but not enforce skills unless they are using a "token" on an action. Both GM and players get resources in the challenge to increase the stakes or make things easier/harder where they think it will add tension/enjoyment. The structure should be available for the players to know, and it should be made clear that the GM is expected to use all their "tokens" by the end of the challenge.
Level and complexity of challenge should be decided based on the level of the opposition to the completion of the attempted task (just as with a combat challenge), and complexity to suit perceived difficulty. In particular, the XP value of the challenge should reflect the combat(s) avoided or advantage gained through completing the challenge.
I hope you find it helpful...
Basic skill challenge setup:
(Complexity+1)*2 successes at basic actions before 3 failures
"Basic actions" map to a single success at moderate difficulty by a single character of the party's choice
"3 failures" should map to a loss condition, and may map to lost surges, lost equipment, lost time or additional combat encounters; alternatively, each failure may cause a (non-challenge terminating) loss condition such as surge loss, equipment loss or power use
Each SC also starts with a number of "tokens" that are used by the GM as "opposition". The number of tokens gained is equal to the challenge Complexity minus 1.
Varying the "Basic Action":
Group actions include:
- The "All for One": all players may roll, the best roll (only) counts; difficulty increased 1 level
- The "One for All": all players must roll, the worst result counts; difficulty lowered one level
- The "Mean Streets": all players must roll, at least half the characters must succeed to get a success
In group rolls, a player may have a character voluntarily take a difficulty 1 higher in order to also aid another single character in the task. They may alternatively voluntarily take a difficulty two levels higher in order to also aid every other character in the task.
Uses of "Tokens":
GM Opposition tokens may be used to:
- Increase the difficulty of an action by one level; this is the basic use of a token
- To specify which specific PC will attempt to complete a specific action, e.g. the dwarf faced with a social task
- To cancel a success, this being typically through "enemy action"
- To double the number of challenge failures caused by failure in a single action; this use must be announced before the action roll is made and, if the roll succeeds, the Token is still spent
- To specify a specific skill to be used for an action, overriding the players' proposal; note that the players may choose to approach things completely differently (change plan) in response, in which case the token is not spent
Earning and using "Advantages":
Any roll may be voluntarily taken at one higher level of difficulty, or an additional roll that counts for failure but not success may be taken at Moderate difficulty, to gain an "Advantage". For each Complexity level over 2, two "free" actions may be attempted that do not count for failures but may give Advantages if successful.
An Advantage may be used to:
- Reduce the difficulty level of an action by 1 level; use of the Advantage must be announced before any dice are rolled for the task
- To cancel a failure if a Hard action is completed; this action does not count as a failure in the challenge if failed
- To block the deployment of a Token; the Token blocked is not spent, but may not be used on the current action in any way
- Allow a reroll of a skill for any one action
- To double the value of a success in an action (i.e. successful action gives 2 successes in the challenge); this use must be announced before the action success roll is made, and if failed the Advantage is still spent.
Power Use in Skill Challenges:
Powers may be used in skill challenges to help complete or to execute actions. At-Will powers may sometimes be instrumental in the way an action is described, but they will not change the difficulty of the roll needed to complete the action.
Encounter powers will generally reduce the difficulty of an action that they are appropriate for by 1 level. Daily powers will similarly reduce difficulty by 2 levels.
Difficulty levels are:
- Trivial (automatic success)
- Easy
- Moderate
- Hard
- Impossible (automatic failure)
The players should describe the actions they are attempting, and these should form a coherent plan to achieve the challenge success outcome. The GM may negotiate the details of the challenge outcome based on the players' description of the plan, but may not affect the rolls required for success based on these descriptions or the basic outcome of the plan except as provided for by the expenditure of Tokens. The GM may offer additional "free" rolls for Advantages in return for (binding) agreements about challenge outcome.
). It encourages things like players saying "I fly to the top of the building and pull out the antenna" even when no such antenna has been established. My players got used to asking and me saying yes pretty quickly, but they didn't quite get doing it on their own, even with explicit encouragement. But maybe that's why my RPG fits my group (and other, past players) so well.
