D&D 5E The importance to "story" of contrivance

[pemerton]

Last night I watched the Natalie Portman/Ashton Kutcher film "No Strings Attached" on TV. It made me think about the importance of contrivance in fiction.

In the final sequence in the film (SPOILERS for anyone who cares), three events coincide - Ashton Kutcher's big night as a screenwriter, which leads to him coming back to his flat with the "other woman"; Natalie Portman's sister's wedding, which leads to her feeling lovesick and telephoning Kutcher; and Kutcher's father's hospitalisation, which creates the pretext for getting Kutcher out of his flat and hence away from the other woman before they sleep together, and for Natalie Portman getting a phone call from her friend who works at the hospital, thus triggering the reuniting of the two lead characters.

Thinking about stories closer to standard FRPG fare, Star Wars depends on several contrivances - the Millenium Falcon arrives at Alderaan just after the Death Star destroys it, creating the opportunity to rescue the Princess; and then it arrives again at the final battle just in time to help Luke.

In LotR, the Rohirrim arrive at Minas Tirith at the rising of the sun, just in time to halt the assault on the gates. And then Aragorn's strategem of distracting Sauron takes effect just at the time that Sam and Frodo are descending into Mordor.

Etc. Etc.

How do you make sure that the necessary contrivances happen in your FRPGing? In my case, by maintaining a very loose backstory, where things aren't "locked down" until they happen on-screen. In a recent session that I ran, for instance, the PC who had been afflicted with mummy rot while hiding in the sewers and catacombs of Hardby, and who was hoping to find a cleric to heal him, stumbled out of the undercity and onto the docks just in time to see (1) a boat arriving, bearing as its main passenger the great holy man Bernard, who (2) was arriving in the city to officiate at the wedding of the PC's nemesis, and (3) at the same time, saw across the crowd his demon-possessed brother - the first time their paths had crossed for 15-odd years.

The characters relationship to his brother, and to his nemesis, have been two of the main drivers of the game since the first session; and the wedding was known to be scheduled to happen in a few days - but framing the PC into the situation just described above, with the cleric he wanted also being connected (by wedding plans, or by geographic proximity) to those other major characters, was an act of contrivance by me as GM. (And it had the desired effect, as the next two sessions involved the unfolding of all the conflicts latent in the scene I just described.)

Share your anecdotes, and talk about your methods!

 

[Morrus]

Everything needs contrivance in retrospect, because every event is the end point of numerous coinciding strings of events. Heck, any given person's very existence is the result of an exceedingly unlikely combination of events.

 

[kalil]

Ensuring that contrivances happens would be anathema to my style of gaming and DMing. The entire charm of roleplaying (imho ofc) lies in player driven actions and the table conversation of player action <-> DM reaction. Thus the very concept of contrievances goes out the window for me and my group.

 

[Redthistle]

Coming up with any adventure is in itself an act of contriving, even in sandbox games.

Everything in a sandbox game is potentially available to be re-contrived in unexpected ways.

Contrivance is inventiveness, sometimes before a game session, and sometimes in the midst of a game.

All rules for RPGs are contrived; official rules at a remove, home-rules within the group.

"Forced" contrivance, otoh, aka "rail-roading", is, if I understand correctly, the nub of the issue for Kalil's group.

In response, they decided on a manner of play to avoid it: a contrivance to avoid contrivance.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Giving players the opportunity to either take advantage of or manipulate contrivances is the key to success in my opinion.

For example, in my current campaign, the PCs have discovered that their tribe (they are all from the same barbarian tribe) has been mostly killed and are pursuing the killers across the continent. Interaction points in the future include coming across survivors of a similar attack and heading off the killer's endgame: performing a foul ritual on the night of a cosmic conjunction.

Now, I can track how fast the killers travel, and have the PCs overtake them or fall behind, and if the players dawdle, maybe they'll get to the ritual scene too late to stop it and will have to deal with when consequences.

But what happens will depend as much on what the players want as what the PCs do - as DM, it only entirely in my power to alter every single event in the chain. Maybe the killers hustle and get someplace faster. Maybe they run into trouble and stay too long at an oasis, allowing the PCs to catch up to them there. The sequence of events isn't really in question, but the way in which they occur depends on what the players do.

 

[transtemporal]

I like to keep my options open in my adventures, so my contrivances are around making sure I introduce enough elements that I can "set" the story as late as possible depending on what the pcs do, according to whatever seems like the most fun.

For example, I've introduced several npcs to the players. One of them is actively plotting against the pcs but I haven't decided which one yet. Do I go for the quiet artisan with disconcerting religious views? the bombastic council member who enjoys making the pcs lives a misery or the seemingly clueless dandy who desperately wants their approval? Depends on what will yield the most fun.

 

[pemerton]

Everything needs contrivance in retrospect, because every event is the end point of numerous coinciding strings of events. Heck, any given person's very existence is the result of an exceedingly unlikely combination of events.

But probably not quite as unlikely as in fiction, I feel. Maybe I just know boring people, but I don't know anyone whose emotional lives resolved in quite the manner of the film I mentioned (in the same evening experiencing (i) the realisation of one's dream to be a screenwrite, (ii) a cathartic resolution of one's difficult relationship with a parent, and (iii) having a lover who broke up with you, who you still pine after, have her own reaslisation and track you down to reconcile with you.

For a different sort of romantic drama, one could equally consider the contrivances that generate the climax and resolution of Romeo and Juliet.

Or think about even a small scene in Casablanca: when Rick engineers things so that the young lovers win money on his gambling table. The opportumity for Rick to undergo this emotional transformation (from disengaged to engaged) occurs more-or-less simultaneously with the call upon him to decide the bigger questions of the film.

I guess that contrivance isn't just coincidence - it's authorship for deliberate aesthetic purposes.

Giving players the opportunity to either take advantage of or manipulate contrivances is the key to success in my opinion.

<snip>

Interaction points in the future include coming across survivors of a similar attack and heading off the killer's endgame: performing a foul ritual on the night of a cosmic conjunction.

Now, I can track how fast the killers travel, and have the PCs overtake them or fall behind, and if the players dawdle, maybe they'll get to the ritual scene too late to stop it and will have to deal with when consequences.

But what happens will depend as much on what the players want as what the PCs do - as DM, it only entirely in my power to alter every single event in the chain. Maybe the killers hustle and get someplace faster. Maybe they run into trouble and stay too long at an oasis, allowing the PCs to catch up to them there. The sequence of events isn't really in question, but the way in which they occur depends on what the players do.

This is a bit unclear to me.

You talk about what the players want and contrast it with what the PCs do - but then finish off referring to what the players do. It seems to me that if the GM is deciding whether the NPCs hustle or stop at an oasis, and if the players don't have access to this information and hence aren't making informed choices about whether or not they are "dawdling", that it is up to the GM whether the PCs arrive at the ritual site early, right on time, or too late.

I'm not sure, in the picture that you paint, where it is that the players are manipulating or taking advantage of things.

Ensuring that contrivances happens would be anathema to my style of gaming and DMing. The entire charm of roleplaying (imho ofc) lies in player driven actions and the table conversation of player action <-> DM reaction.

Can you elaborate, because I'm not sure I see the connection.

For instance, the GM decides that the moment the cultists' ritual culminates is the precise moement the PCs kick in the door. This is a contrivance of the sort I'm talking about. Or, in the example I gave, the PC at the same time has to decide how to confront his demon-possessed brother, and how to seek the help of a holy man who has arrived in town to officiate at the wedding of the PC's nemesis.

The GM setting things up like this is a springboard for player-driven actions. Whereas your post seems to assume, or imply, that it poses some sort of obstacle.

"Forced" contrivance, otoh, aka "rail-roading", is, if I understand correctly, the nub of the issue for Kalil's group.

I'm not sure what the railroading is supposed to be, though. I take railroading to generally be about resolutions, not about the context for choice.

 

[pemerton]

I like to keep my options open in my adventures, so my contrivances are around making sure I introduce enough elements that I can "set" the story as late as possible depending on what the pcs do, according to whatever seems like the most fun.

For example, I've introduced several npcs to the players. One of them is actively plotting against the pcs but I haven't decided which one yet. Do I go for the quiet artisan with disconcerting religious views? the bombastic council member who enjoys making the pcs lives a misery or the seemingly clueless dandy who desperately wants their approval? Depends on what will yield the most fun.

This is an example of the sort of thing I had in mind in the OP.

A challenge for this sort of thing is if the PCs have mind-reading magic. How do you handle that? (In my case, I mostly play systems that don't have mind-reading magic, so the issue doesn't generally come up.)

 

[robus]

Real life is not very interesting. The "dramatic" thing rarely happens. When it does people spend enjoyable amounts of time retelling the crazy thing that happened to anyone who will listen. When we read a story or play in adventure we want those memorable moments to happen more often than not and it's up to the author and mostly the DM to provide them. Have a character they thought they could trust betray them at the worst time. When they're in mortal danger and all hope is lost offer an opportunity to escape (they choose whether to take it of course, perhaps the opportunity is not without its own risk of peril (out of the frying pan...))

Anyway I think contrivance should be a key tool in the DMs toolbox if you want to offer memorable moments.

 

[Galendril]

This happens all the time in D&D. The players arrive in the nick of time to stop a dangerous ritual for example.

One of my players is a Tiefling who went to an ancient temple to stop a catastrophic event. However, she was the necessary piece for that event to occur. She was presented with the opportunity to become a demigod at the expense of the world, or she could come up with a creative way of stopping it (but suffering a setback).

These things happen all the time. I would never say to the players, "Oh, you arrived too late to stop the villains plan. He's achieved so much power you are hopelessly outmatched." (of course, this is a great setup for a series of sessions where players are the underdogs waiting for the opportunity to strike back)