Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[pemerton]

Every game has some sort of restriction on player action.

<snip>

If your game is a post-apocalyptic setting of some sort, then the player's aren't necessarily free to abandon their search for fuel and safety in the badlands and instead examine suburban life in contemporary times.

But this is not a restriction that results from the GM acting as "storyteller", so I don't really see how it bears on [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s point. It's a "restriction" that follows simply from the group's consensus about the subject-matter and genre of the game.

My game certainly contains DM-authored content in the form of a main plot

<snip>

We go where the play takes us, but it inevitably goes back to the main plot.

This isn't really giving enough information to draw a connection between your GMing approach and the categories that [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] have set out. After all, my games have GM authored content - eg rooms in mage's towers where other unconscious mages are recuperating - and this content is among the elements of the shared fiction that figure in the "main plot". But my games are neither "referee" nor "storyteller" as those terms have been used over the past few pages of this thread.

For instance, by "main plot" do you mean events happening in the gameworld that are (in some tenable sense) "interesting"? Or do you mean dramatic sequence of events in which the PCs will participate, as protagonists?

If the former, then I can't tell - at this stage of the discussion - what effect (if any) those events in the fiction are having on the content and outcome of player action declarations for their PCs. And I also can't tell whether those events are part of the framing of the circumstances of those action declarations (ie part of the fictional situation to which the players are responding), or are "secret" events or states of affairs that only the GM knows about, and uses as a type of "filter" for determining the success or failure of player action declarations.

And if the latter - eg in something like the way that a module like Dead Gods or the Dragonlance modules has a series of events in which the PCs will participate - how do you manage the causal flow from event A to event B? Eg how do you ensure that player-generated consequences of event A don't destabilise your anticipated "entry point" into event B?

These are the sorts of considerations that relate the use of GM content authoring, including perhaps GM force, to the outcomes in the shared fiction.

When we talk about storytelling, I'm not sure I understand why it's automatically a case of the GM bending the rules or influencing results to get his desired outcome. Why must the rules be broken for that? I honestly don't feel the need to alter results of dice rolls or anything of the sort to keep the game moving in the way I would like.

Well, this connects to the transition from event A to event B.

If the outcome of event A is literally hostage to the interaction between the choices the players make and the rolls of their dice, then the likelihood of a smooth transition to a pre-authored event B must be fairly slim. Eg to relate that to the OP example, one outcome of that episode of resolution ("scene", to use some jargon) was that one PC was trying to escape across town lugging two bodies while his companion is carrying a jug and a chamber pot full of blood, and with a severed head sitting in the chamber pot as well. That event, and the resulting consequence (on a failed check by the body-lugger to see how well the bodies are lugged) of encountering the night watch, couldn't have been pre-scripted, because until the scene was resolved it wasn't known, or even knowable, what its resolution would be (eg the PCs might instead have tried to reach some sort of accord with the mage whose tower it is and just leave all the bodies there).

In my experience of reading modules and referee advice books, there are two main ways of avoiding making the outcome of event A hostage to the players and their dice.

(1) Fudge results. This is White Wolf's "Golden Rule", and 2nd ed AD&D also advocates this fairly strongly (under the motto "Don't let a die roll spoil the story").

(2) Use GM authority over framing and backstory to negate the consequences of players' declared actions for their PCs. Eg the PCs kill the BBEG, but a lieutenant steps in so that the actual signficance of the PCs' victory is negated. Or the PCs get arrested when the plot "needs" them to be free, so a deus ex machina NPC bails them out with no other costs, consequences or dramatic significance. Or the players sail off into the sunset, but a (GM-authored) storm occurs and blows them back onto the reefs and coast of "the plot". Etc.

Some modules - like the incoherent one I mentioned not too far upthread - don't advoctae either (1) or (2) but seem to just assume that, somehow, event A will lead to event B even though - given the way the game works, in terms of action declaration, resolution systems, etc - it would be a minor miracle for things to just turn out that way.

If I as the GM want the players to become involved in the political machinations at court, I can introduce NPCs, story hooks, goals, and other elements that align with PC motivations or desires. If one of the PCs has a goal to discover his father's killer, then I create a connection...a clue that one of the members of the court may have something to do with his father's death.

This leads the PCs down the path that the GM had in mind. It's also the choice of the players to pursue that goal based on the one PCs motivation. It also required no subverting of the rules or anything "dishonest".

At this level of abstraction, we could be talking about a player-driven game or a GM-driven one. Eg if the player has built and played a PC who is hutning for his father's killer among the nobles of the court, then in effect you are following the player's hook (not vice versa) and framing the PC into situations that speak to the player's interests.

Conversely, if the real action is all about whatever you as GM have conceived in relation to court machinations, so that the "father's killer" thing is really just a "bread crumb" (to borrow [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s term) to lure the player into your stuff - and if, no matter how hard the player tries to shift the focus onto the quest for the killer, it somehow always seems to lead back to the stuff you as GM are interested in - then I would say it is a GM-driven game.

In practice, too, to achieve that sort of GM-driven game where all roads lead to what the GM cares about rather than the players' concerns is probably going to require using "secret" backstory (ie stuff that is not part of the framing of the situation that the players are engaging via their PCs) as an element in adjudication - eg the player has his PC look in a room for clues about his father's killing but has no chance of being successful because the GM has already decided that whatever is discovered in the room will really be about the GM's "main plot".

To finish off: my take in this post, and especially the last few paragraphs, is really displaying my inclination towards a "scene framing" approach to GMing. I'll have to leave it to [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION], if he's interested, to try and frame a response from the perspective of AW-style "principled GMing".

One of the things I am careful to do in my own GMing is to not prepare social or combat encounters. I leave that choice up to the players in how they choose to engage with the fiction.

Absolutely.

 

[pemerton]

If I-as-DM know my players and have found an adventure I think they'll enjoy playing, I'm going to do my best to gently steer them into it.

Why be gentle? Why not just say "Hey, people, here's a fun thing to play!"

I'm also not clear how this relates to [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] talking about "steering towards outcomes". Entering the Tomb of Horrors isn't an outcome - it's a starting point, a framing.

 

[hawkeyefan]

[MENTION=9200]Hawkeye[/MENTION],

What are your feelings on the following passage from Monsterhearts?

It's interesting. I think it's a pretty cool idea in general. I don't agree with all of it, but I don't have a problem with it. It seems to imply that any example of "story discovered through play" must be better than any example of "story designed ahead of play", which is of course ludicrous.

Again, I am not advocating the opposite extreme. I don't think that a railroad is the best form of game. That's just my opinion, others may love them...but I do like to have a good deal of player driven material in my game. I like for their decisions to matter and to help shape events.

My stance is that the GM can also shape events. Not to invalidate player choice or anything like that, but in order to craft a story. To add resonance to the events in play, and help form a narrative of some sort.

When I talk about playing to find out what happens and following the fiction to wherever it leads I really mean it. I mean it even when its painful. I mean it especially when things do not turn out in the way I want them to. My biggest regrets, both as a GM and a player of a character, have come from the times when I tried to control the experience and make it mine. It usually comes from a good place.

You want to keep your character safe so you hold back in a crucial moment where you should be laying it on the line. You have a particular arc in mind for your character so you justify a decision you made after the fact that if you were playing with integrity you would not have made. You do not want to deal with the consequences of a decision you made so you give the GM doe eyes in hopes they will rule in your favor.

Again, control is too strong a term for what I am advocating.

A player has ignored your soft moves and is in a position that would likely result in the loss of a PC so you make another soft move because you love the PC. You designed an elaborate set piece battle, but the PCs came up with a plan that circumvents it. You put a lot of work ito said set piece and want to use it so you pull some chicanery with the fiction. A player makes doe eyes at you because of a risk they do not want to deal with the consequences of so you fudge a dice roll or change some stats on the fly. Your players steamroll the villain in your planned epic confrontation through a series of crits so you add some hp. The players are off track so you nudge them with social pressure. The PCs side with a character who was supposed to be an antagonist so you contort the fiction to make them regret it. You really want that big reveal so you pull back from conveying the fictional world honestly. Robilar soloed your favorite dungeon so you send an army after him to take all his stuff!

Some of that may come up a bit....I don't tend to take it too easy on PCs or feel so attached to any one of them in particular that they have the equivalent of "plot armor". But I could see, when a judgment call may be needed to adjudicate the results of failure, that I don't automatically assume the worst consequence of failure and inflict that on the party. For a really basic example, perhaps a PC is taken captive rather than killed. Is that an egregious use of GM Force? I don't think so....not if there is any plausibility to the villains doing so.

As for the series of crits example or the set piece battle.....I tend not to worry about that stuff, and let it play out as needed. I will adjust some items at times if I feel that it was my initial judgment that was in error. Or if I think that there is some compelling reason to do so at the time of play that I was not privy to at the design stage, then I may make such changes. But these are not done without consideration, and are not done to preserve the outcome I am hoping for.

I think it is the outcome that is the sticking point. I don't necessarily have a preferred outcome. I have a few possible outcomes in mind, and which will happen depends on what the players do. Then, once an outcome to a certain encounter or action is determined, then I determine the impact on the world. The consequences of the outcome.

These are the things that keep me up at night. There's a very good reason why I talk about the discipline that is required to play and run the game to find out what happens and follow the fiction vigorously. Sometimes this stuff is hard! No one is immune to this underlying tension. A commitment to it helps. Embracing principles that help you get there really helps. I personally find it really rewarding in a very real way. It's not like super hard though! This is the same sort of way seasoned poker players approach the game. It's also the same way that software engineers need to approach their work. Holding on lightly and not trying to control things is also super valuable in all sorts of relationships.

Sure. Hold on loosely is a decent philosophy in general. It is not absent from my game, I don't think.

As for your style of play, this is where you start to sound a little one-true-wayish. Your style takes discipline and commitment....implying that other styles are undisciplined and lack commitment? I don't really think that is what you mean, but it's pushing that way.

It's just a tool to use or not use.

John Harper explains this stuff in far less words than I am able to.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Brevity?

Again, this is nothing that I think is absent from my game. I am perfectly comfortable (most of the time) when my plans are dashed by the PCs in some way. I like that it forces me to adapt on the fly...I find some really strong elements of our game come from those moments.

It's just that no matter what the players do, eventually, things will steer back to the "main story", for lack of a better term. My predetermined elements are more at the macro level....the campaign level...rather than at the micro level of actions or encounters.

But this is not a restriction that results from the GM acting as "storyteller", so I don't really see how it bears on [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s point. It's a "restriction" that follows simply from the group's consensus about the subject-matter and genre of the game.

They are elements of the story, so I think they do relate to the GM as storyteller. But I do see your distinction that this is likely discussed ahead of time. But perhaps so is the main story of the campaign? Or perhaps character goals are determined at the time of character creation, and those are incorporated into the game....baked in right from the start. This means that it isn't very difficult to keep the characters motivated to engage in the main story that the GM has prepared.

Having those kind of agreement prior to play inherently limits the players to some degree. To go back to the Tolkien example, the PCs have been given a quest...this is the GM determined content. They must destroy the One Ring, and they know of only one way to do that. How they reach that goal is ultimately up to them....they have many paths to choose from, and many choices to make in how they engage with that "main story". But to simply abandon the quest seems to be a violation of the agreement made at the start of the game.

This is of course assuming that the players have agreed to the game as described.

This isn't really giving enough information to draw a connection between your GMing approach and the categories that [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] have set out. After all, my games have GM authored content - eg rooms in mage's towers where other unconscious mages are recuperating - and this content is among the elements of the shared fiction that figure in the "main plot". But my games are neither "referee" nor "storyteller" as those terms have been used over the past few pages of this thread.

Perhaps some of my comments in this post have clarified. I am talking more at the high level....the general flow of the "main story". I use that term because I am not sure how else to describe it. The point of the campaign. In the specific case of my campaign, there is quite a lot to it, but ultimately it boils down to opposing a specific group of enemies and their goals.

That goal, which all the players understand and have agreed to, is never far from playing a part of the action taking place. However, it is loose and broad enough that I don't need to undermine player agency to keep them along that general path.

Hopefully that helps. Let me know if I need to elaborate further.

For instance, by "main plot" do you mean events happening in the gameworld that are (in some tenable sense) "interesting"? Or do you mean dramatic sequence of events in which the PCs will participate, as protagonists?

I mean the ultimate goal. The sequence of events is largely undetermined because the players can change things, but I do have a general outline in mind. But I don't do much more than sketch things because they can and do change.

Again, to lean on Tolkien...the players may never become embroiled in the machinations of Saruman at Isengard. Their decisions have kept the Fellowship together and they never go that way. That does not mean that I do not then introduce Saruman later on as a sever threat that needs to be dealt with. So I know Saruman is up to something....but when that comes into play, and how, is largely up to the actions of the PCs.

If the former, then I can't tell - at this stage of the discussion - what effect (if any) those events in the fiction are having on the content and outcome of player action declarations for their PCs. And I also can't tell whether those events are part of the framing of the circumstances of those action declarations (ie part of the fictional situation to which the players are responding), or are "secret" events or states of affairs that only the GM knows about, and uses as a type of "filter" for determining the success or failure of player action declarations.

And if the latter - eg in something like the way that a module like Dead Gods or the Dragonlance modules has a series of events in which the PCs will participate - how do you manage the causal flow from event A to event B? Eg how do you ensure that player-generated consequences of event A don't destabilise your anticipated "entry point" into event B?

These are the sorts of considerations that relate the use of GM content authoring, including perhaps GM force, to the outcomes in the shared fiction.

I actually used a good deal of the Dead Gods adventure in my campaign. This was one story arc. I used the main plot of that adventure, but I didn't force the players down any particular path. I also removed certain elements that I felt were the most arbitrary....moments where they only know how to proceed because of X. I introduced several means of reaching each part of the adventure, and allowed the players to go their way, and find the path.

It also helped that I knew I would be using elements from that adventure, and worked some of them into things at the start of this campaign. So a lot of it was information that I made available to one or more players as elements of backstory.

Well, this connects to the transition from event A to event B.

If the outcome of event A is literally hostage to the interaction between the choices the players make and the rolls of their dice, then the likelihood of a smooth transition to a pre-authored event B must be fairly slim. Eg to relate that to the OP example, one outcome of that episode of resolution ("scene", to use some jargon) was that one PC was trying to escape across town lugging two bodies while his companion is carrying a jug and a chamber pot full of blood, and with a severed head sitting in the chamber pot as well. That event, and the resulting consequence (on a failed check by the body-lugger to see how well the bodies are lugged) of encountering the night watch, couldn't have been pre-scripted, because until the scene was resolved it wasn't known, or even knowable, what its resolution would be (eg the PCs might instead have tried to reach some sort of accord with the mage whose tower it is and just leave all the bodies there).

In my experience of reading modules and referee advice books, there are two main ways of avoiding making the outcome of event A hostage to the players and their dice.

(1) Fudge results. This is White Wolf's "Golden Rule", and 2nd ed AD&D also advocates this fairly strongly (under the motto "Don't let a die roll spoil the story").

(2) Use GM authority over framing and backstory to negate the consequences of players' declared actions for their PCs. Eg the PCs kill the BBEG, but a lieutenant steps in so that the actual signficance of the PCs' victory is negated. Or the PCs get arrested when the plot "needs" them to be free, so a deus ex machina NPC bails them out with no other costs, consequences or dramatic significance. Or the players sail off into the sunset, but a (GM-authored) storm occurs and blows them back onto the reefs and coast of "the plot". Etc.

Some modules - like the incoherent one I mentioned not too far upthread - don't advoctae either (1) or (2) but seem to just assume that, somehow, event A will lead to event B even though - given the way the game works, in terms of action declaration, resolution systems, etc - it would be a minor miracle for things to just turn out that way.

Well, I don't know if either of those methods are required. I try to avoid the first in most cases, and the second I try to use with care and with far less force than implied in the examples.

But again, I am talking more high level.

So in your example of the mage's towere and the beheading, and the lugging of bodies....did you have no sense of where things would go after that? Obviously, the PCs actions helped shape where things went....but did you have no idea? For me, I would have a few possibilities sketched out....then the PCs do what they do, and it takes things in an unexpected direction (they get caught by the watch lugging dead bodies around town)....I don't feel the need to simply handwave or otherwise invalidate these events. I let them play out....and then I decide how they affect where things were going after that. So if the PCs are thrown in jail or if they are coerced by the captain of the guard to perform some task for him or what have you, I proceed with that to see what happens.

But once that plays out, things are going to head back in some direction I had previously expected. I look at such instances as sidetracks...noting wrong with them at all. But once they've played out, it's back to the main story, with any possible consequences of the sidetrack taken into consideration.

At this level of abstraction, we could be talking about a player-driven game or a GM-driven one. Eg if the player has built and played a PC who is hutning for his father's killer among the nobles of the court, then in effect you are following the player's hook (not vice versa) and framing the PC into situations that speak to the player's interests.

Yes, precisely.

Conversely, if the real action is all about whatever you as GM have conceived in relation to court machinations, so that the "father's killer" thing is really just a "bread crumb" (to borrow [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s term) to lure the player into your stuff - and if, no matter how hard the player tries to shift the focus onto the quest for the killer, it somehow always seems to lead back to the stuff you as GM are interested in - then I would say it is a GM-driven game.

But it need not be "all about" the GM conceived items. It can be about that, and the PC's father's killer plot can be woven in so taht they are two elements of the same story. This is the approach that I am talking about. The GM having a metaplot if that's what you want to call it, but incorporating player authored material, whether it be at the inception of the game or as consequence of in game player choice.

In practice, too, to achieve that sort of GM-driven game where all roads lead to what the GM cares about rather than the players' concerns is probably going to require using "secret" backstory (ie stuff that is not part of the framing of the situation that the players are engaging via their PCs) as an element in adjudication - eg the player has his PC look in a room for clues about his father's killing but has no chance of being successful because the GM has already decided that whatever is discovered in the room will really be about the GM's "main plot".

Again, I am not arguing in favor of the opposite extreme. "All roads leading to what the GM cares about" is not really what I am talking about, and it's as negative a way to look at it as possible.

Let me ask you....do you think that the GM and the players could actually want the same things in play?

 

[Campbell]

The GM and the other players absolutely should want the same things in play. There absolutely are players who are interested in being told a story. There are also players who are interested in shaping the narrative and exerting their influence in a way that exceeds the impact they can have through playing their characters with integrity. I know this because I have been those players. Sometime those desires and urges still rise up within me. It is just contrary to my interests of late.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Again, I am not arguing in favor of the opposite extreme. "All roads leading to what the GM cares about" is not really what I am talking about, and it's as negative a way to look at it as possible.

I guess I won't argue that, either - but I'll drop a one-liner in favor of it:

Why would I run something I don't care about?

Entering the Tomb of Horrors isn't an outcome - it's a starting point, a framing.

Poor Acererak wasn't guilty afterall: he was framed!

 

[hawkeyefan]

The GM and the other players absolutely should want the same things in play. There absolutely are players who are interested in being told a story. There are also players who are interested in shaping the narrative and exerting their influence in a way that exceeds the impact they can have through playing their characters with integrity. I know this because I have been those players. Sometime those desires and urges still rise up within me. It is just contrary to my interests of late.

Sure, I agree with that. But again, these are the two extremes. There are also players that like to be told a story that they can help shape through their decisions. A blending of the two.

 

[Campbell]

Sure, I agree with that. But again, these are the two extremes. There are also players that like to be told a story that they can help shape through their decisions. A blending of the two.

Absolutely. However, I believe there will always be a certain amount of tension there. This is particularly true if an approach to GMing is utilized where players and often GMs have no meaningful way of knowing where we are truly following the fiction and playing to find out what happens and when GM intervention through social pressure, "deft" framing of consequences and situation, not conveying the fictional world honestly, and subtle or overt handling of the rules at run time to nudge, push, or violently pull things towards either a particular narrative or what they feel makes for a better story. They might not notice the tension. It might even be fruitful for them - something they value. There is also often a culture of extreme metagame aversion so when you feel this tension you are supposed to actively avoid calling it by name or asking about fruitful avenues to explore.

I get it. I have been a player in these games. I have run some of these games. Even in the most GM Force prone games of Vampire run according to the text there are always open questions where players can have an impact on the fiction. My experience on both sides of the screen with this tension and my inability to address it due to the chilling effects of metagame aversion and a lack of social equity informs my current preferences. I used to play and run a lot of World of Darkness games. I have felt the weight of the responsibility for everyone's enjoyment, the pull to make this thing my own, felt guilty about using my social power to steer players towards my story, and felt responsible for guiding the players when I really just wanted to see what their characters would do. As a player I have been in many situations where my interest laid everywhere except the main story, dealt with the frustration of trying to find the story hidden in indiscernible motives and hazy fiction, doggedly pursued things that could never happen because of story reasons, had social pressure applied to give up on things in the interest of the narrative, and played in games only because of the downtime between adventures.

This tension is something I very much have felt and continue to feel when I play in these sorts of games because I have friends who like them. I see it as an authentic avenue of criticism. I will expand on this in a future post.

 

[Campbell]

I want to take a moment and clarify something - principled play utilizing a Storyteller approach is absolutely possible and there are several games out there that highlight various approaches.

• Vampire - The Masquerade and Ars Magica are absolutely principled and require dedication, discipline, and commitment on the part of the GM/ST. I happen to think this approach is subject to some very worthy criticism when it comes to social equity and the tension that metagame aversion exhibits on play. This is considered a necesarry feature by the designers to evoke the personal horror they are seeking. I believe there are better ways to do so.
• Call of Cthulhu uses a slightly different set of techniques and assumptions, but is much more up front about the types of situations PCs can meaningfully make an impact on. The sanity mechanics do much more heavy lifting. There is still a great deal of tension, but less so than Vampire.
• Fate makes the players into co-conspiritors in the process of building a narrative. Metagame aversion goes out the window and meaningful discussions about where an impact can be made can occur. The Fate Point economy serves as a tangible form of agency we can feel. I am not really a fan of fate, but there is far more social equity and transparency involved in the process. One common complaint is that you can see the sausage being made. Another is that we can all see where things are going in any given moment of play. There is almost no meaningful tension on display, except what we bring ourselves. Everyone is assumed to be emphatically exerting their will on the narrative.
• Night's Black Agents and Trail of Cthulhu represent a different approach. We all know we are there to investigate the story and we do not have to rely on social pressure or other forms of chicanery unless the players are resisting the aims of the game. We do not make checks to find stuff out because that would run counter to players solving the mystery. There is very little tension here, largely because hopes of agency are largely dashed and the players are complicit in the act. We still do not like talk about it and make that real. There is no real social equity here.

 

[Campbell]

I should explain what I mean by my contention that I feel like GM as MC results in better stories. Obviously, this is an aesthetic judgement that applies to me personally.

When Monsterhearts recommends to Keep It Feral it is not really talking about the quality of the story as something we can enjoy after play, but rather our experience of the active tension in the fiction in play. It depends on this idea that, like film or television, roleplaying is an experiential medium. Unlike those media it is also participatory. When these techniques are used the entire group is on edge of their seats, genuinely curious about the fiction. We all want to see how things will unfold.

When you are playing a character in a tense situation there is no escape valve. You cannot look to the GM to get your character out of it. All you have available to you are your own skilled play, your knowledge of the fiction, your fictional resources, and the rules of the game. Furthermore, because everyone at the table is interested in curiously exploring the fiction you owe it to them and yourself to play your character with integrity. The cool thing is that the game will actively reward you for this. More importantly, the personal and social rewards are tremendous.

When you are the MC you actually get to see what happens in play in a very meaningful way. Because you are disclaiming decision making and putting it in the hands of an NPC while playing out the scene you get to experience the fiction for a moment in the same way the other players get to. Because you are saying what the rules demand and following the fiction you also have no safety valve. You get to have your heart broken. There is nothing that you can do about it while following your principles.

This can be a really intense experience. It is particularly intense when we are exploring problematic material like we so often do in Monsterhearts and Apocalypse World. It is important that we respect each other's emotional boundaries when we do so. The lack of a safety valve can be a pretty potent criticism of this sort of play. My preference is to utilize a variety of emotional safety techniques including setting boundaries, check-ins, and taking breaks. This is part of the reason why I tend to run shorter games and play different games between seasons.

View attachment Safe Hearts.pdf goes over this stuff in detail.

Here's a few brief excerpts.

This one goes over taking mental and physical breaks to create emotional distance when necessary.

There are a lot of reasons to explore problematic content in play. Most of them are situated at the table - telling stories about this stuff is engaging, rewarding, and exciting. But there’s another reason, one that can take a little longer to hit home. When we play a game like this, we have the opportunity to live through some experiences second-hand. We see a glimpse of what it might be like to inhabit someone else’s skin. It’s a fiction, yes, but the more vulnerable and sincere we are when we play, the greater the likelihood that this fiction contains truth. We can better understand and challenge problematic ideas by playing through them.

This one explains why we do this thing.

There are a lot of reasons to explore problematic content in play. Most of them are situated at the table - telling stories about this stuff is engaging, rewarding, and exciting. But there’s another reason, one that can take a little longer to hit home. When we play a game like this, we have the opportunity to live through some experiences second-hand. We see a glimpse of what it might be like to inhabit someone else’s skin. It’s a fiction, yes, but the more vulnerable and sincere we are when we play, the greater the likelihood that this fiction contains truth. We can better understand and challenge problematic ideas by playing through them.

This set of techniques is also uniquely suited to playing out a particular sort of story - the sort that are fundamentally about characters, the decisions the make, and the resultant fallout. These stories as experienced through play tend to be deeply personal and emotional in nature. We want them to be somewhat messy. It is important that they feel organic and not forced or neatly wrapped up. I happen to have an aesthetic preference for this type of story. Think early Sons of Anarchy, Taboo, John Wick or Breaking Bad.

It is less while suited to deep mythology, grand narrative, epic clashes, Tom Clancying and the like. I have other approaches that I prefer for those types of games.

 

[pemerton]

the GM can also shape events. Not to invalidate player choice or anything like that, but in order to craft a story. To add resonance to the events in play, and help form a narrative of some sort.

This is true, but again on its own it doesn't differentiate very much. Framing by the GM might fit this description, but that's very different from (say) massaging or nudging at action declaration or resolution so as to produce a pre-planned outcome.

In my personal experience, the GM doesn't need to shape events - beyond framing - in order to form a narrative of some sort.

I do see your distinction that this is likely discussed ahead of time. But perhaps so is the main story of the campaign? Or perhaps character goals are determined at the time of character creation, and those are incorporated into the game....baked in right from the start.

<snip>

To go back to the Tolkien example, the PCs have been given a quest...this is the GM determined content. They must destroy the One Ring, and they know of only one way to do that. How they reach that goal is ultimately up to them....they have many paths to choose from, and many choices to make in how they engage with that "main story". But to simply abandon the quest seems to be a violation of the agreement made at the start of the game.

Speaking roughly, and trying to generalise from my own experience (always risky!), I see three broad approaches, with the difference between them speaking to the concerns of the passages I have quoted:

(1) The player authors a PC who is the heir to a dangerous ring. That would be similar to how, in the game mentioned in the OP, the player authored a PC whose brother is possessed by a balrog.

In this game, the revelation of the backstory about the ring would be a result of action resolution (a bit like the cursed black arrows in the OP game). The decision to take the ring to Mount Doom would itself arise in play - and one could envisage it being a result of failure ("I make a check to persuade Elrond to tell us how it can be destroyed" <rolls dice, fails> "Elrond looks at you gravely - 'It cannot be destroyed unless thrown into the fires in which it was forged"), or being the result of success ("It must have been forged by Sauron in his evil volcano forge, and so I bet we could destroy it by dropping it back into the lava!" <rolls dice for a ring lore/obscure history/whatever check, succeeds> "Yep, Elrond and Gandalf agree that that's the only reliable way to be rid of it"). If another character has built some sort of backstory into his/her PC that relates to redeeming a failure of an ancestor to destroy the ring, the GM might even make the ring's immunity to destruction other than in Mt Doom a part of the framing - as part of setting up a situation where the concerns, backstories and goals of multiple PCs will intersect.

Notice that, on this approach, there is no reason why Gandalf couldn't be a PC, whose exposition of lore is a mixture of successful and failed checks. I have a Gandalf-style loremaster as a PC in my main 4e game.

That is largely how I tend to run my games. It is, more or less, what [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] has called "scene framing". Another label give to more-or-less this sort of style is "no myth".

I hope you can see, from this, why I had the reaction I did upthread to the presentation of LotR as being - if a transcript of a RPG - an account of a certain sort of approach to GMing. Because I look at LotR and see how it could result from all sorts of different approaches, including the one I've just outlined.


(2) Another way to produce LotR as a RPG experience would be the following. I think this is probably a pretty widespread approach to play, and is implicit in many modules, APs, etc.

The GM decides that the game will be about the PCs taking a cursed ring to Mt Doom. The GM reveals this to the players partly in campaign set-up, and partly (perhaps mostly if very metagame averse) via in-character exposition and "recruitment" by a "significant" NPC (eg Gandalf, and later Elrond; in this approach, those characters are almost certainly NPCs). The players, in order to participate in the game, have to agree (perhaps up front, but more importantly in the play of their PCs) to take the quest.

The GM has a series of events, locations etc written up in advance. The players will go through these more-or-less in the prepared sequence, with some variations depending on the details of play (eg maybe they skip Saruman, although in some systems - eg orthodox D&D - this might then cause issues around having earned enough XP to be the right level to tackle the rest of the adventure). The players generally won't know what is the GM feeding in the pre-written material, and what is the GM responding to the actual events of play. If one of the PCs dies - especially if it's the one prophesied to deliver the ring to Mt Doom - or there is a TPK, it is a problem for the campaign. The story might grind to a halt, or go on some sort of hiatus, or need emergency plugging. Sometimes the GM will fudge or otherwise manipulate outcomes to avoid this problem.

I think this would count as an instance of what [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] have called "storytelling". It would also count as an instance of what I, in the OP, characterised as "railroading" (while noting that my usage was probably broader than typical). I would certainly regard it as a very GM-driven game.

(3) Similar to (2), but the whole quest situation is agreed to, at the table, up front. The players might even play a role in sorting out the details: PCs are created with the right sorts of hooks and interrelationships to the GM's idea for a quest, geography and history, etc. As the game unfolds, everyone is more-or-less overt and on the same page about where things are going and where they're ultimately going to end up. It's a collective "playing out" of the agreed story.

I don't know what label [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] would give this. I think Fate and Trail of Cthulhu, at least as Campbell is presenting them (I've read but not played them, but Campbell's account of them makes sense to me), fit this picture. I think CoC can easily fit this picture too, although the nature of the agreement is rather high level (the GM keeps the details secret, because part of the fun is being surprised by the precise nature of the mad stuff you discover and the insanity you have to play out for your PC).

I would not count this as "playing to find out": the important stuff is already pre-determined. I wouldn't call it "illusionism", either, because there's no illusion. It's overt. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has used the word "participationism" to describe (roughly) a consensual railroad, but I'm not sure that's quite right for this approach either - that seems more like a useful label for (2) when the table is happy with it.

I don't mind (3) for one-offs - I think it especially suits CoC one-offs, because CoC doesn't have action resolution mechanics that lure the players into making action declarations that can then lead to results that destabilise the agreed scenario. I wouldn't like it for an ongoing game, though.

I think (2) and (3) are not separated by a hard boundary. I think both are fairly different from (1), though.

I am talking more at the high level....the general flow of the "main story". I use that term because I am not sure how else to describe it. The point of the campaign. In the specific case of my campaign, there is quite a lot to it, but ultimately it boils down to opposing a specific group of enemies and their goals.

That goal, which all the players understand and have agreed to, is never far from playing a part of the action taking place.

<snip>

So in your example of the mage's tower and the beheading, and the lugging of bodies....did you have no sense of where things would go after that? Obviously, the PCs actions helped shape where things went....but did you have no idea? For me, I would have a few possibilities sketched out....then the PCs do what they do, and it takes things in an unexpected direction (they get caught by the watch lugging dead bodies around town)....I don't feel the need to simply handwave or otherwise invalidate these events. I let them play out....and then I decide how they affect where things were going after that. So if the PCs are thrown in jail or if they are coerced by the captain of the guard to perform some task for him or what have you, I proceed with that to see what happens.

But once that plays out, things are going to head back in some direction I had previously expected. I look at such instances as sidetracks

I hope my (1) to (3) above, in the context of LotR as an RPG, go some way to explaining how I think about the things you mention here.

I don't find the notion of "sidetrack" at all helpful. The action is what it is. There's just one track.

As far as a sense of where things will go - well, given the PCs' beliefs, which include stuff about the dead mage, the naga, and the mage whose tower the action happened in, I'm fairly confident that those elements will continue to figure. There is also, now, the nightwatch, into whose custody two of the PCs have fallen. So they're going to figure too - that will almost certainly be the starting point for our next session.

But what the events will be in which those elements figure - no, I don't have much of a sense of what those will be.

A few sessions ago, the session commenced where the last one had ended - with a PC locked in an iron maiden, having been captured by death cultists in the catacombs beneath the city of Hardby. That session ended with the PC having reached a truce with the chief death priest, and then practically befriending him. The two reached an agreement, which both honoured. The death priest explained the cult's rationale, and the PC ceased trying to kill them all. In the future, it's not beyond question that the PC might even call upon the death cultists as allies!

That's an instance of what I think of under the rubric "playing to find out". And it's not something that I anticipate in advance. It's the result of framing, plus the application of the mechanics to resolve action declarations, and then feeding those outcomes of resolution back into the framing. It means that things unfold in ways that weren't known, or even knowable, at the start of the session. (This is what I take to be meant by the idea of the story being "feral" - though if I've got that wrong [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] can correct me.)

do you think that the GM and the players could actually want the same things in play?

Absolutely, but what?

If they all want to play to find out, then they both have to be ready to engage techniques - eg the ones I've talked about - to do that. So no one can pre-author the story.

If they all want to play through a story of destroying a ring in Mt Doom (ie my (3) above) then the situation is completely different. To be honest, I'm not even 100% sure how mechanics figure into that - what are they for? if everyone at the table wants to tell the same story, why are we rolling dice to find out whether or not the story we all want to tell is the one we're "allowed" (by the rules of the game) to actually tell? That's another reason I think CoC is fairly well suited to aproach (3) - the dice don't really get checked except as a device for parcelling out insanity, and that helps contribute to the feeling on the player side that one's sanity is not under one's own control.

But if everyone at the table wants to tell the LotR story, why are we rolling dice? What are they contributing to the experience? I'm sure there's an answer, but I personally don't know what it is.