Do you prefer your character to be connected or unconnected to the adventure hook?

[Hussar]

At the end of the day, it's all about buy in, really. If the players have bought into the campaign, the campaign will likely rock. If the players aren't bought in, for whatever reason, the best campaign in the world will still fizzle and die.

For @Saelorn, for example, buy in will have to include the notion of meta-gaming. I might not agree with his definition of meta-gaming, but, if I want to get buy in from him, I'm going to have to work with that definition. Or, simply agree not to play at the same table. Whichever is better.

So, yeah, for DM's, know your players and pitch to their strengths. For players, at least make the attempt to meet the DM half way. The DM is pouring a lot (presumably) of work into the game, and if you're turning up your noses at everything that gets put in front of you, it's really time to walk away. Self-reflection is key.

 

[pemerton]

Do you prefer your character to be connected or unconnected to the adventure hook?

An example of the former would be taking vengeance on the murderer of your PC's parents. An example of the latter would be a bounty hunter PC choosing to track down the same murderer but lacking any personal connection, at least initially.

The former makes for a more emotionally engaging story. The latter potentially gives the players more freedom, assuming it's a sandbox containing many possible adventures.

Different RPGs approach this differently.

So to return to this point: consider the preview playbook (= PC sheet + build rules) for Orbital, a sci-fi RPG currently on Kickstarter that I just backed.

Here's the link to the preview.

Nearly every element of The Heart's playbook is about connection:

• Why do you put others before yourself?
• Who do you refuse your hospitality?
• What tragedy do you carry with you?

Given that the player is instructed to consider these things as they play, these things are clearly going to come out in the course of play. The tragedy aspect is reinforced by the PC-building requirement to choose what haunts you. The moves available when playing this character also reinforce key features of this character, which will therefore be part of play - especially striking in this respect (to me at least) are:

• Regular (ie at will): Help someone feel better, if only for minute.
• Weak (ie earns a token): Try to use words when action was required.
• Strong (ie costs a token): Calm someone from violence with your words.

There is also, as part of the PC-building process, the requirement to choose a link to the threat to the space-station - the threat itself is "a perilous event that threatens to light a spark to all the powder built up within your ragtag, turbulent space station" that is chosen by the players together at the start of the scenario:

• One of my regulars has a black eye and a story.
• A suspicious manifest was mislaid in my place.
• I’ve got history with one of the main agitators.

I expect that the other playbooks will be similar in these respects. The result should be that play in this system moves pretty quickly through moments of crisis and resolution in which the PCs are intimately involved not just causally but emotionally and dramatically.

 

[Lanefan]

Wow. That is a rather rough and jaded outlook on gaming you've got there. I don't consider all meta-gaming to be a bad thing, and as a GM I will alter NPCs and campaign plans based on out-of-game knowledge on what the players would like or what seems more fun.

I'm of two minds here, to some extent.

Meta-gaming from the player side is bad, full stop.

Sometimes, however, DM-side meta-gaming becomes necessary in order to keep things going - even something as simple as placing a player's new PC in a position where the party will run on to it.

That said, I also don't like it when things happen to people close to the PCs, e.g. their families, too much more often than random chance would dictate; because yes, if done too often it can come across as contrived.

Sometimes random chance doesn't dictate it, though. If the PCs have earned some revenge against them then going after their families is very much in play. It's when some random villain who has never heard of the PCs just happens to go after their families that it seems contrived.

(I make it a point not to make things more difficult when the PCs successfully circumvent obstacles because they're clever though. Cleverness should be rewarded.)

Agreed.

I'm also not shy about making things more difficult when (not if) they're the opposite of clever...

 

[Lanefan]

What is an example of a justification for a party to decide to work together over time that doesn't involve any metagaming? (Is it only bad if the DM does it? Is it not meta-gaming if the players all make their characters with a pretty unshakable reason to always be cooperative?)

There's all kinds of in-fiction ways to get a party to work together - or at least go through the motions.

Do the games you play in ever have rules against interparty conflict, or is that always fair game to play out as the dice fall?

Both as player and DM I expect players to play to what their character would do, and if that means in-party conflict then so be it.

 

[Lanefan]

Not sure why you say that they aren't linear. Storm King's Thunder is pretty much A to B to C. Nothing wrong with that, but, it's not exactly a sandbox is it? Same with Princes and with Hoard. Other AP's are more open - Strahd and others are more open ended.

Princes is an odd one, in that it's both linear and not-linear at the same time.

It's linear, in that you've got to do various preliminary things before you can even really access the final showdown; and yet not linear in that more than many APs it leaves considerable choice in which order those preliminary things can be done. There's also lots of room for downtime, side quests and diversions; more so than some other APs I've seen.

 

[Hussar]

Princes is an odd one, in that it's both linear and not-linear at the same time.

It's linear, in that you've got to do various preliminary things before you can even really access the final showdown; and yet not linear in that more than many APs it leaves considerable choice in which order those preliminary things can be done. There's also lots of room for downtime, side quests and diversions; more so than some other APs I've seen.

Fair enough. Although, frankly, if you have to do A, B, and C before you go to D, I'm not sure it's really all that non-linear if you can choose which order to do A, B and C in. You're still doing A, B and C, regardless of the order. It's somewhat less linear, I suppose, but, it's still a single line progression from beginning to end, regardless of which order you do things.

Again, I'm not saying it's a bad adventure. I don't think that it is. And, frankly, there's nothing wrong with linear adventures IMO. I've had great fun with linear adventures. But, in a linear adventure, you don't need anywhere near the character connection to the adventure hook, because, well, this is the adventure you're going on and, well, step on up and let's adventure. So long as the story is engaging enough, I'm happy.

My problem was that I had players who had had a pretty steady diet of linear campaigns and when I tried (three times no less) to run sandboxes, they fizzled and died because the players had zero buy in. They just did not care at all. And nothing I seemed to do was motivating them. So, yeah, it was a good thing we parted ways. I was not the right DM for that group. I mean, this is the group that I dropped three treasure maps on and got a shrug in response. :/ Unfortunate.

But, yeah, it really, REALLY matters to know your players.

 

[Aldarc]

People have their particular likes and dislikes and that's cool. We should just accept the diversity of opinions in gaming and move on.

That can never be cool if your misinformed views of meta-gaming infects this hobby and threatens my immersion! But as long as you keep your BADWRONGFUN restricted to your table then I can preserve my ONETRUEWAY.

I'm of two minds here, to some extent.

Meta-gaming from the player side is bad, full stop.

I disagree, but I think that you equate meta-gaming to “cheating” whereas I do not have so narrow a sense of the term. I think meta-gaming is as much a part of player play as it is for the GM. It’s the part of play that forms and informs how the game is played. Meta-gaming is simply a natural by-product of playing the game over time. Different rule systems and mechanics will impact the meta-game for players and GMs alike. We can even see how meta-gaming informs gaming when players switch game systems that engender different meta-games.

 

[Campbell]

I do not have a whole lot to say about adventure gaming because I do not do a whole lot of it from either side of the screen. Even when I run more traditional games like Legend of Five Rings, Exalted, or Pathfinder Second Edition my focus is on deeply personal character focused play. Characters do not go on adventures. They pursue their deeply personal goals. Because their goals are ambitious (otherwise they would be NPCs) stuff should naturally get tense.

You start with a tenuous situation and have players create like actual people who are invested in the situation and want things from life. It's all done in tandem. The initial situation and characters are part of the same creation process. Once play starts you just follow it where it goes.

I'm not really one for threatening the stuff characters value like family members unless they play a significant in the situation.

 

[Scott Christian]

Not sure why you say that they aren't linear. Storm King's Thunder is pretty much A to B to C. Nothing wrong with that, but, it's not exactly a sandbox is it? Same with Princes and with Hoard. Other AP's are more open - Strahd and others are more open ended.

Even in the most open sandbox world I have been a player in, all campaigns are A to B to C. You might go to F before going to C, but it is still the same. A good DM weaves a story based on the decisions of the players. If you are implying PC's can abandon an A to B to C adventure in a sandbox versus AP, well they still go off to a new A to B to C adventure. Just because they can change it doesn't mean they leave the road.
Sorry, just re-read that. That comes across as course. It wasn't typed that way.

 

[Umbran]

Adventure path play does expect more passive players....

More passive, or more accepting?

There are many kinds of activity that a player can be engaged in - self-driven plot is only one of them.