D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[pemerton]

So here’s a thought, and it’s not fully formed so I expect there will be holes in it and/or criticisms of it, and that’s fine.

Story Now is the inversion of the classic play loop.

The classic play loop is:

• GM presents the scene
• Players declare actions for their characters
• GM narrates outcome

There’s more going on than just the above…the GM typically makes a ruling or calls for a roll or otherwise engages the mechanics that will help him in narrating the outcome, but that’s a summary.

Inverted, it would look like this:

• Players present the scene
• GM declares actions
• Players narrate outcomes

So that’s definitely not an accurate description of Story Now. But bear with me. It’s actually close in some ways.

I mean, in Story Now, a likely first step is that the GM will present the scene or frame a situation. However, this should be based on things that the players have offered through their characters. These games have the players choose aspects of their characters that are meant to be central to play.

So the GM needs to respond to that. He has to take (one or more of) those things and frame the opening situation with those in mind. So in that sense, the first step in the loop is a prompt from players to GM.

The GM then sets the scene, challenging the characters in some way. The players respond by declaring actions for their characters. The resolution of these actions then constrain the GM in some way when he declares the outcome. I think this is true of most RPGs, but is more about the fiction. So if my action in a traditional game is to attack the orc, the outcome is I either hit or miss the orc. With Story Now games, the GM is bound by both the fiction and the rules. In some cases (I’m thinking of some PbtA games here) the results give the player the ability to declare the outcome, and the GM must honor that.

So perhaps it’s best to expand the play loop a bit:

• Players provide character traits/goals/beliefs that they want to be relevant to play
• GM then sets a scene with one or more of those traits in mind
• Players declare actions
• Action resolution mechanics help determine how outcomes are determined
• GM narrates results accordingly

There’s more constraint on the GM in how they establish an opening scene and in how they narrate the results of player declared actions. There’s a lot more player——> GM prompting, rather than the GM constantly prompting the players and having them react.

This idea isn’t a fully cooked theory or anything, just a thought that occurred to me while reading the thread, and trying to grasp some of the resistance to the Story Now process, and recalling my own resistance of it. The comparison is imperfect to be sure, but I think it at least touches on elements that, in my opinion, tend to put gamers who have a more traditional approach off of games that work differently.

I'm no stranger to half-baked theory and conjecture! But on this occasion I can't get fully on board with yours, sorry. I can see where you're coming from, but I think you're looking in the wrong place - the play loop - and equating particular technical features of PbtA and allied games with "story now" in general. I've bolded the bit that I do agree with - but I don't think that it has much to do with the play loop.

Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant, AW as written - they all have basically the same play loop as D&D. The GM frames a scene; the players declare actions for their PCs; outcomes ensue which feed into a new situation (or a development of the existing one) which demands more action declarations. (If the players really have no actions to declare for their PCs, then the game is done.)

As in D&D, there are principles that govern the framing of scenes. And as in D&D, there are principles that govern the narration of outcomes and the feeding of those into the new (or developing) situation. What creates the different play experience is different principles.

When running KotB, the principle that governs scene-framing is Hold true to your prep, together with Honour the wandering monster die When running BW, the principle that governs scene-framing is Make the players, via their PCs, fight for what they believe in. When running Prince Valiant, it's a bit less clear-cut, but by default the principle is Create opportunities for valour and errantry, which may also permit valour and errantry to fail.

It's these different principles that explain the different degrees of player => GM prompting, rather than the play loop as such. The same story could be told for consequence-narration: in BW it is based on "intent and task" plus putting Beliefs under pressure and leaning into Instinct and traits, so inevitably there is a high degree of player => GM prompting even when a check fails; in AW the whole notion of "offering opportunities, perhaps with a cost" and "announcing future or offscreen badness" implicates the players' purposes and aspirations for their PCs (because what is an opportunity, a cost, or badness is all relative to those), and so again there is inevitably a high degree of player => GM prompting even before we get to the outcomes of successful moves; in D&D consequence narration is generally guided by the principles "stick to your prep" and "extrapolate what makes sense" and so inevitably player => GM prompting is reduced.

But not always. In D&D, it is possible for player => GM prompting to happen too - see eg @Scott Christian's example above of the player asking if their PC can find a pie shop. But generally that's not a systematic principle. And indeed if you look at "GM problem" threads, you'll see a recurrent theme is how to deal with that sort of thing in a way that doesn't require the GM to depart from their prep! What's at work here is not the play loop, but the principle that scene-framing follows from prep - which obviously is prone to collide with player requests (be they implicit or express) for scenes that don't fit with that prep.

But - to maintain my back-and-forth with @Ovinomancer about drifting D&D towards "situation first" - you could change some of those principles for D&D, while keeping the basic resolution engine and play loop - and get something much more "story now". The principles are the key, in my view.

 

[Lanefan]

This is one of those cases where it would help to think through how the game under discussion plays.

Here is the Spout Lore move and some commentary on it (pp 21, 66 of my DW pdf):

Some moves . . . Give you a chance to say something about your character and their history. When you spout lore you may get asked how you know the information that the GM reveals. Take that opportunity to contribute to the game and show who your character really is. Just keep in mind the established facts and don’t contradict anything that’s already been described.​

OK, this sounds good so far.

​

. . .​

​

Spout Lore​

When you consult your accumulated knowledge about something, roll+Int. ✴On a 10+, the GM will tell you something interesting and useful about the subject relevant to your situation. ✴On a 7–9, the GM will only tell you something interesting—it’s on you to make it useful. The GM might ask you “How do you know this?” Tell them the truth, now.​

​

You spout lore any time you want to search your memory for knowledge or facts about something. . . .​

​

On a miss the GM’s move will often involve the time you take thinking. Maybe you miss that goblin moving around behind you, or the tripwire across the hallway. It’s also a great chance to reveal an unwelcome truth.​

​

Just in case it isn’t clear: the answers are always true, even if the GM had to make them up on the spot. Always say what honesty demands.​

So let's revisit @Manbearcat's example:
Manbearcat has suggested, as a "miss", the revelation of an unwelcome truth: ie that the Dwarven forge is long-extinguished by something that still lurks.

There are any number of other things that Manbearcat could have suggested - eg maybe (if prior play underpins it) the unwelcome truth could be this: As you think about it more, you realise that Attar was teasing you all those years ago, with tales of the unquenchable Dwarven forges. There was no more truth to those tales, than there was to Attar's claim to have been an archmage. (This might be a doubly unwelcome truth, if it tells us not only that there's no forge, but that Attar was an even bigger charlatan than anyone thought so far.)

Got it. Two thoughts, though:

1. As there's a far greater number of possibilities on a "miss" here, is there any reason why the specific reason for the miss must be revealed right now?
2. In your Attar-was-teasing example quoted (which is kinda cool, I must say!), and corollary to point 1 just above, what I'd like is for there to be some possibility that the PCs don't realize Attar was full of BS until they actually get to the forge that isn't there. (I'd almost certainly have there be something else interesting in or near that location instead, just not the forge they seek)

It's the GM's job, in this sort of game, to come up with ideas that (i) are interesting, and (ii) maintain the pressure on the players via their PCs, and (iii) honour and build on the prior events of play.

As @hawkeyefan and @Ovinomancer have posted, there's no a priori reason to favour the GM's conception of (i) or (iii) over the players'. If the players think a Dwarven forge is interesting, that's a good reason to run with the idea. The alternative I've suggested doesn't, though - I'm gambling that further developing Attar's charlatanry will also be found interesting.

Agreed; assuming Attar is someone who has somehow previously been or become relevant.

The difference, perhaps, is that while if the players think a Dwarven forge is interesting I too am happy to let them run with it, I'm also quite willing to have that idea ultimately be entirely in error. In other words, if they end up red-herring-ing themselves chasing untrue rumours it's just fine with me.

@Manbearcat's example doesn't really let this occur, however. In his later explanations it's made clear they can suffer and-or die trying to get there; but nothing changes the fact that there's still a "there" to get to, rather than a well-chased wild goose.

@Lanefan's suggestion - On further reflection you realise that all the forges there once were must be extinguished - if you want to repair the armour you'll have to go back to town - seems likely to fall short on points (i) and (ii), but we can't know a priori that it would never be a good GM call.

The players might think of this as a plan B as well, if-when the realize the forge is a no-go.

 

[pemerton]

I mean...yes? But those were both the results of rolls. The former was a (highly elided, the actual scene was much more detailed) 6- on a Discern Realities check, which I run as the party learns a truth they wish wasn't (so there's no lying or distrust, instead a threat often escalates).

<snip>

In searching for the things stolen from their fake caravan, the party Wizard got a 6- on Discern Realities, so they learned that there had been a very large stockpile of weapons here...but it had relatively recently been moved elsewhere (an unwelcome truth).

Is this the point at which you, as GM, authored the fiction about the stockpile and it having been moved?

The reason why the cultists are amassing weapons? Where did the weapons go after moving out? No idea! We'll learn all that later, if it remains relevant.

This implies a "yes" answer to my question just above.

I feel like I'm being squeezed a bit. If I'm speaking in abstractions or invented examples, well I'm not saying WHY the players are doing some given thing. If I give examples from what I actually do and have done, either there isn't enough detail, or the specific throughline is bogged down by details, could I maybe state a definition or other, you know, abstraction to make it more clear what I mean? Etc. I don't think anyone is being aggressive or whatever, but like...I feel like when I meet a request I'm always told I've fallen short in some other way that makes it impossible to say.

I'm trying to understand your accounts of your play.

Upthread you said - or at least I took you to say - that it is "illusionistic" to have a mystery without a pre-authored solution. And to me that seemed to be reinforced by how you described the risk of "single points of failure". But now you seem to be describing a mystery - the amassing by the cultists of weapons - that has no pre-authored solution. Based on your earlier statement I had assumed that you had already authored stuff about the amassing of weapons. Now I'm trying to work out - unsuccessfully so far - the parameters of your critique of unanswered mysteries as illusionistic. And relatedly: how could there be, even in principle, a "single point of failure" for these cultists' amassed weapons?

it's extremely confusing (and somewhat frustrating) to me this notion that having ANYTHING AT ALL pre-planned is almost...infectious?

I don't think of prep as a contagion.

I'm just trying to understand your play. To me, it seems that your description of the cultists and their weapons is describing a completely different approach to the relationship between situation, adjudication and backstory than your description upthread of a murder mystery. If you agree with that, then I remain puzzled by your remarks about illusionism and single points of failure. If you don't agree with that, then either I've radically misread your descriptions of your play, or we have very different sense of what counts as differences of RPGing technique.

 

[Lanefan]

This is odd. I mean, for this to be Force, the GM would have had to have planned it and wanted this outcome -- a bird appears and threatens to attack. Note, it doesn't attack, and the game doesn't shift into combat mode because there is no such combat swoosh in Story Now games -- play continues using the same framework. The bird appears adds a new threat, a new source of hard moves to the GM's repertoire, it doesn't create a set outcome. The bird can appear, the PCs can take an action to deal with it, and the bird can be gone just like that! Or, they ignore it but nail successes and the bird just wanders around without anything to do.

So the GM can have the bird appear but doesn't get to declare what the bird (who is effectively an NPC in this case) is doing, or trying to do?

Put another way, the NPC has no free will of its own? It doesn't get to choose whether to attack or talk or fly away, either before or after the PCs do their thing?

That seems mighty odd somehow.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm only describing using your definitions what others mean by 'linear adventure'. I think @Scott Christian nailed it with his story board picture he posted a few pages back.

I'd suggest that linear adventures don't actually exist (as in no one plays one) with your very narrow definition here. I'm not sure why you've defining 'linear adventure' so narrowly that no one can be said to actually play one.

They very much do exist as defined, and have for a long time.

Some of the 1e tournament modules were completely linear, in that there were no branches or exploration choices and in order to complete the module you couldn't help but go through every encounter. (A2, I'm lookin' right at ya!)

Fast-forward 30-ish years to a WotC module for 4e which I own (and have modified and run), in which the underground part as written is a 7-room straight line with a near-irrelevant 8th room off to one side.

Numerous 3rd-party adventures - most commonly short 5-to-12-encounter affairs released at one time or another for all editions - are similarly designed.

 

[Lanefan]

In AW and DW, the rule for a missed check (ie 6 or down) is that the GM can make as hard and direct a move as they like, that follows from the established fiction. So if we assume there has already been an appropriate soft move - eg the GM has narrated the giant nests that sit on the high peaks of the mountains the PCs are climbing - then the hard move (A giant angry bird of prey grabs you off the mountainside is fully justified and not a use of force in any of the senses I set out above: there's no manipulation of mechanics, or of behind-the-scenes fiction, or of scene-framing. There's just the GM doing their job as the rules tell them to.

You've answered my question before I even got to asking it - well done!

That question was going to be, in this situation is the GM justified in having the bird grab a PC in its talons and fly off into the sunset with it?

Because if yes, assuming the rest of the party want to rescue their comrade, then the GM can use that to haul the party into a location and-or an adventure of her choosing (because that adventure site is where the bird takes its captive); and how is that not Force of the highest order?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What's the illusion you have in mind?

Over the past little while I've run mysteries in different ways.

One is to preplan the murder and clues Agatha Christie style. I adapted an old MegaTraveller adventure and ran a session like this freeform last year. The basic function of player action declarations is to trigger exposition/information revelation from the GM. Then the players make their inference and either get the answer right, or do not. (In my case they got all the information but didn't get the right answer.)

Another is to have a mystery build into the situation, and rely on subsequent action resolution to prompt possible answers. Eg in my first BW campaign, one of the players established as part of his PC's background that the PC had a Balrog-possessed brother. The basics of how this happened were established as part of the background - he had been possessed when he tried to conjure a magical lightning storm to protect his tower, where he and his brother were living, from attacking Orcs. But that leaves open further questions like, why him? And what were the Orcs doing there?

When, in play, the PCs returned to the (now somewhat ruined) tower, they were looking for a particular artefact in it (the existence of which, at least in the past, was also a PC background element). A Scavenging attempt was failed. I narrated the outcome as a failure to find the desired artefact, and instead coming across (so-called) Black Arrows in the ruins of the brother's workroom. It was already established that these Black Arrows were used by Orcs in fighting Elves. So this revelation established that the brother was already evil, or at least sinister, before he became possessed. One bit of the mystery filled in, but more questions raised!

I think that Apocalypse World or Dungeon World would also be well-suited to that sort of approach to running a mystery.

A third way is to do everything in play. This is how I've approached Cthulhu Dark. So the mystery unfolds out of the opening scene(s), where the PCs motivations are established and I - as GM - interweave their narrative trajectories. And then further elements are established, revelations narrated, etc as seems appropriate (i) in response to successful or unsuccessful action declarations and (ii) how far we are through the session - at a certain point it makes sense to try and link things together rather than create yet more possible threads and directions of inquiry. This can be done in response to success - Yes, you do find the signature of so-and-so on those documents you're examining, just as you suspected - or failure - When you regain consciousness, you're in a room with a locked door and barred window. Looking out the window, you recognise the grounds - you're in <prior established and suspicious NPC's? manor!

None of these involve any illusionism, as in covert use of force by the GM. Hence why I'm wondering what approach you have in mind in the quote above.

I assume this is the upthread post you referenced (as you have actually mentioned some of this a couple times, but this was the one directed at me personally).

I'll start by saying what'a like what I do: the approach I used was very like your first example. I also used a mix of established and improvised fiction to provide a Christie-style closed venue for a case. In brief, the old Sultana (mother of the four half-sibling co-rulers) had built a manor house on the mountainside as a private retreat for her final husband, who had been a (non-noble) air genie. This makes it valuable, now that the old Sultana is gone and the husband is long dead, for negotiations and parties. Its privacy and no-teleport enchantment gave the PCs time to investigate and let Sultana Malikah (current true ruler of the city) use her guards to keep the suspects inside the house.* There were clues, the party's actions prompted their discovery (e.g. interviewing the servants was the Bard's top priority, which was made easier because the PCs chose to arrive early for the ball and spent most of that time helping some of the servants get their work done, endearing the PCs to the servants. Bard player had no idea it was going to be a murder mystery, he just likes helping people.) They found most or all of the clues, but the critical thing turned out to be the very first one they learned, even though it had seemed inconsequential at first: a color-changing dress. The murderer was an expert illusionist, who had used her magic to appear to be the victim after his death in order to throw off the scent. Yet she made a stupid mistake out of vanity, in that the servants had seen that her dress for the party arrived in a beautiful red, but she was very clearly wearing that dress in rich blue that night. Most of the clues were still useful, mind, but the color-changing dress proved to be the critical one (which surprised the hell out of me, let me tell you; I'd assumed it would be the poison in the coffee.)

Your second example is closest to what I mean, but it feels a bit too..."weakly" mysterious, if that makes sense? The events are well in the past, and there's a lot of leeway for how things had played out, which makes the revelation of the black arrows feel like a fun surprise rather than a "whatever you come to believe was right all along." The issue may be (I'm not sure) that the murder mystery feels like a relatively "closed" event (e.g., every true murder victim has to have died in one and only one way, there has to have been at least one killer, there was at least one weapon or object that killed her, etc.), whereas with this possession, it feels like legitimate new understanding could arise at any time as we learn more about what it all means and what happened around that time. You can't really understand a murder as something other than a murder, but a "possession" could have many meanings and become far more nuanced as you learn more of the how and why. (Admittedly, some murders have context that changes things...but all it can really do is either reveal that what you thought was the true cause of death wasn't or that who you thought actually did the deed did not.)

I guess what I'm saying is, "why did my brother get possessed?" is a fundamentally different kind of mystery from a murder, theft, fraud, etc. It is a question about purpose and justification, rather than about facts-of-the-matter per se. Answering that kind of question feels like enriching the play experience, establishing new background, redirecting the trajectory, and I'm more than cool with my players doing those things. It does not feel like "once we see enough clues, we will then declare what the events were and that will be what the past always was." Note that this does differ from proper illusionism because the players can be in author stance with it. But it reflects the same..."history is clay in our hands" perspective. That causality itself bends to whatever makes sense in the fiction, since chronologically later events (examining things and developing beliefs about them) causes past events to be a certain way and no other.

The third thing I honestly don't know how to parse. It sounds like use of force to me, and to a problematic degree, at least for the part where they wake up in the manor. The characters don't appear to have the freedom to be wrong (whether in whole or in part), because the threads will be drawn together no matter what, it just might be more complicated than expected. And that's sort of the issue I have with the Christie-type mystery in this stuff, as opposed to the "historical" mystery like your possessed-brother example. The players need the freedom to be wrong in a Christie-type mystery. If the mystery is fore-ordained to be solved, then they can't be wrong in the end, though they might stumble before the GM uses force to correct their trajectory. If they're declaring the true killer, they can't be wrong even in principle, because there is no fact of the matter to be wrong about. There is only "stuff we declared before" and "stuff we're declaring now," with the restriction that newly-declared things must be logically consistent with previously declared things. It becomes illusionism conducted by the whole group, rather than solely by the DM, with past facts being created (but, usually, not altered) whenever and wherever necessary to make the current declarations true.

*Social standing is everything to genie nobility. While the two bigwig suspects--Prince Sahl and Baron Afzal--COULD have fought their way out with ease, the loss of face would have been devastating. Though the Baron surely was pissed about the accusation. He's a bit Byronic, you see.

 

[FrogReaver]

You've answered my question before I even got to asking it - well done!

That question was going to be, in this situation is the GM justified in having the bird grab a PC in its talons and fly off into the sunset with it?

Because if yes, assuming the rest of the party want to rescue their comrade, then the GM can use that to haul the party into a location and-or an adventure of her choosing (because that adventure site is where the bird takes its captive); and how is that not Force of the highest order?

I'll take your word. My experience is that module play most often resembles @Scott Christian's storyboard example more than a single line. So I'd say we need to be very careful in defining something as linear vs near-linear. Because it seems it has such a large impact on this kind of discussion. For example, I tend to include near linear into what I call linear.

 

[FrogReaver]

I strongly disagree. The practical effect of making up "second stringers" to keep the "plot" alive - and this could go on ad infinitum, lieutenants all the way down - is that the players never succeed until the GM lets them do so.

You intend 'honoring the fiction' to have some additional requirements than just honoring the fiction as one might use it in ordinary language. I'd say this is another place where jargon is getting in the way of communication.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

My like was because this is not far off from my aforementioned "there's been a murder but you have a quantum murderer until the party declares who the murderer was" issue. That is, I don't at all mind (nor consider it "easy mode") that the player can declare elements of the setting in general. But certain kinds of them break any semblance of groundedness or verisimilitude for me, and those things can't just be "player declares whatever makes sense."

I just can't wrap my head around the idea of "solve a mystery" where the "solution" is invented by the players. That rings as so obviously, inherently hollow that I literally cannot imagine enjoying an experience where that's how a mystery got resolved. How can you collect clues and draw valid inferences when not just the clues but the inferences themselves are causing the truth? It would be like if an absolutely omnipotent deity (that is, one not bound by the rules of logic) tried to do science. How can you perform an experiment and record the results in order to learn something when you, personally, are directly making the results happen, and you, personally, are creating the true state of affairs that the experiment is attempting to ascertain? Indeed, you personally are deciding what logic itself is permitted to relate? That's just...not solving a mystery. It's re-writing history so that whatever you believe to be true not only is true, but always was.

Hey, according to some wilder interpretations of quantum mechanics, that's how the reality works!

But yeah, I get what you're saying.