All i Really Care About is Interesting Choices

[hawkeyefan]

I'm not so sure.

There's a type of play where the GM sets up a challenge, and has a preferred solution. The GM knows the "right" way to get around the challenge. They may allow other solutions, but there's one way that the GM knows ahead of time will work. It is up to the players to find it.

This is not a core to all types of play.

As an example - the Atomic Robo RPG (Fate-based, also based on the Atomic Robo comic). The PCs are generally Action Scientists, going out to handle weird stuff that happens - giant ants marching on the town, rogue AIs, sentient fungus coming to take over the world, the ghost of Thomas Edison come to wreak revenge, and so on.

There is a subsystem for the players to figure out any Weird Science stuff. But, in so doing, they are NOT figuring out what the GM had in mind. The GM, very specifically doesn't have anything in mind. The GM said there were giant ants. The GM did not pick out any particular vulnerabilities, or have any idea how the ants work. That's for the players to decide. The players make up what will work, using a little sub-game, and whatever they come up with is the answer, and will have mechanical impact.

Sure, I don't disagree! I didn't say it was a core part of all play. Just that it was a core part of many types of play. Considering the dominance of D&D and similar games, the prevalence of the Adventure Path as a major approach to play, I don't think that's really all that contentious.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I fully agree that meaningful choices are important. But then we also must consider what it is that makes those choices meaningful. And often it is establishing the context. That first hour or two of the session being spent on interacting with various NPCs is what makes the later choices relating to those NPCs meaningful and gives the required context for those choices to be informed.

Choices are important, absolutely, and they can (arguably should) be at the heart of TRPG play. But ...

As @Crimson Longinus said, choices cannot have meaning without context, and sometimes it takes some amount of play at the table to establish that. I would add that worthwhile choices will have consequences, and it will sometimes take some amount of play at the table to resolve those. I would be inclined to say that both establishing context and resolving consequences are about the choices, so play doing either of those is (or at least can be) centered on player/character choice.

I think how context is established can vary a good deal. It depends on how you want things to progress, and what the preferences are for the folks at the table.

For me, taking into consideration the idea of meaningful choices, I think it really depends on what is meant to make the NPC important. If it's one that's been chosen/created by a player to be an existing relationship... a mentor or friend or family member... then likely very little context is needed beyond what already exists. Think of player authored backstory and how that can give a player context for play....but we don't need to have established all that backstory in play. We may not have established any of it early in a game, yet it may still inform the player. There's no reason NPCs can't work similarly. It's your sister, you obviously care about her (even if the relationship may be complicated, etc.).

If it's an NPC that the GM has created/introduced, then maybe some more context is needed, and so some time can be spent on this. I think establishing this kind of thing has a bit of a science to it, and I think works best with a light hand. Want an NPC to be meaningful to the players? Make them likeable, make them funny, make them vulnerable in some way, make them relatable. There's an economy to this that I think needs to be considered. I lean toward brevity and catchy dialogue or character traits to help here. But I also think we need to ask "why do I as GM want this NPC to be important?" I'm not saying the GM shouldn't have ideas about this, but I think ultimately, the players are the ones who are going to decide if someone's important.

But also, importantly, a lot of the context will only emerge through play. I may not care at all about an NPC in session 1, but by session 12, I may care deeply about them. Does that mean that huge chunks of time need to be devoted to spotlighting this NPC? Or is it possible that small snippets over several sessions will accomplish the same thing? We don't always need the context to be front loaded in this regard.

 

[prabe]

I think how context is established can vary a good deal. It depends on how you want things to progress, and what the preferences are for the folks at the table.

Indeed.

I generally prefer for the players to decide how much time they want to spend interacting with NPCs and/or other environmental features. What they decide to interact with is likely to become important in play.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Indeed.

I generally prefer for the players to decide how much time they want to spend interacting with NPCs and/or other environmental features. What they decide to interact with is likely to become important in play.

That's the kind of situation where I struggle a bit. My instincts are to get to the meat of any situation fairly quickly. So if players are spending a lot of time on something, and the relevance of it is unclear for too long, my reaction is to speed things up. To bring it to some kind of closure or a decision point.

But maybe that trend means we rush past something that may have come up, or I stifle something that would have been interesting or meaningful. So I'm trying to keep this in mind and curb my impulse at least a bit.

I think my first step when I get that "let's GO" urge will be to instead pause a second and say "what is it you're trying to accomplish here". Just have the player tell me what they're going for so we can get to it. If they don't know or aren't sure, then maybe I'll move things along.

 

[prabe]

That's the kind of situation where I struggle a bit. My instincts are to get to the meat of any situation fairly quickly. So if players are spending a lot of time on something, and the relevance of it is unclear for too long, my reaction is to speed things up. To bring it to some kind of closure or a decision point.

But maybe that trend means we rush past something that may have come up, or I stifle something that would have been interesting or meaningful. So I'm trying to keep this in mind and curb my impulse at least a bit.

I think my first step when I get that "let's GO" urge will be to instead pause a second and say "what is it you're trying to accomplish here". Just have the player tell me what they're going for so we can get to it. If they don't know or aren't sure, then maybe I'll move things along.

I think if they don't know what they're trying to accomplish, my instinct would be to let them figure it out. Then again, there are probably reasons I have one campaign that's sitting at 103 sessions and another that's having session 69 (Dude!) tonight. Clearly I don't rush past much.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Really interesting post/thread @Reynard . I agree so much that I've started to dive into systems where the mechanics are all about this kind of focus--where you only roll, generally speaking, when a player makes a risky choice. And also where you skip past a lot of the logistics and drudgery, sometimes using mechanics to fill in those gaps later (like when you do a flashback in FitD to say you brought a given item or talked to a certain person before the mission started). The older I get, the less interested I am in sessions that have no impact or momentum. Most movies and TV shows cut past the filler--why not do that with RPGs too?

But I've seen GMs who maybe take that too far, sacrificing RP opportunities and forgetting that RPGs are like most other narrative mediums--they thrive on great, or at least memorable characters and character interactions. FitD games use a lot of mechanics to work through downtime, which is great, but some GMs see those phases as a checklist to be raced through. That approach means recurring NPCs don't get developed, PC relationships remain static (a definite shame given how that system supports low-level PvP), and the whole setting feels less lived-in and familiar.

Plus, downtime scenes are where some great PC decisions can happen, especially the kind that seem minor in the moment but have ripple effects for the whole campaign. It's hard to know when and how much to slow things down, while still putting that emphasis on decision points.

That said, if I never have another pointless interaction with a shopkeeper, I'll be happier for it.

Yeah, so in my system there's 'interlude' where you CAN RP basically anything, if the GM and players want to. No dice get rolled though! As a general concept I think focusing on the conflict stuff, which should be fairly 'momentous' for the PCs, is where mechanics are best employed. I mean, if the GM wants to have some random tables and such for what you can buy, or whatever, that's fine. I think those are best employed as constraints more than anything (IE no you cannot get spikes in this village).

All of this is of course very agenda-dependent. I mean, if the game is dungeon crawls and figuring out traps and how many torches got burned, well then maybe shopping is a big deal... I just don't tend to run that kind of game very often myself.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Indeed.

I generally prefer for the players to decide how much time they want to spend interacting with NPCs and/or other environmental features. What they decide to interact with is likely to become important in play.

This very much revolves around what the point of play is. If it's to explore the setting (including NPCs), even if the GM is trying to be reactive, then you absolutely need this kind of time to, you know, explore the setting! If exploring the setting isn't the point, if setting is there to enable play, then you don't really need this time -- you're going to build context as you play and see what happens. Nothing to learn.

 

[prabe]

This very much revolves around what the point of play is. If it's to explore the setting (including NPCs), even if the GM is trying to be reactive, then you absolutely need this kind of time to, you know, explore the setting! If exploring the setting isn't the point, if setting is there to enable play, then you don't really need this time -- you're going to build context as you play and see what happens. Nothing to learn.

In my experience, "build context as you play" means "build context after you decide and pretend it's a consequence." I do not find decisions anything like as meaningful in such play.

 

[Ovinomancer]

In my experience, "build context as you play" means "build context after you decide and pretend it's a consequence." I do not find decisions anything like as meaningful in such play.

Okay. I think that well describes all RPG play -- we're all pretending it matters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure, you definitely don't need them, but in some cases mechanics can help move things along, and get players making more risky decisions, rather than turtling or only doing what they're optimized for. Even stuff like getting rid of passive Perception rolls can help--players have to take more actions to figure out what's happening in a given situation, or just act boldly with incomplete information, rather than squinting and peering until they intuit what the GM wants them to know.

Making lots of decisions can be daunting as a player. It helps when a system gives them a nudge, including changing the way you think about a "failed" roll (but obviously that's not a requirement).

Right, so this is interesting in that with HoML there is literally no real mechanism by which to run a sort of procedural 'crawl' type scenario where you would be constantly making perception checks or something similar. All mechanics fall into conflict scenarios, and they are all resolved as challenges (similar to 4e SCs). So, there could definitely be a challenge like "get through this area while avoiding/disarming the traps", but it would be more of an overall conflict kind of thing where maybe setting off or being delayed by too many of them creates some big negative consequence. Its less about wandering around finding out where the traps are, and more about describing an experience of doing so, with the interesting instants of time being the ones that get attention.