D&D (2024) What could One D&D do to push the game more toward story?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sorry, my question was evasive. What I meant was, yes, this is exactly what the 5E DMG says to do in the section on calling for ability checks and setting DCs. That information is in the game. the problem is no one thinks they need to be told how to DM better, don't read the DMG, then turn around and say the DMG is terrible, and that 5E doesn't give DM's advice. It is an exhausting, circular argument.

5E is actually pretty good (2E levels) about talking about the DM's role and how to go about adjudicating. It is just terrible at walking a new DM through the actual process of running a session of D&D.

Yeah, being used to the more robust line in PbtA games, I find 5e's formulation muddled. I agree it is heavily reminiscent of 2e, IMHO 5e is basically a mechanically rationalized 2e. For my tastes a game that really did this stuff well is best, and 5e really would need to be rewritten to be that game. I'm sure many of the mechanics can be adapted, but it would be a fundamentally different game. Honestly, this is why I simply wrote my own game starting from 4e's baseline, because I don't see any point in using something that is so much further from the goal as a starting point.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I can't comment on BitD/FitD, but Apocalypse World doesn't boil down to "yes, and". For instance, if my character goes aggro against a NPC, and then my overall result is 6 or less, the GM can make as hard a move as they like that follows from the fiction, which might be that my PC is captured, or is left beaten to a bloody pulp on the floor, or whatever else seems to make sense.

Part of what makes AW work is that it generates momentum in the fiction without the need for collaboration on the story between the players and the GM. This is the essence of the sort of RPG that the Forge used to call "story now".

I think @AbdulAlhazred is right to say that introducing this into D&D would require a focus on intent in action declaration, and hence adjudication of success and failure. It is the protagonists getting what they want, or missing out on it, that generates the ebb and flow of a story.

In a lot of D&D play, including (as best I can tell) a lot of 5e D&D play, it is the GM who makes key decisions about what the protagonists want, and what the significance of any situation, or any action declaration, is. Changing that can be quite tricky, because it tends to require a different sort of approach to prep, to framing and to adjudication from that which is set out in the 5e materials (at least as I'm familiar with them).

Well, the other half of it is that the player's have to own the intent! I don't think it is true that the GM necessarily decides what the protagonists want, but the GM decides ENTIRELY what it is possible for them to achieve, and thus aspire to. This creates the most classic of all conflicts that exist at the table in neo-trad play, which is a player with an independent agenda vs a GM with a fixed idea of what the world holds and what can happen in it (and often, but not always, a pretty fixed idea of the trajectory of play overall).

This was played out in a CLASSIC fashion in the first full 5e campaign I played in. My character was pretty much built with an agenda. It was a pretty general and rather flexible one, he was just very ambitious and wanted to rule his own kingdom (or whatever, barony, etc.). Instead of trying to fight out a war, or battle of intrigue, with people in the established kingdom, he just went to the frontier and figured out how to construct his own place. The GM was pretty OK with this, but at a certain point she wanted to run an adventure, so all the PCs were transported off (by some GM fiat handwavy thing) to another land where we spent several weeks or a couple months, I forget exactly, doing this completely unrelated activity. When we came back, eventually, the GM decreed that 6 years had passed and all the land I had claimed and my castle was now owned by someone else! Blah, I think that was pretty much the last we played of THAT campaign. I never did figure out what exactly the point of that was, or why it was serving the agenda, etc. Nothing in 5e, however, really addresses the structure of play in a way that would make it make better sense.

I mean, contrast what would happen in DW. A doom supplied by a front could CERTAINLY threaten the character's land in some fashion. Failing to deal with it COULD lead to the loss of his property. No way, no how could it happen within the bounds of the agenda and principles of play of DW through such an arbitrary and unaddressable process. In fact the whole POINT of play would be to find out (at least for that aspect of the campaign) how the character dealt with such a threat to his ambitions. It might involve asking questions about what he was willing to sacrifice, or what moral compromises he might make in order to succeed, or whatever. ANY principled play of DW would lead to that, IMHO! I mean, assuming it went in that direction at all, most DW GMs would probably assume once I won the castle that was that and the various choices and whatever would play out on the next stage, say building the wilderness trading route that was supposed to make the thing economically viable.

 

[Reynard]

When we came back, eventually, the GM decreed that 6 years had passed and all the land I had claimed and my castle was now owned by someone else! Blah, I think that was pretty much the last we played of THAT campaign. I never did figure out what exactly the point of that was, or why it was serving the agenda, etc.

Without more information, my guess is the GM was trying to make the "battle" to get your lands back the central theme of the next stage of the campaign. They probably thought they were throwing you a bone after distracting you with an adventure. The mistake, of course, was not clearing it with you first.

 

[Aldarc]

Hate it. Not what I want in D&D. I don’t want mechanics that push or force story in D&D.

How do you understand the bold? Do you have examples of "mechanics that push or force story" in other games?

I ask because people don't always mean the same things when I hear vague comments like this.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

How do you understand the bold? Do you have examples of "mechanics that push or force story" in other games?

I ask because people don't always mean the same things when I hear vague comments like this.

I don’t have examples - I just don’t like the concept

 

[Aldarc]

I don’t have examples - I just don’t like the concept

That's helpful.

 

[Neonchameleon]

D&D doesn't need it.
You have a session, you play a game, by the end a story will have happened. Not forced, not squeezed into some PBTA definition.

And what do you think the PBTA definition of story is other than "what happened, strung together"? The big differences are that PBTA has more things happen on every roll and has non-linear growth and change.

It you want a game where every roll matters, the new Talisman RPG is perfect. Like PBTA games, the GM doesn't roll, every pc roll generates something ( it has 4 results not 3), but with more freedom and generation of funky effects. My game of the year by far.

I'll give it a look.

I don’t have examples - I just don’t like the concept

Then I suggest you drop any game with a levelling system - because Zero to Hero or levelling up from level 1 to high level is a textbook example of mechanics that force a story.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Then I suggest you drop any game with a levelling system - because Zero to Hero or levelling up from level 1 to high level is a textbook example of mechanics that force a story.

Not in my 20+/- yrs of experience playing D&D

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

That's helpful.

Sorry! I just don’t like the idea of mechanics that push the story. I like the story to happen organically in play. The interaction of players and DM, not mechanics (other than how the dice fall)

 

[Neonchameleon]

Not in my 20+/- yrs of experience playing D&D

So you've never played Zero to Hero? And in your 20 years levelling up has never impacted the way characters behave or their place within the game world?

I'm afraid I simply do not believe you here. Levelling up is a textbook example of mechanics pushing story. You might find that the mechanics don't interfere with the gameplay that much because you accept what they are trying to do - but that doesn't make them not mechanics that push a story.