Player-driven campaigns and developing strong stories

[Manbearcat]

I find my play with five ends up very similar to what you describe with three players, except instead of two sets of activity (your group of two and then the third player alone) you end up with at most three sets (two groups of two and a lone actor) and often two (three and two or four and one).

I find the game makes some difference - my players will look for aid and back-up in Burning Wheel more readily than in Apocalypse Word, which I think is a function of AW characters being generally more badass from the outset than three lifepath BW characters. But even in AW it's extremely rare for me to have five players doing independent and unconnected things.

If I've made a move and Sickboy is missing, there's always more than one player that wants to know how and why, and that will naturally lead the players to seek each other out as different moves catch or require their attention.

I really like running for three in Apocalypse World, but it only takes two or three rolls to go against the players and things can spiral out of control for a hardhold pretty quickly. So I find with three, my players won't seek out confrontation with each other directly or overtly - there's enough adversity (and tension and fun) from scarcity and the apocalypse without really needing to.

Whereas, with five players you've got enough manpower to make the hardhold feel reasonably secure, and that gives greater opportunity for conflicts of interest between the characters.

Just a few quick comments on number of players in these games. As you and @pemerton know (or at least I'm fairly sure I've expressed it to you in the past), I'm definitely a "3 is the sweet spot for players and 2 is far preferable to 4" kind of GM.

However, I concur with your above regarding Apocalypse World. The 10 month game I ran for it featured 4 players and there were sessions where I only had 2 players. The difference in interpersonal conflict that would occur between 4 players vs 2 was stark.

The games I've run with 4 players the last little while are the two long-running Blades in the Dark and Stonetop games I'm running. Homefront phase in Stonetop always seems to be around 2ish Threats/Opportunities regardless of player numbers. Expedition/Adventure-phase is more sensitive to numbers and/or magnitude. When only 3 players are present OR the magnitude of the Threat/Expedition/Adventure is large, its all-hands-on-deck. When there are 4 players present, its pretty much exclusively 2 players pursue one Threat/Opportunity while the other 2 pursue another (with both possibly, or likely, Requisitioning Assets/Followers from the steading). When it comes to Blades, 4 players is going to equal 2 Scores (sometimes 3) except in the most extreme magnitude of cases. My guess is, from the start of this particular Blades in the Dark game (correct me if I'm wrong @AbdulAlhazred , @Campbell , @kenada , @niklinna ), we've only seen about 6 x Scores with all 4 members of the Crew on them at once; Cock-fight Assassination, Stazia's Stash and Grinder Warehouse/Armored Carriage Sabotage/Robbery, Lean on the Duskvol Times, Deathlands Perilous Journey, Assault on the Sun King Cult Compound, Assault on Lord Scurlock's Manor? Might be missing one (I don't think the Kill Bill-esque Bath-house Duel had Beaker).

Regardless, its absolutely doable to run Story Now games (including those with a high "G for Gamism" coefficient like Blades and Stonetop) with multiple, independent situations (including extended) going on and just smash-cut back-and-forth. Its just more cognitive load on the GM. Depending upon how well-slept you are (never in my case!) and generally how under duress you are outside of gaming, its either a "no big deal...lets do this" or a "I can keep my head above water well enough" scenario.

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Unrelated, but necessary:

Needless to say, my position on the Story Now games feature or require a high level of illusionism and/or are shallow and/or are internally inconsistent "critique" is utterly, 100 % baseless. That is 1000s of hours of experimentation & validation with dozens of fairly widely diverging games and replication with dozens and dozens of players (the overwhelming abundance of which were solid to great at the paradigm).

Anyone reading this or thinking about running a game that doesn't feature a metaplot or setting tourism or any type of top-down GM pressure to curate content/corral players via hooks/breadcrumbs (etc), its entirely doable. Its a real thing and you and your players are likely capable at it with a little practice or adjustment. Oh, and ITS NOT A WRITER'S ROOM. The roles are still GM and players and they each have specific roles (though different than normal). Roughly, the system and players create breadcrumbs for the GM to follow. The GM then frames scenes with those breadcrumbs as the constraints on stakes/goals/content and aggressively plays the PCs' opposition in-line with the parameters of system. Rinse-repeat. Story spins out of that deal.

You may not like it as much as games that heavily feature metaplot or setting tourism or other types of top-down GM pressure to curate content and corral players. You may like it more. But the two are different experiences. Try (and enjoy...or not) both.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@Manbearcat How would you even do illusionism in a game like BitD? Or Apocalypse World/Dungeon World? The players roll all the dice, the GM has prep, but in none of those games does anything really exist until someone brings it 'on stage' so to speak (Doskvol is generally assumed to reflect the book, but nothing there is cast in stone). A GM in these games could 'softball', giving the players situations they're going to handle without a lot of threat. Heck, technically in the PbtA games the GM could basically hand you whatever you want without a fight, but it wouldn't be playing with any respect to what the game is intended to do, nor fun. I just do not see how 'illusionism' is really possible.

There's long been this charge that the GM just frames whatever THEY feel like and because the players supposedly then never get the choices they want that they're just puppets. This is not a charge which anyone with any experience playing one of these games with anything approaching a decent GM would ever make though. I mean, that won't even be possible, at all, in BitD. The players pick scores, pure and simple. All the GM is doing is rolling out scenes that describe the dangerous, uncertain, fraught moments of the score. Sure, they can pick what those are, to a degree, but it would be appallingly clear if the GM simply did that in accord with some sort of personal agenda and not with respect to the stated goals, actions, etc. of the players. It would be exactly like a D&D game where the DM says "no, no, you didn't like the lefthand passage, you went right, trust me!"

Dungeon World gets a bit slippery because it apes the forms of D&D pretty closely, so there's a danger that players may not notice, that the game could slip into a kind of faux dungeon crawl. However that won't likely happen when any of the players are familiar with other PbtA games.

 

[niklinna]

It would be exactly like a D&D game where the DM says "no, no, you didn't like the lefthand passage, you went right, trust me!"

Which happened all the time in a certain cave in B2: The Keep on the Borderlands.

 

[bloodtide]

I just do not see how 'illusionism' is really possible.

It's not seeing the forest in the trees sort of thing. The whole game is an illusion. See these games were made as an alternative to D&D types games where the DM has all the power, and the players just play along. With the rules of these games, it feels like limits are placed on the GM and it feels like the players are given tons of power. And a GM that wants to can really lean into the whole "ask question thing" with "react to the players thing" and act like they have a blank slate in mind for everything. This gives the players the illusion they are all powerful and in control of the game, and making the GM just play along.

There's long been this charge that the GM just frames whatever THEY feel like and because the players supposedly then never get the choices they want that they're just puppets. This is not a charge which anyone with any experience playing one of these games with anything approaching a decent GM would ever make though. I mean, that won't even be possible, at all, in BitD. The players pick scores, pure and simple. All the GM is doing is rolling out scenes that describe the dangerous, uncertain, fraught moments of the score. Sure, they can pick what those are, to a degree, but it would be appallingly clear if the GM simply did that in accord with some sort of personal agenda and not with respect to the stated goals, actions, etc. of the players. It would be exactly like a D&D game where the DM says "no, no, you didn't like the lefthand passage, you went right, trust me!"

This is not exactly true. A good, or even great GM can to anything and spin anything. Really what the rules do is block all the average skill and below GMs. A great GM can spin a fiction and make the players think whatever they want to think. The average or below skill GM can't do that. They are the one stuck in the rules.


It might be good to add that if a GM wants a player driven game, they will have to make a group. Your chances of it just happening are close to zero. You can't just want over to your group of friends and expect them to be all be exactly what you want. The GM will need to make the group, person by person. It takes time, but you can make whatever group you want.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Which happened all the time in a certain cave in B2: The Keep on the Borderlands.

LoL! Not when I ran it, but I am 40 years past those days. It might be amusing to approach that module in a narrative focus manner. Not that it's very well suited, but that would be the challenge, lol

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's not seeing the forest in the trees sort of thing. The whole game is an illusion. See these games were made as an alternative to D&D types games where the DM has all the power, and the players just play along. With the rules of these games, it feels like limits are placed on the GM and it feels like the players are given tons of power. And a GM that wants to can really lean into the whole "ask question thing" with "react to the players thing" and act like they have a blank slate in mind for everything. This gives the players the illusion they are all powerful and in control of the game, and making the GM just play along.

Honestly, some burdens are lifted from the GM in, say Dungeon World, but they have given up very little power. It's more a question of how you are using it. There are no illusions in these games. When the GM makes a move it is directly related to the situation at the table. If the GM says "your torch slips from your hands and falls into the pit, you only have one left." Where's the illusion? You get one torch left, do you press on or turn back and fail to get the cure for the Fighter's illness?

See how this works, it's all in the open, simple pressure. Create threats, act on them.

This is not exactly true. A good, or even great GM can to anything and spin anything. Really what the rules do is block all the average skill and below GMs. A great GM can spin a fiction and make the players think whatever they want to think. The average or below skill GM can't do that. They are the one stuck in the rules.


It might be good to add that if a GM wants a player driven game, they will have to make a group. Your chances of it just happening are close to zero. You can't just want over to your group of friends and expect them to be all be exactly what you want. The GM will need to make the group, person by person. It takes time, but you can make whatever group you want.

It's as if you think a great GM means some sort of master manipulator, a 'Johan' who can wrap anyone around their finger. As an accomplished GM, I have been pretty successful and I am the polar opposite of that. In DW the GM preps fronts. He then invents 'dooms' which ANNOUNCE these threats, they never just appear like secrets out of nowhere.

Beyond that, read the first sections of the GM part of the DW rules. Any fiction the GM introduces just serves the cause of character development and narrative which the players own.

As for needing some special group? Nope. I can do it with any set of players you can run a dungeon crawl for.

 

[bloodtide]

It's as if you think a great GM means some sort of master manipulator, a 'Johan' who can wrap anyone around their finger. As an accomplished GM, I have been pretty successful and I am the polar opposite of that. In DW the GM preps fronts. He then invents 'dooms' which ANNOUNCE these threats, they never just appear like secrets out of nowhere.

A great GM uses manipulation the same way anyone in such a social situation does. Like when an actor makes you feel something. But, sure, not every GM is that good at that, or anything: everyone is different.

Beyond that, read the first sections of the GM part of the DW rules. Any fiction the GM introduces just serves the cause of character development and narrative which the players own.

As for needing some special group? Nope. I can do it with any set of players you can run a dungeon crawl for.

I think your description nicely describes the illusionisum in such games.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A great GM uses manipulation the same way anyone in such a social situation does. Like when an actor makes you feel something. But, sure, not every GM is that good at that, or anything: everyone is different.

What does that have to do with narrativist RPGs. At most it's a truth of human nature.

I think your description nicely describes the illusionisum in such games.

Basically at this point you might as well just call it cooties.

 

[Manbearcat]

A great GM uses manipulation the same way anyone in such a social situation does. Like when an actor makes you feel something. But, sure, not every GM is that good at that, or anything: everyone is different.

I think your description nicely describes the illusionisum in such games.

GM Force is a specific thing:

When a GM suspends the system’s or a player’s rightful input (this could be tactical, strategic, thematic) by subverting it with the GM’s own preferred input.

Illusionism is just Force but used covertly.

All of those particulars are essential.

So how is this happening in a gane whereby:

* The point of the game is for a GM to not have a preferred input.

* The game is enjoyable for the GM when they don’t have a preferred input that they have to work to shoehorn into play.

* The game facilitates the operationalizing of this with relative ease.

* The game layer and the conversation of play is so transparent and table-facing that it would become bloody obvious if a GM is (for some weird, incentive-structure defying reason) employing Force.


So I don’t understand what you’re imagining here. The incentive structures are set up in every way to defy Force (both in a GM’s temptation to use it and in a GM’s application of it during play). The game just works when you have neither metaplot nor preferred inputs, its fun to not have those things and be surprised by where play goes, and the system openly defies you and exposes you if you try to fight against it and impose metaplot.

 

[Yora]

Well, that certainly isn't what everyone else means by that term. I'm pretty much 100% certain @Yora didn't mean that in the OP.

I give you 100% approval. That really has nothing to do with the topic here.