D&D General The Alexandrian’s Insights In a Nutshell [+]

[AbdulAlhazred]

A plot is this: The adventurers come to the town, they decide to investigate a missing child, they find the kidnapper, the kidnapper monologues and runs away. End of adventure.

What you should be preparing is the following: In this town, a girl has been kidnapped by (kidnapper name). (Notice here nothing requires action on the part of the PCs) The "three clue" process would be ensuring the PCs can work out who the kidnapper is and where the girl is being hidden by leaving at least 3 clues that will give you the answer.

None of that requires the DM to assume any action on the part of the PCs. The clues are clues to the setting, not to the plot.

That IS PLOT! What do you think the players are going to do when they get to town? You're leading them around by the nose! "There's a little girl who's been kidnapped." maybe "there's a reward" and when you go check it out "the footprints lead to the barn" etc. etc. etc. How much more could it be plotted out? The GM knows exactly what the PCs are going to end up doing, to a T.

This is profoundly different from non-trad play. But in total fairness, TA is not advising you to play a Narrativist/Story Now kind of game. He's very explicit, there are 'nodes', there are 'clues', and there are 'situations'. While I tentatively explored the possible correspondence between that and Fronts, my final conclusion is that TA's 'situations' are very tactical, like on the scale of a room, or a couple rooms. Fronts work on a higher level, and replace the 'nodes'. Clues, when they exist in a game like DW say, are an entirely different concept than TA's clues.

I think there might be some parallels in terms of what sort of problems are being addressed that came up a lot in older trad play. I think the solutions are different because TA is highly trad. I haven't really read thoroughly through Infinity RPG, but I'm betting it is very similar in many ways to something like Cypher System in its approach to parsing authority and responsibility at the table.

 

[pemerton]

while his rosters and such might be usable to elide plot, I'm not sure he's really interested in doing that except on a very local scale. The "three clues" juxtaposed with "situations, not plots" really cannot be resolved any other way. He's not talking about true player freedom to interact with content and PLOT to emerge. He's just saying that specific tactical situations aren't scripted, but all the nodes and clues and such at the next level up, the 'adventure arc' is all totally mapped out, its plot to the max! I mean, it may be "several alternatives might emerge" but all of them were thoroughly envisaged by the GM.

Right, this is the heart of my reply to @kenada upthread (post 56).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

OTOH an AW game does this top to bottom, there's NEVER any plot, at any level of play. Only what story emerges and the plot which that entails after the fact.

I hear these statements a lot--that PbtA is inherently and necessarily "no myth." They do not square with the descriptions given in the rules themselves. For example, with "Exploit your prep":

In all of these things, exploit your prep. At times you’ll know something the players don’t yet know. You can use that knowledge to help you make moves. Maybe the wizard tries to cast a spell and draws unwanted attention. They don’t know that the attention that just fell on them was the ominous gaze of a demon waiting two levels below, but you do.

You cannot know that there is a demon two floors down, which can thus be the attention that falls upon a character, unless you actually have a demon two floors down. That's myth. It isn't much myth; and it certainly doesn't rise to the level of actual "plot." But it's nonzero.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think a lot of the problem comes from taking a broad piece of advice and trying to turn it into a absolute rule. I'm reminded of Stephen King talking about writing. Apparently, he creates the situation and characters, but doesn't plan out the plot (apart from those occasions when he plans out the plot).


Now, I'm generally known for running narrative games, but I only have a vague idea where the plot is going next. If it's a railroad, it's built like in Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers. It's built just ahead of the party, in the direction they are already heading.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You cannot know that there is a demon two floors down, which can thus be the attention that falls upon a character, unless you actually have a demon two floors down. That's myth. It isn't much myth; and it certainly doesn't rise to the level of actual "plot." But it's nonzero.

You can decide at the point the wizard casts the spell that they attract the attention of a demon two floors down. Up until that point, the DM hadn't planned out what was two floors down, but now they know there is a demon there.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That IS PLOT! What do you think the players are going to do when they get to town? You're leading them around by the nose! "There's a little girl who's been kidnapped." maybe "there's a reward" and when you go check it out "the footprints lead to the barn" etc. etc. etc. How much more could it be plotted out? The GM knows exactly what the PCs are going to end up doing, to a T.

I'm not sure why some people have a problem with this (apart from the theme of child endangerment being potentially triggering). Sometimes children get kidnapped. And when that happens its perfectly normal for everyone to drop everything to look for them. Wars, natural disasters, these things happen, and they demand the people react to them. Stuff happens, and people react, the idea that people can have complete freedom to do whatever they want is unrealistic.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

That IS PLOT! What do you think the players are going to do when they get to town? You're leading them around by the nose! "There's a little girl who's been kidnapped." maybe "there's a reward" and when you go check it out "the footprints lead to the barn" etc. etc. etc. How much more could it be plotted out? The GM knows exactly what the PCs are going to end up doing, to a T.

This is profoundly different from non-trad play. But in total fairness, TA is not advising you to play a Narrativist/Story Now kind of game. He's very explicit, there are 'nodes', there are 'clues', and there are 'situations'. While I tentatively explored the possible correspondence between that and Fronts, my final conclusion is that TA's 'situations' are very tactical, like on the scale of a room, or a couple rooms. Fronts work on a higher level, and replace the 'nodes'. Clues, when they exist in a game like DW say, are an entirely different concept than TA's clues.

I think there might be some parallels in terms of what sort of problems are being addressed that came up a lot in older trad play. I think the solutions are different because TA is highly trad. I haven't really read thoroughly through Infinity RPG, but I'm betting it is very similar in many ways to something like Cypher System in its approach to parsing authority and responsibility at the table.

It's not a plot, unless doing anything as a DM for prep is a plot? The PCs can go "not interested" and go on to the next town. There's no agency removed from the PCs.

"Prepping plot" is where you have a whole sequence of events set up that can only occur if the PCs go and rescue the girl. Not just because there's a whole bunch of hints about the girl seeded around the town. Do you understand the difference?

 

[mamba]

The “Don’t Prep Plots” essay literally has a section on using the three clue rule. The problem is that what the three clue rule has you do is a prep a plot.

except that it does not. The post has you create a sequence of the events that happen due to the actions of the villains and NPCs, if the players do not interfere.

The players then do whatever they decide to do, and that can either intersect with these events, change them, or not affect them at all. So you did not plan a plot for the characters that you now have to make sure they follow.

If to you the plot is ‘events that happen in the world if the players do nothing’, then I do not really know how run a game without having that… are you randomly rolling everything that happens to the players with zero preparation? That seems to be the only possible option

 

[mamba]

Are we talking about Justin’s technique or clues abstractly? Even if the latter, just going by the dictionary definition suggests a clue is more than just information. It has a purpose —to lead one to solve a problem (or mystery).

the use by JA, clue as a lead to solve a mystery is a bit more formal but still mostly accurate, in your case the ‘mystery’ then is the location of the bandit camp

I would distinguish between responding when the game requires the GM to say something about the state of the world or to provide information on an impending, dangerous situation (as my homebrew system required in those situations) and designing a scenario with something to guide the PCs to a particular conclusion.

To put it another way, I know where the bandits are are (because I did prep that the hex had bandits at the tramway station), but I reveal information related to the bandits when the system requires me to do that. It could involve an event check. It could be the result of a skill check. What I don’t have is a prep saying, “there is a bandit trail here,” or, “there are bandits on horses over there,” or, “Roy knows about the bandits because he’s been watching them.” Roy didn’t even exist until an event check required a roll on the wilderness encounter table (which I’m still using from OSE), which resulted in “Lycanthrope, Weretiger”.

ok, then I might have misunderstood how you arrived at handing out the clues, but it does not change the fact that you do provide clues, even if the fashion in which you hand them out is based on random events rather than by having them placed in the world explicitly for the chars to find (or miss).

Ultimately how you hand them out (random event, specific placement, thinking on your feet in the moment based on what the chars do) does not matter. You do have to pass information to the players to act upon (or not), you cannot really avoid that altogether.

 

[Manbearcat]

We seem to be meandering all over the place and losing the...errr...plot.

The topic of conversation is "Three Clue Rule" is or is not at tension with "Don't Prep Plots." Not "does any prep at all or particular iterations of prep = plot?"

So the question is:

What are the Three Clues in service to?

The Alexandrian tells you:

* To remove the dead ends or "chokepoints" of rudderless exploration and incorrect player-side inference and extrapolation which...

* ...prevent the pre-authored mystery from being revealed/materializing (plot) in the course of play.

If those two in concert aren't one version of the systemization of plot driving the experience and trajectory of TTRPG, then I'm not sure what is?