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

[Campbell]

Including NPCs with agenda of their own is not plot. Attempting to decide what player character aims should be most definitely is or what will definitely happen regardless of player character efforts is.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Reading through all of these posts and counter-posts just re-iterates something to me I've believed for a long, long time... any "rule" of DMing is merely just advice, and that for every rule that someone says is definitive and always true... there's will also be times when bending or breaking said rule will be perfectly fine. And it's up to each DM to determine for themselves if/when those times might be appropriate.

Heh, "the rule is just advice" is the point I'm trying to make, and I'm getting page after page of pushback!!!!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Including NPCs with agenda of their own is not plot. Attempting to decide what player character aims should be most definitely is or what will definitely happen regardless of player character efforts is.

When, that's okay then, since no one has suggested you should do that.

 

[Campbell]

I've become convinced that story-now gaming is so fundamentally different from "traditional" gaming that it's not really fruitful to mix the discussion of both modes in a single thread. Clearly, Alexandrian is giving his advice in the context of traditional gaming.

Sure, but not all traditional gaming involves hooking players or deciding ahead of time how they should approach things or pulling them back on track.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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).


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”.

Right, nodes, clues, and situations is pregenerating all these linkages. That's the point of the 'nodes, and clues' part, and in that context a 'three clues rule' makes sense, because it guarantees that your PLOT HAPPENS. This is a fine design for heavily prepped material ranging from sandbox (no particular order of appearance) to semi-linear adventure path (order of appearance matters to some degree). When you are prepping, the last thing you want to do is spend a bunch of time building out some location and then have it not appear in play. This is especially the case where motivations and direction of play will be lost if certain things don't happen. Sandbox lacks that later part, in general, but the "I want my prep to be consumed" part still applies, so a three clue rule still works here.

Again, the 'situations, not plot' is MUCH more local. This fits with the 'roster' idea, where a given location is designed so that the inhabitants are intended to respond in a dynamic way. Here you eschew specific assumptions about how the party approaches the location.

 

[Nikosandros]

Sure, but not all traditional gaming involves hooking players or deciding ahead of time how they should approach things or pulling them back on track.

I agree with that. Wasn't trying to argue otherwise.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Right, nodes, clues, and situations is pregenerating all these linkages. That's the point of the 'nodes, and clues' part, and in that context a 'three clues rule' makes sense, because it guarantees that your PLOT HAPPENS.

No it doesn't. Players are perfectly capable of missing all three clues. I would suggest three is the absolute minimum if you don't want the players to miss something. And players are still free to ignore the interesting adventure and go and do something else instead if they so wish. It just means they won't be stuck doing boring stuff because they failed a skill check.

It's no different to "the village is plagued by monsters" in your worldbuilding. You are just making the players do a little bit of work to find out where the monsters are rather than handing it to them on a plate.

 

[Manbearcat]

What questions do you think need answering before you can give a straight answer to a straightforward question? WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY PRE-AUTHORING? If I include in my sandbox proactive NPC organisations with agendas of their own am I, or am I not, committing the unforgivable sin of pre-authoring?

There is a village (population outside the players control), it has a mayor (presupposes a political system that is outside the players control) and he has a problem with monster an bandit attacks (suggests a course of action for the PCs) Is this "pre-authoring? If so, I would say you are correct, it is not possible to play D&D without some level of pre-authoring.

Sure, and the DM does what is appropriate, for their game, and if free to follow or ignore whatever advice they like. Advice not being appropriate in all possible situations does not make the advice bad.

For example, "Don't write Plot". I will sometimes ignore that, because my answer to "what happens if they don't?" is easy - then I wing it. But I would not say "write plot and wing it if it doesn't work" is good general advice. On the whole, the advice that Justin quotes (but did not originate) is more generally applicable.

I don't know why you're escalating to all caps or language like "unforgivable sin." There is no unforgivable. There is no sin here.

Your home game isn't what I'm discussing...or interested in discussing...nor do I have the ability to comment on it...if you post something like a detail-driven excerpt of actual play and tell me what system you're using then I might have some commentary on that...but just giving me some pre-authored fiction/prep tells me absolutely nothing about how your game actually implements prep or pre-authorship and how it then plays (at all or with respect to that prep).

This conversation isn't about prep or pre-authorship by itself (again...I've said that above).

Its about the intersection of prep/pre-authorship with a very specific technique; The Three Clue Rule. And whether that intersection yields a contradiction with "Don't Prep Plots" (my answer is "yes, it does").

A village + a mayor + a problem with monster/bandit attacks? That could be situation or plot depending upon implementation (system/techniques deployed). If you use The Three Clue Rule (or similar techniques like it such as strategic exposition dumps to download plot/lore and McGuffin Chains, get the thing to do the thing to talk to the thing to do the thing to get the thing to..., that funnel the trajectory of play through plot points/items) with your village + mayor + monster/bandit attacks to ensure that play is "bottleneck-proofed" and "funneled to pre-authored content?" Then yes, you're prepping plot (not situation).

Which is totally fine. Prepping/pre-authoring plot or running an AP (someone elses pre-authorship) is fine. I think that is most of the hobby, right? But the deal here is that its reveals the inherent contradiction between JA's (cribbed from other sources) "Don't Prep Plot, Prep Situation" and "The Three Clue Rule." Which is the interesting part of the conversation to me. Both of these pieces of advice are useful for very different types of play experiences. But they are not useful in concert precisely because they work against each other.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't know why you're escalating to all caps or language like "unforgivable sin." There is no unforgivable. There is no sin here.

So why are you so desperate to try and prove your point, that you resort to spurious arguments, misinterpretation, and corkscrew logic to try and prove your point if there nothing wrong?

I mean, I know Justin Alexander isn't a nice guy, but you know what they say: "attack the person, not the argument".

 

[Manbearcat]

I've become convinced that story-now gaming is so fundamentally different from "traditional" gaming that it's not really fruitful to mix the discussion of both modes in a single thread. Clearly, Alexandrian is giving his advice in the context of traditional gaming.

I'm not so sure, to be honest with you. JA's "Don't Prep Plots, Prep Situation" was a 2009 blog post (if I recall) that basically repurposed Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard GMing advice from 2004. That is as Story Now as it gets.

So I think what you have here is a pair of divergent techniques:

* "Don't Prep Plots, Prep Situation" = Story Now.

* "Three Clue Rule" = Traditional.

The problem is (as I see it and have born it out through a whole lot of running of games, including a metric eff-ton of Trad games and Pawn Stance dungeoncrawling and hexcrawling; both of which include profound prep) that those two techniques don't work in concert. They're at profound tension.