When Player Driven Adventures Don't Pan Out

[Reynard]

I've been playing Blades in the Dark lately, and a D&D-esque hack of it I wrote myself. It is very open to player initiatives, and very friendly for improvisational play. Basically, every session starts with deciding what to do, so there is no way to really plan ahead, either as a GM and player. All the prep work is now about setting up the setting with plots and conflicts the player's may want to dive into. Because NPCs really only have one game rating, Tier, and the rest is in the GM's head, it is very easy to improvise.

I wonder what the average session life of a BitD campaign is.

 

[zakael19]

I wonder what the average session life of a BitD campaign is.

Session life?

 

[Reynard]

Session life?

How many sessions.

 

[zakael19]

How many sessions.

Depends how you define a “campaign,” but generally an arc of play is 20-25 sessions unless you take steps to reduce XP gain (the math gets a little wonky once you can get to 4+d in Actions easily). But the game encourages you to do new arcs of play, where the old PCs have either retired or are now the leaders of a gang and the new PCs are either striking out on their own or working for them in turn. That way you can see the city writhe and change with the ramifications of what the players did.

 

[Reynard]

Depends how you define a “campaign,” but generally an arc of play is 20-25 sessions unless you take steps to reduce XP gain (the math gets a little wonky once you can get to 4+d in Actions easily). But the game encourages you to do new arcs of play, where the old PCs have either retired or are now the leaders of a gang and the new PCs are either striking out on their own or working for them in turn. That way you can see the city writhe and change with the ramifications of what the players did.

Right, so if 20 sessions is the target, I don't think it is hard to hold together a "player driven campaign" for that length of time. But D&D campaigns tend to run significantly longer (50 or 60 sessions, or more) and it is, in my experience, harder to maintain that player driven aspect over long stretches of time.

 

[zakael19]

Right, so if 20 sessions is the target, I don't think it is hard to hold together a "player driven campaign" for that length of time. But D&D campaigns tend to run significantly longer (50 or 60 sessions, or more) and it is, in my experience, harder to maintain that player driven aspect over long stretches of time.

FITD games tend to be compact and focused yeah. My Stonetop game is at 62 sessions of player-driven play, and it’s a PBTA (although designed explicitly for long form games).

Either way, the key has been having players who are goal oriented, have character drives and reasons to push forward, and I as the GM front opportunities and ideas where we can play to find out the answers to questions. What I don’t do is prep follow-on actions beyond ideas of how the situation escalates if the players leave things un done.

“Player driven” doesn’t mean “give them no options” because unless you hand them a menu the players don’t know what their choices are. It just means don’t force them into avenues, and show the cost of inaction if you’re trying to do a dynamic world with some sort of overarching dramatic threats.

 

[Reynard]

“Player driven” doesn’t mean “give them no options” because unless you hand them a menu the players don’t know what their choices are. It just means don’t force them into avenues, and show the cost of inaction if you’re trying to do a dynamic world with some sort of overarching dramatic threats.

Of course. No on ehas suggested that.

But I was specifically pushing back against the idea of BitD being easy to run a long player driven campaign, given the game is not really intended for 50 session campaigns.

 

[zakael19]

Of course. No on ehas suggested that.

But I was specifically pushing back against the idea of BitD being easy to run a long player driven campaign, given the game is not really intended for 50 session campaigns.

That’s entirely a feature of the XP/action system, and not anything inherent to the world design though. Grab a similar pressure cooker and lay it over a longer headroom system and you could use the exact same process of play.

 

[Scott Christian]

So, what are your experiences with player driven campaigns? Do you find them to work, require extra effort, or never work? Do you prefer them in actual practice to more directed campaigns, or vis versa? Is your opinion different as a player vs as a GM?

I have moved a lot, and I have played in a lot of different groups. Most of those groups cannot do player driven campaigns. And these are good/great players. They are fun, excited, dig different lore, etc. But an open concept or having a dozen threads does nothing for them. In fact, they generally become worse players for it. All of this includes myself. (Side Note: I have seen players come in with a certain goal in mind knowing the DM was going to acquiesce. For example, "I am going to be a brewer in my downtime and own a bar," or "I am going to own my own keep," etc. All of those things were granted during our sessions, which is about the greatest player driven piece I have seen. Of course, the DM knew these things before the game even started, so it is a pretty easy ship to steer with that foreknowledge.)

As a DM, I have seen it work, but only one time - and it required enormous amounts of prep. I have tried it a few other times, and it went just "meh." Thank goodness those campaigns were only meant to be two to three months long.

And I have watched a group think they were all player driven, yet after speaking to the DM they weren't at all.

That has been my experience. Players like a consistent story. They like things to make sense. And they like to have clear paths to an objective. This doesn't mean there can't be choices, or you negate a living world, or that you remove player agency.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Of course. No on ehas suggested that.

But I was specifically pushing back against the idea of BitD being easy to run a long player driven campaign, given the game is not really intended for 50 session campaigns.

Just FYI, I ran a game of BitD that went longer than 50 sessions. The game does have elements in there that support it. You generally have to embrace some amount of troupe play, and you have to expect that PCs will die or retire, and new PCs will be introduced.

I’ve also run or played in player-driven campaigns of Spire, Stonetop, athe Between, A Thousand Arrows, Heart, Dungeon World, and Scum & Villainy among others. The lengths of these games varied a good amount, but I would say that all of them was shorter than the traditional “long campaign” that we tend to think of when we think of D&D. But that’s not a bad thing. These games are propulsive. Things move. The status quo is changing all the time.

Most of them are far more memorable than the long D&D campaigns I’ve been in.

Then of course, you can also shorten the length of a D&D campaign. There’s nothing that says your campaign against the Usurper has to be X sessions long. If it seems to make sense to wrap things up because play has lost momentum, then wrap things up. I mean… the premise has a built in endpoint… the eventual showdown with the Usurper. So offer some opportunities to the players to build toward that. Feeling that their goal may be close, they’re likely to be more energized. Take advantage of that enthusiasm and build things to a climax.

Then start a new campaign. If you want that one to be player driven, then think about what worked and what didn’t in the Usurper campaign, and adjust accordingly.