When Player Driven Adventures Don't Pan Out

[zarionofarabel]

Players like a consistent story. They like things to make sense. And they like to have clear paths to an objective.

I've been running player driven games for more than 30 years. My games always have consistent narrative momentum that makes sense. They also have clear ways for players to complete the objectives they have chosen to pursue.

This doesn't mean there can't be choices, or you negate a living world, or that you remove player agency.

I have talked to a lot of GMs that run scripted plotline games that think they are providing all of these things for their players. However, alot of the time (not always, but more often than not) the particular methods they use don't really provide real agency, just the illusion of such.

I also find it interesting that so many GMs seem to think that the only way to run a successful player driven campaign is with an overwhelming amount of prep. Especially because I have been doing it with little to no prep since I started in the hobby in 1988. It makes me wonder if the successful execution of a player driven campaign is more about the GM than the players.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I've been running player driven games for more than 30 years. My games always have consistent narrative momentum that makes sense. They also have clear ways for players to complete the objectives they have chosen to pursue.

I have talked to a lot of GMs that run scripted plotline games that think they are providing all of these things for their players. However, alot of the time (not always, but more often than not) the particular methods they use don't really provide real agency, just the illusion of such.

I also find it interesting that so many GMs seem to think that the only way to run a successful player driven campaign is with an overwhelming amount of prep. Especially because I have been doing it with little to no prep since I started in the hobby in 1988. It makes me wonder if the successful execution of a player driven campaign is more about the GM than the players.

Care to stream your prep and game to show us how it's done??

 

[Truename]

Care to stream your prep and game to show us how it's done??

A stream is a lot to ask, but I’m genuinely interested in learning more. I’d like to do more player-driven campaigns, but the prep work was my Achilles heel.

 

[zarionofarabel]

Care to stream your prep and game to show us how it's done??

I don't play online. Honestly I have no idea how to work all that kind of stuff.

The basics of prep is to get the players to setup a framework for the first few sessions using collaborative setting and PC creation during Session Zero. After that I just make up stuff in real time at the table using what I consider to be logical progression based on the previous narrative. I don't have a problem making up stuff in the fly through. It's prepping a bunch of stuff in advance that boggles my mind because I always get lost on so many "what if" tangents it's seriously not funny. I have done it this way since I started because I got the Red Box for a Christmas present in 1988, and lived in a little town where no one knew what a TTRPG was or how to play them. So I just started making up stuff on the fly, and have been doing it ever since. Not sure if that helps.

 

[zarionofarabel]

A stream is a lot to ask, but I’m genuinely interested in learning more. I’d like to do more player-driven campaigns, but the prep work was my Achilles heel.

I know reading and running Burning Wheel helped alot procedurally due to the fact that BW is purpose built to run player driven sandbox games. The play loop for BW is based on a PCs Beliefs, which are a form of goal statements. The GMs job then becomes to create challenges for the PCs to encounter as they attempt to complete said goals. Beliefs can be anything from "save the world" to "get a fancy new sword" and are not sacrosanct, so a player can change or abandon them anytime they decide they want to do something else. There is also a special kind of XP that PCs get for actually completing goals to act as incentive to actually complete them. There's a little more to it then that, but it's the gist.

When I GM any game nowadays I always use setting and PC collaborative creation and make sure that the PCs have some sort of ties to the world. I also have the players come up with goals for their PCs, tied to the "initial situation" to help kick off the game. The "initial situation" is also collaboratively created. Then I make sure to keep the PCs goals written down and displayed prominently so I keep them in mind when adding elements to the narrative. The goals basically act as real time prompts for me as a GM letting me know what the players are interested in narrative wise. Then I just, I don't know, keep all of the TV shows, Movies, and Novels I have consumed in mind and add elements to the story in a way that seems logical. I wish I could explain better how I make up stuff, but that's literally all I do. I mean, if a person can make up stuff and write it down beforehand, they can make up stuff on the spot, at least I think they should be able to. I do some prep I guess, by daydreaming at times about what might happen in upcoming sessions, but I never really write stuff down as I don't think any of my ideas are all that great, and stuff at the table never goes the way I think it will so any prep I did do would be a waste of time anyway. One thing I do constantly is take lots and lots of notes, which I find helps keep previous narrative more solid in my mind. Anyway, my inane rambling probably ain't much help anyway, cheers!

 

[Truename]

I do some prep I guess, by daydreaming at times about what might happen in upcoming sessions, but I never really write stuff down as I don't think any of my ideas are all that great, and stuff at the table never goes the way I think it will so any prep I did do would be a waste of time anyway. One thing I do constantly is take lots and lots of notes, which I find helps keep previous narrative more solid in my mind. Anyway, my inane rambling probably ain't much help anyway, cheers!

This is super interesting, thank you!

I see how that could work for most of the gaming I do. I do a lot of small-scale improv at the table and it usually works better than things I planned in advance. But I don’t see how it would work for site-based games. Dungeons, ruins, etc… the kind of stuff that needs a map. Do you do much of that? How do you handle it?

 

[zarionofarabel]

This is super interesting, thank you!

I see how that could work for most of the gaming I do. I do a lot of small-scale improv at the table and it usually works better than things I planned in advance. But I don’t see how it would work for site-based games. Dungeons, ruins, etc… the kind of stuff that needs a map. Do you do much of that? How do you handle it?

I do not do much site based stuff. I was never much of a fan of dungeon crawling. I also don't do minis combat, sticking to systems where combat can be adjudicated using Theater Of The Mind exclusively. That probably makes running improv heavy emergent play style games way easier.

 

[zakael19]

When I GM any game nowadays I always use setting and PC collaborative creation and make sure that the PCs have some sort of ties to the world. I also have the players come up with goals for their PCs, tied to the "initial situation" to help kick off the game. The "initial situation" is also collaboratively created. Then I make sure to keep the PCs goals written down and displayed prominently so I keep them in mind when adding elements to the narrative.

Just to "yes, and" this with a commercial product that I keep returning to, this is more or less what the Neverwinter Campaign Setting does. It has players pick one of a set of backgrounds with built in goals and priorities, including context and driving forces, and then the GM is given factions + NPCs + their goals + a set of interesting places. Between the two, you just keep providing ideas and opportunities and developing ways forward (or new options) based on how scenes play out and doors open/close.

Regarding Sites in a player-driven game (for some reason a bunch of the more player-driven narrative focused games I run these days use that instead of Dungeon....), that's like the one thing I actually spend some time prepping in my games. You dont have to, I've run an entire site off a cool image + some questions with the players more then once, but I want the Site to have a) narrative/goal relevance (we're here for a purpose - what questions are we answering?), b) an interesting story itself, and c) offer opportunities for various PCs to demonstrate themselves.

So I put a little time into jotting that sort of thing down, rarely more then "10 rooms" but full of stuff that directly relates back to the PC goals/interests/priorities/some tidbits of lore or whatever.

 

[TwoSix]

This is super interesting, thank you!

I see how that could work for most of the gaming I do. I do a lot of small-scale improv at the table and it usually works better than things I planned in advance. But I don’t see how it would work for site-based games. Dungeons, ruins, etc… the kind of stuff that needs a map. Do you do much of that? How do you handle it?

Site-crawling can also be done improv-style. I just generally frame it as "Ok, who built this? What were they using it for? Who is living here now? What are they using it for? How does the old magic stuff interact with the new residents?"

Once you have an answer to those questions, it becomes a lot easier to frame rooms sequentially. And like @zarionofarabel said above, just keep a mental catalog of stuff you've seen in TV and movies and books.

 

[zakael19]

Site-crawling can also be done improv-style. I just generally frame it as "Ok, who built this? What were they using it for? Who is living here now? What are they using it for? How does the old magic stuff interact with the new residents?"

Once you have an answer to those questions, it becomes a lot easier to frame rooms sequentially. And like @zarionofarabel said above, just keep a mental catalog of stuff you've seen in TV and movies and books.

Yeah, and when abstract a "Site" out to a nodal-style collection of related scenes as a framework, it's pretty easy to spin this sort of thing out. Some sort of "spark" table (I'm assuming that means "sparks your imagination" because that's how I treat them) can help give you a springboard.

For my Tuesday game, I've been running a traversal system in modern-fantasy Faerie. I prepped two tables I expect to use over the course of the entire campaign, since this will be a recurring series of challenges on the way to somewhere, and just work the players to frame interesting scenes that pose questions and challenges, and we resolve them. Basically a on-the-fly generate Site.