"A World Worth Saving": Chris Perkins on NPCs and GMing style

[Storminator]

@S'mon The unfortunate thing of it all is that it didn't even accomplish (presumably) what it was looking to accomplish. That sort of relentless play doesn't allow players to initiate causal logic and make informed, optimal strategic and tactical decisions because, as you pointed out, much of the adversarialism doesn't even make sense. It just engenders player paranoia and them trying to figure out the deranged nuance of their resident GM's gameworld, anticipate it and pre-empt it.

I don't know about that. We played Hobgoblintown (as I will now refer to it forever) when I was a teen. There's a definite remorseless logic to it, and it's pretty easy to figure out. The NPCs are out to get you. The monsters are out to get you. The traps are out to get you. The treasure might be out to get you. The DM is definitely out to get you.

Fearing death and danger around every corner isn't paranoia, it's expected. You weren't going to listen at that keyhole without checking it for monsters first, were you? And you certainly weren't going in that room without listening at the keyhole! Detailed equipment lists, carefully crafted spell lists, expendable henchmen, extensive rote "room Gygaxing" routines - those were causal, informed, optimal strategic play.

Of course, you end up role playing roving nomadic bands of sociopath murderers, but it's coherent. And Perkins is right - saving the world isn't a strong hook.

PS

 

[Nagol]

It does tend to breed intra-party cohesion though. There is literally nothing else in the universe that you can rely on.

 

[Manbearcat]

Of course, you end up role playing roving nomadic bands of sociopath murderers, but it's coherent. And Perkins is right - saving the world isn't a strong hook.

Apologies. Let me clarify. I thought it was implicit that the intended backdrop was a world with standard social norms embedded into civilization; eg a "world worth saving". Playing Bob the Paladin in a "world worth saving" that somehow manages a FFV bent to every inhabitant is utterly incoherent (Earnest Hemmingway comes to mind here). You can't play Bob in that game, with that intended ethos, with that intended theme and then have the world behave like a predator trying to eat you at every turn...nothing makes any sense under those pretenses...causal logic is undone. On the other hand, playing Murderhobos in a FFV Twilight Zone world is not incoherent with respect to that game's theme but that game's theme is anything but a "world worth saving". Sociopathic, behavioral "norms" are to be expected and the theme of "survival of the fittest" is to be expected.

 

[D'karr]

Fearing death and danger around every corner isn't paranoia, it's expected.

It's not paranoia when "they" really are out to get you.

 

[S'mon]

I don't disagree with any of the conclusions (more useful in the sort of game where the typical adventuring hook is an NPC giving the PCs a quest, rather than a treasure map/dungeon rumor, but pretty good advice nonetheless) but if it weren't for this thread I would have stopped reading after the first two sentences:

"A campaign needs to earn the players' respect if it has any chance of survival. Too many potentially awesome campaigns get ripped to shreds by disaffected and disenfranchised players, and for good reason."

That seems way too biased in favor of the players to me. Let's try transposing the the player and GM role here and see how badwrong it sounds:

"A player character needs to earn the GM's respect if it has any chance of survival. Too many potentially awesome PCs get ripped to shreds by disaffected and disenfranchised GMs, and for good reason."

I would argue that if you think one of these attitudes is acceptable and the other not, you're too biased in favor of the players.

I think I disagree; I don't think the two are comparable statements. One reason is that player freedom of choice is fundamental, and furthermore immersion requires that there needs to be an alignment between what the PC wants to do IC and what the player wants to do OOC. To run an 'heroic' campaign, the players need to want to help 'those people' just as the PCs do, so 'those people' need to be presented in a favourable light. Now you might have more flexibility in a comic-book-superhero game where jerk NPCs are an accepted part of the genre - Marvel seem to do that a lot with eg Spiderman - but the normal fantasy response to jerk NPCs is to cleave them in twain (if swords & sorcery) or suspect they are agents of the Dark Lord (if high fantasy).

As for PC concepts, the GM doesn't need to rip them to shreds, he just says "Not in my campaign, thanks". The GM is in charge of the game, there is not an equal power relationship. Whereas no single player normally gets to decide on campaign issues such as how NPCs will be presented.

 

[S'mon]

I would argue that if you think one of these attitudes is acceptable and the other not, you're too biased in favor of the players.

Funny, normally I'm being accused of pro-DM bias, eg by Hussar.

 

[AshySimon]

I agree. We're doing Zeitgeist right now and I think it's handling all these points really well. When the NPCs are competent and good, it relieves us, but they never quite do anything heroic, so it's a well tread line. I did notice that our entire group immediately suspects everyone to be butts all the time. Players are pretty jaded people. It's been nice to be consistently treated pretty well. Even when we ARE goof ups. Sometimes it leads to some comical points, none of us are born detectives. It's been a lot of fun.
At this point, I think if someone did betray us it wouldn't even poison things too much. But we'd be SO, SO mad. And not at our GM/the game, either.

Zeitgeist works hard to make us like this random place we've been dumped in as protectors of. It's been doing a really great job. I think we all really do care about the place for real by now.

On the other hand, Tomb of Horrors was fun because everything was legitimately out to get you. --Our DM for that had a similar style to our Zeitgeist DM though. He sort of wanted us to survive. It took us probably close to 15 hours, but we made it, and it felt super great. Not without a LOT of INTENSE paranoia though! It was pretty thrilling. We really thought we were going to die all the time, EVEN when the DM was being nice.

So I don't think there's ever a downside to being 'nice' as a DM. If you're constantly worried about the gaming equivalent of 'slipping and falling' then you can't concentrate well on Character choices that might be a little not-very-meta, or simply not being Player Paranoid. I think it does destroy some immersion - and that can kill some of the feeling of danger more than losing your character sheet!

 

[Libramarian]

I think I disagree; I don't think the two are comparable statements. One reason is that player freedom of choice is fundamental, and furthermore immersion requires that there needs to be an alignment between what the PC wants to do IC and what the player wants to do OOC. To run an 'heroic' campaign, the players need to want to help 'those people' just as the PCs do, so 'those people' need to be presented in a favourable light. Now you might have more flexibility in a comic-book-superhero game where jerk NPCs are an accepted part of the genre - Marvel seem to do that a lot with eg Spiderman - but the normal fantasy response to jerk NPCs is to cleave them in twain (if swords & sorcery) or suspect they are agents of the Dark Lord (if high fantasy).

As for PC concepts, the GM doesn't need to rip them to shreds, he just says "Not in my campaign, thanks". The GM is in charge of the game, there is not an equal power relationship. Whereas no single player normally gets to decide on campaign issues such as how NPCs will be presented.

Why is player choice so important and railroading so bad -- is it just because the presence of the rails is harmful to immersion (i.e. railroading=clumsy storytelling), or is it because there's a metagame shared expectation that the players will be making real contributions to how the story turns out and what it means and railroading turns that into a lie?

If the players have the power to make real story contributions then the other players and the GM become their 'audience' at least some of the time, and the players now have at least some of the responsibility to make the game good (and I don't just mean showing up and not being actively disruptive, I mean making good dramatic contributions via their portrayal of their PC).

I think most people going for more story-oriented D&D would say that they want the players to have some real power to influence the story and that illusionism is undesirable even if it's really well done, but I rarely see anybody talk about how one can be a better roleplayer, it's all about how GMs can coax good roleplaying out of their players, which seems imbalanced to me.

I have low roleplaying expectations when running OSR D&D, I'm like Goldfinger: "I don't expect you to talk, I expect you to die"p)

But if I were going to run a more story-focused game (where it's not really actually up in the air whether or not the protagonist is going to get sliced in half by some trap) then I would start by telling the players that now that I don't get to watch them be amusingly paranoid and actually struggle with player skill-oriented challenges as much, they need to play more dramatically interesting and thematically coherent characters and entertain me more in that way (not in so many words, but basically).

 

[S'mon]

But if I were going to run a more story-focused game (where it's not really actually up in the air whether or not the protagonist is going to get sliced in half by some trap)

I'm sorry, I never ever run a game where "it's not really actually up in the air whether or not the protagonist is going to get sliced in half by some trap".
IMCs there is always a big chance of protagonist failure and death. My PCs don't get script immunity, and Perkins didn't say anything about guaranteed PC success.

The reason I like Perkin's advice so much is that it is vital if you want an heroic campaign (whether linear or open - my 'heroic' Loudwater campaign is open). You say the players in an heroic campaign should feel obligated to be heroic even if the world sucks and the NPCs are jerks, and players are disruptive & bad if they don't follow along. And apparently you expect that in story-focused campaigns PCs won't die.

Well, whatever, but if I was a player in that campaign I'd walk. I would not play in a D&D campaign knowing my PC can't die, and I would not play in a D&D campaign where I'm obligated to play an heroic PC in a world not worth saving.

Edit:
"I think most people going for more story-oriented D&D would say that they want the players to have some real power to influence the story and that illusionism is undesirable even if it's really well done, but I rarely see anybody talk about how one can be a better roleplayer, it's all about how GMs can coax good roleplaying out of their players, which seems imbalanced to me."

Playing an heroic character =/= 'being a bad roleplayer'. Failing to comply with a social contract as to how your PC should behave may be a bad thing, but it's not 'bad roleplaying' either.

"Why is player choice so important and railroading so bad -- is it just because the presence of the rails is harmful to immersion (i.e. railroading=clumsy storytelling), or is it because there's a metagame shared expectation that the players will be making real contributions to how the story turns out and what it means and railroading turns that into a lie?"

It's bad because it's boring - for the player. Film & TV does the passive viewing experience much better. Videogames do the cutscenes + combat much better.

 

[pemerton]

I rarely see anybody talk about how one can be a better roleplayer, it's all about how GMs can coax good roleplaying out of their players, which seems imbalanced to me.

You probably getting sick of the mantra, but Burning Wheel adresses player responsibilities head-on. Both player and GM responsibilities are discussed at relevant points in the text, plus at the end there is a checklist of responsibilities for both.

My personal reasons for focussing more on the GM than the player side are (i) I mostly GM, and (ii) in my experience most players will try to run an interesting/worthwhile PC if given a chance, and the biggest obstacles to that are poor game design in combination with poor GMing. Part of the reason Edwards' stuff at The Forge resonates so strongly with me is because I saw the attempts to generate "story" via GM force, and the resultant struggles over power and crushing of player initiative, at the height of 2nd ed in the mid-90s. While I find Edwards' characterisations sometimes exaggerated, the basics fit with what I've actually experienced.