Advice for new "story now" GMs

[pemerton]

I'm not sure there's much if any difference here between story now and, say, D&D. In fact, one of the sometimes-criticisms against D&D is that the stakes are often too small and-or the system is too granular; yet here you seem to be advocating for just this. And I agree with you.

And in both systems the small things can feed off the large; for example, who's going to look after my farm animals while I'm out on crusade? The crusade represents the larger stakes, and all the smaller-stake items arise en route to getting at the larger one...if that makes any sense

Given that I know from experience that at least two versions of D&D can be played "story now" - AD&D and 4e D&D - I don't think a contrast between D&D and "story now" sheds much light.

Most versions of D&D don't do intimate stakes very well, though, at least in my experience, for this reason that I've mentioned a few times:

It's helpful, here, to know how your game's action resolution system works, because if you prompt your players to declare actions that your system can't handle, that can be a problem. It pushes play away from the player protagonism you're aiming for, and into either rules debates, or rules-free storytime.

The main constraint, I think, is not the scope of the fiction but rather what can your chosen system's action resolution rules handle.

In the example of looking after the farm, How will it be determined who is given this job?,and How will it be determined whether or not they do it properly and How will it being done poorly be brought home to the character?

The versions of D&D I'm familiar with struggle to provide answers to these questions. I'm happy to be contradicted by others' experience, but I don't think it would be easy to build an engaging skill challenge around these questions. And a fundamental problem in D&D is that, given the way the game handles character development and progression of capabilities, it is likely that whatever has happened to the farm when the PC returns can be set to rights by them with little difficulty. So it turns out not to have really been at stake at all.

 

[grankless]

This has been a tremendously helpful thread for helping me focus in on some of my own issues I've faced while attempting to run Forged in the Dark games. Recognizing that I am allowed, or in fact encouraged to let events be "contrived" helps me orient myself better in my own GMing.

Thank you very much for the thread, Pemerton, also I vacillate between reading your posts in the voice of Michael Lutz and Cameron Kunzelman from the Ranged Touch podcast network because of your didactic tone. (this is a compliment)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A well-thought-out post.

One observation/question comes to mind, however:

The examples you give of settings are all, coincidentally or otherwise, quite likely previously known to the players at least in their generalities, as they are either riffs on real-world places or well-known published RPG settings. Unless I missed any, you note Washington DC and Nerath and (I can cheat here and use info from other posts ) have also used Greyhawk (for BW) and medieval England (for Prince Valiant).

So my question is, how do the above ideas square with a GM who wants to design and-or use a completely homebrew setting and thus has to introduce it in both generalities and specifics to the players as play goes along? Or is homebrewing one's own setting discouraged in this style of play?

Just don't hide it. My campaign world I use for D&D games is fully described on my web site. If some part of it is important to play then I will point that out, though I won't necessarily spoil events or situations I've prepped. But since the action is about what the PCs are concerned with, the setting is mostly backdrop. Some themes exist which can be leveraged as needed, the world 'does stuff' but that's just like DW fronts maybe, or the order vs chaos playing out in 4e's WA.

 

[Lanefan]

An alternative approach, which I've used in Rolemaster, 4e D&D and Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy (a FRPG hack of MHRP), is to put a possible end of the world on the table (the return of an ancient cosmological evil in RM; the Dusk War in 4e; the Ragnarok in Cortex+ Heroic), but to make the question of whether or not it comes to pass something that is up for grabs in play. The players then orient their PCs towards it, and based on the actions they declare and whether or not those action succeed, the event may occur or it may be staved off, or it may even turn out that the portents of it were (in the fiction) being misinterpreted.

OK, so with just this you've answered my question: a backdrop of an oncoming disaster or apocalypse can be done. Good.

To be clear: the idea of setting revelations that come unilaterally from the GM more or less independently of what the players take to be at stake in their action declarations is not compatible with "story now" play. And at this point the reason should be obvious: because it de-protagonises the players.

De-protagonizes the players? Or just gives them something else to think about and-or another obstacle to work around in pursuit of their goals?

The former doesn't sound good but I can't see any issue with the latter.

 

[TwoSix]

De-protagonizes the players? Or just gives them something else to think about and-or another obstacle to work around in pursuit of their goals?

The former doesn't sound good but I can't see any issue with the latter.

Yea, but in a story now game, they're the same thing.

Give them another complication or obstacle when the players botch a roll, not just because as a DM, you feel like it's a good time for it.

 

[pemerton]

De-protagonizes the players? Or just gives them something else to think about and-or another obstacle to work around in pursuit of their goals?

in a story now game, they're the same thing.

What TwoSix said!

 

[Darth Solo]

LoL you guys are quoting Ron Edwards? That internet troll? The guy who posted the below about players of "traditional RPGs":

"The most damaged participants are too horrible even to look upon, much less to describe. This has nothing to do with geekery. When I say "brain damage," I mean it literally. Their minds have been harmed."

AND

Now for the discussion of brain damage. I'll begin with a closer analogy. Consider that there's a reason I and most other people call an adult having sex with a, say, twelve-year-old, to be abusive. Never mind if it's, technically speaking, consensual. It's still abuse. Why? Because the younger person's mind is currently developing - these experiences are going to be formative in ways that experiences ten years later will not be. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the characteristic behaviors of someone with this history, but I am very familiar with them - and they are not constructive or happiness-oriented behaviors at all. The person's mind has been damaged while it was forming, and it takes a hell of a lot of re-orientation even for functional repairs (which is not the same as undoing the damage)

You quote that person and all your attempts at credible theory-crafting burn away. There's people who think Hitler had some "good things to say" in Mein Kampf and they try to "apologize away" all the awful he did. But thanks for directing me to his writings so I could learn more about Edwards, a very twisted person.

And I take back anything good I've said about Story Now. If it came from Edwards, it's problematic.

 

[loverdrive]

LoL you guys are quoting Ron Edwards? That internet troll? The guy who posted the below about players of "traditional RPGs":


AND

You quote that person and all your attempts at credible theory-crafting burn away. There's people who think Hitler had some "good things to say" in Mein Kampf and they try to "apologize away" all the awful he did. But thanks for directing me to his writings so I could learn more about Edwards, a very twisted person.

And I take back anything good I've said about Story Now. If it came from Edwards, it's problematic.

...and what, exactly, of what he said here is wrong?

 

[TwoSix]

LoL you guys are quoting Ron Edwards? That internet troll? The guy who posted the below about players of "traditional RPGs":


AND

You quote that person and all your attempts at credible theory-crafting burn away. There's people who think Hitler had some "good things to say" in Mein Kampf and they try to "apologize away" all the awful he did. But thanks for directing me to his writings so I could learn more about Edwards, a very twisted person.

And I take back anything good I've said about Story Now. If it came from Edwards, it's problematic.

It's also something that's been discussed to death over the last 20 years, and there's no need to relitigate it in an advice thread.

 

[Maxperson]

You want to know another secret? Players aren't proactive in "trad" because they're rarely given reason to be. Anything they throw out as "proactive" is either shot down immediately by the GM because it "Doesn't fit in the campaign I'm running," or it gets shelved for "later, when we're in Bingdongnabbington, because that's where the suggestion fits in the story." Only the GM doesn't tell the player that getting to Bingdongnabbington is 6-12+ months of real time play away, because "Sim priorities, man. You can't break the sim!"

Or even if neither of the first two cases is true, there's a residual "trad" GM mindset that you just can't give the players nice things. Because if you just give the players nice things, they then go off and try to break the game. Or ask for more nice things and just become a pain in the a** about it. And what GM could possibly be expected to deal with such things? Players should accept the table scraps they're given and be happy about it.

I'll let you know another secret. None of that is because of traditional play. It's entirely a DM thing. Back in the 1980s we played that way, but since about 1991 or 1992 the mindset of the traditional games I've played in and run has been very different. Nice things happen. Proactive players get to do lots of stuff. Nothing get shelved for later unless the player shelves it himself because it's a goal for another time.

I feel like a lot of people are remembering the old days(1e and before) and just assigning that sort of game play to the traditional style.