A good GM doesn't let his players think they are guaranteed to win. No matter what is actually going on under the hood.
Confession: I like Plot
- Thread starter Hussar
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A good GM doesn't let his players think they are guaranteed to win. No matter what is actually going on under the hood.
Hussar
Legend
Armchair psychology aside, I'm fairly sure that anyone who is trying to act out a role is probably, at least on some level, capable of supressing knowledge that will affect how that character is portrayed.
Otherwise, I don't think any actor could ever believably portray a murderer. After all, I'm pretty sure Anthony Hopkins has never eaten anyone's liver, but, I'm pretty damned convinced that Hannibal Lechter did.
Sure, it might not be 100%. That's not needed anyway. It just has to be believable.
pawsplay
Hero
If real uncertainty exists in the game, then it is 100%. Just as an example, I wouldn't drink orange juice that was only 99% likely to be free of bleach contamination. Similarly, if I'm playing Batman, being 99% sure of leaping across an alley way is going to cause me to play differently than being 100% sure. It cannot be helped.
And just to put my cards out on the table, I have a BA in Psychology.
Raven Crowking
First Post
Sure it is, because "catching the Joker" is the oppositional force to "avoid making sacrifices" that allows "making sacrifices" to be explored.
(Assume Cut & Paste of post from other thread)
RC
Hussar
Legend
The problem being, 1% of bleach contamination will make you very sick. OTOH, I'm pretty sure you eat things every single day of your life that contain contaminants that in higher concentrations would make you sick, without giving it a second thought.
Sorry, but, if I sit down at a gambling table, and I'm given a 99% chance of winning every single hand, you better believe I'm all in at least a few times.
pawsplay
Hero
I'm not saying that each glass has 1% bleach contamination, but that 1% of the glasses have bleach contamination and 99% are safe. I'm not sure what your comment has to do with what I was saying.
Whereas if you know you had 100% chance, you would go all in every time, and there would be no thrill in doing so.
Ydars
Explorer
This is an interesting discussion!
I have recently discovered for myself why so many published modules are so rail-roady in design: I just finished writing a comparatively simple adventure for Ordo Draconis (a Dragon Warriors fanzine), that ended up being about 29,000 words.
Now by rail-roady, I mean an ordered series of situations or scenes where the outcome of the first scene has to arrive at a preset outcome in order not to disrupt the flow of the next scene and so on. This is a rail-road: an ordered series of events is not a rail-road, unless each scene has to arrive at a preset outcome to keep the "train on the tracks".
I don't like adventures like this and so I tried to write one that had multiple (and very different) outcomes depending upon what the players chose to do.
For example, in one scene, the PCs are escorting a noblewoman home and she is their excuse for gaining entry to the hillfort of the villain of the adventure, because she is about to marry said villain. Yet I also decided that she can die on the way, because otherwise I would be forcing a result on the players that should, in real life, be something their characters could affect. So reasoned that if she died, the PCs could still take her home for burial and wrote this in, but just this one change created a lot of complexity in the design of the ensuing scenes and it made the whole thing very complex indeed: multiple this by 10 scenes and you have a serious issue.
So I think that good, non-linear, situation based adventures are very hard to write and this is the reason we either get site based dungeons all the time or random sandbox style campaign settings where there is no plot.
It may also explain why we, as DMs, have come to think in these terms: because we have read alot of published modules that reflect this difficulty.
However, the cardinal rule is this: make your scenes connected by something that does NOT depend on the outcome of the prior scene or else you HAVE to rail-road, at least slightly. Do not take away the power of the players to choose what their characters do and how it plays. It is possible to have a plot and also to achieve this, it just requires a much more robust design in the first place.
I have recently discovered for myself why so many published modules are so rail-roady in design: I just finished writing a comparatively simple adventure for Ordo Draconis (a Dragon Warriors fanzine), that ended up being about 29,000 words.
Now by rail-roady, I mean an ordered series of situations or scenes where the outcome of the first scene has to arrive at a preset outcome in order not to disrupt the flow of the next scene and so on. This is a rail-road: an ordered series of events is not a rail-road, unless each scene has to arrive at a preset outcome to keep the "train on the tracks".
I don't like adventures like this and so I tried to write one that had multiple (and very different) outcomes depending upon what the players chose to do.
For example, in one scene, the PCs are escorting a noblewoman home and she is their excuse for gaining entry to the hillfort of the villain of the adventure, because she is about to marry said villain. Yet I also decided that she can die on the way, because otherwise I would be forcing a result on the players that should, in real life, be something their characters could affect. So reasoned that if she died, the PCs could still take her home for burial and wrote this in, but just this one change created a lot of complexity in the design of the ensuing scenes and it made the whole thing very complex indeed: multiple this by 10 scenes and you have a serious issue.
So I think that good, non-linear, situation based adventures are very hard to write and this is the reason we either get site based dungeons all the time or random sandbox style campaign settings where there is no plot.
It may also explain why we, as DMs, have come to think in these terms: because we have read alot of published modules that reflect this difficulty.
However, the cardinal rule is this: make your scenes connected by something that does NOT depend on the outcome of the prior scene or else you HAVE to rail-road, at least slightly. Do not take away the power of the players to choose what their characters do and how it plays. It is possible to have a plot and also to achieve this, it just requires a much more robust design in the first place.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
Interesting. Dragon Warriors you say? I wonder if my Dragon Warriors DM is aware of the fanzine and if he plants to continue the campaign after the current story is over. (the current campaign is something about Old Gods or Elder Gods?)
Hussar
Legend
Meh. I would argue that there really isn't that much thrill when I'm 99% sure as well. Actually, I'd probably think that there really isn't enough difference to change my decisions. My point is, it's not a simple binary, yes/no situation. Either random or not. There are certainly degrees of randomness and, beyond a certain point, slight deviation or 100% certainty doesn't make a whole lot of difference.
Ydars
Explorer
Hi Mustrum!
Ordo Draconis can be got, for free, from either DrivethruRPG or the Mongoose website. Issue 1 is out and issue 2 is in production: the mag is quarterly and is produced by NaturalTwenty Games.
It sounds like you are playing "Sleeping Gods" and if so, then your GM might be interested to know that a new adventure has just been published: "The power of Darkness" as well as some offerings from people like myself in Ordo Draconis.
Ordo Draconis can be got, for free, from either DrivethruRPG or the Mongoose website. Issue 1 is out and issue 2 is in production: the mag is quarterly and is produced by NaturalTwenty Games.
It sounds like you are playing "Sleeping Gods" and if so, then your GM might be interested to know that a new adventure has just been published: "The power of Darkness" as well as some offerings from people like myself in Ordo Draconis.
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