Contrivance in story dynamics

[AbdulAlhazred]

Fair enough.

With the sort of games I play in and run, I've learned the hard way not to tie prophecies or great events or suchlike to any one particular character for two reasons.

One - less common - is that other players might feel resentful that the one character/player is being singled out for special treatment.
Two - much more common - is that the key character will inevitably find a way to permanently die at the first available opportunity.

And now I'm learning not to even tie them to entire parties! See spoiler for details.

Spoiler: In-progress DM lesson

Just recently I've been running what's supposed to be a mini-AP baked into my larger campaign, involving the finding and reuniting of four Prophecy Crystals and then maybe having that party use them for something really big down the road.

When another DM ran a similar series many years ago, the second crystal they found got shattered by a lightning bolt; this almost destroyed the whole story arc. Lesson learned - I made these ones pretty much indestructible. The Bag of Holding my lot put their first Crystal into, however, didn't have such protection...and sure enough a few sessions later up it went* with all contents lost. I maintained my stoic DM face at the table but inside - as you might imagine - there was a pretty big facepalm.

This was just a couple of sessions ago. They don't even realize quite what they've lost yet, as they don't know anything about the significance of these Crystals or even what they are; all they know so far is that some adventurers were investigating them several decades ago. As DM I've no idea how they're ever going to get the lost one back or even if they can; but at least they've now found the second one.

* - as fate would have it, again by lightning.

Seems odd to me, like you've authored a story and the players are just going to supply some color almost. I mean, you seem to have an agenda for this story of the 4 crystals to happen. It doesn't even involve the players at all (the PCs are part of your plot, but since the players don't even know the story exists they're not even along for the ride at this point!). In terms of contrivance though, which is more to the OP's point, how does this not qualify as a tremendous contrivance? Of all the possible characters who could dig these things up, its the PCs!

Now, I have an explanation for this, in say DW terms, the PCs are the big damned heroes! They are THE Wizard, THE Fighter, THE Cleric, and THE Thief. Maybe they will or won't dig up the fabled 4 crystals, but their players probably decided that was a thing to begin with! (I mean, the GM in DW could generate this story element as a part of a Front, or maybe even as a soft move/doom but IMHO that would generally only be a good move if something the players had decided at some point thematically signaled that as a story direction that would be in keeping with the course of play).

So, for instance, I might invent something like that if maybe the thief was gunning for a big treasure and bit when offered a fantastic gemstone. Later this gemstone leads things into a whole complex plot surrounding the necessity to get 3 more and avert the final evolution of a campaign front (the exact nature of which will certainly riff off of the choices of PC background, answers to questions asked of players, etc.). Note that DW Fronts "just are" once they are established, if the players send their characters off in some other direction, well the front does its thing and so be it. If some of them die, or even if the party gets wiped and there's a restart, things can go on, no one PC need be cast as THE FATED ONE, although it may turn out to be so when the time comes!

In my first 4e campaign, after it matured a bit past the early set piece stuff, one of the PCs became a sort of 'fated champion' character. The player had given her a background that included having a prophesy, and an unusual upbringing where her family origins were unknown. The monks who raised her CALLED her the 'Chosen One' (or something like that, I forget exactly) but it was only when the PCs got to Paragon that this really started to play out seriously. It was never a given that it would, although clearly since the player created those background elements it would have been kind of a let down not to go forward with it.

IIRC a few times at lower levels the players remarked that some bad guys seemed to want to take out the cleric (this character) pretty badly, but it could be attributed to smart tactics. Finally around 8th level the party got themselves wrapped up in some weird Eladrin (Eldar) politics due to one of the PCs being a runaway Eldar Princess. So they ended up looting an ancient Eldar fortress and found an artifact that triggered off the rest of that story arc (being the savior of the land, basically). Now, if said PC had died, or the player had just ignored the plot hooks that would be fine too. The players could have invented a bunch of different paths to go down, I'm sure. I only invented the Shield of Kinnis plot arc/artifact because it matched up with some lore and fit the character conception really well.

 

[pemerton]

Seems odd to me, like you've authored a story and the players are just going to supply some color almost. I mean, you seem to have an agenda for this story of the 4 crystals to happen. It doesn't even involve the players at all (the PCs are part of your plot, but since the players don't even know the story exists they're not even along for the ride at this point!). In terms of contrivance though, which is more to the OP's point, how does this not qualify as a tremendous contrivance? Of all the possible characters who could dig these things up, its the PCs!

I very strongly agree with these remarks.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I very strongly agree with these remarks.

Yeah, this has been my central thesis for years on this point, ALL RPG play is fundamentally pretty contrived. I mean, its possible to imagine some that is a bit less so than other instances, I guess. However I don't think anything resembling the classic model of a group of players who play individual PCs who form a cohesive group really can ever get much away from that. Either the group exists sort of purely for meta-game reasons (typical of most classic D&D play) or else there is a plot device to explain it (IE the 'squad of soldiers' kind of model). In the latter case, why is this particular 'squad' so specifically going to engage in some highly unusual activities? Or if their activities are more typical, then they aught mostly to be pretty mundane, right?

I CAN imagine an RPG that was something like "Play the High School Football Team" or something where the things that happen are highly typical and not exceptionally unusual. The drama would then be purely local and pretty down-to-earth (one PC gets his girlfriend stolen by another, etc.). I don't see anything WRONG with that, but it seems weirdly unfit for something like a fantasy game.

 

[pemerton]

I CAN imagine an RPG that was something like "Play the High School Football Team" or something where the things that happen are highly typical and not exceptionally unusual. The drama would then be purely local and pretty down-to-earth (one PC gets his girlfriend stolen by another, etc.). I don't see anything WRONG with that, but it seems weirdly unfit for something like a fantasy game.

Even then, I'd expect it to have the sorts of tropes and events typical of a John Hughes film or an Archie comic. Which still involve contrivance, revelation etc as opposed to the mundanity of an actual high school!

 

[Lanefan]

Seems odd to me, like you've authored a story and the players are just going to supply some color almost. I mean, you seem to have an agenda for this story of the 4 crystals to happen. It doesn't even involve the players at all (the PCs are part of your plot, but since the players don't even know the story exists they're not even along for the ride at this point!). In terms of contrivance though, which is more to the OP's point, how does this not qualify as a tremendous contrivance? Of all the possible characters who could dig these things up, its the PCs!

Indeed, there's certainly some contrivance involved in their stumbling onto the first one, which has with it a rather cryptic poem pointing to the other three (there is, however, a detailed back-story as to how and why this crystal got to where it was found and why the poem is with it, a story which the PCs are slowly picking up on as they go along and which - depending how things go - may becme more relevant later). That said, they just as easily could have missed the first crystal entirely (it was in a secret treasure room) and-or could have ignored the poem and gone off to do something else. But they found the treasure room and bit hard on the poem's hook, so away we go.

Now, I have an explanation for this, in say DW terms, the PCs are the big damned heroes! They are THE Wizard, THE Fighter, THE Cleric, and THE Thief. Maybe they will or won't dig up the fabled 4 crystals, but their players probably decided that was a thing to begin with! (I mean, the GM in DW could generate this story element as a part of a Front, or maybe even as a soft move/doom but IMHO that would generally only be a good move if something the players had decided at some point thematically signaled that as a story direction that would be in keeping with the course of play).

So, for instance, I might invent something like that if maybe the thief was gunning for a big treasure and bit when offered a fantastic gemstone. Later this gemstone leads things into a whole complex plot surrounding the necessity to get 3 more and avert the final evolution of a campaign front (the exact nature of which will certainly riff off of the choices of PC background, answers to questions asked of players, etc.). Note that DW Fronts "just are" once they are established, if the players send their characters off in some other direction, well the front does its thing and so be it. If some of them die, or even if the party gets wiped and there's a restart, things can go on, no one PC need be cast as THE FATED ONE, although it may turn out to be so when the time comes!

Sounds good!

Got any ideas how they can get the first one back, now that it's lost in Bag Hell?

Spoiler: The corner I'm in

My guess is, knowing these characters and how they are usually played, they're probably going to try to recover the first crystal at some point; and unless they use something like a wish (highly unlikely at their level!) I'm at a real loss for ideas as to any avenues by which they could even hope to succeed. It's already well-established in the setting that a living being going into a Bag of Holding comes out dead if it comes out at all; so just shrinking themselves, diving into a different BoH, and cutting a hole in it isn't a very appealing option. It's also already established through play that the PC Clerics' deities don't want anything to do with these crystals (backstory: they've got inert essences of other deities bound up in them, and deities don't like to mess with other deities on principle) so divine intervention is probably off the table.

And the poem makes it fairly clear through its cryptic-ness that all four are needed, so I can't really go back on that now.

I've painted myself into a corner on this one. Maybe the whole adventure series will end up a failure...but that's kind of the nuclear option, to be avoided if anything else presents itself.

In my first 4e campaign, after it matured a bit past the early set piece stuff, one of the PCs became a sort of 'fated champion' character. The player had given her a background that included having a prophesy, and an unusual upbringing where her family origins were unknown. The monks who raised her CALLED her the 'Chosen One' (or something like that, I forget exactly) but it was only when the PCs got to Paragon that this really started to play out seriously. It was never a given that it would, although clearly since the player created those background elements it would have been kind of a let down not to go forward with it.

IIRC a few times at lower levels the players remarked that some bad guys seemed to want to take out the cleric (this character) pretty badly, but it could be attributed to smart tactics. Finally around 8th level the party got themselves wrapped up in some weird Eladrin (Eldar) politics due to one of the PCs being a runaway Eldar Princess. So they ended up looting an ancient Eldar fortress and found an artifact that triggered off the rest of that story arc (being the savior of the land, basically). Now, if said PC had died, or the player had just ignored the plot hooks that would be fine too. The players could have invented a bunch of different paths to go down, I'm sure. I only invented the Shield of Kinnis plot arc/artifact because it matched up with some lore and fit the character conception really well.

In my case and with my luck, the character would probably die shortly after the bolded bit happened, i.e. only after both she-as-PC and you-as-GM had committed to the story.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Even then, I'd expect it to have the sorts of tropes and events typical of a John Hughes film or an Archie comic. Which still involve contrivance, revelation etc as opposed to the mundanity of an actual high school!

Right, I think inevitably you would want to go that way simply for sheer lack of entertainment value in just revisiting your teen years, lol. It seems to me that there's already this fundamental 'contrivance', the focus on the PCs as being role played by the players.

Now, maybe that points to a different path? What if you envisage an RPG in which the players do NOT play one given specific character? I'm not suggesting how that would work, but it might at least mean the 'contrivances' would be DIFFERENT, if not absent.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Indeed, there's certainly some contrivance involved in their stumbling onto the first one, which has with it a rather cryptic poem pointing to the other three (there is, however, a detailed back-story as to how and why this crystal got to where it was found and why the poem is with it, a story which the PCs are slowly picking up on as they go along and which - depending how things go - may becme more relevant later). That said, they just as easily could have missed the first crystal entirely (it was in a secret treasure room) and-or could have ignored the poem and gone off to do something else. But they found the treasure room and bit hard on the poem's hook, so away we go.

Sounds good!

Got any ideas how they can get the first one back, now that it's lost in Bag Hell?

Spoiler: The corner I'm in

My guess is, knowing these characters and how they are usually played, they're probably going to try to recover the first crystal at some point; and unless they use something like a wish (highly unlikely at their level!) I'm at a real loss for ideas as to any avenues by which they could even hope to succeed. It's already well-established in the setting that a living being going into a Bag of Holding comes out dead if it comes out at all; so just shrinking themselves, diving into a different BoH, and cutting a hole in it isn't a very appealing option. It's also already established through play that the PC Clerics' deities don't want anything to do with these crystals (backstory: they've got inert essences of other deities bound up in them, and deities don't like to mess with other deities on principle) so divine intervention is probably off the table.

And the poem makes it fairly clear through its cryptic-ness that all four are needed, so I can't really go back on that now.

I've painted myself into a corner on this one. Maybe the whole adventure series will end up a failure...but that's kind of the nuclear option, to be avoided if anything else presents itself.

Yeah, I wouldn't go back on it. I'd just see where it leads. The players may have some ideas in terms of 'fixing' any plot holes.

In my case and with my luck, the character would probably die shortly after the bolded bit happened, i.e. only after both she-as-PC and you-as-GM had committed to the story.

Yeah, that was certainly on the table, though being 4e typically it generates these "and you barely pulled through" outcomes vs outright death (and in this case perhaps a return from the dead would have been pretty thematic! 4e has the Revenent race for that!). I did have one TPK in another 4e campaign, but it was pretty low level and there were some NPCs around that made pretty good fallbacks. Otherwise individual characters have bought them farm many times in those games. If the PC was a focus of an ongoing story arc, then maybe things took a twist, or the other PCs continued, or even just did something completely new.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Seems odd to me, like you've authored a story and the players are just going to supply some color almost. I mean, you seem to have an agenda for this story of the 4 crystals to happen. It doesn't even involve the players at all (the PCs are part of your plot, but since the players don't even know the story exists they're not even along for the ride at this point!). In terms of contrivance though, which is more to the OP's point, how does this not qualify as a tremendous contrivance? Of all the possible characters who could dig these things up, its the PCs!

Now, I have an explanation for this, in say DW terms, the PCs are the big damned heroes! They are THE Wizard, THE Fighter, THE Cleric, and THE Thief. Maybe they will or won't dig up the fabled 4 crystals, but their players probably decided that was a thing to begin with! (I mean, the GM in DW could generate this story element as a part of a Front, or maybe even as a soft move/doom but IMHO that would generally only be a good move if something the players had decided at some point thematically signaled that as a story direction that would be in keeping with the course of play).

So, for instance, I might invent something like that if maybe the thief was gunning for a big treasure and bit when offered a fantastic gemstone. Later this gemstone leads things into a whole complex plot surrounding the necessity to get 3 more and avert the final evolution of a campaign front (the exact nature of which will certainly riff off of the choices of PC background, answers to questions asked of players, etc.). Note that DW Fronts "just are" once they are established, if the players send their characters off in some other direction, well the front does its thing and so be it. If some of them die, or even if the party gets wiped and there's a restart, things can go on, no one PC need be cast as THE FATED ONE, although it may turn out to be so when the time comes!

I think part of the reason the crystal example feels like it works (as a contrivance or otherwise) is that it presents a problem (these crystals need to be gathered) rather than a solution, and I'm reminded of Sanderson's laws of magic:

An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.

"Mysterious magic" (or "soft magic"), which has no clearly defined rules, should, in genre fantasy, not solve problems, although it may create them.

But rather than discussing a magic system, we're discussing cause and effect in story structure-- a lot of players will happily accept that the four crystals need to be gathered as a contrivance because it presents them with a problem to go and solve, but they'd be less happy having solutions contrived for them, for the same reason a reader is unhappy with mysterious magic solving problems.

Literally, they don't feel like problems have to be earned (because they're part of the premise) but would want to earn the solution (because that's the substance of the narrative, is their trials to gather the crystals) the more the crystals fall into their lap (represented by solution contrivances) the less they feel that the crystals are the fruit of their own labors, so the plan to make them gather the crystals is a fun game, but dropping the crystals on them isn't.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think part of the reason the crystal example feels like it works (as a contrivance or otherwise) is that it presents a problem (these crystals need to be gathered) rather than a solution, and I'm reminded of Sanderson's laws of magic:


But rather than discussing a magic system, we're discussing cause and effect in story structure-- a lot of players will happily accept that the four crystals need to be gathered as a contrivance because it presents them with a problem to go and solve, but they'd be less happy having solutions contrived for them, for the same reason a reader is unhappy with mysterious magic solving problems.

Literally, they don't feel like problems have to be earned (because they're part of the premise) but would want to earn the solution (because that's the substance of the narrative, is their trials to gather the crystals) the more the crystals fall into their lap (represented by solution contrivances) the less they feel that the crystals are the fruit of their own labors, so the plan to make them gather the crystals is a fun game, but dropping the crystals on them isn't.

Umm, sure, but one of the, perhaps THE, most consistent objection to games with a structure like Dungeon World, or some interpretations of 4e (variously termed Story Game, narrative agenda, etc.) is PURELY the idea of contrivance itself regardless of any consideration of what purpose it serves plot-wise. While we could see the crystals as either problem or solution, they are certainly a contrivance, a 'plot driver' of some sort!

And honestly, I would not even see something like these crystals as either problem or solution at all. The problem is whatever using them for prevents or fixes. The solution is the actions that the PCs take in order to arrive at that solution. This is very different from the 'soft magic solves a problem' thing, because the soft magic is just something arbitrary which in-and-of-itself produces the solution to the problem. To be even more detailed in that analysis, even 'soft magic' isn't problematic if the protagonists must go to great lengths to carry it out. Its only problematic if it is so 'soft' that it can just be implemented anywhere without cost or effort.

I would say that there is more a rule of PROPORTIONALITY. That is minor problems can be solved cheaply and easily. If they are minor enough and the solution is 'soft' enough, they become nothing but color. Bigger problems, ones where more is at stake, generally require the protagonists to pay a greater cost to solve them. I mean, this rule can be subverted, which will produce some type of absurdity in most cases, but that might be useful once in a while (IE it is humorous if the giant bad-assed fire dragon is offed with a pin prick, but only once of course). A similar proportionality rule exists in terms of payout, the rewards and the risks generally need to scale together, otherwise things don't seem to be interesting.

However, OWNERSHIP creates even a different dynamic, to a degree. In our BitD game it would be fine if some relatively easy score gave us a big boost, though it would become silly if that was a common thing. OTOH if it happened that way, we'd probably devise some fiction where the ultimate outcome was more in keeping, like some kind of long-term consequence becomes apparent over time. Or maybe the new situation simply leads the crew to becoming overly confident or foolish and later that leads to a bad consequence. This sort of thing can be really well used at times, and is a fun activity for players (because, really, all players enjoy adversity in good measure).

 

[kenada]

Indeed, there's certainly some contrivance involved in their stumbling onto the first one, which has with it a rather cryptic poem pointing to the other three (there is, however, a detailed back-story as to how and why this crystal got to where it was found and why the poem is with it, a story which the PCs are slowly picking up on as they go along and which - depending how things go - may becme more relevant later). That said, they just as easily could have missed the first crystal entirely (it was in a secret treasure room) and-or could have ignored the poem and gone off to do something else. But they found the treasure room and bit hard on the poem's hook, so away we go.

Sounds good!

Got any ideas how they can get the first one back, now that it's lost in Bag Hell?

Spoiler: The corner I'm in

My guess is, knowing these characters and how they are usually played, they're probably going to try to recover the first crystal at some point; and unless they use something like a wish (highly unlikely at their level!) I'm at a real loss for ideas as to any avenues by which they could even hope to succeed. It's already well-established in the setting that a living being going into a Bag of Holding comes out dead if it comes out at all; so just shrinking themselves, diving into a different BoH, and cutting a hole in it isn't a very appealing option. It's also already established through play that the PC Clerics' deities don't want anything to do with these crystals (backstory: they've got inert essences of other deities bound up in them, and deities don't like to mess with other deities on principle) so divine intervention is probably off the table.

And the poem makes it fairly clear through its cryptic-ness that all four are needed, so I can't really go back on that now.

I've painted myself into a corner on this one. Maybe the whole adventure series will end up a failure...but that's kind of the nuclear option, to be avoided if anything else presents itself.

In my case and with my luck, the character would probably die shortly after the bolded bit happened, i.e. only after both she-as-PC and you-as-GM had committed to the story.

Could they create humunculi and send them in to retrieve the items? Though I guess you’d have to trust them once they entered wherever the bag’s contents got dumped (assuming it’s a different plane).