D&D General Defining Story

[overgeeked]

The is exactly what I aim for when playing or running a game. It's also why I favor shorter campaigns where it's easier to tell that story. As a GM, I tend to set things up knowing what the bad guys will do assuming the PCs don't intervene in some manner. How the PCs handle the situation is entirely up to them though.

Yeah, that’s a great way to run things. The NPCs and factions have goals and will pursue them. It’s on the PCs to stop them, if they want to, and on the players to figure out how. Either way, things happen and the world changes around the PCs. I think it was a PbtA game where I first saw that advice explicitly laid out. Either fronts in AW and DW, or Monster of the Week.

 

[Hussar]

When I say "mystery" in D&D, I'm not talking about who killed the butler (well, sometimes...), I'm talking about why everyone in Silverymoon has disappeared, or why Waterdeep has been ripped out of the earth and sent into the sky, or why the Sword Coast has collapsed into the Underdark. The reason why these things happen may be locked in (but not always), but the ways in which it affects the PC's, and how they choose to fix it, if at all, need not be. And on such a big canvas, building PC backstories into the campaign, if they want, is quite easy.

Fair enough.

But, the point is, the DM has the answers to these questions. There's no "emergent story" there. The DM already knows. The story is about how the players discover that secret and what they do about it - presumably returning Waterdeep to Faerun as the most likely resolution to that mystery. While, sure, the details will change, it's very probable that there are certain elements which will be common across any group which plays that same scenario. They have to travel to Place X and Meet NPC Y if they want to learn Fact Z. Granted, with a 3 clue rule, there might be multiple Place X's, but, given the limited time most DM's have to prepare, there aren't likely to be that many different points.

My point is, you have a story already. Waterdeep has been ripped from the ground. The PC's are tasked with discovering why and what can be done about it.

It would be a pretty rare campaign that started with Waterdeep being ripped from the ground, the players shrugging and heading to Baldur's Gate to do something completely unrelated.

 

[Hussar]

You can't have an emergent mystery in terms of who is truly guilty.

You can, however, have an emergent mystery in terms of what the consequences end up being.

Because I did exactly that. I had a murder mystery, with only a little bit of magic involved. There was a clear, singular perpetrator the entire time and I knew who they were.

But there were several suspects, and multiple layers of political wrangling, and the possibility of at least three distinct diplomatic incidents as a result of this murder if the wrong people were accused, and further possible blowback against the party's sponsoring city-state (whose Sultana had made them temporarily diplomatic representatives for her government.) That's where the emergent properties come into play. We already know the danger, there's no question that the ultimate problem is "do we find the killer or not?" But what created tension and allowed for the players' individual actions to shine through, just as a "do we stop the bad guy or not?" story would, is that there were many ways things could cash out, some of them great, some of them terrible, many in-between. Ultimately, the party succeeded with flying colors and even ensured that the political machinations which got them into this in the first place ended up going very smoothly and having nothing but positive impacts on their royal sponsor. Had they missed too many clues or misinterpreted those clues, however, they could have enabled the real culprit to trigger a state of war (or at least armed conflict) between two or three Jinnistani city-states, weakened their sponsor's diplomatic position, and empowered one of their rivals to reap massive financial windfall from supporting both/all sides of the resulting conflict.

The irony, of course, is that the critical clue which ensured the downfall of the real killer was that the servants knew she had received a red dress by post before the party, but was seen actually attending that party in a blue dress. An excellent coverup blown by someone being overly finicky with their fashion choices.

Here's the thing though.

All those consequences are authored by you the DM. The "culprit triggers a state of war" consequence isn't an emergent story. It's the pre-authored resolution that you have already decided upon if the players do not succeed. Which is perfectly fine. I have zero problems with this. You have a story, the final resolution is basically a spectrum from complete success to abject failure. But, the general outline of that story is still pretty much in the bag before play begins. At no point is the party going to simply leave and go somewhere else. This murder mystery is the story that's going to play out. Now, we're not writing a novel, so, the conclusion isn't pre-set. But, again, there's very much a story there.

 

[Hussar]

I disagree. In my example mystery above, it's easy (and arguably inevitable!) to have an emergent story that arises from the decisions of the players even though the DM knows all the factual answers beforehand.

The only story that is emerging is the order of events - most of which have been predetermined by the DM - and the final resolution, which, frankly, in D&D, is almost universally going to be success.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Here's the thing though.

All those consequences are authored by you the DM. The "culprit triggers a state of war" consequence isn't an emergent story. It's the pre-authored resolution that you have already decided upon if the players do not succeed. Which is perfectly fine. I have zero problems with this. You have a story, the final resolution is basically a spectrum from complete success to abject failure. But, the general outline of that story is still pretty much in the bag before play begins. At no point is the party going to simply leave and go somewhere else. This murder mystery is the story that's going to play out. Now, we're not writing a novel, so, the conclusion isn't pre-set. But, again, there's very much a story there.

Except that there were easily a dozen different scenarios all possible, none of which I had any preparation for other than "if Baron Afzal gets formally accused, that's bad." I don't see how this is not at least somewhat emergent. It's not a specific plan I had in advance.

You seem to be acting like literally ANY preparation, whatsoever, no matter how minor, automatically nixes any and all emergent-ness. That's not how I would use that term, and that's not how I think most people view it. Preparation is not the enemy of emergent story.

 

[Xetheral]

The only story that is emerging is the order of events - most of which have been predetermined by the DM - and the final resolution, which, frankly, in D&D, is almost universally going to be success.

I don't follow your response. My example was:

As an example, consider a murder mystery where the identity of the killer isn't hard to determine with the party's resources, but (1) the question about whether it was murder or self-defense doesn't have an objective answer, (2) there are competing jurisdictional claims complicating the definition of "justice", and (3) any decisions made regarding whether or how to accuse, expose, capture, or kill the perpetrator would carry political costs.

There's no preset events here at all. How the party addresses (1) and (2) can't possibly have a preset resolution, because the choices the party makes necessarily are subjective judgements based on quandries that don't have a correct answer. And (3) is wildly open-ended, leaving it up to the party to decide whether and how to factor the politics into their decisions. And the whole mystery doesn't even have easily identifiable success or failure states.

So I don't understand how you think my example leads to the players merely deciding the order of predetermined events when there are no predetermined events. Nor do I understand how you think my example leads nigh-inevitably to a success when the example doesn't have a clear definition of what qualifies as a success.

 

[Hussar]

Except that there were easily a dozen different scenarios all possible, none of which I had any preparation for other than "if Baron Afzal gets formally accused, that's bad." I don't see how this is not at least somewhat emergent. It's not a specific plan I had in advance.

You seem to be acting like literally ANY preparation, whatsoever, no matter how minor, automatically nixes any and all emergent-ness. That's not how I would use that term, and that's not how I think most people view it. Preparation is not the enemy of emergent story.

I would argue that yes, actually preparation is the enemy of emergent story. The more you have prepared, the more details you, the DM, have nailed down, the less emergent the story gets. After all, for a story to be emergent, it cannot be predicted. That's the definition of emergent. Something that cannot be predicted beforehand.

You have all the ingredients of a story there. You have a location, you have a plot and you have characters, both PC and NPC. You have a pretty good idea of the range of potential outcomes. I'm not sure how that's not a story.

Again, I don't define story as something that is complete. Story doesn't to be complete to be a story. If you have all the elements of a story before you start and the players are then going through these elements, reacting to them, doing this or that, then, well, there's nothing particularly emergent there. At no point did your NPC have a sudden change of heart and declare his/her guilt. That was never going to happen. You had a pretty good idea of how this was going to play out.

 

[Hussar]

I don't follow your response. My example was:

As an example, consider a murder mystery where the identity of the killer isn't hard to determine with the party's resources, but (1) the question about whether it was murder or self-defense doesn't have an objective answer, (2) there are competing jurisdictional claims complicating the definition of "justice", and (3) any decisions made regarding whether or how to accuse, expose, capture, or kill the perpetrator would carry political costs.

There's no preset events here at all. How the party addresses (1) and (2) can't possibly have a preset resolution, because the choices the party makes necessarily are subjective judgements based on quandries that don't have a correct answer. And (3) is wildly open-ended, leaving it up to the party to decide whether and how to factor the politics into their decisions. And the whole mystery doesn't even have easily identifiable success or failure states.

So I don't understand how you think my example leads to the players merely deciding the order of predetermined events when there are no predetermined events. Nor do I understand how you think my example leads nigh-inevitably to a success when the example doesn't have a clear definition of what qualifies as a success.

I would argue that every event there is preset. You, as DM, know what will happen if the party determines if it was murder or self-defense. That's not emergent, that's just two choices. Any political costs are determined by the DM and those costs are very likely pre-determined before play even begins. The only thing that emerges here is which of the slate of options presented by the DM the players choose.

To me, that's a story. It's no different than choose your own adventure stories.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I would argue that yes, actually preparation is the enemy of emergent story. The more you have prepared, the more details you, the DM, have nailed down, the less emergent the story gets. After all, for a story to be emergent, it cannot be predicted. That's the definition of emergent. Something that cannot be predicted beforehand.

You have all the ingredients of a story there. You have a location, you have a plot and you have characters, both PC and NPC. You have a pretty good idea of the range of potential outcomes. I'm not sure how that's not a story.

Again, I don't define story as something that is complete. Story doesn't to be complete to be a story. If you have all the elements of a story before you start and the players are then going through these elements, reacting to them, doing this or that, then, well, there's nothing particularly emergent there. At no point did your NPC have a sudden change of heart and declare his/her guilt. That was never going to happen. You had a pretty good idea of how this was going to play out.

Story is the outcome once the play has completed. And yes, the GM may set up the starting conditions, and hopefully ones that are rife with conflict and interesting revelations. But what you seem to be missing that the GM doesn't control the PCs, and what the PCs do will greatly influence the outcome. Until the PCs have made their choices and influenced the course of events there is no story.

For this to work the best, there should be a lot of situations that have no obvious "correct" answer but ones that are more open ended.

 

[Lanefan]

I would argue that yes, actually preparation is the enemy of emergent story. The more you have prepared, the more details you, the DM, have nailed down, the less emergent the story gets. After all, for a story to be emergent, it cannot be predicted. That's the definition of emergent. Something that cannot be predicted beforehand.

You can have the whole thing prepped down to the floorboards and still have no idea what's going to happen once the players get involved.

I mean, take a typical old-time adventure module. With a few exceptions (most of which have numbers starting with DL) all they present is a setting and a bunch of maybe-connected situations and-or obstacles and-or potential opponents. Even if I-as-DM know this material inside out, I still have no way of knowing how (or even if!) the players/PCs will approach it or what will happen if-when they do.

Or take another example: the common situation where the DM has a behind-the-scenes schedule of events that will happen at specific times unless the PCs somehow force that schedule or those events to change. For example, I could have predetermined that two armies are going to meet and do battle in the Vale of Flowers on Day 12, but I've no idea how or if that's going to affect the PCs nor do I know how or if the PCs will affect it. Maybe the PCs broker a peace on Day 10. Maybe they're in the Vale for other reasons on Day 12 and unexpectedly get caught in the fighting. Maybe they'll work with one of the armies, helping them plan for that battle. Maybe they don't get to the Vale until Day 14, when all they see is flocks of crows. Or maybe they go another way entirely and don't hear about the battle for months.

I'm kind of in that situation right now. The party I'm running is in a hilly area that's on its way to becoming a war zone. Going in, I thought I wouldn't have to worry about details of the war itself as it was months away and the PCs should be long finished in the area by then. Well, what I initially thought would take them several in-game days (or at most a few weeks) has now gone on for three in-game months, meaning that armies, scouts, and strike forces are now moving in the hills around them like chess pieces.

I'd initially thought that war would be an off-screen bit of news. Now it's looking like I'll have to run it in some detail, if only to determine how or if it directly affects the PCs and-or what opportunities they might have to get involved if they so desire. And though I've got ideas as to who will win the war and how this will happen if all else remains the same, I've no idea how it's going to play out as regards the PCs nor do I know whether the PCs will intervene somehow and make a difference.