DMs: Are you a "plot-nazi"?

[Number47]

Sometimes it's railroading or plot-nazi, but sometimes it's something else. There are a lot of groups out there who simply WANT the DM to tell them what to do and where to go. It can be very frustrating.

For those who think they could never run a campaign where NPCs have independent motivations, it can be easier than you think. The key is to simply have an idea of what an NPC is about, then make stuff up as you go along. You do NOT need to have plans written down for everything everybody wants to do five months in advance. Just say to yourself, "the party has been gone from town for a month. What has happened in that time based on competing goals of NPCs, and outside forces?"

If the PCs haven't been somewhere for about a month or more, make sure that things are different in a noticeable way when they return. Do this even if you don't have a real reason that things changed. This is what gives them the impression that the world changes around them. A great thing to do is to make some important, random change. As the player discuss what it could possibly mean, use their ideas to develop what it really does mean. It makes them feel smart for getting the right answer, or close to it, and they will never question it later because it made sense to them at the time.

Example: the group notices a large force of city guards leave the main gate and head into the woods. As far as the group knows, they don't return. Nobody in the city talks about it. In fact, nobody is willing to acknowledge that the guards left at all. Why did this happen? Let the PCs decide!

Ok, rambling done now.

 

[Sigma]

That's not necessarily railroading (okay...it is...but it isn't bad railroading). What I'm really talking about is when the DM fudges the rules or has NPCs to illogical things in order to achieve a specific result. For instance...the DM decides that as part of his plot, the evil NPC cleric instructs some of his ghouls to paralyze and capture one of the PCs. But when the fateful encounter occurs, the PCs do something unexpected and no one is paralyzed or captured...so the DM starts throwing more ghouls at them or increasing save DCs in order to insure that this critical event happens. That's what I mean by being a plot nazi.

Sure, I might have an evil NPC decide to caputer a PC. And I'll have him plan out his scheme based on whatever knowledge he has. But when the attack comes, if the PCs foil it, good for them.

I once played in a game where a wizard and his apprentice were serving as "guides" to the party of first level characters. The wizard kept stepping in and saving our skins are every turn and was really leading the party rather than guiding it. This was annoying so we players decided to go our own way, only to be geased into following them. The DM actually flipped through the PHB to find just the right spell. The DM had a story in mind and damnit we were going to follow it! Bah! I never went back for the second game...

Last game, the party was going up against a devil that had been bothering them for some time. It was disguised as a former acquaintance of theirs, and they had set up a meeting to discuss some information. This devil was an osyluth with 1 level of ranger and 3 levels of a really nasty prestige class. He was a CR 10, they were level 7. I didn't expect him to stay and fight, the plan was to have him teleport out if attacked, and retaliate through other means. To defeat him (which was going to be difficult since he was so much more powerful than them and capable of teleporting at will), they were going to need to travel to a dangerous location in the campaign, get his True Name, and use that. Finally, the devil was going to give them some important information about an assassination that occured earlier in the game in exchange for his life.

That was the plan, here's what happened.

The PC's paid the owner of the restaraunt to take a hike. They filled the place with their men, and set up hit squads at every exit. No big deal I think, the osyluth can teleport. Combat was going to begin when the assassin of the group attempted his death attack on the osyluth. The chances of success were low. The devil needed to roll a 5 or better to make his save.

And, of course, he rolled a 4.

So, the devil got killed, the PC's didn't go to the dangerous place where they were also supposed to free a vampire for the next adventure, and they never learned who was behind the assassination earlier in the campaign.

I eventually worked around those minor plot details (had another group accidentally free the vampire, put the info about the assassin in another place), but the adventure was cut short by a session because of that one roll.

 

[SableWyvern]

OK. I understand now.

Generally speaking, I would not alter a combat or encounter once I had planned it. I would certainly never do so in a situation where the players have come up with a clever plan that circumvents all my plotting, and for which they deserve the reward of easy victory.

I may, however, alter things on the fly in situations like these:

I simply misjudged the difficulty of the encounter, and it needs to be altered. Note I am talking about a situation were one side flat out outclasses the other when that was not my intent. As stated above, clever planning on the PCs is fine.

Through clever planning or otherwise, the players will not feel challenged, and will probably not get a satisfactory level of enjoyment from success. If this is due to clever planning, I would not, however, simply have the plan fail. In fact, I would do my utmost to see that the players are rewarded for their clever thinking - at the same time as ensuring, if possible, that their plan did not ultimately lead to an unfulfilling session.


Again, as in my previous post, these sorts of things should not be done in a manner that is apparent to the players. They should not detract from their enjoyment, or make them feel like a solid plan was thwarted by metagaming.


As to your geas example: if it's metagaming and the players know it, and it's forcing players to do things they don't want to, then it's bad.

I can't iterate enough, that, IMO, one of the greatest arts a DM can develop, is to be able to manipulate PCs and players, without them ever realising it. This is not a skill that is developed to be used at every available opportunity, but one that can be incredibly handy at crucial moments.

 

[King_Stannis]

nein, mein fuhrer! no plot nazi here.


i agree *gasp* with teflon billy, especially when it comes to NPC's. understand the motivations of the npc's and have them react to the changing world. this is key to the success of any campaign. have 4 or 5 fully fleshed out npc's, at least one or two of which are the C3PO & R2-D2 (or Jay and Silent Bob, if you will ) "storytellers" of your campaign. not that they should be invincible, but try to keep them above the fray and make them a living breathing part of the landscape. have them grow and get old as the PC's come and go.

a little saying i try to go by is "don't worry about the contents of a dungeon 3 levels away, worry about what NPC 'X' had for breakfast when the PC's talk to him".

 

[Maraxle]

I was guilty of this when I was just starting out, but now I'm very much against it.

In the original campaign I ran, there was one particular quest where an old healer had been driven mad by his obsession with an artifact that had come into his possession. He started using his knowledge of the human nervous system to create a poison of sorts that turned people into mindless servants who he could use to protect his wonderful item. He mostly preyed on travellers, vagabonds, and others who would not be missed by the local townsfolk. The setup for the adventure was that he had made a mistake this time, and took the adult son of a local farmer who was coming to visit his parents. The local guard managed to trace the whereabouts of the son to the healer's mansion, but found it to be burned to the ground. The PCs were hired on as laborers to help clear the burned out lot and (surprise, surprise) found the entrance to the sublevels under the mansion. When they told the local guard, they were instructed to search the sublevels (I guess the guard were busy that day) and bring swift justice to the old healer.

Well, to make a long story short, they found the old healer, and instead of killing him like I expected, they decided that the swiftest justice would be to bring him back for trial. I was surprised as they had been fairly chaotic in the past. What they didn't know was that I had already begun writing the 2nd quest in the series where I assumed the old man to be dead. This opened up a whole new avenue which I hadn't expected, and allowed me to use the old healer (now a prisoner of the state) as a plot device later in the campaign. This is when I learned my lesson.

 

[nsruf]

I'm more the opposite of a plot-nazi. If my players don't want to react to my plot hooks but rather do other things, I don't mind to improvise something. They just shouldn't complain about inconsistencies in my improvised plot afterwards...

However, I will certainly "recycle" NPCs and encounters they missed out on, i.e. either reuse them in a different context or decide what happened because of the PCs taking a different route and introduce the players to the consequences. This means my preparations are not totally wasted, and in many cases there remains still some plot continuity.

IMO, railroading is one of the worst things a DM can do - it tends to ruin my enoyment of the game like nothing else. So I try to avoid doing it myself if possible. If a plot requires it, I try to put it in the prologue - the old "You are in prison" shtick would be an example. But as soon as the game has really started, the players can try what they like and expect logical and fair consequences.

 

[SableWyvern]

Heh.

I just remembered a session I ran quite some time ago.

You see, my campaigns are often far more likely to have players that think they have to take my plot hooks, than those who point-blank refuse them all.

I had tried explaining to the group their freedom to do what they wanted, but they continued to require direction.

So, I directed.

One PC came across some druids, who convinced him that the princess in nearby city was evil, and they needed him to kidnap her for them, so that they could convince her to mend her evil ways. For a start, it was all a lie.

Secondly, there was no way the PCs had the capabilities to pulling off a successful kidnapping of someone so powerful.

After a while, they realised this. They discussed at length how impossible the mission was.

The fools metagamed, and decided that despite their obvious inability, if I'd thrown the hook, they had to be able to complete the mission.

By the end of the session, the PC who had spoken to the druids was dead in the street, and the rest were wanted criminals fleeing for their lives.

It was a harsh lesson, but they did finally learn that they had the ability to do what they wanted in-character (including saying "Stuff this, this mission is crazy).

 

[Desdichado]

I think I'd like to play in a game of Winninger's, but I have little patience for the kinds of things EGG seems to enjoy best about the game (from reading his column in Dragon, anyway: I don't have any personal experience with what he likes in a game.)

Similar to what was noted above, I rarely can railroad as a DM, because I have no idea what is going to happen. I plan a few locations, a few NPCs and organizations that the PCs might likely come across, any monsters that I think might get in their way depending on where we were last time we met, and essentially I let them go and do whatever they feel like.

Although most players seem to appreciate at least the occasional ambush or thinly veiled plot hook if they don't know exactly what they want to do. Although I believe railroading is bad, you've got to be aware that (in my experience) most players want some direction from the DM, especially at the beginning. Later, when things are really moving on their own and they don't need it as much, it's not so necessary. It depends on where you are in the campaign, I suppose.

 

[the Jester]

Usually except for the first couple sessions of a campaign I find that the pcs drive the game by a combination of reacting to the consequences of their prior actions and going after their desires.

I _never_ plot-nazi to the level you described. Let 'em foil my plot, the foiled villain will vow revenge and return later.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I'll go out on a limb here, and say that I'm willing to engage in a little plot-fascism when the game in question calls for it. This is because my current group of players has a tendency to wait for me to tell them what to do next. (I don't know why.) So I've had some games where the PCs were free to make up their own minds, and some games where the PCs had a choice of plot hooks to choose from. Both were fun, but ...

The game I've run, that was most overwhelmingly praised by my group, was the one that was railroaded from start to finish. (I often think of it as the game where I knew how it was going to end, before I wrote anything else.) I never took free will away from my group, but I knew what was going to happen in the campaign world, and the players obliged me by taking the appropriate heroic choices when called for.

As a result, my next game will be rather heavily scripted - and we'll see what level of success it has. By planning the adventure in this fashion, I can have a game with a plot, a point, and a climax - and sometimes the players think that's worth a little railroading.

P.S. Never, ever, take away the player's free will if you can possibly avoid it. Some players will react badly even to effects such as Fear, if it damages their image of their character.