From Adventure Game to Story Game?

[Libramarian]

Like tabletop RPGs - done badly it isn't very good. Your point?

That the thread's definition for story game is way too broad to be useful.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I'm leaning heavily toward solutions more related to FATE than railroading, especially since I'm going to go intergalactic sandbox with my next campaign. I'm gearing up to be content sitting and GMing nothing much until the players decide what they're going to do. I want them to give me the plot hooks.

In my upcoming D&D game, what I'm looking to do is add three aspects (ala FATE) to characters: a High Concept (who are you?) a Trouble (what is your problem?) and a Renown (what are you known for?). The first two aspects are chosen by the player. The last aspect is based on how the character is viewed by the world. I think the Renown aspect will play well for D&D because PCs always want to be big shots (at least in my experience) and this gives them a chance for what the world thinks of them to really influence play through the aspect. It makes it really important. And they can't just define what they want it to be. They have to role-play that out and attain the goals they set for themselves to achieve the aspect. As the PCs evolve, so does the aspect.

I'll do the normal FATE stuff with the aspects, compel them and allow them to be invoked. I'll also give NPCs aspects, to use just as the PCs do.

What I'm not sure is if I should eliminate action points or roll them into action points. I never really liked 4e action points. They're just boosts, not really ways to influence the game. I like action points that are used for more nebulous things, like declarations. I might just kill off action points as they exist and let this take their place. I'll have to talk it over with my players more before making a final decision.

 

[Neonchameleon]

That the thread's definition for story game is way too broad to be useful.

Except the thread gives a definition - and one that makes sense. If you the player have narrative control of the world outside your character's direct actions (rather than simply offering suggestions to the DM) it's a storygame. If the control you have is what your character can do it's an RPG.

So action points are RPGs. Plot points are story game. If the players frame some of the scenes it's a story game.
[MENTION=12037]ThirdWizard[/MENTION], you might want a look at Leverage or MHRP's distinctions before adding in FATE aspects and compels. I'm not sure how to add those to D&D (+2/-2 and the latter offers a complication on a 3?) - but penalty invoked by the player I find even better than DM-Compel Bargain.

 

[Yaguara]

This means that if you want to use traditional RPG rules to run a story game with narrative logic (dramatic arcs, etc. etc. etc.) you've basically got to give the DM big gobs of power to the DM to overrule the rules left and right to make things more story-like and to nudge the PCs towards the plot.

How is that any different than the big gobs of power that the DM has to run the adventure game? The DM has always had this power. All a "Story" game is doing is defining a means of sharing that power with others. The DM creates the encounter, they judge the rewards provided by the encounter, they determine the opposition's strength and actions, they adjudicate the results of the dice rolls. For example, your PC is trying to sneak into the Necromancer's Tower and fails the roll. What does that really mean? The DM decides what it means. It might mean that the PC trips on their way to the shadows and is spotted BEFORE they get into the tower. It might mean that the PC neglected to fully close the window they were used to gain entrance and a passing guard spots it AFTER they have gotten into the tower. Either way the game mechanic (a failed sneaking roll) is satisfied but the drama is much different. In the first scenario the PC can retreat, fight the guard, etc. In the second the PC has to evade the search parties the Necromancer sends to investigate. One of my favorite quotes (I've already used it once tonight, might as well use it again) comes from Orson Scott Card. "Plot comes from what characters want." My contention is that if the DM needs to nudge the players to the plot then they have the wrong plot.

 

[Hussar]

Yaguara - that's not always true though. Take 3:16 Carnage Beyond the Stars as an example. At any point, I, a player, can declare that we win an encounter and I can narrate how that win goes. Granted, I can't do it all the time, but, I can do it. I can also declare that I fail an encounter and get to narrate how that failure falls out. I can tell the GM that instead of the big nasty xenomorph eating my spleen, he takes me back to the larder for later. And the GM is obligated to follow that.

 

[Daztur]

Yaguara: a lot of story games put a lot of those decisions in the players hands. There are plenty games out there that let a player define how they win or lose an encounter if they lose it and plenty more that allow rerolling if they lose it.

But for me the main difference is that if you have a game (like a lot, but hardly all, old school D&D) in which the DM has no particular plot in mind then the PCs drive the plow. In an indie game in which the players can pull all kinds of metagame tricks out of their bags (by doing stuff as players behind saying what their characters will do) they can drive the game and still have it display a lot of narrative logic due to how the metagame mechanics are set up. If the DM has a pre-set plot and is trying to nudge the players onto it when they have the "wrong" one then that isn't too interesting to me. That isn't to say the the DM can't pull lots of tricks, just I like the players making their own plot rather than the DMs trying to herd cats to get the player to follow theirs.

 

[Yaguara]

Hussar, you missed my point. Daztur stated that trying to run a story driven adventure game puts more "big gobs of power" in the hands of the DM than normally exists. My point is that this simply isn't true. The DM has always had that narrative power and a good DM makes liberal use of that power. I am well aware that "Story" games have rules that share this power with the rest of the players but the OP's question isn't about those games - it is about how to bring the best parts of those games into a more traditional adventure game like D&D. I understand that many people seek some sort of framework and structure to help create the game/story they want to see. That is what the poster is looking for - a way to help guarantee the kind of game they want to see for themselves and the other players - that is really what these "Story" rules are all about.

Daztur: I understand your position - there are few things worse than railroading players to follow a pre-set plot. I suspect you are talking about a game where the player's actions make no difference to the overall game. That is not what I am describing. A good DM doesn't have to do that and a good plot doesn't need to either. A good plot is one the players will seek out and drive forward all on their own. How do you know a good plot from a bad one? Simple - a good plot is dictated by the player's desires not the DM's. You talk about a DM that has no particular plot in mind. To my way of thinking that is not a good DM. You talk about a DM that has to nudge the players off of the "wrong" plot. To my way of thinking if the DM has to nudge the players onto the plot then that IS the wrong plot and the one the players are pursuing is the right one. The DM needs to know what the plot is to guide the narrative but it is the players who decide what the plot is. Notice I said "guide the narrative" not "dictate the narrative." The DM has to be able to create the encounters that allow the players to move the plot forward. The DM also has to be able to organize the plot so that players with divergent goals are not going in different directions all at once. The DM doesn't decide what the goals are - the DM decides when and in what order they are achieved.

 

[Daztur]

Yaguara: ah I misread you then and our positions are closer together than I thought. Let me poke at things a bit. Let say you're playing a game and in the first combat encounter your character gets hit by a lucky critical and dies, do you:
A. Have the DM try to avoid that sort of thing from happening through narrative power (making sure that the big scary orcs avoid attacking the wizard with 4 HPs) /dice fudging.
B. Tell the player that his character is dead and that he should go roll up a new one.
C. Play with a system that's set up so that the whole situation is pretty much impossible.

This isn't theoretical. This is what happened to me yesterday

RPGs are random enough that all kind of weird-ass disasters happen at what would be the wrong dramatic moment in a story. For example in a thread a couple months back I remember someone saying that they didn't want any long lasting injuries in D&D since (to paraphrase the scenario they made up) "they didn't want to be travelling to stop a demon summoning ritual and break their leg fighting some random gnolls on the way and then have a choice between being in crutches and hopping around uselessly for the final fight or have the adventure be the story of some guys who holed up taking a rest when the demon got summoned instead of being the story of the guys who burst in at the last moment during the demon summoning ritual." For me at least as a DM, I wouldn't pull strings to make sure that the PCs get to the demon summing ritual in time to interact with it but I wouldn't mind playing a game in which the PCs had some metagaming power to pull the strings themselves.

 

[Yaguara]

Let say you're playing a game and in the first combat encounter your character gets hit by a lucky critical and dies, do you:
A. Have the DM try to avoid that sort of thing from happening through narrative power (making sure that the big scary orcs avoid attacking the wizard with 4 HPs) /dice fudging.
B. Tell the player that his character is dead and that he should go roll up a new one.
C. Play with a system that's set up so that the whole situation is pretty much impossible.

OK, let me tackle this. In a straight game - I kill the character and let the player make a new one. I don't create the encounter to make this impossible but I create the encounter to make it unlikely. Still as you say, sometimes things happen. However, in a home game with my regular group we have a house rule: when you run out of hit points you are not dead. You have suffered some catastrophic injury and are removed fom the fight. After the fight magical healing may restore your hit points but it will not heal the crippling injury. The character still suffers a negatie consequence for getting "killed" in battle (such as losing an eye for a random example) but I don't hae to worry about trying to work in a new character to the group in the middle of an adventure. There is another advantage to crippling a character versus killing them. When you kill a character the player has a momentary down because their character is dead but then they get all excited about creating a brand new character and within a few game sessions that old character (and the mistakes that led to their death) are all but forgotten. On the other hand, when you cripple the character - they are a constant reminder of whatever stupid action got them crippled in the first place. It is more of a challenge to the player but it is also more rewarding for them. I've had a few grumble about it at first but they quickly come around and the player I got the most pushback from is now my strongest supporter and is obsessively proud of his scarred and one-eyed fighter.

I don't have a problem with DM's fudging dice rolls. It comes back to the idea that the goal is to create a great time for the players - if the GM needs to cheat a bit to do that then so be it. I have more of a problem with players fudging the rules (and that is basicly what those meta-game rules allow players to do) but even that is just a momentary twinge. It has to do with PC vs GM mentality. Players brought up in the adventure game way tend to be somewhat selfish about their characters and success. They will tend to only cheat the rules for their PC's benefit and not for the story benefit. You can train them out of it but I'm getting impatient in my old age and don't always want to bother.


To address your demon story - I never have random encounters. I'm a bit of a control freak in my games. Every encounter has a very specific purpose - to either illuminate the world/character/setting or to advance the plot. Random encounters will also (sooner or later) mess up the math. At some point random chance is going to align in such a way to either significantly weaken or strengthen the party and it always seems to happen right before the climactic boss fight. So no random gnolls on the way to the showdown with the demon in my games.

 

[Libramarian]

Except the thread gives a definition - and one that makes sense. If you the player have narrative control of the world outside your character's direct actions (rather than simply offering suggestions to the DM) it's a storygame. If the control you have is what your character can do it's an RPG.

So action points are RPGs. Plot points are story game. If the players frame some of the scenes it's a story game.
@ThirdWizard , you might want a look at Leverage or MHRP's distinctions before adding in FATE aspects and compels. I'm not sure how to add those to D&D (+2/-2 and the latter offers a complication on a 3?) - but penalty invoked by the player I find even better than DM-Compel Bargain.

It makes sense, sure, but it includes boring, unfun games, like sitting in a circle narrating stuff going clockwise.

What's the definition of a good story game (if you like)? That would be more useful. Where do good story games tend to be different from RPGs, where do they tend to be similar, and why? Many of the posters so far, including yourself, seem to be take it as an assumption that a story game will resemble an RPG in some respect, that you should never go "full story game" as it were, but it's not clear in what respect.

I'm not that experienced with, or interested in, story games (I'm more of an OSR guy), but one thing I've noticed is that mechanics that give the players influence over the story beyond the influence of their characters work better if this capacity is still related to their characters in the sense of their emotions and desires if not their physical capabilities.

e.g. a story game mechanic that gives your character extra fighting capability if they're fighting to save a loved one. That feels right, so it's not as jarringly meta as a mechanic that allows the player to gain the same combat advantage by reframing the scene or something like that.

That's an example of a good, sophisticated story game mechanic, whereas stuff like asking the players to stat their own enemies is just lazy DMing, imo.