[Game Design] Will Wright on Story and Game

[Celebrim]

If you want a story with a twist, go for it. A twist doesn't need in-deapth planning, though. You just see a pattern, and guess about what ELSE could cause that pattern.

A twist which is imposed on the story arbitrarily isn't a twist. It's playing a shell game with the players in which the game is rigged. And I've played both styles of game, and believe me when I say you can tell a difference.

"The great evil witch is marshaling forces to the north! But the REAL threat is that it's a distraction from the quiet doppelganger revolution happening in the capital city."

Which is great if you have that determined in advance so you can begin slowly feeding in clues and allow the players to determine at what point the story branches, and they'll probably dig that, but about the second time you pull a shell game on your players you are going to have a player rebellion on your hand.

Again, you can let the players determine the twist. If they pursue political scheming instead, you can reverse the twist on the fly so that the primary villain is actually a decoy.

Believe me when I tell you that when a DM gets in the habit of doing this it isn't fun.

not every D&D game needs a story, and, in fact, sometimes the game could be better served by ignoring the story if the players don't really care about it.

I'm not going to bother fighting this one. Suffice to say that I think every good game - even just a hack and slash dungeon crawl - has a story attached.

#1: You just did it.

No, I didn't. I probably would have just lost half my players in frustration, and I probably wouldn't have anything really interesting for several weeks after a big gear change like this. I _might_ could wing it, but in that exotic of a setting that I'd never actually DMed before I'm not even sure of that.

So...the approach doesn't work for RPG's....because...the approach attracts those who are interested in creating their own stories?

No, the approach doesn't work for RPG's because the approach attracts those who aren't interested in games. It most certainly does not attract those interested in 'creating thier own stories'; as others have pointed out, Wright's games aren't really story enablers.

It's a different kind of social contract: rather than the DM asking "what do you do?", the players say "What happens next?"

Speaking of not understanding your logic, don't you have that backwards? Because it seems to me that the social contract of, "What do you do?" (the one I tend to use I think), is the one that actually empowers the PC's.

 

[pemerton]

What this new idea would seem to encourage is that *all* you are to do, as a DM, is add things that the players need, and add nothing else.

I don't actually see a new idea here. For example, Ron Edwards has been writing about this sort of roleplaying for years at The Forge.

I have no problem with backstories within limits. What I have a problem with is a player writing 'forestory'. If a DM cannot expect to have a story unfold exactly according to his designs, then players should not start with the assumption that they know exactly where thier character is going either.

<snip>

Whether scripted or not, the story is always determined by the choices actually made by the players. Once again, I assume that if anyone in this thread is offering anything novel at all, it isn't merely "Don't railroad the players." If all that's being said is, "Don't railroad the players.", I've wasted my time responding to it.

<snip>

the question is actually what role the DM has in determining the action and content of the game. Player choices are assumed to play a large role in the determining the course of the game. The question was, should (or even can) the DM's role in story crafting be relegated to merely responding to player desires to grant them the story that the players suggest that they want?

<snip>

'wish fulfillment' gaming becomes very unsatisfying to most people about the time that they turn 12 (at the latest)

"Story" can refer to two things: (1) the sequence of events that constitute a plot; (2) the thematic range and resolution of the game.

I think that Kamikaze Midget is running these together somewhat. I am trying to distinguish them.

It is possible to have a game in which the players have a degree of meta-game control over the plot. Conan d20, which allows Fate Points to be spent to tweak the gameworld in a limited way, is an example. This is not "wish-fulfillment gaming" - Fate Points are a limited and valuable currency. But it marks a difference between the mechanics of that game, and the mechanics of D&D.

It is also possible to have a game in which players have a high degree of control over thematic content and resolution. Consider The Riddle of Steel, The Dying Earth, or Hero Wars/Quest. These are all games in which the mechanics give the players, not the GM, the capacity to determine the thematic content of the game: TROS via spiritual attributes, The Dying Earth via the players' shaping of conflicts so as to enable the delivery of taglines, Hero Wars via such mechanical elements as the players' creation of their characters' relationship attributes, and the players' control over the shape of conflict resolution via APs and Hero Points. These games require the GM to prepare a context for adventuring: a setting, perhaps, or a situation, but not a plot.

I think that letting players have that sort of control over the plot and/or theme makes a difference to the way an RPG plays. For example, in his Adventure Building series on the WoTC website, Wolfgang Bauer suggested that PCs be given the illusion of choice, but that all roads nevertheless lead to the dramatic confrontation with the BBEG that the GM has planned. This sort of "illusionism" can result in the players experiencing drama, but not in them creating it, as the drama and its resolution have already been plotted by the GM: the final confrontation is predetermined by the GM as PCs vs BBEG.

Once players have the capacity to shape the plot, there is no guarantee that the game will head in any given direction. You are correct to say this can lead to the game stultifying under some conditions. But it is wrong to say that it will lead to stultification under any conditions. Look at Jonathan Tweet's description of his original campaign in Over The Edge, for example.

Once players have the capacity to shape and resolve the themes, the content and character of payoff is up to the players. Again, if this is what the players want, then pre-scripting by the GM will utterly thwart them.

You've not shown me anything that suggests that there is a qualitative difference between the two. The DM is always going to be scripting out the challenges that occur. Players will always make small localized choices within a framework. Maybe its a failure of my imagination, but I can't imagine what the difference you are seeing actually is.

Some players want to make more than localised choices within a pre-determined framework of options. They want to make game-shaping and world-shaping choices. It is possible to run an RPG in which this happens. It may not be to the taste of all groups.

Player actions might tell me which 'side' they wish to take in a conflict, what setting intrigues them, whether they are motivated primarily by personal gain or whether they are looking to serve some larger cause, and each of those choices can be met with big thematic payoffs in the context of any number of conflicts I could introduce to a setting. But each of those thematic payoffs might involve at some point searching for a wonderous widget hidden in some 5' square, and in each case if that thematic payoff is to truly be a big time payoff it has to happen in ways that the players don't expect, that involve a good deal of planning, and some sort of creative twist that creates that all important moment in a story where the seemingly minor story points come together into something larger and more glorious than you thought they were. The big thematic payoff has to be thier waiting to be discovered. Else, it just won't be a really big payoff.

I'm not sure how to understand this paragraph. If players are allowed to choose sides in a conflict, then the big thematic payoff can't be preplanned by the GM, because it can't be known in advance what the dramatic conflict will be. Or maybe we are talking about different aspects of planning - once the GM knows which side the players have taken, it may be helpful to have a bit of time between sessions to stat out the opponent they have chosen. I don't know if KM objects to that, but that's not what I'm talking about. As per my reference to Dragonlance, I'm talking about the default assumption in most D&D modules that the PCs will start at the beginning and work through the module until they defeat the enemy that has been pre-determined by the module writer, in the circumstances and (typically) for the reasons that have been pre-determined by the author. This sort of adventure precisely does not permit the players to choose sides.

As to whether or not finding a given widget in a 5' square is part of the resolution - player-driven play will typically (I think) focus much more on interpersonal conflict (PC vs PC, or more often PC vs NPC) than on exploration and equipping scenarios.

Don't you even see where that goes? A player tells you, "Heh, I need to play a 11HD aberration with disentigrate at will and the ability to generate an anti-magic field.", and I'm supposed to toss out my notes and say, "Ok Mike. Hold on while I think out a Epic planescape/spelljammer campaign that involves Joe as a feared pirate lord. Shouldn't take me more than 10 minutes. Bob, could you please tear up your character sheet and create something more suitable in the 21st level character range, and Sue you can still play your Shaman, but I think you'll have to rewrite your character background as well or at least add some more pages to it. Karen, it doesn't look like this is going to be very low magic afterall. Sorry."

Can you handle that? Do you think you can keep all the players happy if you give any of them that much freedom of choice? How do you think the other players are going to respond to one players declaration that he wants to play a PC beholder?

I agree that PC design is an issue in player-driven play. But only because it is an issue in any RPG. What happens when one player wants to play a Dwarven Paladin, and another a Chaotic Neutral Elven Bard? D&D has never had mechanics to handle party-building - it is left up to the players and GM to negotiate. I don't think that the scenario you sketch raises different issues in this regard.

 

[Celebrim]

Conan d20, which allows Fate Points to be spent to tweak the gameworld in a limited way, is an example. This is not "wish-fulfillment gaming" - Fate Points are a limited and valuable currency. But it marks a difference between the mechanics of that game, and the mechanics of D&D.

I think you over state the importance of that. I can have 'hero points' in D&D that grant rerolls or bonuses to dice rolls or fortunate item 'discoveries' and various other things, and while this gives the character's certain options and might increase thier survivability, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with player choice in anything but a tactical sense.

It is also possible to have a game in which players have a high degree of control over thematic content and resolution. Consider The Riddle of Steel, The Dying Earth, or Hero Wars/Quest. These are all games in which the mechanics give the players, not the GM, the capacity to determine the thematic content of the game: TROS via spiritual attributes, The Dying Earth via the players' shaping of conflicts so as to enable the delivery of taglines, Hero Wars via such mechanical elements as the players' creation of their characters' relationship attributes, and the players' control over the shape of conflict resolution via APs and Hero Points. These games require the GM to prepare a context for adventuring: a setting, perhaps, or a situation, but not a plot.

Without knowing those systems or mechanics, I can't really comment.

Once players have the capacity to shape the plot, there is no guarantee that the game will head in any given direction. You are correct to say this can lead to the game stultifying under some conditions. But it is wrong to say that it will lead to stultification under any conditions.

Once players have the capacity to shape and resolve the themes, the content and character of payoff is up to the players. Again, if this is what the players want, then pre-scripting by the GM will utterly thwart them.

I think we may be talking about several different things. If you approach your role as a DM sufficiently from a simulationist perspective, and you are a narrator only in the sense that stories will unfold in any sufficiently interesting setting and you've brainstormed ahead of time what some of those stories may be, then I feel you are 'pre-scripting'. You've created a framework in which player choices can be made, and unless they players decide to completely leave the framework ("I don't want to be here, lets decide to go 50/500/5000 miles that a way.") none of thier choices in it will really thwart you nor will the fact that you've got a setting where you've thought about where things would go if the PC's don't do something to alter that thwart the PC's from acting.

But you seem to be talking about scripting at a much more micro level, which I'll get back to in a second.

Some players want to make more than localised choices within a pre-determined framework of options. They want to make game-shaping and world-shaping choices.

There is no difference. World-shaping choices are just localised choices within a pre-determined framework of options where the scale has been increased (and necessarily the world has lost some of its granularity). A good example of this might be a typical Sci-Fi game in which you go hopping about saving the galaxy, but each planet is basically one city or even one location in a city like a spaceport or bar. The network - removed of its fluff - still looks the same whether its 5 miles to a village or 5 ly to a planet, and the adventure flowcharts if you have them still look the same to, and the BBEG is still basically the same whether he threatens the universe or just the island kingdom. It's all just fluff, and player choices still change thier game environment to the same degree.

I'm not sure how to understand this paragraph. If players are allowed to choose sides in a conflict, then the big thematic payoff can't be preplanned by the GM, because it can't be known in advance what the dramatic conflict will be.

I'm not sure I understand how that follows. Are you suggesting that thematically it doesn't really matter whether Luke blows up the Death Star or fights alongside his father to save it? What I'm suggesting is that the story outcomes may be very different, and result in all sorts of different character conflict, but that the same general planning can't be used which ever side Luke chooses.

As per my reference to Dragonlance, I'm talking about the default assumption in most D&D modules that the PCs will start at the beginning and work through the module until they defeat the enemy that has been pre-determined by the module writer, in the circumstances and (typically) for the reasons that have been pre-determined by the author. This sort of adventure precisely does not permit the players to choose sides.

Dragonlance is not the best of examples simply because it is written as a railroad and if you run it as written, it will be. What I'm saying is that these flowchart style modules both are merely chapters in a larger story - and sometimes optional chapters at that - and that its not so hard to dynamically add a new branching path if the players insist on doing something really original. In Dragonlance in particular, this is - once you have all the modules and are not waiting on them to be delivered - not as hard as you may think, since you have access to not merely a story but a detailed setting.

As to whether or not finding a given widget in a 5' square is part of the resolution - player-driven play will typically (I think) focus much more on interpersonal conflict (PC vs PC, or more often PC vs NPC) than on exploration and equipping scenarios.

I just don't see them as in any way mutually exclusive. As a percentage of the words spent on a subject, most of the LotR focuses on interpersonal conflict, but there is still the war going on and an epic quest to bring a widget to a certain location.

 

[pemerton]

I think we may be talking about several different things.

I'm sure that's true! I've tried to disambiguate some of them.

If you approach your role as a DM sufficiently from a simulationist perspective, and you are a narrator only in the sense that stories will unfold in any sufficiently interesting setting and you've brainstormed ahead of time what some of those stories may be, then I feel you are 'pre-scripting'. You've created a framework in which player choices can be made, and unless they players decide to completely leave the framework ("I don't want to be here, lets decide to go 50/500/5000 miles that a way.") none of thier choices in it will really thwart you nor will the fact that you've got a setting where you've thought about where things would go if the PC's don't do something to alter that thwart the PC's from acting.

<snip>

What I'm suggesting is that the story outcomes may be very different, and result in all sorts of different character conflict, but that the same general planning can't be used which ever side Luke chooses.

It's true that I haven't been using "scripting" and "planning" as synonyms. For example, the settings for Hero Quest (Glorantha) and The Dying Earth (Vance's Dying Earth) are both quite well planned, but the adventures in those games are not scripted.

My own view is that most D&D adventures - at least the published ones - don't allow the players to choose sides. They are written with a clear expectation that the players will loot the dungeon, not defend it, or with the expectation that the players will fight the BBEG, not ally with him/her.

The published settings also tend to make similar assumptions about who the allies and villains are. This is obviously so in FR, I think, and Greyhawk also isn't really designed as a setting to support players of Orcish PCs defending their homelands against the religious fanatics of Furyondy and Veluna.

World-shaping choices are just localised choices within a pre-determined framework of options where the scale has been increased (and necessarily the world has lost some of its granularity). A good example of this might be a typical Sci-Fi game in which you go hopping about saving the galaxy, but each planet is basically one city or even one location in a city like a spaceport or bar. The network - removed of its fluff - still looks the same whether its 5 miles to a village or 5 ly to a planet, and the adventure flowcharts if you have them still look the same to, and the BBEG is still basically the same whether he threatens the universe or just the island kingdom. It's all just fluff, and player choices still change thier game environment to the same degree.

<snip>

Dragonlance is not the best of examples simply because it is written as a railroad and if you run it as written, it will be. What I'm saying is that these flowchart style modules both are merely chapters in a larger story - and sometimes optional chapters at that - and that its not so hard to dynamically add a new branching path if the players insist on doing something really original. In Dragonlance in particular, this is - once you have all the modules and are not waiting on them to be delivered - not as hard as you may think, since you have access to not merely a story but a detailed setting.

By "the world" I had in mind less its constituents - planets, cities, people, etc - and more its meaning and thematic orientation. When playing in Middle Earth, for example, the setting material is written with an assumption built in that the thematic aim of the game is narrow success by good in its struggle with apparently overwhelming evil.

In that sense, I think that if players in Dragonlance try to roleplay betrayal, the game will de-rail because the world hasn't been build to support that sort of thematic twist. The resolution in favour of good's eventual triumph is assumed in the materials. A GM could re-write it, I guess, but I suspect that at that point a lot of the appeal of the world would be lost.

Without knowing those systems or mechanics (TROS, Dying Earth, Hero Quest), I can't really comment.

A pity - I think those systems illustrate the possibility of different approaches to RPGs from the "default" approach that AD&D and D&D 3E encourage.

 

[Reynard]

Freedom and responsibility are inextricably linked, even in the fun but fruitless past time that is RPGs. If players desire a great deal of freedom to tell their own stories -- that is, control not just what their characters do in a situation, but also those situations themselves -- to some degree, they have to accept the responsibility of doing so with an agreed upon framework. This requires a good deal of pre-play communication and planning, and part of the resultant social contract must include an agreement between the players and the DM regarding how each person and the whole group is going to get where everyone wants to be, game wise.

Assuming we are still talking about D&D in something resembling the tradiitonal sense, with its basic assumptions and genre tropes, them that might mean the players say, "We want to be wandering adventurers to loot tombs for lost riches." Assuming the Dm agrees that is good idea for a campaign he'd like to run, and as a group they have all decided in a milieu in which to do this, the DM can say, "Give me a couple weeks to put build a sandbox while you guys make your characters."

When the group gets together the next time, some things will have had to happen for the contract to work. The players will have had to create a group of wandering adventurers. That is harder than it may sound. lone wolves, old sages and blind-mute-cripple beggars just won't fit, and the player that creates one is breaking the contract. The DM will have had to create a setting, even a lightly sketched out one, with tombs to loot and riches inside, not a notebook full of intricately detailed plots and counter-plots. The DM is breaking his end of the contract if he doesn't throw a map down on the table and say, "This is where you live, this is where the tombs can be found. Where do you want to go today?"

Obviously, this is a simplistic example but it illustrates the point. Whatever it is the group decides upon needs to be understood and approved by everyone involved. otherwise, there's no group and there's no game. the more control over the game and its events the players want to wrest from the DM, the more responsibility they have in making the game run smoothly and provide an extertaining experience for everyone at the table -- not just the DM, but the other players as well, including the casual gamer that just wants to roll some dice.

IME, most players that say they want freedom don't want the responsibility that goes with it. Most just want to do the thing that is cool to them and have the kind of fun they prefer and aren't that concerned with whether the other people at the table are having the same level of fun. it is a psychological thing, I think, based largbely on the traditional division of power and responsibility in RPGs: those that regularly DM are used to concerning themselves with others' fun and watching over a broad scope of characters and events; those that are players more often than not only have themselves and their character to worry about.

And, finally, I'd like to point out that, IMO, the "story" in an RPG comes after the game is done and the last die is rolled. you tell the "story" of Sir Nobwood the Paladin because he died at the end of scorpion tipped kobold spear or because he killed the dragon, married the princess and became king od the land. Deciding that either of those things is the "story" before they happen kills the Game in RPG and turns it into a very poor version of improvisational theater.

 

[hong]

Oh good grief, so now the game needs a villain and a plot only if I think the player's 'need' one?

Yes. The elements of a game should be those that satisfy all of those involved, and if those involved don't think a villain and/or plot are necessary, then these elements get ditched.

Funny, that.

 

[Celebrim]

Yes. The elements of a game should be those that satisfy all of those involved, and if those involved don't think a villain and/or plot are necessary, then these elements get ditched.

Funny, that.

No, "funny that" would be 'Pie'.

Something seems to be missing. I wonder what it is?

 

[hong]

No, "funny that" would be 'Pie'.

Something seems to be missing. I wonder what it is?

Players?

Funny, that.

 

[pemerton]

If players desire a great deal of freedom to tell their own stories -- that is, control not just what their characters do in a situation, but also those situations themselves -- to some degree, they have to accept the responsibility of doing so with an agreed upon framework. This requires a good deal of pre-play communication and planning, and part of the resultant social contract must include an agreement between the players and the DM regarding how each person and the whole group is going to get where everyone wants to be, game wise.

Agreed.

IME, most players that say they want freedom don't want the responsibility that goes with it.

<snip>

it is a psychological thing, I think, based largbely on the traditional division of power and responsibility in RPGs: those that regularly DM are used to concerning themselves with others' fun and watching over a broad scope of characters and events; those that are players more often than not only have themselves and their character to worry about.

I'm in no position to quibble with your experience. And I certainly think it is true that player expectations about are game will be heavily shaped by the previous play experiences that they have had.

And, finally, I'd like to point out that, IMO, the "story" in an RPG comes after the game is done and the last die is rolled. you tell the "story" of Sir Nobwood the Paladin because he died at the end of scorpion tipped kobold spear or because he killed the dragon, married the princess and became king od the land. Deciding that either of those things is the "story" before they happen kills the Game in RPG and turns it into a very poor version of improvisational theater.

I don't think this is really fair. For example, if my character's backstory includes that he is the last surviving member of a once-noble house, there is nothing wrong with my goal in play being to re-establish that house, and with my knowing that the climax of the adventure will somehow involve a conflict related to that goal.

To develop this example by drawing on TROS's Spiritual Attribute mechanic: if I set as my character's Destiny "To re-establish my house", then the GM is obliged (by the social contract of the game) to give me the opportunity to pursue that destiny. If the GM also wants to provide a fun roleplaying experience, s/he should be trying to develop situations where that destiny can come into conflict with other of my SAs: perhaps my house failed because it broke its pact with a demon, and to re-establish that pact would require me to relinquish my Faith.

A game that was set up, from the get-go, to explore these story elements and themes would not have to be "very poor improvisational theatre". It seems to me that, with an interested player and an enthusiastic GM, it could make for compelling roleplaying.

 

[hong]

I don't think this is really fair. For example, if my character's backstory includes that he is the last surviving member of a once-noble house, there is nothing wrong with my goal in play being to re-establish that house, and with my knowing that the climax of the adventure will somehow involve a conflict related to that goal.

To develop this example by drawing on TROS's Spiritual Attribute mechanic: if I set as my character's Destiny "To re-establish my house", then the GM is obliged (by the social contract of the game) to give me the opportunity to pursue that destiny. If the GM also wants to provide a fun roleplaying experience, s/he should be trying to develop situations where that destiny can come into conflict with other of my SAs: perhaps my house failed because it broke its pact with a demon, and to re-establish that pact would require me to relinquish my Faith.

A game that was set up, from the get-go, to explore these story elements and themes would not have to be "very poor improvisational theatre". It seems to me that, with an interested player and an enthusiastic GM, it could make for compelling roleplaying.

Even in the D&D context, it's not like all characters are made from 1st level. If the game is at 15th, and your PC dies and you make a new one, most DMs will let you start at a level somewhere close to the others. In which case, it would be reasonable to treat the new PC as more than just a blank slate.