GMing: What If We Say "Yes" To Everything?

[Reynard]

It’s not that it won’t ever work. Its that it won’t always work.

Nothing "always works."

 

[FrogReaver]

Nothing "always works."

Doesn’t sound like a good defense to me.

 

[Luther Malevolent]

I got to participate in this as a player once. We had been playing RPGs all day and night and now it was the wee hours of the morning and some of the fellows had passed out already. A few of us too tired to really play anything proper basically just did a group narrative play- no dice and the DM/narrator said yes to everything. It was fun for about 15 min and then slogged on for another 15 because there was no challenge, risk or anything that really drove the story forward. Our characters were heroes of the day, but it felt hollow.

I compare this to a game when the GM never said "No" and le the dice fall where they may instead. The dice were on our side and on this little one shot we succeeded on every roll that was called for. It generated its own form of hilarity and fun and while it may seem that this was the same as the experience above, it was far better if only for the 'Risk' of failure that was present.

I also participated in a game like this once, though I’d say it worked out much better for us.

Similar story, late night didn’t really want to start up anything else so the gm ran with an idea he had. We were a trio of intergalactic secret agents sent to earth to retrieve a runaway scientist and a prototype device he had come up with that would change the galaxy. He gave us a choice for our character archetype, we could choose our specialty brains, brawn or stealth. He followed our choices up with some secret information for each of us about where our true allegiances lay, we weren’t all exactly working together as much as it seemed.

We started play searching for the scientist, playing up some in jokes about our hometown and the late night haunts. The brains player asked if he could use his brains to reprogram vehicles/cameras to work for them, gm answers yes.
Various little things like this go on for a bit, stealth goes off to hunt for clues solo. The other return to their hotel room/base of operations to rest and monitor cameras.

Brawn gets a secret communication informing him that at least one of the team is working for the enemy. He immediately declares he shoots brains, gm says yes brains is filled with lead and drops. Brains asks if he can get a shot off as he’s dieing, yes. Disintegration ray takes out the lower half of brawn’s body.

You might think game over here but the gm reacts and has a trauma team show up and Brawn gets a cyborg lower torso replacement. Brains is revealed to have always been controlled by a robot brain and he’s been uploaded into another body.

The game continued much this way for a couple of hours ending up stealth in a robotic spider body battling brawn while brains sent an army of killer robots against both. In the confusion the scientist escaped and our hometown became a barren wasteland.

The game worked because of the constrained situation we were in with characters with specific goals and the gms ability to roll with the flow and adjust the situation with a new setup that still made sense even though we’d completely changed things.

I think the antagonism amongst the characters may have helped somewhat as we played in a similar manner a few times where it didn’t quite work as well. More petered out without resolution.

 

[Reynard]

Doesn’t sound like a good defense to me.

So because it might not work, it should not be attempted?

 

[Doctor Futurity]

What about Story Now style Narrativist play? The GM has a crucial role here in framing the obstacles to the PCs and at the same time the game is generally about the PCs and their interaction with the premise.

Also a valid kind of game, but likewise of its own type. I wouldn't want to shoehorn D&D into such a mold when another game would suit the playstyle better.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Also a valid kind of game, but likewise of its own type. I wouldn't want to shoehorn D&D into such a mold when another game would suit the playstyle better.

Having played D&D since close to its inception, and having a pretty decent exposure to narrativist, and other, styles of games; my opinion is that modern D&D ala WotC has a lot to learn from things like PbtAs, Burning Wheel, etc.

Take a look at our 4e PbP here as we are playing in a pretty much entirely Story Now process. I'm not dissing trad D&D, but IMHO people who are bunkering down and not really looking at newer tools are missing a lot.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Having played D&D since close to its inception, and having a pretty decent exposure to narrativist, and other, styles of games; my opinion is that modern D&D ala WotC has a lot to learn from things like PbtAs, Burning Wheel, etc.

Take a look at our 4e PbP here as we are playing in a pretty much entirely Story Now process. I'm not dissing trad D&D, but IMHO people who are bunkering down and not really looking at newer tools are missing a lot.

Those are really different styles of games, though, and appeal in specific ways that are not universal. I explored PbtA heavily (got into AW, DW and a few others) and I realized I really intensely dislike their approach, which feels to me extremely procedural and counter-intuitive to the creative process. That said, I realize they work extremely well for some groups, but I myself intensely dislike that style of play. Burning Wheel is (for me, ymmv) even worse. So yes, those are excellent alternatives for those who like that style....but they are far from preferable for some others. Another example, more mild, but one in which I have a lot of investment is Call of Cthulhu. Trails of Cthulhu reinvented the wheel with the gumshoe engine, positing an approach designed to "fix" the perceived fail state issue with CoC. But it fixed nothing for me except to make the organic experience of investigation and discovery more procedural and less fun, when all CoC needed was a better restatement of how the fail forward approach would work (which 7E addressed well). But for others ToC did address a perceived issue, and for them it works better....just not for me.

 

[PrunellaUK]

The nearest I had to this was playing a HeroQuest Glorantha game. If you know the Glorantha world, it's a place where heroic PCs are close to their gods and walk in their steps. At times they can 'heroquest' - in other words enter the foundational myths of their society, play out those myths by acting as avatars of the gods, and even change the stories (in turn altering the fabric of the universe).

I remember a session where, after a lot of effort, the players got their community's permission to run a heroquest, and so they entered the "gods' time" and began to act out a great mythic story. It was an interesting session, where the PCs were now gods, playing to the logic of myth and dreams. So across the blasted obsidian landscape of the Greater Darkness, they shapeshifted into lightning, clouds, animals, whatever. They were god-like tricksters pulling off all sorts of mythic feats. Their every action was freighted with religious meaning. And I found myself increasingly saying 'yes' to everything.

The critical moment, where one of the PCs disguised themselves as a storm ram and dove into the dark waters of the underworld, leading a pursuing army of demons to drown, was emblematic of the session. It was pure myth, and the PCs stuck the landing because they'd got their heads into that dream logic. But I had to enable them at every turn to embrace that headspace. And that meant a lot of 'yesses'.

I think this kind of thing is very session-specific. It worked because we were acting out myth. In a grittier session it might have failed entirely.

 

[colombus1592]

Some games somewhat assume that, for instance, those where you play godlike entities (Nobilis or Godbound). Be prepared to have your world/scenario trashed in all possible ways once the players understand that even sky is not the limit

 

[PrunellaUK]

"With great power comes great irresponsibility."