How Do You Create Story?

[Shemeska]

My last campaign I started out with a core metaplot before the game began, and a number of ways to involve the PCs given how they started off the campaign. From that point, it was just figuring out ways to have the PCs touch upon that metaplot by tangents when possible, build up their interest in it so that they'd involve themselves without the need to push them in any way towards it, etc.

There was very little railroading outside of the first plot arc, in which they were all being blackmailed. The primary antagonists now, the PCs and players alike just simply loathed them, and that was all I needed to keep them hooked into that metaplot.


Now, my new campaign since the previous one ended after 2-3 years, is much less direct. I've got several loosely related metaplots, but it's not certain which of them the PCs will actually get involved with. They've got a lot more choice this time around in choosing from among a much more diverse range of options, and those choices, more than a preset metaplot, till end up driving where I ultimately go with the campaign. Not that one is better than the other, but I'm just taking a different route than "Everywhere you go, there's a 'loth" which was the last campaign more or less. *chuckle*

 

[Quickleaf]

As for how I produce stories: I produce scenarios and challenges and situations, and the unleash the playes on the situation like bulls in a China shop.

Just brilliant!

I have 2 answers, the truth and what I've always wanted to try.

The truth is I produce stories by brainstorming a bunch of ideas on paper.
I'll get about 20 ideas down, then pare them down to about 10.
Then I compare these ideas to what's happened in the campaign thus far, and edit.
Last I come up with a theme that unifies all the different ideas.
I did try the card thing once in a Planescape game. We had 38 cards, each which listed a theme and 3 ways it might be used in play. Of course, true to form, a player drew "Fall from Grace" while escaping from their archenemy, and had them be ursurped from control of their faction. Arrgh!

Now, what I've always wanted to try is clue rolls (see below). I found this gem on a forum somewhere written by a GM who'd written it up for his Pulp game. Basically, whenever a player makes a roll to find out information (Knowledge, Gather Info, Notice, etc), the table is consulted. I think this would be a frickin' BLAST to play!!

CLUE ROLES
Format: Player says “I expect XYZ.” Then rolls, consulting table…

Fail by 10 or More: No, And
Fail by 5 or More: No, But
Fail by less than 5: No, But or Yes, But (at GM's discretion)
Success by less than 5: Yes, But
Success by more than 5: Yes (Player narrates)
Success by more than 10: Yes, And

GM Narates "NO" plus "AND" on a failure and "BUT" on a success
Player Narates "YES" plus "AND" on success and "BUT" on failure.
Only one “Clue Roll” per character per scene
Only one “Clue Roll” per skill per scene

How I envision this working:
Jarett plays Detective Ferrari who is trying to find out who keep taking the sports page out of his newspaper. Ferrari goes about the office, shooting out with the occasional "By the way, have you seen the sports page?" Jarett, expecting that Ferrari's sidekick Lou has the sports page, makes a DC 8 Gather Information check, succeeding by less than 5.
So Jarett narrates the 'Yes': While I'm in the bathroom, I spring the question on the Sergeant, who silently motions toward a closed stall. All of a sudden, I hear the flipping of pages stop. "Only Lou..." I mutter.
The GM narrates the 'But': But as soon as the stall opens you find the acne-ridden intern who owes you $5 from the poker game last night. He pretends not to see you an heads for the bathroom exit. In his hands is the sports page.

 

[the Jester]

This is my process:

Drop approximately six thousand plot hooks.

Pursue as needed.

Think through the consequences of the actions (or inaction) of pcs on various plot threads. Extend to their logical conclusion.

 

[barsoomcore]

I think fusangite's post actually increase the number of neurons in my head. It's a very strange feeling.

That sounds cool, but scary

Yeah. I'm still putting together my Season Two Barsoom Tales story hour (I promise, JD!) and the single most significant plot point in the whole season is the result of a swashbuckling card hitting the table. The "Love" card, causing one of the NPCs to fall in love with a PC, and thus creating an entirely new storyline (basically of that NPC attempting to win the heart of the PC) that ended up taking over the ENTIRE campaign. I can't now imagine what the campaign would have been like if that card hadn't been played. And it wasn't like every session was ignoring the rest of the party while said NPC tried to woo said PC -- most of THAT action happened off-screen -- but that by falling in love, the NPC's priorities shifted dramatically and the whole campaign transformed as a result.

It was kind of cool. An entire world transformed through the power of love.

I'm also very interested to hear about these event cards

Try these. You just might like them. My players LOVE 'em. Sometimes I do, too.



Regarding fu's post about campaigns being the detective story of figuring out the world -- that's not entirely dissimilar to my usual campaign, either.

I lack the patience (or possibly just the straight-up brains) to develop such rigourously metaphorical worlds, so my campaign settings are always a lot sloppier. I always feel that my campaigns are best described as "The Story Of <SettingName>". The setting is the "character" that undergoes the truest, deepest transformation. The PCs often do not transform at all (other than gaining in power -- my players mostly aren't into that sort of "immersive" roleplaying), and the bad guys aren't really for that purpose, but inevitably my campaigns are about some significant, irreversible transformation in the world itself, that the PCs somehow form a necessary component of. Either in facilitating the change or preventing it at the last minute.

In either way, by the end of the campaign the world can never again be as it once was. Without THAT, I find a campaign lacks much interest for me. Which is also why I have never run more than one campaign in a given setting. For me the campaign is the story of what happened to this place, so once it's over, the story is done. Time to come up with a new setting and make up a NEW story.

 

[fusangite]

inevitably my campaigns are about some significant, irreversible transformation in the world itself, that the PCs somehow form a necessary component of. Either in facilitating the change or preventing it at the last minute... In either way, by the end of the campaign the world can never again be as it once was. Without THAT, I find a campaign lacks much interest for me. Which is also why I have never run more than one campaign in a given setting.

That's a pretty good rendering of my preferred type of story/game. The challenge of good GMing, I think, is to minimize, to the greatest possible degree, the conflict between this requirement and the free will of the players and their characters. It's a shame you didn't have a chance to join Agharta; it would have met your requirements.

 

[Afrodyte]

I am strongly narrativist in my roleplaying preferences, so a lot of what I do as a player and as a GM to satisfy my desire for meaningful choices comes about more or less subconsciously. One of the few things I do deliberately set out to do is asking the following questions for pretty much every character I play or GM for:

1. Desire: What do you want?
2. Motive: Why do you want it?
3. Conflict: What keeps you from getting it?

The answers can be as shallow or as deep as I or the players like. For my own characters, I tend to prefer the deeper end of things, but I don't always find it necessary (especially for stock characters). Answering these three questions can tell me more about a character than answering twenty questions that may or may not have a bearing on the story. I prefer to answer the first question in terms of tangible goals or ongoing processes. In D&D terms, a bard may wish to seduce a priestess while his paladin brother wants to uphold the code of chivalry. For the second, I like to think in terms of emotions or needs, preferably both. The aforementioned bard may seek out the priestess because he is afraid of not having made his mark on the world. The paladin may uphold the code of chivalry because he needs a means to measure his self-worth. For the third question, just about anything--personal, interpersonal, environmental (geographical, biological, and social)--can thwart a character's attempt to fulfill his/her desire.

Thinking on it a bit, I realize that asking these questions gives me a means to imply or insert meaningful choices in the game. The nature and outcomes of these decisions are not usually predetermined since the questions the story raises tend to answer themselves. Knowing a character's desires, motivations, and conflicts allows ideas to simply leap off the page. You don't have to waste time with generic plots to engage the players, or worry about how you will get them excited about what's happening with their characters. You can just get to the meat of the characters with the shortest possible delay.

 

[IcyCool]

You could also try mining your players for some ideas. For example, I asked the Druid/Wizard in my game what he'd like to do now in Sigil. As he lost his animal companion due to his hurried exit from the prime and seeing as how he's now an Arcane Heirophant, he'd like a new companion/familiar. Amongst the many random thoughts he mentioned, this was IMO the best:

Familiar: Will work for food.
You see a small cat on the side of the road sitting next to a sign that
reads, “Familiar: Will work for food”. It turns out that the Familiar’s
owner has been
(sucked into one of the hells / feebleminded / a lousy master / stuck in a
coma)
and the Familiar is looking for a new master before his old either one
kicks off or dismisses him. Give that the Familiar doesn’t want to die or
turn into some dumb animal in Sigil, he’s looking for a new master.
Unfortunately, most wizards round here want more that a silly cat,
“Lantern Archons make much better familiars.” So he is getting a bit
desperate.

That had me chuckling for a good few minutes.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

I pretty much use the "how to create a campaign" advice from the Sorcerer supplements. So if you want to classify me, I guess I'm a dirty Narrativist.

I come up with an idea for a campaign I think is cool, figure out what kinds of themes it deals with, then run it by the players. We talk about it for a few weeks, flesh out some ideas, talk about possible characters. Then I start thinking about NPCs that would be interesting while the players are mulling over their PC ideas.

We have a character creation session where we all talk through the characters as we go, bounce ideas off each other, and look for places the characters can be connected.
(We don't go with a party structure, so the connections are as tight or as loose as we decide is appropriate.) They come up with a vague idea of some NPCs they might be involved with, and a Kicker that tells me what happens to them at the start of play.

Armed with that information, I work on the relationship map of the NPCs in the campaign. I figure out where we can swap out my ideas with NPCs the player characters are connected to. I jot down notes about what the NPCs want from each other and what they might want from the PCs, and various ways they could make each others lives' difficult.

Then before the first session of play, I make up a list of Bangs, things I can throw at the PCs that they'll have to deal with. We start play at the events of the player-written Kickers, cut back and forth between the different PCs' scenes, deal with the PC actions and consequences, etc. When things start to flag, I throw another Bang out there. Things spiral out of control enough after a few sessions that I don't need to keep adding much complexity at all.

Ron Edwards calls this "Bass-playing" GMing, and that seems appropriate. You throw down the basic structure, and when the players start riffing, you just go with the changes. No map, no plot, just characters dealing with the crap life throws them and how that kicks up even more crap. It's pretty damn fun.

 

[fusangite]

One of the few things I do deliberately set out to do is asking the following questions for pretty much every character I play or GM for:

1. Desire: What do you want?
2. Motive: Why do you want it?
3. Conflict: What keeps you from getting it?

The answers can be as shallow or as deep as I or the players like. For my own characters, I tend to prefer the deeper end of things, but I don't always find it necessary (especially for stock characters).

This is interesting. It is very different from the motivations that tend to power my campaign, though. Generally, in my games, adventurers are responding to danger, threat or crisis that someone else is causing rather than pursuing their desires, thereby bringing themselves into conflict with others. At the level of character, most great stories seem to be about people doing one thing because they are obliged to and then doing something else because a higher calling or obligation must be fulfilled or because some danger threatens them discharging their obligations. There are also stories about people pursuing their unfulfilled desires and then choosing to reject this path and then pursue a higher calling or respond to some threat instead.

Although our culture has morally internalized capitalism so that human motivation can be conceptualized in the terms you describe, I think we are fortunate that our stories have yet to internalize this morality. Aside from sports movies or movies about women's professional advancement, fulfilment of goals/desires is not a predominant theme in popular culture. Given that most games are set in pre-modern societies, how does this psychological capitalism actually manifest in the stories your games produce?

Answering these three questions can tell me more about a character than answering twenty questions that may or may not have a bearing on the story.

Being a strict narrativist -- unlike most who claim the title you seem to understand and practice Edwards' theory as described -- do you find that thematically focusing the system on individual character egos tends to inhibit party cohesion?

You don't have to waste time with generic plots to engage the players, or worry about how you will get them excited about what's happening with their characters. You can just get to the meat of the characters with the shortest possible delay.

Out of curiosity, do you think this "getting to the meat of the characters" is the main appeal of narrativist-style gaming? Or do you think people use it for other reasons. I ask because the style has little appeal for me and I would like to get a better sense of some of the things that attract people to it.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Although our culture has morally internalized capitalism so that human motivation can be conceptualized in the terms you describe, I think we are fortunate that our stories have yet to internalize this morality. Aside from sports movies or movies about women's professional advancement, fulfilment of goals/desires is not a predominant theme in popular culture. Given that most games are set in pre-modern societies, how does this psychological capitalism actually manifest in the stories your games produce?

I'm not parsing this at all. Wanting to fulfill your desires is strictly a capitalist thing? Popular culture doesn't deal with fulfillment of desires?

I'm thinking "love story". That's something you could see equally easily in pop culture or in a premodern setting.

I could see how a game focused around the fulfillment of desire could work against a party structure. That's why, when I did it, we didn't have a party. The PCs worked together sometimes, at odds sometimes, and were off on their own a fair bit. Everybody had their own goals, but the general premise of "What lines will you cross to get what you want?" served to tie the stories together.