Is your D&D campaign a game or a story?
- Thread starter Quasqueton
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Raven Crowking
First Post
In any event, being involved in the creation of a story is not passive. Both in terms of the stories I've had published, and in terms of stories that have arisen out of gaming, I would argue that being presented a story is very, very different than making a story. Reading and writing are not the same thing.
Heathen72
Explorer
The Shaman said:
Exactly, it aint nice, is it, but there was little in the original thread that was vehement until you raised the stakes, so if you don't like the taste of what you dish out try keeping it nice next time.
But yes, talking past each other is pretty pointless.
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Insight
Adventurer
Great topic.
For a lot of would-be/aspiring writers, it is difficult to resist the temptation of crafting a story for your game. After all, the idea that you could write something for your friends to enjoy is tempting. Often, the best writers in a group are the game masters, so this is what would seem a natural fit.
Upon further examination, however, this is not always what's best for the group. Too much story easily becomes railroading, what is least interesting or exciting for the players, and frustrating for a game master who has probably spent way too much time 'crafting' his campaign.
Early on, I was a writer/gm and not a gm/writer. As a writer/gm, I would expend a lot of time and effort on the creation, and paid little attention to what the PCs would be doing during the course of the game. What was of utmost importance to me was that the story went on, and the players' interests were secondary (at best).
Now, as I have matured as a GM (and as a writer), I have found new and inventive ways to involve the players, and totally divorced the idea of an immobile story from my concept of running a game. Now, it is totally about the involvement of the characters - what is it that they do to affect the outcome of the adventure?
For a lot of would-be/aspiring writers, it is difficult to resist the temptation of crafting a story for your game. After all, the idea that you could write something for your friends to enjoy is tempting. Often, the best writers in a group are the game masters, so this is what would seem a natural fit.
Upon further examination, however, this is not always what's best for the group. Too much story easily becomes railroading, what is least interesting or exciting for the players, and frustrating for a game master who has probably spent way too much time 'crafting' his campaign.
Early on, I was a writer/gm and not a gm/writer. As a writer/gm, I would expend a lot of time and effort on the creation, and paid little attention to what the PCs would be doing during the course of the game. What was of utmost importance to me was that the story went on, and the players' interests were secondary (at best).
Now, as I have matured as a GM (and as a writer), I have found new and inventive ways to involve the players, and totally divorced the idea of an immobile story from my concept of running a game. Now, it is totally about the involvement of the characters - what is it that they do to affect the outcome of the adventure?
The Shaman
First Post
spunkrat, if you have a problem with my posts, TAKE IT UP WITH A MODERATORspunkrat said:
My preference is to pour gasoline on it and light it with a road flare.fusangite said:
Until everyone is working from a common, agreed-upon definition of what "story" is in a roleplaying game context, we'll continue to see some people equating it with setting conceits, and others with adventure plots, and others with roleplaying, in which case we'll keep spinning right round, baby, right round like a record, baby, right round round round.
While defining gaming terms gives some gamers a big spoogey Forgeasm, it makes me want to bang my head on my keyboard. I'm done here.
Raven Crowking
First Post
Insight said:
Well, that's the differnce, isn't it?
If by "story" you mean "What is going on in the world beyond the PCs, what the NPCs have done and what they wish to do (and how they intend to do it) and what the results of the PCs interactions have on the aforementioned" then I am definitely in the story camp. I love to set up an area & let the PCs go wild.
If by "story" you mean a sequence of events that must happen regardless of PC choices, then I am not in that camp. I do dangle a lot of hooks that can lead into sequences of events, but those events are always in a semi-fluid state, ready to be changed on the basis of PC action.
As an easy example, if I set up a murder mystery and the PCs figured out who the murderer was in the first act, the story would shift to them figuring out how to prove it, how to prevent the murderer from escaping, or whatever. The PCs make the decisions that determine the direction in which the story flows.
In my story hour, there is a sequence of events where the PCs travelled down a river from one town to another. (The players informed me that this is what they wished to do in an earlier session.) There were a number of pre-planned encounters along the river journey, which they could react to or ignore as they wished. They also could have abandoned the ship and done something else. The biggest event during that sequence was entirely in the PC's hands, and very much unplanned.
In a later sequence, the PCs aided a group of Lakashi pilgrims to reach the Serpent Stone. Of course, the pilgrims didn't want outsiders to actually see this holy place, and intended that they be killed by the Guardian of the valley where the Serpent Stone was. Again, there were a number of pre-planned encounters along the way, some of which were hooks to other potential adventures. The PCs proved too canny to fall into the pilgrim's ambush, but they could also have said "No" at the outset, left the group to pursue another hook, etc.
The DM's job, IMHO, is to present and play the world. Part of this is to offer possible directions in which the PCs can go (i.e., hooks to potential adventures). The PCs then decide what they wish to do. Some events in the world may be foreordained (a comet on the 15th of Greenleaf heralds the birth of the new prince of the Cloven Isles). PC actions should not be foreordained.
As always, YMMV.
RC
Raven Crowking
First Post
Rel said:
Only swimming underwater and using a port-a-potty spring immediately to mind.
To lighten things up, may I suggest: http://www.enworld.org/article.php?a=157
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Kamikaze Midget said:
You do if you are the writer, or the storyteller. You do if you're one of a group collaborating to write a story. You do if you are playing theatresports.
Baseball, an unquestionable game, is passive if you are in the bleachers, but participative if you are out on the diamond.
Games are incredibly various, ranging as they do from Rugby to Go by way of spin-the-bottle and truth-or-dare. In some games the mechanics of play consists of running around and kicking a ball, in others of choosing where to place a counter on a grid, in others of daring to reveal embarrassing truth. There is no fundamental inconsistency in the play of some particular game consisting of taking part in the telling of a story.
Some writers (eg. PG Wodehouse) plan their plots in detail and in advance. Some start with their characters and a conflict, chuck them into a situation, and let things develop how they will. Raymond Chandler once admitted that when things got slow he had a man with a gun crash through the window without worrying much about where he came from and why.
You get to take in a great part of RPGs as "participative, collaborative, storytelling games". There is an element that you don't take in with that definition, a build-and-battle wargaming element like 'Trillion Credit Squadron'. Sometimes one will frame the other. Anyway, I don't think that one communicates effectively by referring to the participative, collaborative, extemporary storytelling element of an RPG as 'story', nor to the build-and-battle wargaming element as 'game'. Both terms are fatally ambiguous used that way.
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