Is your D&D campaign a game or a story?

[Umbran]

Balderdash.

Given what follows, I am not sure this word applies.

Offer the players a setting that responds to their actions and their characters will tell the story.

Stop and consider this for just a moment. How, pray tell, is it at all at odds with what I've stated? Consider that "responds to their actions" and "not random" are not at odds. Consider that "responds to their actions" and "logical consistency" and "high probability of complex interaction with the character personalities" are also not at odds.

Unless, of course, you think that the players will consider random reaction to their actions as interesting. But I think you'll need to support that somewhat.

Really, the "game-master-as-storyteller" is a lot of self-aggrandizing hooey

Ah, yes. Thank you for calling me a self-aggrandizing speaker of hooey.

You are quite welcome to your opinion. Until you are able to present it as objective fact rather than personal opinion, I suggest that you be less flatly insulting about it. Or at least describe to me who this phrasing is supposed to be at all constructive.

...the players bring just as much imagination to the table as the game master.

Right. Now, please tell me where I said otherwise.

Honestly, I can't see anywhere where our positions clash. I don't understand what your beef is.

 

[The Shaman]

*snip*

Umbran, there is no recourse to authority here - your opinion and experience is your own, as is mine, so leave the "objective" pretense off the table.

Recently I sat down with a buddy of mine to play an evening of Traveller - we had a subsector map and four characters (two each) that comprised the crew of a free trader, with a little starting capital and a lot of debt. That's it - no plot, no details other than those on the subsector map and our characters sheets, and no referee. We used the existing encounter, trade, reaction, and mishap tables to determine who and what our characters met, and we took turns roleplaying the non-player characters, using skill checks as needed per the rules.

Again, no plot, and no dedicated referee - just two guys taking random results and roleplaying them to the best of our abilities.

In the course of our travels, we battled pirates, smuggled jewels, dodged starport security, endured inspections, bribed officials, repaired broken drives, and travelled to a dozen star systems. The "story" was what came from those random encounters, told after the fact - I kept notes, and I plan on turning it into a story hour.

It didn't take "logical consistency, interesting linkages, and high probability of complex interaction," and the sum total of the "setup" was the planetary profiles provided by a Judges Guild supplement. All we needed was some roleplay imagination and those random encounter generators.

This was not an isolated occurance, by the way - our Advanced Dungeons and Dragons gaming group back in the day explored a dungeon made using the generator and encounter tables in the back of the DMG for months. Again, the story was what arose out of those encounters: defeating a fearsome foe, getting our codpieces handed to us by what should have been a "pushover" monster, getting lost, getting found, dodging a trap, negotiating with another party of adventurers, finding a magic item, losing a friend. The sum total of our experiences became our story of adventure, of derring-do, of shared hardship and sweet success, of friendships made and lost, of simmering conflicts and vengeance sought.

So yes, Umbran, I do think you're full of hooey on this, as I do most "storyteller" game masters. Dress the scene, herd the extras, and get the hell out of the players' way - that's all the game master needs to do.

 

[ForceUser]

So yes, Umbran, I do think you're full of hooey on this, as I do most "storyteller" game masters. Dress the scene, herd the extras, and get the hell out of the players' way - that's all the game master needs to do.

Sure, but some of us enjoy metaplots that develop over the course of a campaign, as do some of our players. I know that if my players felt that all I was doing was throwing a random succession of adventures in front of them with no overarching story goal, they'd be unhappy.

 

[Dremmen]

2

When I DM, I use the game rules as a framework for a collaborative story. Doesn't matter which system I'm using, I've got to have a good story.

For me, killing critters for their loot got old about ten years ago.

AMEN!

And Umbran, agree with you 100%. Shaman, there really isn't a need to go as far as calling gm's that like to tell a story "self-aggrandizing". That's how some people play the game. My wife would simply not play in a game like what you describe. She is into a established, long term campaign with some common threads in story as time passes, and characters that are as much a part of the game world as the critters that keep jumping out. I'm the same way as far as preference, both running and playing.

I'm actually surprised so many do value the story over the game. I thought the vast majority out there got their kicks from the game, not the story. So it is good to know maybe I'm not so much the minority as I thought.

 

[Mercule]

Um... Yes.

 

[The Shaman]

Sure, but some of us enjoy metaplots that develop over the course of a campaign, as do some of our players. I know that if my players felt that all I was doing was throwing a random succession of adventures in front of them with no overarching story goal, they'd be unhappy.

Whatever toots your whistle.

For me, "The play's the thing."

 

[Mallus]

For me, "The play's the thing."

So discovering, interacting with, and manipulating plot elements doesn't count as "play"?

What I get from your position is that you don't enjoy a gaming experience that has any context other than the one created by the players. Is that right?

 

[der_kluge]

It's a game and a story, the two terms are not polar opposites.

No, I don't think so at all.

If it's purely a story, then the GM sits around a campfire and just tells a story. If it's interactive, then the other players get to contribute a bit to the story. But no dice are ever rolled. CAPES! would be closer to this style of play. It's more of an interactive story-telling experience.

A pure game scenario is going to be harder to recreate with at least some premise.

Making 20th level characters, and starting with Aboleth in the monster manual and working your way through all the monsters until you kill them all, or die fighting the Tarrasque would be a purely "game" sort of situation.

Somewhere in between would be... well, somewhere in between.

 

[ForceUser]

Whatever toots your whistle.

Then why bag on Umbran?

 

[The Shaman]

My wife would simply not play in a game like what you describe. She is into a established, long term campaign with some common threads in story as time passes, and characters that are as much a part of the game world as the critters that keep jumping out.

Please forgive me if I'm misreading you here, but the implicit assumption seems that these kinds of "common threads" and recurring characters can't arise without the game master's hand on the throttle.

In my experience adventurers will develop relationships with non-player characters. Have you ever had your players forge a friendship or a rivalry with a minor NPC in whom you didn't expect them to take an interest? That kind of organic interaction doesn't require anything more than a referee who's able to roleplay a believeable character - the players will fill in the blanks and drive the relationship.

Going back to the Traveller example, one of the random encounters was a "trader" - the non-player character as played by my friend became a trusted ally on the planet we were visiting, and we would look him up each time we hit dirt. The trader NPC became our source of results from the random rumor table in the sector book, and we would offer him first dibs on our "small cargos."

The fact that there is no story from the outset doesn't mean a game is reduced to playing whack-a-mole with random encounters.