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

[pogre]

When we play D&D it seems a bit more centered on the game aspects. We are now playing WFRP and it is more story heavy. I enjoy both games very much.

 

[Hussar]

To be honest though, looking at something like the recent Campaign Arcs in Dragon, I think I would prefer to play in those than simply wading my way through B2, A1-4, GDQ. Not that I didn't have fun doing the latter, but, there wasn't exactly a whole lot tying those adventures together other than than our characters.

 

[Aaron L]

5

I cant imagine thing else. For me, story is the underlying reason for encounters. I guess a game could consist soley of the characters starting at the door to a dungeon, going through hallways fighting rooms full of randomly generated monsters, and ending when they reach the exit door, but anything more to it then that I call story. (and I wouldnt want anyway near such a game!)

There is an evil necromancer creating hordes of undead the caracters have to destroy? Boom, thats a story. The events that transpire becaue of that, the characters actions and thier consequences, are all story. I dont think anyone here who says they want story in thier game is referring to a scripted scene during which NPCs spout dialogue at each other. (please correct me if I am wrong) Story is what spurs the character to action, the actions the characters take, and the results of thier actions. Story is an essential ingredient and a natural by product of the game.


Maybe some people are thinking of speaking as story and combat as game? If thats the case then I can see a campaign favoring one over the other. But otherwise I cant imagine an imbalance between game and story being healthy. Too much "story" and the players lose independence to a railroaded script, and too much "game" and encounters lose any meaning other than "kill whats in front of you."

 

[Raven Crowking]

Great post, Aaron L!

 

[Odhanan]

I think Umbran and you are missing each other's points.

For actors in a movie, they have to think in terms of their characters in the present, in the current scene. Players' have the same situation because they don't know what's coming. That immersion is what drives the narrative.

Think of your players like rats in a maze. You don't know what the rat will do and rats with different personalities do different things. The conflict between the PCs and the villains, the PCs and their environment, and the PCs and each other IS the narrative. It IS the story being told. For players it may be about immersion, but for DMs, the result is the narrative.

Maybe that puts indeed the finger on the difference. I don't feel the players at the game table are "rats in a maze" with me, DM, as some sort of scientist playing with them. There's no "narrative" per se. No maze. Just a base situation and events/elements of background. I don't have a precise idea of how things would have to go, or what kind of end would have to take place. I don't have a preconceived "story" in my head when I DM. There are only possibilities and probabilities for me to evaluate -and often I'm proven wrong.

I am really opposed to the idea of "narrative" in RPGs. If a coherent story comes out of a game that has been played, that's because of players and DM who understood each other and because they shared the same feelings at the time of what the events of the campaign meant to them. This happens sometimes. And sometimes it doesn't. That actually depends a lot on the DM and how he wants to understand what the players want out of their game, and work with this knowledge at hand (instead of fighting against it, like so many DMs out there supposedly do).

 

[I'm A Banana]

There is a problem in me with the "5" response. Because while D&D is, of course, both, sometimes one has to give for the other, and it's a question of how much you fudge and handwave for your group's sense of story vs. how much you let the dice lie as they may.

I let the dice lie, so it has to be mostly game. The game is the framework around which the story is told. I don't create a villain, the PC's do. I don't make a plot, I make world filled with hooks.

Now, this doesn't work for every group. Some groups want to be more or less hand-held through a plot in which they are the main characters, and that's fine. However, even in that instance, I see the dice and the rules directing the action, even though there's a lot of thought about how event A leads to event B.

I've played mostly story. I've played mostly game. And I vastly prefer to have the story hinge on the game when the two come into conflict (and they do, though not always).

It's part of why I like D&D. The little fiddly bits about the rules help me tell a story. I don't tell a story without a die roll, a feat choice, a descision between left and right at the junction to support it.

 

[ThirdWizard]

There is a problem in me with the "5" response. Because while D&D is, of course, both, sometimes one has to give for the other, and it's a question of how much you fudge and handwave for your group's sense of story vs. how much you let the dice lie as they may.

That sounds eerily like what I said earlier, and so I must agree with it on principle!

The way I look at the game vs. story dichotomy is the quality of each in relation to each other. Above Aaron L points out that a necromancer creating undead and the PCs running off ot destroy them and kill him is a story.

Well yeah, but its a bad story in and of itself. If that's the extent of the story, then you're looking at the game being much more important. The session will be more about the PCs going in and kicking butt. Maybe lots of roleplaying, but unless you're Pulitzer level roleplayers, I doubt there will be much story involved. Lots of dialogue, perhaps, but no real plot to speak of.

But, the more involved the story gets, the better it is at telling a story, the more constraints the PCs will feel. Because the more story-involved the adventure is, the more foreplanning the DM must do. If you've got a long drawn out murder mystery and the PCs make the Sense Motive checks against your antagonist, realizing that he's hiding something when the plot called for him not to be a suspect, well, you've got two choices: fudge or go with it. If story is more important you fudge, if game is more important, you don't fudge.

Sometimes you can't have both and you have to choose. Which way do you choose?

 

[Raven Crowking]

In a case like that? Game, 100% of the time.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Sometimes you can't have both and you have to choose. Which way do you choose?

Well, to be fair, in a story-heavy game, the opportunity to use a Sense Motive check to see through the villain's ruse would never occur. After all, skill checks are a game element -- sense motive checks can occur only when it would be dramatically appropriate, when they have reason to suspect someone.

I think we're really in agreement with Aaron L's example of "story." As far as I can tell, that's a hook (a necromancer is creating undead, what are you heroes going to do about it?). More story would, for instance, say that one of the PC's family members is trapped in the necromancer's tower. Of course, that puts limits on the PC, effectively forcing them to go along with the story or be an evil character. And often, story-based games have more stringent requirements on what a character can be than game-based stories because of the problems of designing a plot for every kind of character.

The more story you add, the more narrow the band of permissable actions for the PC's, the tighter and more linear the dungeon becomes. And this isn't nessecarily a bad thing at all, because playing out a story can be a lot of fun, it's just a consequence of the actions.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Well, to be fair, in a story-heavy game, the opportunity to use a Sense Motive check to see through the villain's ruse would never occur. After all, skill checks are a game element -- sense motive checks can occur only when it would be dramatically appropriate, when they have reason to suspect someone.

Wow, you're right. The fact that I hadn't considered that is probably telling about my style.

And, since I have a player who is on the Story side. He likes to watch the DM's story unfold, even if he has to be railroaded along the way, and he think that its a good thing for the DM to know how the campaign ends even before the first session. We're at odds in this, but we can still enjoy the game together, so I don't think the difference is impossible to overcome.