It's not playing a game, it's acting out a novel

[JRRNeiklot]

If I want a fricking story, I'll read a book. The story is what you tell 10 years later over a few beers. I'm here to game. I hate anything prescripted past, you all meet in a tavern and....

Just give me a location or a hook and keep your damn story out of my way!

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

*Shrug* Some of my favorite games have been total railroads.

One of the most amazing one-shot sessions I ever played in came during a week where someone was out for the night, so we couldn't do the normal game. That game being about unwillingly chosen champions of the gods who compete in fights, challenges, fetch quests, and other dangerous things (our first major leg of the quest involved delving through half a dozen different mythological underworlds, and champions were dropping like flies, just to get an idea) so that the winner's patron becomes the most powerful god for the next 1000 years and can establish his/her own pantheon. The champion him/herself being granted any one wish for the effort. So anyway, we had heard about the previous winners and knew that circa 1000 A.D. Satan's champion had won the games, but not how. So, that night the DM invited us to RP 3 of the finalists remaining to go after the prize. We knew we were supposed to lose. HAD to lose, otherwise it'd completely mess up the entire backstory of the ongoing game. But we had no idea how we were going to lose. Turned out the DM had a pretty elaborate Xanatos Gambit set up to plan for anything we could really try, and legitimately had his guy win in the end, despite giving us free reign to try our best to not let that happen. It was still loads of fun, and how it went down in the end (we each had powers or magic items granted by our deities and going in Satan's champion's power was unknown; we later found out the hard way that his power was to body swap, leading to our alliance utterly shattering in a most tragic fashion) left us amused rather than bitter.

I dunno, the thing I most enjoy about video game RPGs is the feeling that I'm playing a novel, and it carries the same enjoyment as reading a book, except you're actually immersed in the story. A tabletop game doesn't have to be like that, but it also isn't such a bad thing, either.

 

[Janx]

Whenever the GM of a potential game says that he/she is planning to write a novel based on the game, I usually run.

I have had some experiences with this, and they were not pretty.

I wonder how many gamers who vehemently declare they don't want story in their game have played in games like the OP described?

I once had bad homemade pumpkin pie. I mean vomit inducing I will never eat homemade pumpkin pie even if made by my reknowned pie-making friend The Pie Man. He is appalled that I will eat a box pie over his pumpkin pie.

That kind of bad experience will make anybody have that kind of negative reaction to even the thought.

But in the same vein the bad sandbox example is "we wandered around, did stuff, then we died"

A good GM can make what you do and what happens from that into a Good Story. Or he can just make it random pissing around.

I prefer the former. I wouldn't enjoy the OP's example.

Just because some pie makes you sick, doesn't mean all pies will, especially when made by a craftsman.

 

[I'm A Banana]

There's several very good ways to do narrative style games that constrain choice and drive characters in various ways.

This...is not one of them.

It is a game. It has to be a game. If it's not a game, why are we playing it? I'll read your novel when it's published, kid. Right now, I wanna play a game.

 

[Gondsman]

I've found that every time I develop a plot in advance as the DM I always create my own idea of how the PC's should react and when they don't...I sort of lose my place and things don't go well....

I'm finding that If i just collect stat blocks and sort of approach the game like a player and let what the PC's come up with sort of direct the plot, I end up liking it a bit better because I'm reacting to the story, I don't have hopes to get crushed...And I think the story ends up a lot more organic.

 

[S'mon]

But in the same vein the bad sandbox example is "we wandered around, did stuff, then we died"

A good GM can make what you do and what happens from that into a Good Story. Or he can just make it random pissing around.

I prefer the former. I wouldn't enjoy the OP's example.

Just because some pie makes you sick, doesn't mean all pies will, especially when made by a craftsman.

I tend to go for a 'short story ethos' - a particular session or adventure may resemble a short story, but the campaign isn't intended to resemble a novel. My inpirations are the old school magazine writers - Howard, Leiber, Vance and Moorcock - and their shorter works which I will loot for situations, villains et al. But session by session the PCs can do whatever they want, and I'm not seeking any particular outcome. I tried a campaign that would have a loose plot running all through it and IMO overall it was not nearly as successful as sandbox play. There was a lot of good stuff there, but I saw a heavier level of player attrition than I'm used to, which is not a sign of a happy campaign.

 

[Ariosto]

RPGs originated as tools for doing just the opposite of telling a story. All the "game stuff" of chance and choice serves the purpose of confounding determinism, of fostering unpredictability. The vast range of possible courses of events is the fulcrum of interest.

Gamers invented the genre as another variation in the "strategic simulation" lineage that includes Panzer Blitz, Rail Baron, Source of the Nile, and so on.

There's always a trade-off between opposing things. Many people would say that telling a story cuts into the space not only of the "G" but also of the "RP" (as acting out a part in a story is not the same thing to them).

 

[Thunderfoot]

<SNIP>
The lesson from all this that I learned, if the GM says they are writing a novel based on the events of the game, run away!

Dude, that sucks, but I have to say, I've written novels BASED on game play without letting it affect the game play. I think the problem here was the GM wanted to flesh out her characters a little more and need cheap (read free) help with R&D. I agree with your course of action by leaving and am sorry the friendship went south... I've been there.

I always keep a log of what happened in game and then try to novelize (with slight embellishment) what actually happened. I always approach a game with an idea of what is going on in the world, but allow the players to steer it in whatever direction they want it to go. Having some idea is not bad thing, it's much easier to keep continuity if you can follow along with a semi-skeletal script. Likewise, if it truly is semi-skeletal, when the players do something completely unexpected, its much easier to change your parallel guideline. I realize that this is NOT the experience most folks have with "scripted" adventures (the term railroading comes to mind) but there needs to be some amount of structure, at least from my perspective.

 

[jasper]

If people really want to tell a story based on the game, make the story afterwards. Don't go in with the intent of making the story go a particular way. Players tend not to go along with the GMs plans at the best of times.

true. But even then we have TSR novels like "Spellfire" and other um bad novels published.

 

[Mallus]

I still think of my games as novels, of a sort, with the caveat I have no control over the main characters, and little control over the plots, such as they usually are (my games are also, well, games, even if I tend think of them as fiction first).

With my campaigns, I try to provide the sense of living in a novel. A vast, implausible, often idiotic and gleefully violent, yet for all of that somewhat satisfyingly imaginative novel. Which I have no idea how it ends, or even where it will lurch from week to week, in search of some reasonable facsimile of adventure.

Who'd want to run a game where everything was predetermined? If you don't want the players input, why have them participate?