Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[pemerton]

double

 

[pemerton]

I played my BW character yesterday, and I then GMed a session of MHRP-style Cortex Fantasy.

Here is some stuff that is relevant to the discussion around approaches to RPGing and how the shared fiction is established.

Burning Wheel
In the BW session, we first spent a bit of time with the GM explaining to me where things were going to be located on the map of Greyhawk. Generally, BW favours a loose approach to world creation and world geography but we've been using GH in the campaign where I'm GM, so this made sense. I don't know what he had or hadn't read online about the Principality of Ulek and the Pomarj, and how much he just made up himself, but in any event this was all good stuff to establish some basic framing for the campaign.

Then, after some introductory framing explaining that Aramina (my travelling companion) and I (ie my PC) are wandering through the frontier, witnessing abandoned homesteads with signs of flight, I declared a couple of initial checks: a Homestead-wise check (untrained) to learn more about the circumstances of abandonment of this particular ruined homestead, which succeeded, and hence (in this case) extracted some more narration of backstory from the GM; and then a Scavenging check, looking for the gold that the homesteaders would have left behind in their panic and which the orcs would have been too lazy to find.

Unfortunately this second check failed, which meant that orcs from a raiding party had virtually infiltrated the homestead before I noticed them. Aramina panicked (failed Steel check) but I commanded her to make for the horse (successful Command check to overcome her hesitation), but then - following through on the failed Scavenging check - the GM called for opposed Speed checks. Aramina lost, so the orcs surrounded her. I tied with the orcs, so made it to the horse but (given the tie) the GM then called for another check - my Knots check vs the orcs' Speed to see if I could unloose the knot tying the horse to the post before the orcs closed. I couldn't, and so we were in combat.

The orcs were threatening Aramina but (triggering my instinct) I was able to interpose myself to protect her. I beat up the orcs - go plate-and-mail against orcish spears (needing one roll of 4+ on six dice to deflect their blows) and a "versus armour" rating of 3 with my mace, meaning they need to roll 4 such successes with their 3 dice for their leather armour to deflect my blows! At one point I did roll a 1 on my armour check, though, and so my breast plate lost a die of protection.

The orcs were part of a larger raiding party, with mumakil. I think the GM was hoping I might chase the mumakil, but I have no animal handling, animal lore etc and so the mumakil remained nothing but mere colour.

The larger raiding party was chased off by a force of elves. I'm not surprised that elves should show up - my GM loves elves!, just like I'm notorious for using undead and demons - but the interaction with the elves probably took an unexpected turn.

I (again, in character) told Aramina to try to staunch the wounds of one of the fallen orcs, so we might interrogate them, while mounting the horse to go and meet up with the elves and look for their leader. I tried an untrained Heraldry check to recognise the elves' arms, and failed - so the elven leader was not too taken by me! In this there was cross-narration by me and the GM, but it ran in the same direction: as I was saying (in character) that I don't recognise the elven leader's arms and wondered who he was, he (spoken by the GM) was telling me that he didn't like my somewhat discourteous look. The GM is entitled to narrate such a thing - I failed my check, after all.

I don't know what, if anything, the GM had in mind for the elves, but one of my Beliefs is that fame and infamy shall no longer befall my ancestral estate. So I invited the elf to travel with his soldiers south to my ancestral estate, where we might host them. The GM had the elf try and blow me off, but I was serious about this and so called for a Duel of Wits. Unfortunately my dice pool was very weak compared to the elf's (6 Will dice being used for untrained Persuasion, so slightly weaker than 3 Persuasion dice vs 7 Will dice and 6 Persuasion dice) and so despite my attempt as a player to do some clever scripting I was rebuffed by the elf without getting even a compromise.

As I said, I don't know what the GM had in mind for the elves but I'm pretty sure the GM hadn't anticipated this. So I don't know what he anticipated for the elves' departure, but in the game it followed my failure to persuade the elf to join me. In the course of discussion the elf did mention that one orc - who may or may not have fallen in battle, he wasn't sure - was wearing a shield bearing the crest of the Iron Tower. I think the GM was expecting me to pursue this orc, but I didn't, for two reasons: (i) having been rebuffed by the elven leader, I wanted to head off in a different direction, and (ii) I'm a bit worried that Aramina is too squishy for hunting orcs!, and I'm pretty vulnerable too to being swarmed. If we return back this way once the orcs have had a few days to move out, we might then search the woods for the shield.

So the session ended with Aramina and I riding out following the river to the NW, but along the southern (ie Ulek) bank, and then setting up camp at the end of the day. Aramina was angry that I made us ride out, once the elves had left and in order to avoid any trouble from orc survivors, without having any lunch: from the mechanical point of view I was angling for a Fate point for being Disciplined, and for a Fate point for Araamina's fiery temper. I expect to start the next session trying to persuade Aramina to beat out the dint in my breastplate (she has Mending skill; I don't) and then some Cooking and maybe some campfire action.

Upthread, I quoted a bit from the BW rules where Luke Crane says that if, as a player, you're not grabbed by the story, it's your job to make things interesting! As I've said, I don't know what the GM had in mind for the elves but I did my bit to make it interesting. I think the GM's favourite part of the session was the fight with the orcs, but mine was the Duel of Wits with the elf. Even though I lost, I (i) got some good advancement checks, and (ii) enjoyed speaking my arguments as the rules require - especially my "avoiding of the topic" (which, mechanically, allows me to use my Will in defence rather than my untrained Persuasion), and (iii) established more about my character and his relationship to the ingame situation.

This was the first time this GM has ever GMed a session. It was a fun session. My choices clearly mattered, in the ways I've described above. The GM had a sheet of paper in front of him with about half-a-page of print out, and I think that had some notes that he was using to help manage his orcs and his elves (as well as some stablocks from the rulebook). But the actual events of play clearly weren't pre-scripted: they couldn't have been, because they were driven by my action declarations, which is as it should be in BW.

Cortex Fantasy
This is a much more light-hearted RPG than BW. The characters are more two-dimensional, and the whole experience is much less gritty.

The PCs started the session separated in a dungeon. After a bit of hijinks finishing off an un-resolved conflict from our last session, I spent a Doom Pool die to rejoin the two groups. In the fiction, this was a combination of a successful creation of a "Secret Exit" asset by one of the PCs (who had been on his own in a necromantically cursed room with many burial niches in its walls, out of which zombies had come, and who - in wolf form, with his wolf companions - was crawling through an empty zombie niche looking for a way out) and a failed attempt by one of the two PCs in the other chamber (where they'd just fought giant spiders) to find a secret exit from the chamber: I narrated that, as he turned away from the wall in frustration, his sword-hilt struck a roundel and pressed it into the stone, opening a secret door.

This secret door led into a hidden chamber with a pack of ghouls - the same chamber into which the wolves were crawling following the winding ghoul-tunnels that lay beyond the zombie niches.

(Bringing the two groups together powered down the wolf PC, who is strongest solo, and also one of the other two PCs, who - at that point, before spending XP to swap things around - was strongest in a pair rather than solo or in a team. It also made my life as GM a bit easier.)

After dispatching the ghouls (the wolf PC getting the benefit of his "Secret Exit" asset - the ghouls didn't expect an attack via their tunnels!), the PCs followed strange piping music down a hitherto-hidden tunnel leading out of the ghouls' secret room to the lair of a Crypt Thing. The berserker attacked but missed. I think the wolf skin-changer tried something - I can't remember what - but with little success. But then the Doom Pool build up to 2d12 and so I was able to spend it to end the scene - in the fiction, the Crypt Thing teleported them all into an empty room on a lower dungeon level. Mechanically, this landed them all with a d12 Lost in the Dungeon complication.

After taking a rest (ie a Transition scene), they headed out and I described the next scene - a pillared hall with murals, flickering braziers, and a living statue guarding great doors. While the two warriors dispatched the statute, the skinchanger read the mural to try and work out where in the dungeon he was - mechanically, he successfully eliminated his Lost in the Dungeon complication. The swordthane did the same after dispatching the statue, and then helped the berserker also to read the mural/map before the latter then broke down the door. The skinchanger had continue to study the mural/map and had worked out the Path to the Treasure (a d10 or d12 - I can't remember precisely - asset).

On the other side of the door was the land of the svartalfar: a land of faerie fire, of deadly traps, and with the glint of gold. The PCs were confronted by four dark elves - a young fighter, an experience fighter, a C/F/MU and a F/MU (mechanically, I was using 4 statblocks from facing pages of the Civil War sourcebook: one I can't remember, but the other three were Lady Deathstrike and Moonstone - both good dark elven names - and Radioactive Man, who made a good drow wizard once I respecced his Radiation Control as Earth and Stone Control). The skinchanger used his Cunning expertise and his established knowledge of the path to the treasure to bluff Moonstone, the C/F/MU, into taking him to the dark elven treasure vaults - also picking up Milestone-based XP in the process for leaving his allies in a risky situation - and ended up finishing the scene with a huge (d12+) treasure asset. The other PCs finished off the three remaining dark elves, but not before the F/MU brought the stone crashing down, blocking off the tunnels the skinchanger and Moonstone had travelled through.

Next session will be a new act, I think, with the skinchanger needing a new Milestone now that he's finished off one by taking the treasure and leaving the dungeon; and probably beginning with the other two PCs having left the land of the dark elves after long wanderings through subterranean tunnels.

Although much of the detail of the setting is introduced by me as GM in the course of framing, key elements are introduced by the players, mostly in the form of assets - the tunnels into the ghoul room; the fact that the murals in the pillared hall have a map of the dungeon; and the drow treasure (and my Scene Distinction Glint of Gold was itself a riff on the fact that the skinchanger PC had established a Path to Treasure asset). The framing itself was all spontaneous as needed, although the stat blocks were mostly prepared in advance (I'd written up Ghouls and a Crypt Thing, used the MHRP book for dark elves, and only the Living Statute was written up by me ex tempore).

But this account should also make it fairly clear why the notion of "illusionism" just has no purchase in this game. Everything's on the surface: the Scene Distinctions, the Doom Pool growing or shrinking (it started the session at 2d6, 1d8, 2d10 and ended at 1d6, 1d8), the assets and complications, the NPCs in a scene, etc. There's nothing even remotely analogous to a fork in the road with the same encounter destined to occur down either path.

 

[Lanefan]

Needless to say, as per my post just above this, I think that the presence of that third option is crucial to GMing this sort of game, and that is why "secret backstory" is, on the whole, inimical - because it answers the question before it is even asked in play!

Of course it answers the question, for the DM; and that's the point. The players don't know - they're playing to find out.

On a broader scale, in order to present a coherent relevant game world (and game, for all that) to the players through the eyes of their characters the DM has to have knowledge of said game world that the players (and characters) don't.

And while you say it's mere colour whether the characters turn east or west at a fork in the road, it's still very relevant to me as a player: I want to know where I am within the world. If we already have a map - either pre-made by the DM or made by us on a previous visit to the area - I'll be looking at it to see where we are, where we might be going, and what might be waiting for us either on the way or when we get there based on geographical clues; and if we don't already have a map we will once I've drawn it as we go along.

It's the stuff you call "colour" that gives the game world its depth and richness, and eventually makes it familiar to us both as characters and players once we've explored it a bit. Instead of jumping from one dramatic encounter location to another, take 30 seconds or a minute or even more and describe what we see on the way - particularly if where we're travelling is new to us. And if we want to stop at one of the nameless villages, let us.

An example: quite early in my current campaign the various adventurers started using a town called Torcha as their home base, as it was the nearest decent-sized place to where the adventuring was. About 110-ish miles (or 6 days' walk) to the south is the port town of Karnos. The first time any PCs made this trip* I made a point of describing the countryside they were passing through, the types of people they were meeting on the road, the villages and waystations they'd see, and so forth...all in the name of immersion, depth, and giving them a sense of this place that I had a pretty good notion would become quite familiar to them over time. Since then various PCs have made that trip probably a hundred times or more all in; but other than varying the weather I know the players** already have an idea in mind what it's going to look like thus I don't have to describe it all again: they can imagine it on their own based on that first description. (exception: if there's a new player I'll repeat the descriptions)

* - in fact en route to some adventuring; they'd been recruited in Torcha to do some investigating in Karnos: this a prelude to what would become a variant on the Slavers' A-series. Some would say I should have jumped straight to Karnos (where the action was) once they left Torcha and skipped everything in between; I think the game would have been lessened if I had.

** - players, not characters this time; the Torcha-Karnos road is going to look pretty much the same no matter who's walking it, so in this case the descriptions are more for the players than the characters.

Lan-"9 years later and they're still using Torcha as a home base"-efan

 

[pemerton]

On a broader scale, in order to present a coherent relevant game world (and game, for all that) to the players through the eyes of their characters the DM has to have knowledge of said game world that the players (and characters) don't.

You keep asserting this, but - as I posted not far upthread - with no actual evidence. You haven't presented any evidence that those of us running games without secret backstory lack "coherent relevant game worlds".

 

[Lanefan]

You keep asserting this, but - as I posted not far upthread - with no actual evidence. You haven't presented any evidence that those of us running games without secret backstory lack "coherent relevant game worlds".

If you-as-DM don't know ahead of time that Col. Mustard did it in the Library with a +3 Mace then how can you possibly provide consistent clues and frame consistent scenes to that effect?

Conversely, if all you have is an obviously-murdered corpse (let's say of the sister of one of the PCs, to make it dramatically relevant; and let's say that PC's player had already agreed to this out of session, to forestall that argument) and even you-as-DM don't know ahead of time how it died or at whose hand, then how on earth can the players hope to roleplay their PCs to investigate the murder and track down the killer? Sure they can ask questions of NPCs, conduct searches, and all the rest...and you-as-DM then have to role-play those NPCs, narrate the search results, and so on...which means you-as-DM are still supplying the answers. Wouldn't it just make your job easier to know ahead of time what happened, so you can provide real or false clues and evidence along the way and know for yourself which is which?

Lan-"campaigns without mystery are campaigns without life"-efan

 

[tomBitonti]

If you-as-DM don't know ahead of time that Col. Mustard did it in the Library with a +3 Mace then how can you possibly provide consistent clues and frame consistent scenes to that effect?

Conversely, if all you have is an obviously-murdered corpse (let's say of the sister of one of the PCs, to make it dramatically relevant; and let's say that PC's player had already agreed to this out of session, to forestall that argument) and even you-as-DM don't know ahead of time how it died or at whose hand, then how on earth can the players hope to roleplay their PCs to investigate the murder and track down the killer? Sure they can ask questions of NPCs, conduct searches, and all the rest...and you-as-DM then have to role-play those NPCs, narrate the search results, and so on...which means you-as-DM are still supplying the answers. Wouldn't it just make your job easier to know ahead of time what happened, so you can provide real or false clues and evidence along the way and know for yourself which is which?

Lan-"campaigns without mystery are campaigns without life"-efan

If you could generate a murder plot by random means, then the decision points could be shifted in time from before the session to within the session.

This doesn't change much, though, since as soon as players start looking for clues, much of the plot will need to be decided. All that it changes is that the DM doesn't know ahead of time how the plot will resolve.

If you then take the random plot generation and allow it to be biased based on players' interest, that adds in a bit of the players driving the resolution.

This is the same as writing software using "late" or "lazy" resolution: Deferring all resolutions to as late a point as possible.

That is, in theory. Getting this to work at the table sounds troublesome, and seems to me would not work very well without a system which has built in mechanisms to help the GM. Which is kind-of of what the more dynamic systems seem to be doing. Or that seem to be trying to do.

Edit: I'm wondering how well dynamic resolution handles building tension. When the GM knows the plot, he or she can work at building tension towards the eventual resolution. I suspect that is what "Go to the Action" (not sure if I'm using the correct term there) is all about: Moving the resolution to a field which is exciting to the player.

That brings up (to me) interesting questions about the psychology of resolution and how much consistency is required to be psychologically satisfying. I'm thinking that this varies a lot between different people, and that difference is expressing itself within the dialog and preferences that are being displayed in this thread.

Thx!
TomB

 

[hawkeyefan]

Obviously it's your prerogative to disagree with whomever you want to - but which bits are you disagreeeing with?

Do you think I'm wrong in saying that the main threat to good "story now" RPGing is not illusionism - for which there's no scope, because you can't hide whether or not something engages the PCs' dramatic needs - but rather a failure to frame engaging scenes?

It's hard to say what I am disagreeing with. I have acknowledged that your playstyle is not Illusionism in the Forge-established meaning of the word as you are using it. I've said that repeatedly....yet your responses always go back to making that point. So, it's hard to engage since you seem to be disputing something other than what I am saying.

My original point was that there are elements common to both the playstyle you are putting forth (or at least in my interpretation of such) and a more traditional playstyle where GM force and illusionism come into the picture.

No. It's not part of any backstory until the moment of revelation.

As I posted upthread in reply to [MENTION=61721]Hawke[/MENTION]yfan,

A GM making a note - "If the appropriate situation arises, X claims to by Y's rather" - is not establishing any backstory, secret or otherwise. It's just brainstorming.

I disagree with you about this, to a certain extent. Not so much about the brainstorming aspect, or that such musings cannot be changed. But in the establishment of backstory. Perhaps some will see this as a pedantic point, but I think there is a subtle but important distinction here that may be a big factor.

If a GM introduces an NPC and has even a faint idea that the NPC will have a fate along the lines of being the father of one of the PCs, then I think something has been established. Not within the game world, I know, but established in the mind of the GM. I would expect that if that is the GM's intention....if he's even considered this as a possibility for this NPC....then that's going to affect how he uses the NPC. He's already putting that NPC into a position of importance. Certainly the PCs will latch onto the mysterious villain more than they will the shopkeeper who sold them some rope and a lantern.

The GM is very likely steering things in this manner. The degree to which he does so will vary greatly from GM to GM, I'm sure....but I'm sure it's there in many games.

So let's say there are two NPCs....a mysterious figure whom the PCs have run into and who seems opposed to them in some way. They don't know that much about this guy, other than that he's incredibly dangerous, and that very few people know about him. The GM has an idea that this NPC could be related to one of the PCs, could in fact be the father that the player had determined was an important element for the character. All framing or story establishment or scenario construction or whatever term you want to use is made with this in mind. It's never openly established in the fiction, but it's certainly not contradicted, and it's there in the back pocket of the GM to introduce when the time is right.

So the GM's ideas have already affected things to some extent. The fact that nothing is so definitive as to be a contradiction if the GM's brainstormed idea doesn't come to fruition doesn't change the fact that this idea has influenced things. At the very least, the game world will take shape in such a way as to not contradict the possibility of the GM's idea.

So, I think that even brainstorming helps to establish things to some extent....an extent that could in fact be important, and have an impact on how the game takes shape. Yes, these things could change....much in the same way that two rooms on a map can be swapped. This state of potential flux is the similarity I spoke of above.

In other words, all that the GM's narration establishes is that this NPC claims to be the PC's father. Nothing is established, in virtue of that, about who the PC's father is.

The only thing that is established as true in the fiction is that the claim has been made. Which the player knows.

Yes, the narration of the GM only establishes that the NPC has claimed to be the PC's father. This is entirely true. This can also be the case in a GM driven game. Let's say I am running a very backstory heavy game....it's plot heavy and there is little focus on the personal lives of the PCs. But I decide to change that and have the big bad guy turn out to be one of the PC's father. But then, as we build up to hat, something happens that makes me decide to change that....so I decide the unassuming shopkeeper is actually the PC's dad, and has been helping the PCs because he hopes they can stop the big bad, who was the shopkeeper's enemy long ago.....

Yes, there would be some proponents of GM driven games that would insist that the villain is the father because that's what the GM was going for. But not all GM driven games must be so. The technique you are describing is not unique to your chosen games.

If one thinks of the father example, for instance, one can imagine the player setting out to establish it as true that the claim is false. That would not be possible in a "secret backstory"-driven game; but is eminently feasible in a "story now" game.

Not be possible? Why not?

I don't disagree with it being very feasible in the "story now" approach.

Another example that I posted upthread - also in reply to [MENTION=61721]Hawke[/MENTION]yfan - exmplifies the same features:

The claim that the Dusk War is upon upon us! is the challenging revelation. The PCs deny it. Play will show whether or not they are right. This game literally could not be played if I as GM had already decided whether or not the Dusk War has come. That would turn the game from a struggle over the fate of the world into a mystery or puzzle-solving game - an instance of what you quote Ron Edwards describing as "exploration of situation".

I don't want to play a game in which the players explore the situation. I want to play a game in which they drive the situation. This is utterly at odds with the truth and the outcome of the situation already being established in the form of "secret backstory".

I don't follow your reasoning here at all. "Are these the end times?" or some variant on that is probably a really common element in many games, regardless of approach. And I would expect almost any GM to say that the answer is up to the PCs. Even if it's a pure railroad all along and all that matters is if the PCs defeat the big bad in the final encounter. If they beat the big bad, it ain't the end times....if they don't, it is. Up to the PCs, isn't it?

Again, I think you are assuming that a GM driven game must be the opposite of the story now/player driven approach that you prefer....so you assign attributes to it that may or may not apply. This is why I've described my game as a mix of both elements.....because I don't see them as mutually exclusive opposites.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

1) See my post above to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]. I wasn't asserting my own opinion. I was soliciting yours. I may not have framed things in a way to get that across.

When you say "Story Now games sort of have a higher incidence of coincidences like this," that is exactly correct. Table time for the players and on-screen time for the fiction should be spent "on the action". Baker's axiom for this in Dogs is "at every moment, drive play toward conflict."

But I was asking you personally about it because I've seen a lot of concern for "realism fidelity" and "table time/on-screen time exclusively spent on 'the action' " aversion throughout this thread (not necessarily all from you).

2) See my post directly above to Ovinomancer on GMing this scenario. To help, I'm going to give you some Dog's specific GMing direction straight from Vincent Baker:

a) "Follow the players' lead about what's important and what's not."

b) When you create The Towns, "something's wrong (Pride, Sin, False Doctrine, False Priesthood, Hate & Murder), of course...that's what makes the game interesting."

c) Setup; "you need some NPCS with claims to the PCs time, some NPCs who can't ignore the PCs' arrival, some NPCs who've done harm, but for reasons anybody could understand."

d) Don't have plot points in mind beforehand..."don't play the story". Just play The Town. Present the PC's with choices; "provoke the players to have their characters take action then...react (with your NPCs/The Town)!" Always do this to keep play driven toward conflict, over and over, escalating as necessary, until all conflict in The Town is resolved. (DitV 137-139)

e) Reflect between Towns with the players. Use what they've gained, lost, and given you to "push them a little bit further in the next Town."

1) See my post above to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]. I wasn't asserting my own opinion. I was soliciting yours. I may not have framed things in a way to get that across.

When you say "Story Now games sort of have a higher incidence of coincidences like this," that is exactly correct. Table time for the players and on-screen time for the fiction should be spent "on the action". Baker's axiom for this in Dogs is "at every moment, drive play toward conflict."

But I was asking you personally about it because I've seen a lot of concern for "realism fidelity" and "table time/on-screen time exclusively spent on 'the action' " aversion throughout this thread (not necessarily all from you).

2) See my post directly above to Ovinomancer on GMing this scenario. To help, I'm going to give you some Dog's specific GMing direction straight from Vincent Baker:

a) "Follow the players' lead about what's important and what's not."

b) When you create The Towns, "something's wrong (Pride, Sin, False Doctrine, False Priesthood, Hate & Murder), of course...that's what makes the game interesting."

c) Setup; "you need some NPCS with claims to the PCs time, some NPCs who can't ignore the PCs' arrival, some NPCs who've done harm, but for reasons anybody could understand."

d) Don't have plot points in mind beforehand..."don't play the story". Just play The Town. Present the PC's with choices; "provoke the players to have their characters take action then...react (with your NPCs/The Town)!" Always do this to keep play driven toward conflict, over and over, escalating as necessary, until all conflict in The Town is resolved. (DitV 137-139)

e) Reflect between Towns with the players. Use what they've gained, lost, and given you to "push them a little bit further in the next Town."

Got it.

I'll start with these statements:

a) Yes

b) There are a lot of ways to make something interesting besides "something's wrong" and I don't see a need to limit it to just that option. However, there is always something interesting going on, but it's not always immediately evident. This doesn't mean that I pre-determine something (although I often do), but it plays off the first point - sometimes the town isn't important to them. Sometimes it's just a place to rest, recover, take a break, and reprovision for example.

c) This depends on the characters. Not every adventure is NPC driven, although that's always an option and a lot of fun.

d) Totally agree. Although the town and the NPCs, etc. have their own stories. And while I agree that as a DM I will obviously provide things in the world, and they will sometimes initiate (or imply) conflict, I object to having to always drive toward conflict. (And I don't see how you can ever resolve all conflict in a town.)

e) Use what they've gained lost and given - yes, listen to the PCs to find ways to build on the stories. But as a DM I'm not pushing them to anything. It's up to the PCs to determine where they go next. Some (NPC driven) story arcs will be more compelling toward a certain direction, but not always.

Point a) specifically says the DM should follow the lead of the players about what's important and not. Moreso I think the players should be the primary authors of the story - as Eero pointed out, the DM is in control of the backstory and setting, the players in control of the story. Steps b) and c) continue in that approach, but then d) and e) instruct the DM to drive the story.

You asked about "realism fidelity" and "table time/on-screen time exclusively spent on 'the action' "

The "realism fidelity" is, at least for me, in-world consistency. I do have a lot of rules that relate to "realism" but they aren't related to the story directly so don't really apply here. From what I understand about a lot (but not all) Story Now games is that they are largely self-contained. That is, they aren't part of an ongoing campaign. So whatever comes up in the course of that game, of however many sessions, isn't relevant once you start a new game (story). But if the characters, locations, NPCs, and such continue from one campaign to another, that consistency can become more important. Some people won't care - if you play the HotDQ AP and then move onto OotA AP in 5e D&D, you don't really have to have consistency. But they are also largely self-contained, and they players will probably start with new characters for the second adventure.

For somebody like me, who had been running a continuous campaign from the release of the Forgotten Realms in 1987 until 4e came out, 4e really created problems. I kept up with the published timeline, with the various story arcs from novels, etc. occurring (mostly in the background), etc. So when they jumped ahead 100 years, it totally screwed existing campaigns like mine. Do we jump ahead the 100 years and drop all of our existing story arcs? And since the timeline has detailed some major events in the near future for us, do we incorporate those? In the end, once 5e came out, we've jumped ahead (made easier by new groups of players), but it was pretty annoying. As a result, though, I've also taken advantage of the shift to bring things closer to the way my campaign was during AD&D rules, and have modified the 5e rules to support that.

In and of itself, the Story Now approach makes for an interesting and fun game. And there really isn't a reason why I can't do the same thing in D&D. Sure, the rules don't specifically support it in the same way, in that the rules don't make you address the fiction directly as they are more mechanical in nature. But they don't prevent me from doing it either. But the instructions (all of the ones you list above) can easily be worked into the game.

So what I think I'm finding is that, for me, the "problem" with Story Now games is that they are very specialized. I like long form campaigns. I like to see the same group of characters work through life, growing and changing on the way. Where the journey is as important as the goal. With an ever-growing cast provided by the players, some of which relate to other characters/stories, others that don't. Story Now games are designed to be a movie - or a more short form approach. The focus is generally on conflict, a specific story line, and maintains much closer focus on that, since it's got a much shorter amount of time to address it than a series that has 22 episodes a year for 10 years.

Most of my campaigns literally run for years. Players have multiple characters, and NPCs or events that happened several years ago can come back into play. While I use a published campaign world, a significant portion of the organizations, villains and other NPCs are all directly from prior campaigns. The world is populated by people the players "know." In many cases these are older PCs that are no longer in active service (although they can be).

The canvas is different. It's more of a Tolkien approach, where he was as interested in the linguistics (not us - beyond me), and the history and world itself as the stories within it. My primary focus as the DM is providing an environment where the players can write whatever story they'd like. The world is the way it is because of the things that have come before. And figuring out what came before is also interesting.

From the character perspective, it gives you time to let the character grow. To find out what makes them tick, and makes them different from your other characters. Not that you can't do that in Story Now, but you're dealing with a shorter time-table, and a more intense scenario usually.

The Story Now approach often has the same problem that I have with a lot of current TV series. For example, Hawaii Five-O - my wife loves it. Except that every single week you have a small group of law enforcement involved in large gun battles with villains toting automatic weapons. In Hawaii. Why would anybody vacation there? The place is obviously crawling with out-of-control criminal elements.

It's ludicrous. The number of times law enforcement gets into gun battles with automatic weapon-toting criminals is quite low across the entire country. And it makes news when it happens. Usually national news. That type of show strains credibility with me and is another type of "realism fidelity."

It doesn't mean you can't have a great story in all that. Of course you can. I just prefer that I don't have that type of story every week.

The Story Now approach is very good at what it does. I think it would be a much better fit than earlier RPG attempts at James Bond. Mission-based would fit very well with the narrower focus of Story Now. Traditionally, Bond hasn't explored much about the character, but the last few movies have been more interested in how the job, the world, etc. weighs on him. Firefly, being episodic in nature and where the setting changes in each episode (or it's within the self-contained setting of the ship itself. Star Trek, etc. All of those would be well suited to that style. Really anything where the setting serves only as a backdrop. Where the characters don't really get involved in the politics and things like that. What it doesn't do is long-form dungeon-crawl, hex-crawl, how do the characters fit into the world as a whole approach. It is, in fact, often their stated goal to avoid all of that.

But I'm interested in more than that. Our campaigns have long-term story arcs for each character. But there are many short story arcs, and story arcs that tie the characters together, of course. But then sometimes they don't. My campaigns aren't party-based. They can be, like Fellowship of the Ring. But then, like that book, they sometimes split up. Permanently. They go separate ways. We play through their stories too if we want. Sometimes it's just a character that they are ready to retire, so the player and I work out what their goals are going forward, and they become an NPC. Until they decide to pick them up again. If ever.

At any given time with say, six players, there are a good dozen or so story arcs occurring. And a given session might not address any of them directly. And they aren't all "conflicts" in the sense that we're always trying to ramp up the action. I don't drive them toward a specific story or plot, even if it evolves between us as a group. They have lots of stories and plots, and pick what and when they want to engage in any given plot.

They aren't always "conflict" - could be mystery, could be comedy, whatever. Police and legal procedurals are interesting to me because they can cover a whole lot of ground in the human condition. In the world, in the stories, and in the characters. You can do this in Story Now games, but it's not optimized for that. In general, their focus is on a single type of story, with rules that strongly direct the story (or the DM) to create that type of story.

Most of the elements and concepts from Story Now games are solid and helpful. And the more I'm going through this thread, the more I'm finding that I use (or can use) a lot of the techniques. More importantly, to me anyway, is that they are also quite limiting in their approach. They tell one type of story very, very well. And they either don't support other types of stories, or they do it relatively poorly. (Does that mean it can't be done? Of course not.)

Table-time spent on the action is directly related to the type of story. Assuming a drama, hour-long TV shows spend more time on character development, outside of the main setting (police station, hospital, law firm, fire department, etc.) and in. They have the ability to dig a bit deeper than a 1/2 hour show that has to maintain a tighter focus. But I like dynamics. The periods between the action enhance the action, make it more intense, but in a different way.

Can you have a long-term campaign with a Story Now system? Dungeon World seems to be interested in the same type of worlds and general concept as D&D. But it doesn't encourage anything outside of the immediate story to be addressed in any way. It doesn't encourage cataloging and recording the places and people of the world for future use, or delving into the history, events, and ongoing plots that are (currently) independent of the PCs. Consistency isn't as important as the current story. That's fine. The goals are different. They just don't readily support my goals and needs.

One thing I can say, is that there is nothing within your description, or really the descriptions of anybody else's games that I object to. And I like a lot of the ideas and stories themselves. The only thing I do object to from time to time is how the story is generated. Like in the OP [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] made a Perception check to determine whether a vessel was there or not. Personally, I don't mind randomly determining whether or not a vessel was there, although as I noted it really probably didn't need to be a random check. But the idea that a characters Perception check, which is designed to determine if they notice something is there, as opposed to determine whether something is there or not, rubs me the wrong way. It's the same thing that bothers a number of folks as the idea that the act of searching for a secret door determines whether the door is actually there or not.

Now [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is used to the Story Now approach, which is more concerned with the scene or goal, rather than a mechanical task. And if everybody is on the same page with that, then allowing the Perception check to determine that the vessel is there isn't an issue. And there's no reason in a Story Now game that he can't decide that it just doesn't belong there, in which case it's not there regardless of the check. But to a lot of us, those are two different things: Is there a secret door present? And if so, can the character find it? One is a determination of setting, not story, in my world. The second is a use of a skill. For the original example, it was a question of story.

I like to treat my campaign like the real world. The world, as it is, is independent of the actions of the NPCs. And it's independent upon the actions of the PC (me). When I'm developing the campaign, I treat them as such. The stories can act upon the world, and the world can act upon the story, etc. That doesn't mean that I can't add a secret door if it seems appropriate in that location. But the answer is based on entirely different questions than whether it would serve the story here. Why would there be a secret door here? That's really the question that needs to be answered, not whether the character successfully detected an as-yet nonexistent secret door.

Is [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] wrong? Of course not. We just have different goals, and different approaches in reaching those goals.

As i'm writing this, my wife is watching The Secretary, a TV show about the Secretary of State if you're not familiar with it. So far (nearly a third of the episode) we've seen the Secretary of State for all of about 2 minutes. So far this episode is about a number of different plots, and multiple characters. I'm sure some of those will circle back to the Secretary, but not all of them. This is exactly the sort of thing we enjoy. With some of them carrying to future episodes, some not, and so on. Ironically, I'm not a fan of spotlighting, however, where one episode focuses on one character, etc. But depending on what's going on, the session will sometimes do that naturally - where the players choose to focus on something that's important to one character in particular, rather than me as the DM.

So for me, the Story Now techniques are a a great addition to the DM's toolbox. I'll continue to try to learn more so I can incorporate them into my campaign. But it's one tool, or perhaps group of tools, that will join the others in my toolbox, to be used where and how it works in my campaign.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

On a broader scale, in order to present a coherent relevant game world (and game, for all that) to the players through the eyes of their characters the DM has to have knowledge of said game world that the players (and characters) don't.

You keep asserting this, but - as I posted not far upthread - with no actual evidence. You haven't presented any evidence that those of us running games without secret backstory lack "coherent relevant game worlds".

How about I think that I am incapable of presenting a coherent relevant game world to the players through the eyes of their characters if I (the DM) don't have some prepared material and knowledge of said game world that the characters don't?

Does that work for you?

 

[pemerton]

If one thinks of the father example, for instance, one can imagine the player setting out to establish it as true that the claim is false. That would not be possible in a "secret backstory"-driven game; but is eminently feasible in a "story now" game.

Not be possible? Why not?

If you-as-DM don't know ahead of time that Col. Mustard did it in the Library with a +3 Mace then how can you possibly provide consistent clues and frame consistent scenes to that effect?

I have put these two quotes together because Lanefan's rhetorical question provides the answer to hawkeyefan's non-rhetorical one.

It's important, in my post that was quoted by [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION], that I said "player", not "PC". That is, I am not talking just about the PC setting out to prove that the claim of fatherhood is false - which presumably is possible in any game - but the player setting out to make it the case in the shared fiction that the claim is false.

In a "secret backstory" game, whether or not the NPC is the father is (presumably) known to the GM (if it's not, then there's no secret backstory!), and so the player's action declarations can't actually establish this bit of the fiction. All they can do is uncover it (which is what I have referred to upthread as "learning the contents of the GM's notes"). If the PC cast a Commune spell and asked "Who is my father?" or "Is the NPC my father?", the GM would provide the answer written in his/her notes.

Upthread I've already posted examples of the PCs trying to solve mysteries, and how this works in a "story now" framework where there is no "secret backstory". Here's one such:

Mystery: why did the PC's brother become possessed by a balrog?

Clue - narrated by the GM as a consequence of a failed Scavenging check: the PC searches the ruined tower where he and his brother once lived and worked, hoping to find the nickel-silver mace he left behind 14 years ago when fleeing attacking orcs; but instead, he finds cursed black arrows in the ruins of what had been his brother's private workroom.

Further clue - narrated by the GM as a consequence of a failed Aura Reading check: the PC reads the magical aura of the arrows, hoping to learn who made them - it was his brother!​

The clues point towards an answer to the mystery - the PC's brother was evil, and hence a fitting receptacle for balrog possession. They are narrated by the GM in accordance with the "challenging revelation" approach described by Eero Tuovinen.

The mechanics of the system are important here: every action declaration is resolved according to "say 'yes' or roll the dice". There is no automatic success comparable to classic D&D commune. So the aura reading is a check, which can result in failure, which enables me as GM to narrate another clue that points in the unhappy direction.

Here's another example:

Mystery: is the Dusk War upon us!

Clue - introduced by GM as part of framing: the tarrasque has risen from out of the earth and is wreaking havoc - this is one of the prophesied signs of the Dusk War.

Further clue - introduced by GM as part of framing (partly unprompted, partly in the course of discussion between the PCs and a NPC, partly in response to knowledge checks which were, in effect, requests for more framing detail): the tarrasque is surrounded by maruts who in ancient days made an agreement with the Raven Queen to ensure that no one would interfere with the tarrasque carrying out its rampage at a herald of the Dusk War.

The PCs responded to this by having one of their number attack the tarrasque and single-handedly bloody it, while the other PCs explained to the maruts that they had made an error in their cosmological calculations: this could not be the tarrasque heralding the Dusk War, because the ease with which it was being defeated meant that it could not be the harbinger of the end times. It must be some lesser precursor to that prophesied event. (Mechanically, this was both successful combat actions and success in a skill challenge to persuade the maruts.)​

In a "secret backstory" game the PCs presumably could persuade the maruts, but whether or not the prophesied end of days was here or not would itself be something already known to the GM (if not, then there is no secret backstory).

I don't follow your reasoning here at all. "Are these the end times?" or some variant on that is probably a really common element in many games, regardless of approach. And I would expect almost any GM to say that the answer is up to the PCs. Even if it's a pure railroad all along and all that matters is if the PCs defeat the big bad in the final encounter. If they beat the big bad, it ain't the end times....if they don't, it is. Up to the PCs, isn't it?

I am not talking about a world-threatening villain that the PCs might try and stop. I'm talking about a prophesied end-of-days - the Ragnarok or the Apocalypse.

The answer to the question is the Dusk War upon us is, in the fiction, either yes or no: it's either the end times, or it's not. But at the table, in the real world, the answer is not known. The players, like their PCs, want the answer to be no. There are NPCs - including the Raven Queen, it seems - who want the answer to be yes. Of course, the PCs don't have the causal power in the fiction to establish the answer - it's a cosmological truth. But the players, at the table, have the causal power to shape the fiction. That is the difference from a "secret backstory" game, where the answer to the question is settled in the GM's notes. (Again, if there is no such answer then we're not talking about a "secret backstory" game.)

Conversely, if all you have is an obviously-murdered corpse (let's say of the sister of one of the PCs, to make it dramatically relevant; and let's say that PC's player had already agreed to this out of session, to forestall that argument) and even you-as-DM don't know ahead of time how it died or at whose hand, then how on earth can the players hope to roleplay their PCs to investigate the murder and track down the killer? Sure they can ask questions of NPCs, conduct searches, and all the rest...and you-as-DM then have to role-play those NPCs, narrate the search results, and so on...which means you-as-DM are still supplying the answers.

First, a subsidiary point: the GM does not seek the player's agreement out of session. That would be making the mistake that Eero Tuovinen describes, of getting the player to author his/her own challenge. It is the GM's job to narrate the murder, whether as framing or as a consequence of a failed check. (As [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and I were discussing not far upthread, which of these, if either, is appropriate narration is the sort of decision a "story now" GM has to make all the time; if the GM gets it wrong, then the situation will fall flat, or fail to provoke a choice on the part of the player.)

Second, the main points.

(A) In a "story now"/"narrativistic" game the GM is going where the action is, in accordance with dramatic need. The sister has some significance. The sister's murder has some significance (eg it opens up the town council to control by the PC's rivals). The PC has someone in mind as the suspect. In short, the scene will provoke some choice on the part of the player. That choice will involve action declarations, which will be successful (in which case things unfold the way the PC hoped) or will fail (in which case things unfold unhappily for the PC).

Which leads to the other main point:

(B) It's simply not correct that "you-as-DM are still supplying the answers". Look at the examples I've given in this post; or other examples from upthread, like whether or not there is a vessel in the room where the unconscious mage has been decapitated. If the player's action declaration for his/her PC succeeds, then it is the player, not the GM, who is shaping the fiction. The player's successful Perception check established the presence of a vessel in the room. The players' successful defeat of the tarrasque made it plausible that it was not, in fact, the Dusk War harbinger but only some lesser incarnation.

Think about (A) and (B) in relation to the example [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] posted not far upthread, of the discovery of the brother's hat in the brothel. I don't know DitV's resolution system, but I can easily imagine how this might unfold in BW:

The PC picks up the hat from the hook in the foyer and strides into the main parlour of the brothel. He draws his pistol, holds up the hat, and calls out "The owner of this here hat had better come out here now, or I'll come and find him!"

At the table, the GM calls for a Command check, with (say) Conspicuous, Oratory and Intimidate folded in as augments.

If the check succeeds, some NPC stranger stumbles sheepishly out of one of the bedrooms, and the scene now evolves into a social encounter as the PC tries to find out how the NPC came by the brother's hat.

If the check fails, then the PC (and player) have not got what they want. So the GM narrates the brother coming out of a bedroom into the parlour, pulling up his britches as he comes. Now the situation has taken a very different turn . . .​

Because of (A), there is no fumbling around by the players or the GM wondering where to go to look for clues. The situation is charged with dramatic need. The player can declare actions. The GM can supply engaging framing.

Because of (B), the GM as much as the players is playing to find out. The resolution of the mystery will not be determined by the GM. It's not the GM who supplies the answers. The answers are generated by the consequences of action declaration: if the player succeeds, the PC's intent is realised; if the player fails, the GM narrates some consequence adverse to the PC's intent.

Note that, even on failure, the GM is not sole arbiter. It is the player who established the intent of the action declaration, and hence who establishes the parameters (adversity to or negation of that intent) that govern the GM's narration of consequences of failure.

Wouldn't it just make your job easier to know ahead of time what happened, so you can provide real or false clues and evidence along the way and know for yourself which is which?

Would it make my job easier as a baker of cakes for my family to buy one at the shop? To me, that sounds like giving up on my job.

As I've repeatedly posted, I don't want to play an RPG where the main goal of play is for the players to find out what I have written in my notes. And if my players want to find out what I think would make for a good mystery, well, they can read my novels! But as far as RPGing is concerned, I want to play to find out. For me, that's what RPGing is.

My original point was that there are elements common to both the playstyle you are putting forth

<snip>

If a GM introduces an NPC and has even a faint idea that the NPC will have a fate along the lines of being the father of one of the PCs, then I think something has been established. Not within the game world, I know, but established in the mind of the GM. I would expect that if that is the GM's intention....if he's even considered this as a possibility for this NPC....then that's going to affect how he uses the NPC.

<snip>

The GM is very likely steering things in this manner.

<snip>

So the GM's ideas have already affected things to some extent.

Sorry, I hadn't realised that any of this had been taken to be in contention.

Yes, the GM has ideas. Otherwise the GM couldn't frame scenes or narrate consequences. But I don't know what you mean by "steering things in this manner".

Consider one of the examples I posted around six or so posts upthread, from one of the sessions I participated in over the weekend: my GM included elves in the situation, because he like elves. And no doubt he had some ideas about what might happen with the elves (just as a GM might have ideas about NPCs and their connections to PC parenthood).

So, with whatever ideas he had in mind, the GM narrated the presence of the elf captain. I initiated the social exchange; and it seemed fairly clear to me that the GM had not expected me (in character as my PC) to try to persuade the elven captain to bring himself and his company to my PC's ancestral estate. The interaction of stat blocks, scripting (ie blind action declarations, which is how BW handles complex conflict resolution) and the dice dictated that the elf captain rebuffed my PC's invitation; but while the attempt failed utterly, as I posted upthread it nevertheless (i) got me some good advancement checks, (ii) let me have fun speaking my arguments as the rules require, and (iii) established more about my character and his relationship to the ingame situation. Following the interaction with the elf captain, I was the one who then chose that my PC and his companion would head off in a different direction from the elves without taking any lunch (which we had originally been planning to eat at the ruined homestead).

So anyway, as I've said, I don't know what you have in mind when you refer to the GM "steering things" in an episode of play like this. If you simply mean that the GM determines some elements of the fiction as part of framing - eg the elf, who didn't want to come back to my ancestral estate but rather to return to Celene with a fallen comrade - then as I said I didn't realise that was in contention. But if you mean something more, I'm missing what that is.

I think you are assuming that a GM driven game must be the opposite of the story now/player driven approach that you prefer....so you assign attributes to it that may or may not apply. This is why I've described my game as a mix of both elements.....because I don't see them as mutually exclusive opposites.

Well, as I've said upthread I don't know enough about your game to form any opinion on it.

But I think the contrast between the sort of approach that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is advocating for - in which the GM authors the backstory in advance, and the players' job includes finding that out in the course of play - and the sort of approach that I prefer, is a fairly clear one.

For all I know, you run a game in which you frame scenes according to dramatic need, and establish the content of the fiction in the sort of fashion that I have described: the interaction of framing, action declarations and consequences. Ron Edwards discusses this in two essays:

Sh*t! I'm playing Narrativist
In Simulationist play, morality cannot be imposed by the player or, except as the representative of the imagined world, by the GM. Theme is already part of the cosmos; it's not produced by metagame decisions. Morality, when it's involved, is "how it is" in the game-world, and even its shifts occur along defined, engine-driven parameters. The GM and players buy into this framework in order to play at all. . . .

Therefore, when you-as-player get proactive about an emotional thematic issue, poof, you're out of Sim. Whereas enjoying the in-game system activity of a thematic issue is perfectly do-able in Sim, without that proactivity being necessary. . . .

The Now refers to the people, during actual play, focusing their imagination to create those emotional moments of decision-making and action, and paying attention to one another as they do it. To do that, they relate to "the story" very much as authors do for novels, as playwrights do for plays, and screenwriters do for film at the creative moment or moments. Think of the Now as meaning, "in the moment," or "engaged in doing it," in terms of input and emotional feedback among one another. The Now also means "get to it," in which "it" refers to any Explorative element or combination of elements that increases the enjoyment of that issue I'm talking about.

There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s). . . .

Jesse: I'm just still a little confused between Narrativism and Simulationism where the Situation has a lot of ethical/moral problems embedded in it and the GM uses no Force techniques to produce a specific outcome. I don't understand how Premise-expressing elements can be included and players not be considered addressing a Premise when they can't resolve the Situation without doing so.

Me: There is no such Simulationism. You're confused between Narrativism and Narrativism, looking for a difference when there isn't any.​

It's very clear to me that Lanefan is running a game that, in Edwards' framework, would count as "simulationist" because "exploration of situation and setting". I think the same is true for [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION], but probably with a greater focus on setting and character rather than situation. But you, [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION], haven't said enough about how you run your game, or provided examples of play that would illustrate your techniques. So I can't tell.