Let's Not Save The World...Again

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It used to take a lot less to make us feel heroic. Guns and ships and criminals used to be good enough, as in the stories of Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and even James Bond as written by Ian Fleming, not as he's known from movies. In pulps, it was enough to defeat a gang or an unusual villain. The "science fiction" adventure of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne is surprisingly tame by contemporary standards. Now we want everything in movies to be flashy and completely unrealistic, approaching the ridiculous, as in most comic book movies and other action movies (Indiana Jones IV, anyone?).
Jaded: "tired, bored, or lacking enthusiasm, typically after having had too much of something;"
"feeling or showing a lack of interest and excitement caused by having done or experienced too much of something"

We see it in video games: "save the world (or galaxy)" is a pretty common, almost mundane, motivation. It's not enough any more to rescue the kidnapped person or prevent a dastardly deed.

"Saving the world" creates a cheap sense of grandeur. It's the Age of Inflation, everything has to be "stunning" or "awesome," everybody is "saving the world." I call that jaded.

I played in a campaign where, invariably, we faced such waves of monsters that few of us (sometimes only my character) were left standing. The GM evidently manipulated numbers so that this would happen. But it became almost tedious rather than exciting.

We lose impact when it's always "save the world", or always any particular outcome/objective. Pacing is vital both in games and on the screen, and good pacing requires alternate tension and relaxation. If every story is “epic”, epic becomes normal, not extraordinary. If we always save the world, that becomes mundane. Games (like life) benefit from variation in tension/relaxation. The contrast makes them both more intense and more enjoyable. Good pacing would mean alternating the Save the World objectives with others at a lesser scale. (For an under-3-minutes explanation of pacing see https://youtu.be/QAPkcr4b0EE.)

What can a GM do? Set expectations from the campaign beginning. Choose players (and adventures) wisely. Make "Great Objectives" the purpose of an entire campaign, not of each adventure. The threat of death, or of losing all their stuff, should be enough to thrill adventurers without resort to saving the world.

In my campaigns, stretching back more than 40 years, we've never saved the world; an entire campaign might be about saving a city or country, but that didn't happen in every adventure (nor any particular adventure, really). Saving the world calls for really experienced (high-level) characters, and few get that high.

If it isn't enough to risk death, regardless of objective, then there may not be much you can do about jaded players. Or maybe there's no risk of death in your campaign? That could lead to boredom: no extreme lows.

References:
Extra Credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LScL4CWe5E
Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4032/beyond_pacing_games_arent_.php

contributed by Lewis Pulispher

 

[Istbor]

When I run into that feeling, like I have made my players save the day/world/multiverse one too many times, then I take a different approach to the next campaign, should I be the DM. That is, "Taking over the world". While one could argue a point that you are 'saving' it. It doesn't typically feel that way. It starts out small, gaining influence, followers, land and power, and eventually you are a force to be reckoned with.

I had fun running it, and my players have had fun playing the not-so-good guys.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I have similar thoughts, but it's not really "save the world" that I find is as the main issue - it's the focus on gaining levels and abilities along with designing "cool stuff". It's not the scale of the story that matters, it's the focus.

In most movies, books, TV series, etc., the focus is on the characters and their stories. Sometimes the setting plays a large part, and the story is how the characters react to the setting. But in most cases (there are some exceptions) there isn't a lot of advancement in the skills of the characters. Indiana Jones is Indy, Bond is Bond, Superman's abilities are well known and largely haven't changed in decades. Luke Skywalker did advance, but the rest of the characters around him for the most part didn't.

In addition, the setting is usually fairly consistent, and more importantly, used to set the stage. The most successful of the Indy movies are set against a backdrop of WWII, with the Nazis as the villain. Superhero villains return again and again. The same applies to the many villains in Bond movies. In a lot of TV series (mostly non-fantasy ones, but also science fiction like Star Trek), there is no overarching villain. Each story is self-contained, although sometimes there's a bigger story looming in the background that becomes the focus from time-to-time. Police or legal dramas have an endless parade of crimes to solve, criminals to put behind bars.

Major villains are frequently thwarted, but not killed outright. They return again and again.

The advantage of an approach where characters remain at a certain level for a long time is that you have time to get to know the characters. For the characters to grow. To see how they'll handle a certain situation, survive this challenge, etc. Knowing that they aren't the most powerful beings in the universe. That survival or success isn't assured.

While I love the D&D 5e ruleset, it's heavily weighted toward success. Level advancement is very fast, and new abilities every couple of levels. Next week's monsters are "bigger and better" and encounters are designed around mathematical equations driving toward combat, but make sure it's not too hard. The APs are designed to bring characters from 1st level to 15th level (with some variations), with a big story to go with it. Once you reach the end, there isn't really many places to go with those characters from there. The design seems to imply it's time to make new characters and pick up the next AP, instead of maintaining the same characters across multiple APs.

That's an inherent problem with the "level-up as a goal" design - eventually you level out of the system. It's always been a challenge for DMs, and 4e tried to address it, but the 4e approach had its own issues. Mostly because as long as level advancement and gaining new abilities is the goal of the game, you can only go so far.

It reminds my of a common problem TV shows have at the end of a season. Instead of continuing with their development of the characters and their stories, there's some big event that shakes up the world of the show. Half the cast might be dead next season! Except that the first episode of the new season neatly resolves the issues, and everything goes back to normal (often completely ignoring the ramifications of those couple of episodes). Of course, the end of the next season has to be even bigger.

While I understand that Spielberg and Lucas wanted to get away from the Nazis in the Indiana Jones franchise, they are the perfect type of villain, like the Russians in Bond or other spy series of the era. You can't destroy the ultimate villains and their network, just thwart their current plans. War settings in general work well as a backdrop, as there are always stories to tell, missions, or challenges that somebody must handle, but you know they aren't going to defeat the opposing army single-handedly. The mob is a good model for an a villainous organization (or organizations, as they have rivals of their own).

But recent RPG design recommends against recurring villains. Expect that the encounter with your villain will result in the death of the villain. Don't take away your player's victory by allowing the villain to get away. The design model is to drive toward the encounter with the BBEG, and success is defined as the destruction of the BBEG.

As I was going through the AD&D PHB recently, a picture near the end struck me as a perfect example of how the focus of RPGs has shifted. It's a picture of a small group of adventurers leaving the dungeon. The rogue (thief) has a bag of loot, and is looking back, as if there's more to be found, and there's a silhouette of a dwarf, and a fighter, holding a bag of loot, and raising his axe to the sky. And to me the picture is all about survival. Not the big battle with the BBEG, but we simply got some treasure, had some adventure, and survived. They are excited simply to be able to leave the dungeon, to adventure another day.

There doesn't have to be any more story than that. Like a cop show, each episode is about a new crime to solve, a new criminal to identify and stop. A party of adventurers just has one more dungeon to explore. Come back to town, blow it on the high life, and go back and get some more. There doesn't even have to be a big story to go with it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against their being a story. But it doesn't always have to be "bigger and better" than the last one.

 

[Mallus]

The extremely popular Lensman series, finished at its core by the 1940s, had humans save the universe; I don't know any other setting that broad, or that high-powered with people throwing around planets. The Golden Age of comics was when Superman and the other big superheros were at their flashiest and virtually invincible, whereas the later Iron Age offered us guns and gangs.

I was going to post about Doc Smith's Lensmen. By the end of the series, using entire planets as FTL missiles wasn't good enough. They used planets made of antimatter. And the series bad guys were a race of ultimate brainy evil that decimated entire continua (if I'm remembering the Eddorians backstory correctly).

Even incidental details ran towards the big & crazy, like the species that thrived in environments like Pluto's and grazed in another dimension.

And didn't a lot of early DC pantheon of heroes, barring of course the Batman, resemble mortal gods? All flying and super-strong and nigh-invulernable, decked out in capes? It was Marvel in the 1960s and 1970s that popularized supers down at the more human, street-level scale.

edit: I'm all for reducing the scale/scope in genre fiction & games that rely on their tropes. But I also wary of arguments that describe a perfectly reasonable-sounding history narrative which is also false.

 

[lewpuls]

Perhaps I should explicitly state the obvious: my articles here are descriptive, not prescriptive. I can't care how you run or play your game (unless I'm playing!).


prosfilaes, I just reread the Lensman series. Yes, it's apocalyptic, yet so much of it is individual adventures, quite a contrast, and I think quite unusual.


No one can "prove" much of anything in 500 words (and usually, not in 5,000). Trends are trends, you can always find exceptions (such as Lensman), yet finding individual exceptions doesn't destroy the generalization about hundreds or thousands of items. "No generalization is always true (not even this one)."


I have an historian's skepticism of saving the world, of conspiracies, of the supernatural. There's a place for high-stakes objectives in FRPGs, it's when that's done over and over again that it becomes tedious.


Ilbranteloth, I pose what you've described, as players who focus on the destination, not the journey. If you rise in levels rarely, you'll pay more attention to what's happening every session. But we've been doomed by video game RPGs.

 

[Hussar]

But, how is this anything new?

Going back to the early history of D&D - you have the GDQ series. One of, if not the most popular module series of the game. There's no going back. There's no revisiting. And it's all about getting to the next boss, which is bigger and badder than the last boss.

Or the A series of Slaver's modules. Again, same thing.

Even the T series was intended as this ongoing complete campaign.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against their being a story. But it doesn't always have to be "bigger and better" than the last one.

But, since day 1 of D&D, it's always been thus. You go to the dungeon, do whatever, come back, gain XP, gain that level, go back to the dungeon to go deeper with bigger monsters and bigger threats, and then wash, rinse repeat.
[MENTION=30518]lewpuls[/MENTION] is trying to pin this on video games. Good grief, this was part of D&D when video games consisted of Pong and Pac Man.

And just to address [MENTION=30518]lewpuls[/MENTION] directly - you repeatedly claim that you cannot "prove" anything in 500 words. Then why are you trying to prove something? Why are you making claims about the "way things were" and "the way things are" when those claims are very contentious? Instead of making broad, sweeping claims about history that, perhaps focusing on means to compromise or resolve what you see as an issue might be more productive?


........ Edit to add

Just to be fair, I do enjoy these articles. They are thought provoking, and they do have a pretty interesting point. The problem I have, is that the history is spun in such a way that it's very difficult to get to the message without first trying to address some quite questionable attempts to paint the history of the hobby in a very self serving light. No, it is not true that we've gone from local to world shattering fiction. No, it's not true that it used to be that we were happy with fighting gangsters. Good grief, A. C. Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame, wrote The Lost World - a lost island full of dinosaurs where humans evolve into vampire demons. ((and we'll ignore the incredibly racist bent for now)) Not exactly "dealing with gangsters".

 

[pemerton]

In most movies, books, TV series, etc., the focus is on the characters and their stories.

<snip>

As I was going through the AD&D PHB recently, a picture near the end struck me as a perfect example of how the focus of RPGs has shifted. It's a picture of a small group of adventurers leaving the dungeon. The rogue (thief) has a bag of loot, and is looking back, as if there's more to be found, and there's a silhouette of a dwarf, and a fighter, holding a bag of loot, and raising his axe to the sky. And to me the picture is all about survival. Not the big battle with the BBEG, but we simply got some treasure, had some adventure, and survived. They are excited simply to be able to leave the dungeon, to adventure another day.

There doesn't have to be any more story than that.

There doesn't have to be. Likewise, in narrative ficiton, there doesn't have to be any more story than there is in Hardy Boys books. But obviously some readers prefer more.

I've never encountered anyone who plays classic dungeon crawl D&D for the story. If you want a RPG in which the focus is on characters, and their stories - rather than, say, on a combination of effective planning and clever play in the moment - then who would recommend starting with a dungeon crawl of the sort advocated in the 1st ed AD&D PHB?

recent RPG design recommends against recurring villains.

Which RPGs have you got in mind? At the moment I'm GMing games in three systems, all of which is relatively recent (4e, BW, MHRP/Cortex fatnasy hack). None recommends against recurring villains. And all my campaigns have featured recurring villains.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Ilbranteloth, I pose what you've described, as players who focus on the destination, not the journey. If you rise in levels rarely, you'll pay more attention to what's happening every session. But we've been doomed by video game RPGs.

I'd probably characterize it as the opposite, that to us it's about the journey, not the destination. But yes, with level advancement slower, you tend to focus more on the story and the characters.

But, how is this anything new?

Going back to the early history of D&D - you have the GDQ series. One of, if not the most popular module series of the game. There's no going back. There's no revisiting. And it's all about getting to the next boss, which is bigger and badder than the last boss.

Or the A series of Slaver's modules. Again, same thing.

Even the T series was intended as this ongoing complete campaign.

But, since day 1 of D&D, it's always been thus. You go to the dungeon, do whatever, come back, gain XP, gain that level, go back to the dungeon to go deeper with bigger monsters and bigger threats, and then wash, rinse repeat.

Yes, and no. Originally, the concept behind D&D was that the DM would prepare their own world and dungeons. It took TSR a while to start publishing adventures, in part because Gary reportedly didn't think anybody would want to buy them. The original modules published often came from tournament adventures.

B2 (Keep on the Borderlands) was a good example of the original design approach, where you'd have a home base and a dungeon to explore, and as you cleared out things, new things could move in. We did play those adventures, but they were within the context of our ongoing campaigns. Where each of us had a number of adventurers at any given time. You had Ed Greenwood's and others articles in Dragon magazine that were implying a broader approach to running a campaign, that became even clearer with the release of the Forgotten Realms set.

The issue I have isn't that it's not possible. The 5e rules (other than the very fast advancement) do allow this approach and it works very well. But the presentation of the rules, adventures, and such point very much to the BBEG playstyle. To give them credit, they have tried to make each AP unique in it's feel and specific approach. And for a mass market game, their approach is much easier to support and to pick up a casual game.

I can't really speak for others, but back in the day, everybody I met and played with had the more character focused, long-term approach. Where they would have play the same characters for years (while adding others for other parts of the campaign as needed).

[MENTION=30518]lewpuls[/MENTION] is trying to pin this on video games. Good grief, this was part of D&D when video games consisted of Pong and Pac Man.

And just to address [MENTION=30518]lewpuls[/MENTION] directly - you repeatedly claim that you cannot "prove" anything in 500 words. Then why are you trying to prove something? Why are you making claims about the "way things were" and "the way things are" when those claims are very contentious? Instead of making broad, sweeping claims about history that, perhaps focusing on means to compromise or resolve what you see as an issue might be more productive?


........ Edit to add

Just to be fair, I do enjoy these articles. They are thought provoking, and they do have a pretty interesting point. The problem I have, is that the history is spun in such a way that it's very difficult to get to the message without first trying to address some quite questionable attempts to paint the history of the hobby in a very self serving light. No, it is not true that we've gone from local to world shattering fiction. No, it's not true that it used to be that we were happy with fighting gangsters. Good grief, A. C. Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame, wrote The Lost World - a lost island full of dinosaurs where humans evolve into vampire demons. ((and we'll ignore the incredibly racist bent for now)) Not exactly "dealing with gangsters".

Absolutely, they existed before video game RPGs. But it wasn't the predominant approach. There is no doubt, that D&D and RPGs has always supported many playstyles, and the games being released in the late '70s and early '80s began to highlight the many playstyles around. My "objection" if you want to call it that, is that the predominant game style has moved away from what I see as its roots. That's my perspective. On the other hand, as I've said, I think that for the game as a whole, the approach that WotC has been taking seems to be a very successful approach, and their purpose is to build the brand and sell more games. And they seem to be doing well with that.

 

[Hussar]

See my problem with that characterization of the history of the game is that both the G series and the D series predate the ADnD DMG. How can we argue that it was this or that way back in the day when you had both approaches being punished at the same time?

 

[prosfilaes]

No one can "prove" much of anything in 500 words (and usually, not in 5,000).

Again, do you want a participation trophy? Rise up to the challenge of 500 words, don't complain about it.

Trends are trends, you can always find exceptions (such as Lensman), yet finding individual exceptions doesn't destroy the generalization about hundreds or thousands of items.

But you have to establish that something is a trend, first. You say "hundreds or thousands of items", but in 2013, in books alone, there were 305,000 titles published (plus 459,000 self-published titles). What did you count? Did you in fact count anything?

As per [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], there is an interesting discussion here about saving the world again, but by starting it off with a claim about history that's not at all convincing hurts the discussion.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

There doesn't have to be. Likewise, in narrative ficiton, there doesn't have to be any more story than there is in Hardy Boys books. But obviously some readers prefer more.

I've never encountered anyone who plays classic dungeon crawl D&D for the story. If you want a RPG in which the focus is on characters, and their stories - rather than, say, on a combination of effective planning and clever play in the moment - then who would recommend starting with a dungeon crawl of the sort advocated in the 1st ed AD&D PHB?

Which RPGs have you got in mind? At the moment I'm GMing games in three systems, all of which is relatively recent (4e, BW, MHRP/Cortex fatnasy hack). None recommends against recurring villains. And all my campaigns have featured recurring villains.

My point about the story is that it doesn't have to be the epic "end of the world" type of story. It can be similar to an open ended TV series where each episode focuses on the same characters in a different story.

And I said RPG design, not specific games. Just like there are a lot of blog posts and recommendations across the internet about "the DM should say yes" many of them also recommend against letting the BBEG get away at the end, that it "robs the players of their victory."