Let's talk about "plot", "story", and "play to find out."

[Lanefan]

Way late to the party here and I've only read the first few posts, but...

What do you think of TTRPGs (broadly) in relation to "story." Are RPGs "stories." Are they "story generators"? Something else? How do the particular mechanics of a game interact with what you think the relationship is? How about adventure structure, particularly for campaign length adventures, from At The Mountains of Madness to The Enemy Within to Curse of Strahd?

For you, personally, are you telling a story when you play a TTRPG?

For my part, I think you are creating a story through play, but that story is not what happens at the table per se. Rather, the story is how we talk about it after the game is done. Stories have a structure that does not really work in play. RPGs are messy, ephemeral things in play, with terrible pacing and contradictory plot elements. But once play is done, the thing that remains with us is the story that RPG play generated.

For me, as DM I'll often have plotted out or "story-boarded" what the next few adventures are likely to be ay any given time (if for no other reason than doing so gives me time to write them, if necessary). I'm not married to the storyboard, though; and what they players do with/to those adventures, or whether they even engage with them rather than left-turn to something else, is entirely up to them. Anything finer-tuned than that is also up to them, as are their downtime activities and so on. (IME downtime activities, with the right players and-or characters, can produce more story than the actual adventuring!)

The actual moment-to-moment and day-to-day in-game story of the party and its characters, such as said story may be, doesn't appear until after play is done. Any capital-s Story structure that might arise is almost always due to pure random chance and mostly noticed only in hindsight: sometimes it'll be years later when reading over old game logs that I'll realize "Crap, that worked out better than I thought!".

Recent example: Five years or so back, I ran a party through a couple of adventures in my setting, leading to a somewhat momentous event (namely, an in-game reason for a significant on-the-fly rule change). A few real-world years later I ran another completely unrelated party through a homebrew five-adventure series, leading to a different momentous event (namely, finding-learning the key to fixing their broken world).

It wasn't until reading back through the game logs last week - two years after that second series finished - that I realized that by sheer luck and without any planning on my part both those momentous events in fact occurred on the same in-game day. Had I noticed that sooner I could have made some use of it, with people unsure which event led to which downstream consequences and effects; but in-game time has since moved on to the point where it's a bit late for that now.

One of my more oft-repeated sayings as DM is "You can't script this [shizz]".

Perhaps most interestingly, that story is different for every participant.

I'm not sure this claim holds up; or if it does it implies each player is almost playing a different game than the others.

Perception of the story might be different in each player's eyes, but - like with any media - the story itself is the same.

As is probably obvious, I am an advocate of playing to find out and presenting situations rather than plots or adventures.

Ass both DM and player I'm fine with the adventure being presented to the players as a hook or whatever as long as the players are then left free to approach and deal with that adventure in any way they see fit at the time. Or not approach; if the players bail on it and-or left-turn into something else entirely then it's on the DM to react to that and run whatever they decide to get into.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Hm? The game presents 5 categories of Consequences (as in, the things you bring into play as the fiction and rules demand):

• Reduced Effect
• Complication
• Lost Opportunity
• Worse Position
• Harm

Starting or ticking a clock is considered a Complication consequence, "I'm going to mark two ticks on the 'Suspicion' clock as your poor attempt to dance makes speculative gazes fall your way" or "I'm marking 3 ticks on the 'back offices burn down' clock as the papers fly out of the filing cabinets and spark more flames!"

And the sad thing is that "complication" is potentially the most interesting of these, if it is something you need to immediately respond to instead of kicking the can via making it a clock.

Ah ok. So "sneak past the guard" isn't our objective here. It's get into the house unnoticed. We care about goals, right? The Obstacle is "the guard notices you" your Action is "I'm going to shimmy up the house nice and slow so he doesnt see me, and I'm going wrap my Fine Shadow Cloak around me for extra cover, Prowl?"

And the Position is probably Risky, Effect ... Great? On a success, you'll slip inside unnoticed.

Yes, I don't quite see the point of the semantic diversion here. The situation is as I described. But the fact remains that if you fail at that, thus as a consequence would be noticed, but you roll to resist it and thus don't, but fill your stress gauge as a result and get a trauma, it is a hella stupid and anticlimactic way to get traumatised!

 

[Reynard]

]I'm not sure this claim holds up; or if it does it implies each player is almost playing a different game than the others.

Perception of the story might be different in each player's eyes, but - like with any media - the story itself is the same.

In the context of RPGs and "story", I think this is a distinction without a difference.

 

[Fenris-77]

Hm? The game presents 5 categories of Consequences (as in, the things you bring into play as the fiction and rules demand):

• Reduced Effect
• Complication
• Lost Opportunity
• Worse Position
• Harm

Starting or ticking a clock is considered a Complication consequence, "I'm going to mark two ticks on the 'Suspicion' clock as your poor attempt to dance makes speculative gazes fall your way" or "I'm marking 3 ticks on the 'back offices burn down' clock as the papers fly out of the filing cabinets and spark more flames!"

These are the mechanics by which the consequences are measured and tracked, not the actual consequences. If you ignore the fictional positioning of the whole action declaration/adjudication loop everything gets wacky.

Declarations and consequences are always and forever specific to the 'fiction' as it currently stands at the moment of the action in question. The mechanics exist, as it were, before and (in the above case) after that to track effect from action to action across multiple characters and situations.

Let's say you try to dodge a guard. The result of a failed roll there is never 'take harm' or anything like that. The consequence is he sticks you in the ribs with his polearm. That gets interpreted by the GM as 2 harm, or in different circumstances a clock ticks or whatever, but in all those cases the mechanics are secondary. Necessary, but secondary.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm not sure this claim holds up; or if it does it implies each player is almost playing a different game than the others.

Perception of the story might be different in each player's eyes, but - like with any media - the story itself is the same.

It's the Rashomon effect; each participant's recollections are their own story, and each story illustrates a part of the greater whole.

 

[zakael19]

These are the mechanics by which the consequences are measured and tracked, not the actual consequences. If you ignore the fictional positioning of the whole action declaration/adjudication loop everything gets wacky.

Declarations and consequences are always and forever specific to the 'fiction' as it currently stands at the moment of the action in question. The mechanics exist, as it were, before and (in the above case) after that to track effect from action to action across multiple characters and situations.

Let's say you try to dodge a guard. The result of a failed roll there is never 'take harm' or anything like that. The consequence is he sticks you in the ribs with his polearm. That gets interpreted by the GM as 2 harm, or in different circumstances a clock ticks or whatever, but in all those cases the mechanics are secondary. Necessary, but secondary.

Sorry, I'm really not getting why you're bringing this up. I thought we established that this all follows from the fiction / Position & Effect discussion already? Is there something you're trying to clarify here I'm just not seeing?

And the sad thing is that "complication" is potentially the most interesting of these, if it is something you need to immediately respond to instead of kicking the can via making it a clock.

You can combine Consequences as the fiction demands. Tbh, "Less effect" is pretty boring; the rest can be very interesting and again, combined! "You take a sharp blow across your arm and drop your sword, what do you do?" is pretty interesting! Harm + worse position to fight again.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

These are the mechanics by which the consequences are measured and tracked, not the actual consequences. If you ignore the fictional positioning of the whole action declaration/adjudication loop everything gets wacky.

Declarations and consequences are always and forever specific to the 'fiction' as it currently stands at the moment of the action in question. The mechanics exist, as it were, before and (in the above case) after that to track effect from action to action across multiple characters and situations.

Let's say you try to dodge a guard. The result of a failed roll there is never 'take harm' or anything like that. The consequence is he sticks you in the ribs with his polearm. That gets interpreted by the GM as 2 harm, or in different circumstances a clock ticks or whatever, but in all those cases the mechanics are secondary. Necessary, but secondary.

I don't think they are secondary. Harm is listed in the rules as possible consequence, thus it is something the GM can choose in a situation that calls for a consequence. Then fiction is invented why that harm is suffered in the story.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You can combine Consequences as the fiction demands. Tbh, "Less effect" is pretty boring; the rest can be very interesting and again, combined! "You take a sharp blow across your arm and drop your sword, what do you do?" is pretty interesting! Harm + worse position to fight again.

Yeah, the reduced effect is the worst. And good point about combining the things, I like that. Though whilst I think that hurt arm + dropped weapon is OK, I also think that there can be better ones, ones that move the story into unexpected direction. But of course not every consequence needs to be that, and indeed if they were the overall narrative might become too erratic.

 

[Fenris-77]

I don't think they are secondary. Harm is listed in the rules as possible consequence, thus it is something the GM can choose in a situation that calls for a consequence. Then fiction is invented why that harm is suffered in the story.

This is the exact opposite of how actions are adjudicated. Our two different readings of the rules on this point explains a lot. The mechanics explain (frame, make game sense of) the fiction, not the other way around. Without the specific fictional outcome there is nothing to adjudicate or apply mechanical effects to.

 

[Fenris-77]

It's the Rashomon effect; each participant's recollections are their own story, and each story illustrates a part of the greater whole.

You need to trademark that shizz.