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

[Crimson Longinus]

Here’s where I’m at.

One: Creating fiction in response to each other is trivial. The player does something and the GM makes up whatever. Rinse and repeat.

Two: Constraints are what makes role-playing fun. So if you prep an adventure with fictional stuff, you have your constraints. This is broadly the trad model.

Three: Constraints, trajectory and purpose work together to allow us to play the fiction and find out what happens. The constraints are the thing that give rise to the imagined causality of role-play, as if the fiction has a life of it’s own. The trajectory is the mutual thing, we as a group want to find out. A question(s) we want the answer to.

Four: if there is no or very minimal myth, then the constraints AND trajectory must come from elsewhere. Usually formal structure and mechanics.

Yes! This is exactly where I was getting at! Like if we don't want the game just be the GM leading the players along a story, then there must be some constraints. In trad approach they come largely from the prep. If the prep say says that there is trap in the treasure chest and there is a key in the flower pot then that's where they are. But if that is not predetermined, then it is better if there is something more concrete than the GM just makes it up on the spot. Like that of course can work and some of it always is present, but all of the game is just that and it applies to important decision points as well, then it can get pretty GM-storytimey. And personally as GM prefer to have more constraints and structure. So then we need some sort of mechanics, that tell the GM when to say that good or bad stuff happens, even if they invented the specific nature of it on the spot.

However, one of my issues with many implementations of such is that the acausality of consequences leads to weird incentives where the player and character decision spaces diverge. Like for example if the presence of a trap on a thing can be generated as consequence for poor investigation roll or some such, then a poor investigator should never examine things first, as their inaptitude has a high chance quantum collapsing the situation into unfavourable one, even though from the perspective of the characters this makes no sense.

And this is probably me overthinking things, and if this sort of thing happens just occasionally it might not be that noticeable in actual play, but I am the sort of person who is rather perceptive about such structures so it bugs me somewhat.

 

[Joerg Baumgartner]

As a GM, I am telling the start of a story at the very least, the "what went on before". Even when the game sets off in medias res (i.e. a combat encounter), there is a previous story for the players to find out (unless being ambushed or similar is just a Tuesday encounter for your murder hobos).

 

[zakael19]

So the question ‘what integral design elements support that?’ is very broad. I’m not a fan of either Blades or low myth PbtA. Blades tends to work when the GM is being very attentive to the consequences and currency. I’ve seen this work but because it’s popular it’s held up as an exemplar when in fact it requires a specific skill set.

I'm not sure what you mean here re: "attentive to consequences and currency."

Like if we don't want the game just be the GM leading the players along a story, then there must be some constraints. In trad approach they come largely from the prep. If the prep say says that there is trap in the treasure chest and there is a key in the flower pot then that's where they are. But if that is not predetermined, then it is better if there is something more concrete than the GM just makes it up on the spot. Like that of course can work and some of it always is present, but all of the game is just that and it applies to important decision points as well, then it can get pretty GM-storytimey. And personally as GM prefer to have more constraints and structure. So then we need some sort of mechanics, that tell the GM when to say that good or bad stuff happens, even if they invented the specific nature of it on the spot.

The way I've worked around this is to have strong player-goals that we're driving play towards. Then when I frame a situation out, the players can make action statements that push the scene towards what they're looking for, and when I need to set stakes I do so before a roll and we reframe after.

I ran low prep/myth (but not no-myth, I need some scaffolding to hang my GM hat on and get excited about or I fizzle out) Tales of the Valiant like that - using a Skill Challenge structure to frame out the conflicts en-route to goals. Worked great: obtained players goals; framed scenes; roll dice; resolved.

Risks were framed before any rolls were made as well. No "causality" issues, because we simply weren't doing stuff like "I roll perception to see if there's a trap" but instead me going like, "yeah, you see a chest right where you were told it would be - surely the Gem of Zulimar you're seeking is in there! But there's a fiendish set of runes all about, clearly some sort of trap. What do you do?"

 

[thefutilist]

I'm not sure what you mean here re: "attentive to consequences and currency."

The GM needs to frame the player into decisions that are consequential for the mechanics. I’m bad at explaining how to do this because it’s not of particular interest to me. I’m only dimly aware of why Blades is fun and that’s only because I’ve played Dungeon World with a Blades GM and had that kind of ‘aha’ moment as to what the system is doing. You’re using all these currencies but for the currencies to matter there has to be something solid (akin to myth) for them to grind up against. Take this with a pinch of salt though and feel free to disregard anything I say about Blades, it’s not my wheelhouse and when I actually ran it I didn't understand it at all.

 

[zakael19]

Take this with a pinch of salt though and feel free to disregard anything I say about Blades, it’s not my wheelhouse and when I actually ran it I didn't understand it at all.

How I feel looking at anything Luke Crane had a hand in.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Focusing on the OP (to avoid catching up on 34 pages of discussion), I tend to run my games less as plots/stories and more as 'narrative-rich spaces' in the sense that they're full of setting, and character, but rather than a plot, these elements interact in ways that don't conform to traditional storytelling.

Any stories you have are less "Lord of the Rings" and more "Let me tell you about the crazy stuff that happened on our family vacation" in structure, or involve acts of narrative archaeology, where the characters are unearthing other narrative elements in the setting and each other and reacting to them, becoming a lens through which to experience stories that aren't them, but then becoming part of it by reckoning with the reality they present.

Mechanics exist to produce constraints that shape an alignment between player and character, with variations by game (mainly in how the player views the character's struggles) but I prefer a broad alignment (my character's goals are my goals, and vice versa) the variation I like is more like Curseborne, where players are incentivized to emphasize flaws and monstrous curses and the like in exchange for mechanical tools they use to push toward their character's goals.

You'll note that the narrative incentives of that push against some conventions of storytelling in prefab narrative, I consider that a core feature of the medium.

 

[SteveC]

I think this is a really interesting discussion! I am thinking about just this issue in my own game design at the moment. I describe my game as "play to find out" so I had to think about it a lot.

In general, how I run a game depends on what I'm running, in terms of both the system and scenario. I ran Curse of Strahd when it first came out. I introduced the group to Strahd right away. He said "I am having dinner this Saturday at my castle, please be there." And the players asked what day it was: it was Monday. That gave them a definite time before they were going to "my dinner with Strahd." (And then someone pointed out that in the Realms, weeks had 10 days, which allowed me to point out a difference in Barovia that I totally had planned out already )

I am currently running Abomination Vaults. At the start of the game, the bad guys turn on their super weapon. The group was able to determine it would take about a month for it to recharge, so they had about 30 days to get to a specific point in the scenario.

In both of those cases, there was something happening at that point in the future, but I said "what are you going to do?" in the meantime.

For my own game, the players engage with a particular plot, and I put a clock into play for when the bad guys are going to finish what they are doing. There are also clocks for larger issues going on. When they find out about it, I put the clock actively into play where they can see it. It gives them a feeling of "we can do stuff, but time is passing in the world" and I find that generates the pressure I need to make things fun, while still letting them explore things as they will.

That's how I do it now, but if I was running a more scripted module (which I don't think is a bad thing) I would get their buy-in before starting play that we were going to have a more constrained time period.

 

[pemerton]

I ran Curse of Strahd when it first came out. I introduced the group to Strahd right away. He said "I am having dinner this Saturday at my castle, please be there." And the players asked what day it was: it was Monday. That gave them a definite time before they were going to "my dinner with Strahd." (And then someone pointed out that in the Realms, weeks had 10 days, which allowed me to point out a difference in Barovia that I totally had planned out already )

I am currently running Abomination Vaults. At the start of the game, the bad guys turn on their super weapon. The group was able to determine it would take about a month for it to recharge, so they had about 30 days to get to a specific point in the scenario.

In both of those cases, there was something happening at that point in the future, but I said "what are you going to do?" in the meantime.

What is the process for determining the passage of time between the announcement of the deadline, and the arrival of that deadline?

Some RPGs I've played are pretty clear about how time passes, and how that relates to players' declared actions: Classic Traveller (especially when it comes to travel); Mythic Bastionland; Torchbearer 2e (although the time in this system is more abstract).

Others leave it almost completely up to the GM, who narrates the passage of time basically as part of the colour/flavour of the ingame events: 4e D&D, Prince Valiant, Agon 2e and Marvel Heroic RPG are all examples of this.

In that latter sort of game, setting a deadline doesn't really give the players any authority over what they can get done before it arrives.

Even in the former sort of game, setting a deadline may not give the players much authority if the geography, events that impede the players, etc are all determined by the GM, unless the players are clearly able to obtain information to make things gameable. This is the case in TB2e and, I think (based on less experience) Mythic Bastionland. It is quite a bit less so in Classic Traveller.

For my own game, the players engage with a particular plot, and I put a clock into play for when the bad guys are going to finish what they are doing. There are also clocks for larger issues going on. When they find out about it, I put the clock actively into play where they can see it. It gives them a feeling of "we can do stuff, but time is passing in the world" and I find that generates the pressure I need to make things fun, while still letting them explore things as they will.

What triggers the "ticking" of these clocks? I think it creates a pretty different play experience if that is connected to player action declarations (eg advance a clock as a consequence of failure) or not (eg the GM advances a clock when they think it "makes sense").

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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

I'd agree with this, though I think one can easily overstate how different that story is for each person.

Now, you can force games to be more like stories by demanding certain beats be present and forcing pacing, etc... But every single element that makes play more like a story makes it less like an RPG -- because RPGs are defined by their embrace of player agency. In trad games this is mostly the GM, but more modern games give players tools to put their fingers on the scale as well.

I mean, I don't think that's necessarily true. Because I don't think there's the hard contradiction between player agency and story-like elements in all cases, especially because, as you point out, a lot of more recent RPGs let the players make the game more story-like, but often that also increases player agency, rather than decreasing it.

I think the most "story-like" (as played through) RPG adventures tend to be what people refer to as railroads, and to feature a lot of "cutscenes" where the PCs are onlookers who can't really influence anything, and those absolutely remove player agency and make things more "story-like". But stuff like a PC being able to spend a meta-resource to have a plausible NPC suddenly make an entrance to a scene or something - that makes things feel more like a story without, I would argue, diminishing anyone's agency (including the DM). Also a lot of DM abilities to do that same are similar - spending Fear to do things in Daggerheart, if you're doing it right (and the game does explain how) rarely diminishes player agency or detracts from what they've done, but can make things more story-like and dramatic, very easily. However, it is freeform so the DM is absolutely capable of derailing "the story" too with that kind of thing. I've seen DMs derail their own stories before, intentionally and otherwise.

Also, particularly well-designed adventures (Mothership has a lot of these) can feel very like a cool story even though they're not railroading you particularly hard. I think space horror as a genre is particularly easy to make feel like a story as so many RPGers are familiar with it (more, I would argue, than are actually, genuinely, honest-to-god familiar with fantasy as a literary or movie/TV genre) and tend to instinctually lean in to genre tropes or see situations in terms of genre tropes.

I do think whether the players lean into or away from the genre of the RPG/adventure, and understand that genre and its tropes can often make a big difference as to how "story-like" an adventure/scenario is. Also whether the characters themselves can jive with the genre or whether they clash with it. Some people take issue with how modern D&D has embraced all classes and species and so on, in settings and adventures as well as rules but it does mean that the older issue one saw in 2E and to some extent 3E where the colourful bunch of weirdo PCs clashed massively thematically and stylistically with the narrow assumptions and vibes of an adventure is much less often an issue.

All that said, possible the most enjoyable Mothership adventure we ever did (actually a mini-campaign) was absolutely a total mess story-telling-wise, and would totally impossible to write down in any way that made it make sense (the DM tried for the first few sessions but then gave up!). And that was down to player agency - and the dreaded basically-at-will time-travel. Once serious frequent time-travel gets involved it's very hard to tell a compelling story even in conventional media. But it was totally chaotic fun.

 

[SteveC]

What is the process for determining the passage of time between the announcement of the deadline, and the arrival of that deadline?

In both cases, this was "an adventuring day." So the group got up in the morning, did as much as they could do, and then did a long rest. And the timing advanced.

In the case of Abomination Vaults, I am running it with Foundry, so I have a plug-in ("Simple Calendar") that has a built-in Pathfinder calander that I can show the group every day. Since it was 30 days, they had time to adventure, and even some downtime fo crafting, but they still had time pressure on them.

In the adventure, there is an actual reason the weapon was powered up, and something they could do to power it down temporarily, which I did some quick calculations and thought it wouldn't be outrageous to put that timeframe on. And after they completed that quest, the bad guys did something else with another time limit on it to an NPC that I had introduced and they cared about. That's where we are now.

What triggers the "ticking" of these clocks? I think it creates a pretty different play experience if that is connected to player action declarations (eg advance a clock as a consequence of failure) or not (eg the GM advances a clock when they think it "makes sense").

That's a really good question. In my own game, I put that into the game. One of the consequences of failing a check is advancing a clock, although I limit things to advancing it once per session. I also advance it if time passes without action. I wanted to strike a balance between giving the players agency to do their own projects, but also say "time is passing in the world." It is a balance that I think some people would enjoy and others would not like as much, since it makes things less linear and more about making hard choices.

I sort of thought about the part in Spiderman (the Sam Rami one) where the green goblin gives Peter an impossible choice of who to save. Or Superman with Lex Luthor firing off two missles to have Supes have to choose between Lois and millions of innocent lives.