D&D 4E Pemertonian Scene Framing and 4e DMing Restarted

[AbdulAlhazred]

I can only give personal recollections, so with that proviso..

Game designers and some players were definitely aware of some of the possibilities a good bit earlier.

1st of all I would say the sandbox wasn't a RESPONSE to anything. The sandbox was the Ur State, where D&D started. I mean it might have in its most prototypical form have been just "here's the dungeon, go any direction you want" but the point was you DID always go whatever way you wanted. The DM might trick you into going a certain way or put out the bait, but no GOOD DM forced anyone to do anything. Obviously simplistic railroad was an easy outgrowth, the DM had only a certain adventure to run, so choo choo you ended up there. Even back in the earliest days that wasn't really considered tolerable DMing.

In any case IIRC Top Secret SI had some sort of meta-game stuff. Toon was releasd in 1984 by SJG and very definitely was almost ABOUT the meta-game/breaking the 4th wall, etc. Admittedly though, MOST early 80's designers were focused laser-like on better sim. I think the thought was that somehow if you could make an RPG that was a perfected enough simulation of the genre then somehow it would be qualitatively better, thus such monstrosities as Twilight 2000 which simulated every detail of your character's gun and which bullet he was using and exactly where to the inch you got shot, etc. I'd say by the mid-80's that misapprehension had been thoroughly popped.

Interestingly I do recall people using meta-game mechanics as house rules, even in the 70's. There was a Boot Hill campaign where after we'd played through a number of pointless rounds of bar fight, guns, everyone bleeds dead, we invented a plot point. Your character could invoke it to do most anything, but informally you had to use it 'fairly' to make your character's story better. You were actually expected to even use it against your character if it made his story more cool (characters were pretty disposable in that game anyway). One of the GMs got a bit carried away with it and we never quite carried that on as a general thing into other games, but the germ of the idea was definitely floating around.

It certainly is true enough IMHO that the whole thing didn't solidify and become generally understood until WW came along, and a few other similar things. I guess every idea has to percolate for a while before it ripens (ah the mixed metaphors).

 

[Bedrockgames]

I dont think it is as much a question of evolution as trends and fads. Twilight 2000 is actually a pretty solid game for example, built for an era when people expected more crunch and more realism. It is entirely possible we could return to that trend again (just like Tarentino re-ignited an interest in 70s film and bucked the trend of highly efficient minimalist dialogue). Now, if that trend happens again, it will certainly be different. I think there are certain things people just wont do anymore in rpgs in terms of mechanics that are all over the place. But I do think there is a danger in thinking there is some kind of straight line of progress from the 70s to today, when it comes to adventure structure or what the mechanics emulate. A lot of this is trend as well as design improvement.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So glad to see this topic continue to survive. /congrats

A few questions I've been saving...

Regarding scene-framing and protaganism: there's an old adventure design hack where some predetermined encounter (or scene) occurs because the PCs cross some (usually narrative) state threshold, and the DM springs the scene in a way that might be variously be described as It Just So Happens, By Some Coincidence, or Look Who Got Here First. We've been jacking around in the dungeon privy for the last 5 hours dissecting otyughs for loot, but as soon as we set foot in the lizard shrine, Stuff Happens. In a video game, this might be called a 'scripted event'. Paizo's APs, for example, make generous use of scripted events. They can be especially useful as icebreakers; Paizo's AP formula shamelessly leverages opening scripted events to inject the PCs directly into the main storyline (Carrion Crown's opening is particularly brilliant). However, most of the time these things are obvious, often arbitrary, story constructs foisted on the party because they crossed an invisible line somewhere (or said the magic word or whatever). I have found that players are pretty accepting of these 'offers you can't refuse' (see what I did there), mostly due to the social contract at the table. In fact, my experience as a player is by the time you've slogged your way into the 5th book of an AP, you're quite happy to see these triggers take over, because that means you are Finally Getting Somewhere.

Now, I recognize that this isn't scene-framing, but scripted events do express an element of protaganism; that's what they're there for, a kind of primitive proto-scene framing device to bring the PCs into the action. I think this also meets the description of pressure, right? The problem is, in addition to being procedural pre-scripted story elements without much player input, they're usually just a bit too obvious. They stick out like a mic boom caught in the frame. Is there a trap you can find yourself in with scene-framing, where strong protaganism has led you to one coincidence too many? Is there a risk of being a bit too Dramatically Correct? No-myth play in particular seems like it would be pretty unrelenting in this regard.

One outcome of procedural play is the occasional non sequitur that reminds players there are Other Things going on besides their story. Which is explicitly anti-protagonist, of course, but when fans of procedural play refer to immersion, I think this is one of the of outcomes they're looking for, whether it was actually randomly generated or not. If you're scene-framing from player-offered button pressing all the time, is there a risk of predictability that needs to be managed? Can (or how would) you integrate an externally-generated scene into an A<B framing style game to provide pressure without telegraphing the script authoritah.

Here's what happened with me. Sometime right after 2e was released I conceived of a grand campaign. This was something like 1988/89 I guess. I sort of conceived of this as the ultimate sort of classic D&D campaign. The good guys (PCS) would be defending their kingdom against the bad guys, complete with all the various cheesy high fantasy elements. The key part though was a sort of master calendar that detailed all the things that the bad guys would do. So it was basically sort of the ultimate time-and-space sandbox, plus a bunch of those 'trigger' type things, somewhat like the way Paizo does some of their APs now, except I took that a lot further. Way too far of course as I found out pretty quickly.

The end result was managing the whole giant schedule of world events and trying to logically figure out the 1st and 2nd order effects of whatever the PCs did (because of course, while they played the basic role they were given, they did all sorts of unexpected things). Pretty soon I devolved it down to just forgetting any sort of attempt at logic in terms of the campaign world and just used what I had as dramatic fodder for scenes that were fun and interesting. The PLOT didn't really make that much sense, the bad guys were no longer a sandboxy force of evil, they were just dramatic set dressing. If I needed 10 more wyvern-riding evil knights I just slapped them in there, never mind that the original concept said their were exactly 13 of these guys named this, that and the other.

It ended up working fairly well. NOW I would pull off that campaign pretty handily and not waste time on stuff that was not useful, etc. Still, I went in with only some half-formed ideas drawn from 70's vintage D&D play about how to make a story and came out the other side with something a lot different. Playing some games like Paranoia and Toon kind of helped, though certainly the sort of scene-framing you guys are talking about now wasn't really sorted out back then.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I dont think it is as much a question of evolution as trends and fads. Twilight 2000 is actually a pretty solid game for example, built for an era when people expected more crunch and more realism. It is entirely possible we could return to that trend again (just like Tarentino re-ignited an interest in 70s film and bucked the trend of highly efficient minimalist dialogue). Now, if that trend happens again, it will certainly be different. I think there are certain things people just wont do anymore in rpgs in terms of mechanics that are all over the place. But I do think there is a danger in thinking there is some kind of straight line of progress from the 70s to today, when it comes to adventure structure or what the mechanics emulate. A lot of this is trend as well as design improvement.

Oh sure, and my brother-in-law LOVES Aftermath/Twilight 2000, just eats it up. We played it some and it was fun, up to a point. It was just evolution to something of an extreme in one direction. The game was well-written IIRC. It just wasn't really my cup of tea. I didn't care about the differences in jam percentage and accuracy between an AK-47 and an AR-15. I wanted to know how being jumped by a bunch of guys with guns would play out when the PCs were trying to get to medical care because a key NPC was sick. Would they do some heroics with guns, negotiate, give up, sneak around, etc. One way or another a dramatic scene was likely to play out, either a PC sacrificing themselves or the NPC dying, the party cleverly sneaking past in the nick of time, etc. While the characteristics of different guns could be factored into that it wasn't a very useful tool since how things played out would ideally be driven by player engagement with different aspects of the plot, and not so much game world physics, which just serve to explain things afterwards.

 

[Kurtomatic]

I'm wary of allowing any one playstyle to lay claim to immersion. I've seen a tendency by some people to want to stake it out as some sort of territory. I think it comes with a playstyle which suits you, not with a playstyle.

No worries, I'm not advancing any one-wayism. My preferred approach is focused on achieving outcomes and bringing the largest tool box I can carry to the table to create those outcomes.

So regarding immersion through simulation (which is only just one flavor of immersion), process is only one of a number of ways to create a simulation; simulation is bigger than just procedure (see Turing test). Simulation is about imitating a target model, and the classic fantasy RPG sandbox is only one of many possible models to choose from. That level of navel-gazing is fine, but what really counts is quality time at the table; everything else is in service of that.

No-myth sounds like a lot of fun, and it's something I'd be willing to try as a player. As a GM, however, I simply don't have a quorum of players that are well-suited to that level of commitment to the narrative. Just as you say. Ultimately, I'm looking for ways to hybridize techniques like scene-framing into a more traditional D&D table. Perhaps even subvert the procedural elements to some degree, without wearing a "This is an INDIE GAME NOW BIOTCHES!" t-shirt.

One of the practical obstacles to the old-school sandbox is player engagement. Without some kind of story-whip driving them around, some players can become lost in decision paralysis. This isn't turtling, usually simple inertia. It seems to me that the genius of scene-framing, bangs, etc, is empowering the DM to inject momentum into the game while still driving the narrative from player choices. I've been looking for ways to drive player engagement (momentum) through character advocacy, hence my interest is this thread.

 

[D'karr]

No worries, I'm not advancing any one-wayism. My preferred approach is focused on achieving outcomes and bringing the largest tool box I can carry to the table to create those outcomes.

That's all scene-framing provides, another tool in the toolbox. I know I said it in one of the previous threads but with all the closings, openings, closings, and reopenings it may be lost to the conversation. If the players are leading, then follow. But if they're not leading then you need to inject something for them to follow. Sitting around for hours with everyone looking at each other for a direction leads to an extremely boring game.

As I've grown older, I have little to no patience for boring games.

 

[MarkB]

This might be veering a little off the main topic, but this caught my attention.

I had no idea that the Pathfinder APs were so deadly! I guess that can be an issue when writing an adventure for a system with such a wide range of variability in PC effectiveness - where is the "sweet spot" to design around?

I don't know about the current APs, but back when I was running Savage Tide, Paizo made no secret of the fact that they were building for veteran gaming groups, players who could (and would) create highly optimised characters.

I can certainly attest to that in practice. Our group considered ourselves reasonably experienced, but they still saw a heavy turnover in PCs over the course of the game.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I don't know about the current APs, but back when I was running Savage Tide, Paizo made no secret of the fact that they were building for veteran gaming groups, players who could (and would) create highly optimised characters.

I can certainly attest to that in practice. Our group considered ourselves reasonably experienced, but they still saw a heavy turnover in PCs over the course of the game.

I think Savage Tide was the last adventure I played under 3.x (and we were not using PF), and it seemed not too bad, but the DM may have been adjusting things, and we didn't get all that far before the group fell apart (it was PbP).

 

[Storminator]

I don't know about the current APs, but back when I was running Savage Tide, Paizo made no secret of the fact that they were building for veteran gaming groups, players who could (and would) create highly optimised characters.

I can certainly attest to that in practice. Our group considered ourselves reasonably experienced, but they still saw a heavy turnover in PCs over the course of the game.

That was my experience as well. Every melee character (and cohort, and animal companion) died. I was very happy to stop DMing that.

PS

 

[D'karr]

That was my experience as well. Every melee character (and cohort, and animal companion) died. I was very happy to stop DMing that.

PS

I think my least favorite part of that AP, before we just stopped playing entirely, was the travel to the Isle of Dread. It was horribly boring. We arrived at the Isle, did some stuff and just called it quits.