Player-driven campaigns and developing strong stories

[pemerton]

It might be good to add that if a GM wants a player driven game, they will have to make a group. Your chances of it just happening are close to zero. You can't just want over to your group of friends and expect them to be all be exactly what you want. The GM will need to make the group, person by person.

I don't think there's any particular evidence for this. In my experience most RPGers are happy to be creative about their PCs, and to decide things like What my character wants and What my character does.

 

[pemerton]

If the GM says "your torch slips from your hands and falls into the pit, you only have one left." Where's the illusion? You get one torch left, do you press on or turn back and fail to get the cure for the Fighter's illness?

See how this works, it's all in the open, simple pressure. Create threats, act on them.

Exactly this.

 

[bloodtide]

What does that have to do with narrativist RPGs. At most it's a truth of human nature.

Gamers are humans.

Basically at this point you might as well just call it cooties.

Ok, but I don't know what that is.

So I don’t understand what you’re imagining here. The incentive structures are set up in every way to defy Force (both in a GM’s temptation to use it and in a GM’s application of it during play). The game just works when you have neither metaplot nor preferred inputs, its fun to not have those things and be surprised by where play goes, and the system openly defies you and exposes you if you try to fight against it and impose metaplot.

I can understand your confusion. The problem is your narrow focus. You say things are things because you say they are, then say you play a game a set way. Then say see what was said does not happen if you follow everything I said. And, ok, that is true with that very narrow focus. So to understand, widen your focus.

Though I'd be interested to know how the system does stuff?

I don't think there's any particular evidence for this. In my experience most RPGers are happy to be creative about their PCs, and to decide things like What my character wants and What my character does.

Sure, that's maybe less then half of the players out there. A good chunk of the other half are the self insert ones that just play the game as themselves. And the rest just want to play the by-the-numbers combat game.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I've listened to like enumerable podcasts and "how to DM" videos and read books about DMing theory, and I've come to the conclusion that the vast majority of the ones that think they are running character driven games are really running high illusion GM driven games.

What games have you played or GMed that promote player-driven play? Not which have you read, or which have you listened to a podcast about? Which do you have actually play experience with?

Because I and several others in this thread have shared actual games and actual examples of play that display that player-driven play is absolutely possible, and all you have done to take the opposite stance is to insist it is so.

Why should a neutral observer of this converstion listen to your opinion over that of others with the opposite opinion?

Oh, I agree. One of the things that came out of the Forge era is a realization that the processes of play weren't well encoded, described and transmitted to the players. A lot of the games that came out of the discussion do a very good job of not only telling you the rules, but also telling you how they want the game to be played.

This is both good and bad.

How is it bad? Generally speaking, I'd expect clarity in any set of rules and procedures would be viewed as a positive. In what ways do you think it is a negative?

Player Driven is where the game is made for the real life players. They are playing their character as a self insert: as themselfs. If the player likes combat and loot, then the character likes combat and loot. The player cares nothing about the fiction at all. For example if they have an elf character and some elves ask for help, the player utterly does no care and just asks "can we have more combat now?"

That doesn't sound like anything anyone is promoting here as player-driven play.

It's more about letting the players determine the direction and focus of play. Or at least, letting them have much more say than is often present in traditional games.

And, don't all the highly praised games, like Dungeon World and Blades in the Dark force the players to do things? Is this no really a huge point of these games: to force the players to play the game? Though sure "force" is too harsh, as it's more "strongly encourage", but it's the same at the end.

Force players in what way? I mean, if I suggest Blades in the Dark as a game, I suppose the players are "forced" to play a criminal type of some sort, and to band together with the other PCs into a crew. But I think that'd all be covered by basic acceptance of taking part in the game. Once we're beyond that point, there's not a lot of play that is forced on the players.

There is some structure to the game... it's expected that the characters go on scores and then recover during downtime, and so on. But otherwise, no, not much is forced on the players. I mean, they're expected to follow the rules, but I don't think that's what you have in mind.

Have you ever played or run these types of games?

It's not seeing the forest in the trees sort of thing. The whole game is an illusion. See these games were made as an alternative to D&D types games where the DM has all the power, and the players just play along. With the rules of these games, it feels like limits are placed on the GM and it feels like the players are given tons of power. And a GM that wants to can really lean into the whole "ask question thing" with "react to the players thing" and act like they have a blank slate in mind for everything. This gives the players the illusion they are all powerful and in control of the game, and making the GM just play along.

It's not a binary situation where either the GM has all power, or the players have all power. There is shared authority in these kinds of games. There are rules that are expected to be followed by each participant. I think that's one of the main differences between these games and many traditional ones (or traditional-minded GMs maybe): the GM is not above the rules. They are expected to honor what the dice say, and what the players declare.

Do you typically think that there is anything that the GM cannot override about the rules? I know that's how it seems from your past posts. Many games specifically don't want that to happen. No secret rolls, nothing happening without the players being aware... all of this stuff limits how the GM is able to steer things.

It might be good to add that if a GM wants a player driven game, they will have to make a group. Your chances of it just happening are close to zero. You can't just want over to your group of friends and expect them to be all be exactly what you want. The GM will need to make the group, person by person. It takes time, but you can make whatever group you want.

What do you think about games that are designed to deliver that exact experience? Don't you think it's more likely that such a game would make it easier for players to get into that kind of mindset? Like, if that's the way the game works, why would the players have a hard time with it?

 

[Thomas Shey]

What do you think about games that are designed to deliver that exact experience? Don't you think it's more likely that such a game would make it easier for players to get into that kind of mindset? Like, if that's the way the game works, why would the players have a hard time with it?

While I'm more on your side than not here, I think this ignores that there are a certain number of players who, at the least, do not want to do the lifting to derive their own purposes. They might not need a GM to do it for them, but they'd at least need the other players to because its just not something they're interested in; they just want to go and play.

 

[pemerton]

I think this ignores that there are a certain number of players who, at the least, do not want to do the lifting to derive their own purposes. They might not need a GM to do it for them, but they'd at least need the other players to because its just not something they're interested in; they just want to go and play.

And?

There are players who want their RPGing to closely resemble a tabletop wargame, or a board game; there are other players who want their RPGing to be very different from these other sorts of games?

There are all sorts of players. Who see "going and playing" as involving different sorts of things.

If the OP is wanting to increase the player-driven elements in their RPGing, presumably they believe that they know, or can find, some players who'll be up for that.

 

[hawkeyefan]

While I'm more on your side than not here, I think this ignores that there are a certain number of players who, at the least, do not want to do the lifting to derive their own purposes. They might not need a GM to do it for them, but they'd at least need the other players to because its just not something they're interested in; they just want to go and play.

Sure, and there would be any number of games and/or GMs that would suit. I’m not challenging anyone’s preference in this thread. I’m simply saying that the kind of game @Yora described in the OP is possible.

Having said that, I don’t know how much of the difference we can attribute to the “lifting” you mention here. It assumes greater effort on the part of the players. I don’t know if that’s always the case.

It may be, but it may not. For instance, I’ve played in plenty of trad games where the play group simply could not figure out what they were “supposed” to be doing, despite great effort toward that. I’ve certainly found such games harder than many others. I’ve also found GMing such games to be far more challenging in many ways. And less so in others.

I think it’s too subjective to attribute it to anything other than preference.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, and there would be any number of games and/or GMs that would suit. I’m not challenging anyone’s preference in this thread. I’m simply saying that the kind of game @Yora described in the OP is possible.

No argument. It was more your last sentence ("Why would players have a hard time with it?") I was reacting to: they'd have a hard time with it in some cases because they just fundamentally don't want to do it. I'm making no claims how common this is, just that its a thing.

Having said that, I don’t know how much of the difference we can attribute to the “lifting” you mention here. It assumes greater effort on the part of the players. I don’t know if that’s always the case.

It may be, but it may not. For instance, I’ve played in plenty of trad games where the play group simply could not figure out what they were “supposed” to be doing, despite great effort toward that. I’ve certainly found such games harder than many others. I’ve also found GMing such games to be far more challenging in many ways. And less so in others.

I think it’s too subjective to attribute it to anything other than preference.

I'm not claiming that it is, just that with some people its strong enough it doesn't matter what tools the game they're playing give them, because they just won't use them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And?

It was a response to his last sentence.

 

[hawkeyefan]

No argument. It was more your last sentence ("Why would players have a hard time with it?") I was reacting to: they'd have a hard time with it in some cases because they just fundamentally don't want to do it. I'm making no claims how common this is, just that its a thing.

Sure, but again that seems about preference rather than either player ability or difficulty with the rules.

I'm not claiming that it is, just that with some people its strong enough it doesn't matter what tools the game they're playing give them, because they just won't use them.

I wouldn’t disagree. But I took your use of lifting to imply effort. I think there’s a difference between not being able to do something and choosing not to do it.

Generally speaking, I don’t think that Story Now type games are overall any more or less difficult to play than traditional games. So, setting aside any individual’s preference for or against them, I’m not sure what more you were trying to say.

To reframe my original point here, and again, setting aside matters of preference, I think a game like Apocalypse World and many of its PbtA offshoots enables player driven play without the need for a whole lot more effort on the part of the players. I would say it involves a different sort of effort, but not really more effort.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I wouldn’t disagree. But I took your use of lifting to imply effort. I think there’s a difference between not being able to do something and choosing not to do it.

"Choosing" I think implies a more proactive process than the people involved are using, I think. Its more inertia than anything else.

Generally speaking, I don’t think that Story Now type games are overall any more or less difficult to play than traditional games. So, setting aside any individual’s preference for or against them, I’m not sure what more you were trying to say.

I'm just saying that engaging with it on the level Story Now wants requires more thought than they want to give. We aren't talking about people who are often exactly playing anything but the most basic types in other games. If you wound them up and aimed them, they might be able to go through the motions in a Story Now game, but I find it unlikely the other people playing would find them bringing much to the table.

To reframe my original point here, and again, setting aside matters of preference, I think a game like Apocalypse World and many of its PbtA offshoots enables player driven play without the need for a whole lot more effort on the part of the players. I would say it involves a different sort of effort, but not really more effort.

Different is sometimes sufficient, especially when you're dealing with people who only borderline engage as it is.

 

[Yora]

To stretch out a metaphor excessively far, if we want the players to do any lifting, the game should provide plenty of easy to see handles to grab on to. Being proactive shouldn't require special skills or exceptional creativity.

The classic dungeon crawling style of old D&D is very good at that. The game rules lay it out clearly that progress in the form of character advancement is made by finding treasures. So players easily understand that what they are supposed to do is to go searching for treasures. And the fiction of the setting lets them know how to reliably begin that search: Find the locations of dungeons. That's where treasure will be found. And if the GM did a halfway decent job, learning about more dungeons is easy. Just ask the relevant people: Sages, mayors, priests, innkeepers, and so on.
The choices to be made here for the players are very simple ones: "Who should we ask for clues about dungeons?" "Which of the dungeons we know about should we go to?" Give them a few more hints like the dungeons being "the haunted crypts", "the caves in the spider woods", and "the bandit lair somewhere on the mountain pass", and the choice which place they want to go to starts to become significant, as it will determine what strategies they will plan for and what kind of supplies they want to bring.
Even when the players think they could just flip a coin when making these initial choices because of how little information they have to go with, they will later understand that everything that's happening to them would not have happened if they made a different choice earlier. I find this to be a very significant part of the experience of playing a player-driven campaign.

Forged in the Dark games have their own way of providing structures by making their adventures jobs that the players will set the basic parameters for before they head out. Rob this place, steal that thing. In Blades in the Dark, these jobs serve to give the players progress points which they can use to extend their control over the city's underworld with the goal to become its criminal lords. Scum and Villainy and The Sprawl lack this campaign progress, which I think means there are fewer handles for the players to hold on for pursuing a long term goal.

When you have infinite options and unlimited choices, it's really hard to take charge of the story because there are too many possible decisions that could be made. Games always benefit from having some kind of structure that reduces decisions from coming up with one of infinite many things to choosing between a limited set of options.

Now this is of course something that is quite specific to the style of the fiction of individual campaigns. Old D&D and Blades in the Dark are both very limited in what kind of adventures they mean to offer. Treasure hunting in dungeons and comitting crimes to become the crime lords of a city.
I guess to provide meaningful structures for the players to work with, the overall style of the campaign's fiction has to be established first.

 

[Bagpuss]

The problem with the players being given a series of immediate task by a superior authority is that it again limits the impact that player decisions to short term situations. They still go from point to point as they are being directed to by the GM as servants of NPCs who make the actual decisions where the story is meant to go.
It's certainly an improvement over an all railroad campaign, but still far off from the goal.

Then make the Players the authority figures. This is what Kingdom by Lame Mage does. All the players are the "rulers" of the Kingdom, be they advisors, wealthy individuals, influencers or an actual King.

No prep and no GM, so there can be any GM Railroading.

The nature "Kingdom" is decided by the players are the start of the game, be a gold-mining town in the Wild West, a dwarven collective living in a active volcano, a deep space research vessel, a school of magic, a pirate ship stealing Spanish gold, or an actual medieval Kingdom.

They then decide what threats are faced by the kingdom, be they external ones, like barbarians raiding from the east, or internal ones like the the gold mines are nearly played out.

The players decide on locations within the Kingdom, to set their scenes, they can draft in NPCs.

Then they play through a series of "crossroads", decisions the kingdom must face, that speak to the direction and nature they want the kingdom to take. "Do they leave the crew of the badly damage Spanish gold ship to drown, now they have their treasure?", "Does their space craft, divert from it's flight path to investigate an anomaly they have just detected?"

Eventually the kingdom could come to a crisis as the threats, become real dangers to the existence of the kingdom and players get to vote it they help maintain the kingdom or let it fall.

Time is flexible so you can play out months, years or decades in a matter of three or four crossroads (which you could probably resolve in an evening).

 

[Vinicius Lessa]

My 2 cents to the topic:

"Strong stories" in the context of TTRPGs is simply what emerges naturally from the players choices during play as a result of investment and agency. That's it. I don't think the kind of long and epic stories seen in other media like books and films should be desirable here, because those are product of a single author pre-scripting everything, and not a group "finding out" during play. And TTRPGs are all about finding out, not pre-script.

With that said, I think the OP already knows the answer by citing Apocalypse World and derivatives - just pick games that offer that kind of structure to facilitate play. And while PbtA & Forged in the Dark & Fria Ligan games these days are perhaps the ones that best communicate and support the style, older games since Traveller and Runequest (at the very least) already did it, albeit in perhaps a more cluttered or less clearly communicated form. But the style been there for a long time. Just don't aim for those grandiose stories seen in other media. In TTRPG, the grandiose happens in the moment to moment choices that players and GM do that steer the adventure in exciting and surprising directions. Those are the memorable moments we'll hold dear for years to come. Just play and find them.


Edit: about the effort or skill needed for this, I don't think it's higher than any other as long as eveybody is on the same boat. TTRPGs were never this monolythic culture with singular elements, so it seems obvious there will be various styles of play out there. But as long everybody is on the same wavelenght on what the game will be about, no more effort will be needed here than any other style.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To stretch out a metaphor excessively far, if we want the players to do any lifting, the game should provide plenty of easy to see handles to grab on to. Being proactive shouldn't require special skills or exceptional creativity.

The classic dungeon crawling style of old D&D is very good at that. The game rules lay it out clearly that progress in the form of character advancement is made by finding treasures. So players easily understand that what they are supposed to do is to go searching for treasures. And the fiction of the setting lets them know how to reliably begin that search: Find the locations of dungeons. That's where treasure will be found. And if the GM did a halfway decent job, learning about more dungeons is easy. Just ask the relevant people: Sages, mayors, priests, innkeepers, and so on.
The choices to be made here for the players are very simple ones: "Who should we ask for clues about dungeons?" "Which of the dungeons we know about should we go to?" Give them a few more hints like the dungeons being "the haunted crypts", "the caves in the spider woods", and "the bandit lair somewhere on the mountain pass", and the choice which place they want to go to starts to become significant, as it will determine what strategies they will plan for and what kind of supplies they want to bring.
Even when the players think they could just flip a coin when making these initial choices because of how little information they have to go with, they will later understand that everything that's happening to them would not have happened if they made a different choice earlier. I find this to be a very significant part of the experience of playing a player-driven campaign.

Forged in the Dark games have their own way of providing structures by making their adventures jobs that the players will set the basic parameters for before they head out. Rob this place, steal that thing. In Blades in the Dark, these jobs serve to give the players progress points which they can use to extend their control over the city's underworld with the goal to become its criminal lords. Scum and Villainy and The Sprawl lack this campaign progress, which I think means there are fewer handles for the players to hold on for pursuing a long term goal.

When you have infinite options and unlimited choices, it's really hard to take charge of the story because there are too many possible decisions that could be made. Games always benefit from having some kind of structure that reduces decisions from coming up with one of infinite many things to choosing between a limited set of options.

Now this is of course something that is quite specific to the style of the fiction of individual campaigns. Old D&D and Blades in the Dark are both very limited in what kind of adventures they mean to offer. Treasure hunting in dungeons and comitting crimes to become the crime lords of a city.
I guess to provide meaningful structures for the players to work with, the overall style of the campaign's fiction has to be established first.

I agree that genre, tone, and at least some elements of milieu are likely to be required in order to create a working RPG. Plot and setting details, and character then need at least enough establishment to frame scenes. The core though is what RE described as agenda, what is the overall goal of play. Everything kind of hangs on that, and determines the relationship between the other elements and which predominate.

Games can, for instance, be very light on setting and plot, like zero myth games (IE Dungeon World). This would be a hindrance for a game like BitD, but it allows DW to be very open and let you create a wider range of stories with it. 99% of BitD games follow pretty similar plots.

 

[bloodtide]

To stretch out a metaphor excessively far, if we want the players to do any lifting, the game should provide plenty of easy to see handles to grab on to. Being proactive shouldn't require special skills or exceptional creativity.

Except it does. Players can't just sit back, relax and "grab onto things".

The classic dungeon crawling style of old D&D is very good at that. The game rules lay it out clearly that progress in the form of character advancement is made by finding treasures. So players easily understand that what they are supposed to do is to go searching for treasures. And the fiction of the setting lets them know how to reliably begin that search: Find the locations of dungeons. That's where treasure will be found. And if the GM did a halfway decent job, learning about more dungeons is easy. Just ask the relevant people: Sages, mayors, priests, innkeepers, and so on.

This is the perfect Roll Playing game type. This is the pure mechanical game, with little or no role playing. The characters are very often just stats..

The choices to be made here for the players are very simple ones: "Who should we ask for clues about dungeons?" "Which of the dungeons we know about should we go to?" Give them a few more hints like the dungeons being "the haunted crypts", "the caves in the spider woods", and "the bandit lair somewhere on the mountain pass", and the choice which place they want to go to starts to become significant, as it will determine what strategies they will plan for and what kind of supplies they want to bring.
Even when the players think they could just flip a coin when making these initial choices because of how little information they have to go with, they will later understand that everything that's happening to them would not have happened if they made a different choice earlier. I find this to be a very significant part of the experience of playing a player-driven campaign.

Keep the game simple is the easy you to go. Also keep the setting simple.

When you have infinite options and unlimited choices, it's really hard to take charge of the story because there are too many possible decisions that could be made. Games always benefit from having some kind of structure that reduces decisions from coming up with one of infinite many things to choosing between a limited set of options.

Very true.

Now this is of course something that is quite specific to the style of the fiction of individual campaigns. Old D&D and Blades in the Dark are both very limited in what kind of adventures they mean to offer. Treasure hunting in dungeons and comitting crimes to become the crime lords of a city.
I guess to provide meaningful structures for the players to work with, the overall style of the campaign's fiction has to be established first.

It's not about the rules on page 11 or the rules stat blocks : it's the role playing: immersion oneself in the setting.

The big strength of D&D, and one of the reasons it has lasted so long is that it's not a limited game. The D&D game does not list Moves for the DM and Players. It's not like a board game where each "takes a move per the rules". In D&D the players can try to do anything through their character, and the DM can do anything. This makes for a very open game......but also for big problems.

 

[niklinna]

Games can, for instance, be very light on setting and plot, like zero myth games (IE Dungeon World). This would be a hindrance for a game like BitD, but it allows DW to be very open and let you create a wider range of stories with it. 99% of BitD games follow pretty similar plots.

Similar in what sense? Our current Blades in the Dark campaign has at least four wildly different plots going on simultaneously, and that's just from the PCs' point of view!

 

[pemerton]

"Strong stories" in the context of TTRPGs is simply what emerges naturally from the players choices during play as a result of investment and agency. That's it. I don't think the kind of long and epic stories seen in other media like books and films should be desirable here, because those are product of a single author pre-scripting everything, and not a group "finding out" during play. And TTRPGs are all about finding out, not pre-script.

<snip>

Just don't aim for those grandiose stories seen in other media. In TTRPG, the grandiose happens in the moment to moment choices that players and GM do that steer the adventure in exciting and surprising directions. Those are the memorable moments we'll hold dear for years to come. Just play and find them.

I think this is an interesting topic.

I think RPGing can deal with the "local" or "intimate" - provided that the system supports it. Here's an example from Burning Wheel play that I've posted about before:

Aramina wanting to explore Evard's tower, and Thurgon persuading her to first repair his armour. My memory for the mechanics is a bit hazy - I think it was a duel of wits, with the GM scripting for Aramina - but the situation has remained with me. As I posted back when the play took place, it's not quite Vermeer: the RPG, but the (non-romantic) intimacy of the moment has stuck with me. It was made possible by some mechanical elements (rules for armour damage, and rules for the Mending skill, and neither of them too complicated in their operationalisation), by some subtle interplay of Beliefs (Thurgon: Aramina will need my protection; Aramina: I don't need Thurgon's pity), by the fact that the principles that govern framing and conflict resolution mean there is no overwhelming gameplay imperative that the armour must be repaired (contrast the crises in D&D play when PCs have to turn up to the ball unarmoured!).

I think it's also possible for player-driven RPGing to push more towards the "grandiose". Here's an explanation I posted a couple of year ago in reply to @Campbell:

one way of tackling this, in my view, is the 4e way - make the PCs' goals, responsibilities and relationships the same thing as the "big bads" with their world-shaking stakes.​

I suspect that Burning Wheel could also be used to push towards more grandiose themes than I have tried in my own play. And HeroWars/Quest might be another system suitable for that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The big strength of D&D, and one of the reasons it has lasted so long is that it's not a limited game. The D&D game does not list Moves for the DM and Players. It's not like a board game where each "takes a move per the rules". In D&D the players can try to do anything through their character, and the DM can do anything. This makes for a very open game......but also for big problems.

Don't really agree with this bit. D&D is a quite limited game! Later editions have branched out SOME, but it's fundamental paradigm is designed to motivate a specific sort of setup where GMs provide specific pregenerated challenges and the PCs navigate them specifically to achieve a certain type of win conditions. It really has almost zero support for anything else, even in it's most modern form!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Similar in what sense? Our current Blades in the Dark campaign has at least four wildly different plots going on simultaneously, and that's just from the PCs' point of view!

Yeah they're different in detail. Still the overall story arc is pretty much as @Yora describes. I agree you can probably diverge a fair amount from that, much like you can diverge a bit in D&D from one set formula. I mean I don't know exactly how to measure this, so it isn't a very quantified thing.