Player-driven campaigns and developing strong stories

[S'mon]

I use an episodic sandbox with an overarching threat. I guess Buffy the Vampire Slayer and to some extent Babylon 5 were my inspirations for this approach. The PCs can do what they want, but somewhere in the distance an active BBEG force is on the move. I will roll for its successes and failures, but generally slanted towards success, where other factions would be more random. So it might happen that offstage NPC good guys succeed in a desperate holding action to hold the mountain pass vs the BBEG army, but the chances are the BBEG is only slowed, not defeated. Eventually the PCs may rise to challenge the BBEG, and succeed or fail - one of my best ever campaigns was set in the aftermath of a previous campaign where the BBEG won.

Edit: I guess what I do somewhat resembles (edit) Dungeon World 'with its Fronts/Threats system and Progress Clocks', but more simulationist, I use a Free Kriegsspiel* type approach where I'll get in the heads of the NPC factions, determine their resources, goals & attempts/efforts, and where there's conflict I'll roll to resolve success, usually with a d6. I may not roll if success is certain, eg my Black Sun BBEG faction had a 'ringer' in the form of Kainos, Demigod Son of Ares-Bane. He was around CR 28, and when he went up against various level 8 or so NPC heroes, I didn't bother rolling.

*Derogatorily referred to as Mother May I by the uncouth.

 

[kenada]

One thing that has been bothering me for years now about stories in RPG adventures and campaigns is that it overwhelmingly takes the form of a more or less complete script being written that covers all the relevant plot points and sequence of scenes before the players even enter the picture. Written adventures have already laid out what will happen, in what places, in what order. The GM has a very good idea how the last scene of the adventure or campaign will play out before the players even make characters. Sometimes there are branching paths in the script, or a number of locations can be visited in any order or skipped at all, but even then the scenes that will happen have already been written. Maybe there will be NPCs who might live or die in a given scene, but either way they are probably not going to be relevant after that either way.
What these types of campaign do is to put players in the position of an audience that is being told a story. It doesn't make meaningful use of the unique aspect of RPGs that makes them special as a medium of the world and NPCs being controlled by a GM who is right there and can have them react to whatever the players could possibly want to make their PCs do. It also typically puts the PCs in the role of pawns for other NPCs, and in the worst case only bystanders to the story of other people. When we are playing an RPG and preparing a campaign, we have the unique opportunity to create stories that develop as the direct consequence of the players choices and decisions for their characters. If the outcome of a scene is already pretty much fixed because there already exists a follow up scene that depends on a specific outcome, I think we are genuinely playing RPGs wrong.

Now one solution to deal with this situation is to go all in with a sandbox approach. There's a map with sites of interests on it where the players can get points to advance their characters, and the players are completely free to go to whichever places they want, deal with anyone they encounter in whichever way they please, and whoever might live or die as a consequence of these encounters will not cause any disruption to the game. The limitation of this approach is that even though it gives players full freedom and can create really fun and memorable scenes or sequences of scenes, these stories are generally short and not very much interlinked with each other, other than having happened to the same PCs. It does not tend to generate the grand stories of great struggles and intrigue that we commonly see in fantasy and sci-fi fiction.
Dungeon crawling to hunt for treasures or explore the magical wonders of old ruins can be great fun, but ongoing conflicts with regular antagonists is a different type of fun and excitement that also is really appealing.

I think the platonic ideal of a great RPG campaign is one that takes place on a grand stage and revolves around the PCs struggling in an ongoing conflict against groups of NPCs, while also having the players ideas, plans, and decisions determining what path the story will ultimately take.

How can we get there?

I think the most helpful thing I've come across in that regard has been Apocalypse World with its Fronts/Threats system and Progress Clocks. But AW is certainly a "special" kind of RPG in every sense of the term and designed to be an almost no-prep game. Stuff just happens and we enjoy the ride as the chaos unfolds. Also a cool idea to approach campaigns, but I don't know how much this could really carry a campaign with a larger scope in mind.

I pretty much dropped the idea of planning story for campaigns when I made the turn towards sandbox campaigns, and I think before that I barely had any clue what I was doing as a noob GM who only knew D&D 3rd ed. and Pathfinder. So I'm still facing this with a pretty much empty toolbox of my own yet. What's been happening out there in the world of player-driven narrative games?

What about the approach Kevin Crawford uses in his games? Pick a setting (or generate one), ask the players what they are doing next, then prep for that. It preserves the traditional authorial role of the GM, but what you prepare is based on what the players want to do. His games also feature faction systems for that “living world” element, though I found the one in WWN kind of clunky to use and might suggest BitD’s refinement on that instead.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

I like to see the OPs vision as an acquired GM skill, which gets easier with time and with a permanent group of players that want to roleplay and engage with the game.

Nowadays I don't think about it much as I often use the same method no matter the genre, and we always play traditionalist games: I choose or make a world/region for the campaign, I put up some campaign framing and have ideas for central themes and rough plot arches, and I put some work into good NPCs and adventure seeds around the starting area. Then my players will enter with weird ideas, wrongful conclusions and Marx Brothers logic, and from then on I adapt, build and evolve my original frames and plots based on their actions and ideas. So it's sandboxy, but not without framing and supporting arches if I need them.

It's fun for me as GM since I have to be on my toes, improvise and be quick to adapt, but it's also kind of laid-back, since I indirectly let my players take control of most of the campaign direction. And it works for me and my kind of players, but it's certainly not a general formula for success for all tables - one have to adapt to ones own preferences and player styles and wishes.

 

[Yora]

In general, though, if the system isn't generating challenges through its processes, the GM is going to have to be the one to come up with the challenges, and I think that does tend to need some kind of guidance.

The challenges of the campaign are the obstacles that stand in the way of the players achieving their goal. I think the main element that separates player-driven campaigns from scripted games is that the players pick the goals depending on their own and their characters' perception of what issues in the game world need to be faced and addressed. I believe that in addition to the players deciding who they want to challenge and oppose, it is also important for the players to pick who they want to support and approach for alliances against shared enemies.

As others have said, they do generally need to get a feel for your world before they're willing to make stabs into the dark, so starting them off with more structure is always helpful.

To me, the reason why so much adventure content is specific, is because in preparation, the specific is much more important. You can absolutely mine linear adventures for stuff in them, but a vague pamphlet explaining where things are and shrugging is much more useless to me as a GM.

I think one important advice we could take away from this is to start the campaign with very unambiguous and clear cut conflicts and factions and arrange for the players to have to make decisions whose outcomes will be very predictable and immediate. No hidden agendas, manipulative NPCs trying to deceive them, or complex conspiracies at this point. Simple A or B options that will result in the consequence that the players can expect from them. And both need to be genuine options with meaningfully different outcomes.
(Making enemies or friends would probably be good consequences, as they create relationships that can become relevant later.)

To make preparing content more practical, and also to give players some guidance and unity to the party, I think it might be a very good idea to have the general background and outlook of the party established first, before working on populating the world with people and the players start thinking about the specifics of their PCs. When you pitch the campaign, it would be something like "In this campaign you are playing a group of young nobles trying to establish a new stronghold on the frontier" or "In this campaign you are playing a group of thieves trying to take over the city's underworld".
This is of course a predetermined long-term goal that the players will have to comply with during the campaign, but it is not a script that lays out a series of events that they will have to follow to reach the end. Instead it is a focus that helps the players to make characters who are compatible with each other to work for a common cause, and specifies for the GM what kind of content in regards to NPCs, factions, conflicts, and locations will actually be relevant to the campaign.

 

[S'mon]

I like to see the OPs vision as an acquired GM skill, which gets easier with time and with a permanent group of players that want to roleplay and engage with the game.

A big part of it is setting the scope right. You start with a narrow scope, eg starter town and a couple nearby dungeons, plus maybe rumours of a big vague threat over the horizon, but you give the players freedom of action within that scope. Gradually as you play you prep more material, partly in response to player expressed interest, and the scope widens.

IME it's VERY important to get the scope, and the amount of prep, right for each stage of the campaign. Too much stifles, too little is barren.

 

[amethal]

One thing that has been bothering me for years now about stories in RPG adventures and campaigns is that it overwhelmingly takes the form of a more or less complete script being written that covers all the relevant plot points and sequence of scenes before the players even enter the picture. Written adventures have already laid out what will happen, in what places, in what order. The GM has a very good idea how the last scene of the adventure or campaign will play out before the players even make characters. Sometimes there are branching paths in the script, or a number of locations can be visited in any order or skipped at all, but even then the scenes that will happen have already been written. Maybe there will be NPCs who might live or die in a given scene, but either way they are probably not going to be relevant after that either way.

There are lots of different RPGs and lots of different ways to play them. There are thousands of different RPGs out there, on drivethru and itch.io and other places. I don't think stories in RPG campaigns are overwhelmingly anything.

It's perfectly possible to have a "player driven" D&D campaign if you want one, but you could instead play something like Urban Shadows, where it's very hard not to have a player driven game.

It seems you might appreciate something like the Dracula Dossier, where the GM gets lots and lots of detailed notes on the situation whereas the players basically get "This is the problem. Have fun solving it."

Or maybe Pirates of Drinax, where the PCs are the pirates in question and are tasked with restoring the glory of the Sindalian Empire. There are a bunch of pre-written scenarios the GM can throw in if the action starts to slow, but none of them are necessary (with the possible exception of the finale). And if the PCs want to simply steal the spaceship and explore the galaxy they can do that instead.

 

[S'mon]

I think one important advice we could take away from this is to start the campaign with very unambiguous and clear cut conflicts and factions and arrange for the players to have to make decisions whose outcomes will be very predictable and immediate. No hidden agendas, manipulative NPCs trying to deceive them, or complex conspiracies at this point. Simple A or B options that will result in the consequence that the players can expect from them. And both need to be genuine options with meaningfully different outcomes.
(Making enemies or friends would probably be good consequences, as they create relationships that can become relevant later.)

That's good advice, yes. With the proviso that players can come up with some weird notions. Players deceive themselves better than I ever could! I work hard to make the setting comprehensible. I can't guarantee that players necessarily do comprehend it, and I certainly won't make NPCs act illogically to ensure the outcome a mistaken player expects.

 

[Yora]

That's why it needs to be really simple and straightforward in the early game!

The misunderstandings and projections alone will provide more than enough complexity.

 

[Committed Hero]

I'm not so sure that PbtA cannot to 'grand theme' type games. I mean, maybe the specific mechanics of Apocalypse World are not geared to that, but lets suppose you had a game where there was a more wide open world, the one in AW is basically a doomed crapsack world where things only get worse. So of course it won't support long-term play....
Dungeon World offers a more open milieu than AW, though I think it mostly envisages campaigns that wrap up after a certain point. THAT may be somewhat inevitable given the structure of player-motivated story trajectory.

Dungeon World's Fronts are a great way to run a dynamic sandbox (although there's nothing specifically powered by the apocalypse to them).

I've all but given up trying to think about contingencies that the players might try - they outbrain me. It's far more efficient to prep a situation in detail, and just have them figure out how to approach it.

If you have PCs with clear motivations, you should be allowed to lean on them to drive play forward - or at least present hooks that will in theory entice the players. It never hurts to remind them that you baited one with something in mind [insert your game master baiting pun here].

 

[payn]

I flip the grand story dynamic on its head. For example, the Traveller Pirates of Drinax sandbox campaign starts with the PCs getting a ship and a grand empire building goal placed before them. Something so task driven and time consuming to achieve, that there is no way to easily do it in a handful of adventures. Also, the dynamic of the setting will change where the unknown PCs will gain allies, rivals, and enemies... The stakes will continue to rise until there is a final grand conclusion. Just like the villain/faction of a typical written adventure.

Now the downside to this is you need a group of proactive players. The types that will explore, take action, drive the story forward. Not everybody likes this style of play. Some folks just want to be Captain America and Iron Man. They know Thanos is the end game, they dont care about that. They want the destination and dont mind the railed journey. It provides them with a neon sign that points them to the good stuff and they dont have to guess or make up what the game is about.

That said, I dont think its helpful to say things like written adventures are not genuine RPG experiences. I think its about preferences and being able to articulate and communicate that to your players. Which is why I think session zero and campaign/players guides are a huge bonus for any gaming group. They set the expectations so that hopefully everyone is on the same page. YMMV.