Player-driven campaigns and developing strong stories

[Celebrim]

I think what's important is not so much that the players have a talent or developed skills at crafting engaging stories, but investment into the setting and its conflicts. When playing a game, the players are not (or at least should not be) attempting to create a series of events that will make compelling retellings. Instead the goal is to create excitement and engagement in the moment as things unfold. If it turns out to be a "you would have to be there to get it" story in which nothing of consequence happened and no progress was made, that's fine. If tension and engagement are high as the events are happening, that is all the success that matters.

At this point I'm confused, because that to me reads like a complete contradiction of how I read your original post. Do you or do you not want long running compelling literary fiction to be produced by your play? In your original post you wrote:

"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."

That's a very different goal. If all you are trying to do is generate a loosely connected series of events that provided moment by moment excitement, but which do not make for a compelling retelling and which do not produce a transcript of play that is comparable to a good novel or a good movie or a good TV show, then that's a very low challenge. You've already described enough tools in the toolbox to create that sort of wandering encounter or randomly generated dungeon type game, where you are just happy to kill the monsters and take their stuff. And really, for me that sort of play though I was already starting to get bored of it by the time I was 18, and I can remember the session very well where the group I was a player in at the time just gave up on that sort of play and invested in the campaign where there was more going on than moment by moment action and had stories they felt were compelling.

At some point when you've gamed enough, you get to the point where you are no longer interested in stories "where you would have to be there to get it" and which no progress is made and nothing of consequence happens and the transcripts of play aren't memorable except for that moment someone rolled a critical or failed a saving throw or set off a trap or what not. Not that those things are bad, but I thought the whole point of this thread was how we get more engagement than that while having players drive the story instead of being as one person put it just an "audience" for the events.

 

[pointofyou]

I think what's important is not so much that the players have a talent or developed skills at crafting engaging stories, but investment into the setting and its conflicts. When playing a game, the players are not (or at least should not be) attempting to create a series of events that will make compelling retellings. Instead the goal is to create excitement and engagement in the moment as things unfold. If it turns out to be a "you would have to be there to get it" story in which nothing of consequence happened and no progress was made, that's fine. If tension and engagement are high as the events are happening, that is all the success that matters.

Tension, and in many cases immersion, comes when the stakes are high. And stakes become stakes when the players are invested into what happens to the people involved. We can assume that players are always invested in their own PCs (though that's not even a given), but if that's their only investment then they have reasonable motivation to keep their characters out of harm. Which means not being proactive and remaining reactive by continuing to escape from risk. Getting invested in the fate of people and places to the point that avoidable risk to the PCs become a worthy trade is what I believe is the key to get players to proactively go on the offense against the people they perceive as antagonists.

How to get them invested is the big puzzle to solve.

Honestly it is neither a mystery nor a recreational impossibility. If you want the story of the game to be about the PCs then you make the game about the PCs. You can choose one of the myriad games that purport to have that as their explicit intent or you can run a more-conventional game to be about the PCs. I've found the latter to work better for me but your choices and preferences are your own.

 

[S'mon]

I thought the whole point of this thread was how we get more engagement than that while having players drive the story instead of being as one person put it just an "audience" for the events.

I think the real trick is not to think in terms of story creation, whether pre written or in play. I create the elements of conflict, such as motivated NPCs with their own goals. This creates exciting events. Maybe stories are told afterwards, but nothing is pre written, and the players are actors in the world, not authors of the world. Don't think in terms of "compelling literary fiction", think in terms of "Who are they? What do they want? What will they do to get it?"

 

[hawkeyefan]

Agreed. Although I would say here the rules are probably the least influential part of this.

I don't think so. I think they have a profound impact on how a game works. I would argue that it is more important than player skill, which was your original point. I think player skill is the least important of the three. There are plenty examples of brand-new players who are totally engaged and play with inspiration and excitement, despite their lack of expertise.

Also, look at D&D as an example again. Highly detailed NPC and monster entries, specific spatial distances and effects for combat and spells... all these things promote a certain kind of play that require at least some prep, mostly in the forms of maps and statblocks.

What if D&D didn't have monster stats? What if the ranges and areas of effects of spells were more broadly categorized? That would effect how people play.

You seem to be of the opinion that the only way for the players to drive play is if they're highly skilled players. And while that may be one way to do it, there are others. Having the game itself help with that, and the GM, too, are huge parts of it.

These things don't really have anything to do with the rules, and they can occur in lot of ways. For me a lot of this occurs in asking the players about backstories, which is a time that just about game or any style of play you can allow players to inject things into the setting without it being much of a risk. So you can allow players to inject NPCs, families, factions, deities, cults, whatever into your game and have personalized fronts and allies that will play a role in the future story. And you don't need rules for that. But what that to me does is something the opposite of 'no myth'. This is an opportunity to collaborate on the world's myth.

That opportunity doesn't completely go away after the story starts, but it does get more limited after the game starts because you have to avoid inserts that would be retcons or which would be too important to the story or which would imply PC knowledge that would be problematic. But it's often OK to allow some injection of player world building at later points.

By rules, I meant the procedures of play just as much as I meant the actual mechanics. It's not so much about backstory as it is about what's to come. The players can have a lot of say on that, if the game is designed to bring their wants to the fore, and if the GM knows to pay attention and proceed with that in mind.

It can also be specifically the mechanics. The Spire game I mentioned took on the epic feel it did largely because of Fallout, and the impact it had on the characters, which then impacted play. One character in particular had a journey in the game that was like nothing I've ever experienced in any other game. It would not have happened without the rules working the way they do, the player being open to having his character changed in fundamental ways, and the GM being able to help with it.

I don't see how there is much difference between the two. Sooner or later you need enough of the world for the story to take place in, and that implies preexisting stories. And much of those stories both logically and by story necessity can't be stories the PC took part in, because otherwise there would be no mystery and no exploration. But whether or not the player has chosen to work with you to insert backstory into the setting, the world is still there for the PC's stories. And this needs to be true whether or not the player has the slightest idea at the start of what they wanted to accomplish. Because most of the time, they don't. And even if they did, they have no more ability than the GM (and indeed much less) to predict and shape how the story goes because well, randomness will happen and discoveries will be made and mistakes will be made and no plan survives contact with the unknown.

I don't think that setting is about pre-existing stories. The setting should be there for the player characters. Look at the original Star Wars... there's clearly a lot that has happened in the past. But all of it is there to propel Luke on his journey. That's the focus. If that was an RPG, we shouldn't be as concerned about solving all the little tidbits about the past. We should be focused on Luke's journey.

Don't make the focus of your game be about the players learning what's in your 22,000 word backstory (hell, even Lucas was making it up on the fly). Make it about finding out about their characters and what they care about and what they do about it.

As for inconsistencies... what do you think is more likely to result in them... my one page of backstory or your 40 pages?

Oh dear. No, the post is asking questions about how things are done without seeming to understand that things are done that way for the simple reason that there isn't an alternative. I don't think you have any idea just how many systems I have read the rules for. You'd be much better off assuming that I am aware of the alternatives to fortune mechanics or having a GM or whatever.

I don't care how many systems you've read the rules for. Your second sentence here renders the point moot. I cannot see how you will have read so many games and feel that there is no alternative to the approach you've described. There absolutely is, and I'd expect someone with a strong grasp of the wider RPG industry to know that.

Yeah. So what is the fun of inventing the solution to your own puzzle? You say that I don't need to do those sorts of things, but you don't really produce alternatives.

I didn't suggest that anyone should do that.

Because at this point we're like 8 or 9 bounties into the campaign and I'm trying continually to avoid the routine that you'd have if you approached this entirely from a realistic perspective. Realistically, most bounties wouldn't be all that interesting. There wouldn't be a story. They wouldn't play out as great TV episodes. I'm continually throwing twists at the players. In this particular circumstance the Prefect has agreed to write out the Writ of Remandation and pay a bounty if the PC's will provide the criminal. So the PC's find themselves playing the unusual role of 'local sheriff' while otherwise doing the usual things that they would do to hunt down a bounty, only this time they don't have a puck and a face they are looking for. They still have their Imperial Peace Keeping License, and they are still doing all the same things they normally do, just this time they actually have magisterial authority - something that they've wanted at times in prior adventures but haven't had. In some senses, this is fulfilling a bit of a power trip/fantasy that the players previously had, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could just arrest people?"

So look at the Mandalorian as an example. It started out with a bounty hunter. Then it became about something else as a result of what happened as the show unfolded. If we viewed this as an RPG, maybe the player said they wanted to play a cold-blooded mercenary, and so the GM decided to test just how cold-blooded they were by introducing a child for them to care for. And we'll make the child important in some way that the players will understand, even if the character doesn't. Then leave it up to the player if they turn the kid in or decide to protect him.

That decision can then help shape how things are going forward. The GM should let the player decide, and then proceed accordingly. If the player decided to save the kid, then we know they care about something. So then the question maybe becomes how much? Enough to risk their sense of self? Their heritage and legacy? And so on.

If the player decides to turn the kid over to the remnants of the Empire and collect their bounty, then the GM should accept that and not somehow steer things so that the kid shows back up and so on.

Fundamentally, that's not that strong. That's in total just about the same as my session zero where we discussed concepts for a new campaign and agreed that it would be Bounty Hunters. If the system was Blades, we'd still have a Crew of Bounty Hunters.

It formalizes it as a process and makes it explicitly a part of character creation. My character's Friend and Rival are on my character sheet, just like my Action Ratings and my Gear. And they're meant to come up and to matter, though perhaps not as frequently.

You're dismissing multiple things as not being strong examples, but yet they're not meant to be applied in isolation. Combine these practices with a game that allows for them to happen and a GM who knows how to help with that, and collectively, they work quite well.

Sure. And if the players had said we all want to be Jedi Survivors and made appropriate PC's then that would have had the same effect and I would have made a completely different campaign with completely different adventures.

Right, that's a good first step toward player driven play. I don't think it's all that can be done.

Again, that's not that strong. Yes, it encourages or even forces players to do that in way that most games don't, and yes, I only had one player in this campaign bother to make a backstory at all. But if players wanted to bring in contacts, friends, and enemies I would have totally been on board with that. I've done it for prior campaigns, so it's not even like these players didn't realize that was an option. It's just not a priority for this group.

So this reminds me of all the posts here and elsewhere lamenting how pointless the Bonds, Ideals, Flaws, and Traits are in D&D 5e. They're just there, without much connection to anything else, accept if the GM remembers to grant inspiration. They're tacked on.

But what if they were more integral to the game? What if the GM actively used the Bonds to help craft the setting? What if the game instructed the GM to actively find ways to test the characters Ideals? What if the Flaws couldn't be conveniently ignored?

Other games effectively incorporate these kinds of elements into the game such that play of any given game is ABOUT the characters, rather than being about something else and just featuring these characters.

I mean he could, but he's just not supposed to. But this is so weak, because it's not like if we were playing Dungeons and Dragons and the group decided to be smugglers and a player inserted backstory for a character that made them enemies of the Red Saches gang that I'd ignore that and wouldn't let it shape the campaign. Regardless of the system, the players can make their own fronts, collectively or individually before play. That's great, but then I'm still the one that has to bring that to life. Nothing has changed much between systems for me here. There are some changes Blades brings about, player driven flashbacks for example and concrete ways to describe the groups growing influence in the downtime minigames between heists, and yeah without writing in your own minigame tracking influence like that is hard in systems that don't explicitly support that minigame. You can fudge it without a minigame, but minigames do make that sort of thing more compelling.

I could keep going, but your examples to me don't really demonstrate to me a lot of change from what I'm already doing in games.

I mean, in my current D&D game that I'm playing in, we're doing the Temple of Elemental Evil. It's a perfectly fun game. I'm enjoying it. It's not player-directed at all. It can't be, really... it's about the threat of the Temple. It's not about Malacus the Eladrin Wizard. My character and any other PC could be swapped out and little would change about the game.

Yeah, and the result in my experience is always bland shallow games filled with incoherence and illusionism and ultimately for me a distinct feeling for me as a player that have no real power over anything because the GM feels impowered to metagame. And if the GM's metagaming, you got no agency and very little impact over the story.

What do you mean by GM metagaming here?

I consider myself a pretty darn creative person. You can look back through old threads were people ask me for creative content and what I generate for them as evidence of that claim. There are probably people more creative than I am, but I've never met a single person creative enough to wing a story at any depth without extensive preparation. I know that claim offends people who say that they are doing that, but until they actually demonstrate it to me I'm just not going to believe it. And particularly in an RPG, where you are the GM inserting the fictional positioning and consequences into play at every turn, if you didn't actively limit your power by pre-establishing some truths that constrain what you can do, well I don't by that the players have any choices at all. It's all Schrodinger's Setting at that point, painted as serves the GM's ideas of what the story should be from moment to moment. If you don't have prep, literally nothing can happen except what you want to have happen.

I don't see how anyone can demonstrate it to you except perhaps if you actually played with them. Have you actually played or GMed any of the games I've mentioned, or similar ones? Would you be open to doing so?

It feels very much like you're starting with your conclusion, and then working from there.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That seems like a very uncharitable reading of @Celebrim's post.

I think the point here is that a game needs a unified motive, a driving force. There might be various plot threads focused on individual characters, but they need to weave together as a coherent whole.

At least as long as there are reasons the group has to operate as, well, a group a majority of the time. That isn't perhaps the case in all games, but at least you exclude certain sorts of other game features if you insist on it being practical to run each character as a mostly independent entity.

The PCs can't be strangers with no connection, and yet also have the freedom to each drive their own individual narrative simultaneously. Maybe that works if you only have 1-2 PCs, but certainly not well for bigger groups. The ability to keep a coherent motive driven by PC motivation only becomes more tenuous as group size increases. When you have a game with 5-6 PCs, a certain amount of GM steering of the overall plot becomes almost an inevitability.

With relatively simple characters and resolution systems that are focused on situation resolution rather than task resolution it can be done. Its not my cuppa, but its a thing.

 

[Celebrim]

I think the real trick is not to think in terms of story creation, whether pre written or in play. I create the elements of conflict, such as motivated NPCs with their own goals. This creates exciting events. Maybe stories are told afterwards, but nothing is pre written, and the players are actors in the world, not authors of the world. Don't think in terms of "compelling literary fiction", think in terms of "Who are they? What do they want? What will they do to get it?"

I generally agree with your ideas, and it's the creation of compelling NPC's, their resources, their plans, and so forth that takes up a good deal of my preparation. But I tend to think answering the questions, "Who are they? What do they want? What will they do to get it?", is how you get compelling literary fiction and is not something contradictory to it.

 

[S'mon]

I generally agree with your ideas, and it's the creation of compelling NPC's, their resources, their plans, and so forth that takes up a good deal of my preparation. But I tend to think answering the questions, "Who are they? What do they want? What will they do to get it?", is how you get compelling literary fiction and is not something contradictory to it.

Yes this approach will often create good stories in hindsight. It's the thinking in terms of literary creation pre-game that is harmful, I think.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think so. I think they have a profound impact on how a game works.

Celebrim's Second Law of RPGs states, "How you prepare to play a game and how you think about a game has a bigger influence on the game than the rules." I'm rather fond of that observation, and I find it holds.

Also, look at D&D as an example again. Highly detailed NPC and monster entries, specific spatial distances and effects for combat and spells... all these things promote a certain kind of play that require at least some prep, mostly in the forms of maps and statblocks.

What if D&D didn't have monster stats? What if the ranges and areas of effects of spells were more broadly categorized? That would effect how people play.

Would it? I think you get things backwards. Detailed monster stats and spell effects are the product of how people played D&D and not the result of it. People made the maps before they made the other things. They needed the other things because they had maps.

Besides, those are the easy parts of prep. Most of the work doesn't go into those things for most of the things I do in most systems.

By rules, I meant the procedures of play just as much as I meant the actual mechanics.

Procedures of play is what isn't written down in the rules. It's things that vary from whether or not you count the roll if the dice falls off the table, to whether or not the DM draws maps, to whether or not PC's write out 4 page backstories, to whether you RP in 1st person or 3rd person, to what filters does the group apply to determine what a valid proposition is and how skill rolls are called at the table. It's a thing very different than the rules and which most tables are not even consciously aware of. Most games don't actually change play by changing the rules, but by changing how people think about playing.

I don't think that setting is about pre-existing stories. The setting should be there for the player characters. Look at the original Star Wars... there's clearly a lot that has happened in the past. But all of it is there to propel Luke on his journey. That's the focus. If that was an RPG, we shouldn't be as concerned about solving all the little tidbits about the past. We should be focused on Luke's journey.

The two aren't separatable. There isn't this either/or distinction you are trying to make. Imagine Star Wars as a campaign. Do you think it matter's if Luke's player knows that Darth Vader is his father from the beginning? Which do you think is more exciting from the player's perspective, setting up all his own story beats or discovering them as he explores the setting? I think it's better if the player just signals his orphan status as an opportunity to explore fairy tale themes, and then let's the GM come up with his past generally with the consent of the player - "On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you want me to mess with you?", sort of thing. And I really hope that the player said 10 out 10, because making Leia a secret sister is so Greek Tragedy, "Yikes!".

Don't make the focus of your game be about the players learning what's in your 22,000 word backstory (hell, even Lucas was making it up on the fly). Make it about finding out about their characters and what they care about and what they do about it.

Again, the two aren't separable. The setting backstory isn't the opposite of player empowerment. What the characters do about whatever is always what an RPG is about. But, finding out what their characters are and what they care about is an aesthetic of play that 80% of gamers do not give a flip about. Most players have no interest in roleplaying out their feelings in melodramatic scenes and are already pretty sure what they care about and aren't interested in particularly in RPing out moral or ethical angst, or deciding what relationship that they are going to have with other characters (PC's or NPC's). Most players do not want that as a focus of play. But regardless of what system you are playing, all players have access to that sort of RP if that's what they want. If your aesthetic enjoyment is exploration of character, and you are in a group - like say Critical Roles group - where you have quality improv actors that can do those scenes, well go for it. But you as a GM aren't really in control of that. You aren't the person animating the characters. You don't get to create Raistlin and give him personality and drive and put him into those scenes. That's on the player.

As for inconsistencies... what do you think is more likely to result in them... my one page of backstory or your 40 pages?

Your improv when you one page no longer covers the questions you need to answer and you have to answer things on the fly.

I don't care how many systems you've read the rules for. Your second sentence here renders the point moot. I cannot see how you will have read so many games and feel that there is no alternative to the approach you've described. There absolutely is, and I'd expect someone with a strong grasp of the wider RPG industry to know that.

I'm not even going to derail the response by dignifying that. But if you'd back up and look at some of my specific objections rather than assuming I don't know things, you might have more interesting things to say. The fact you immediate go on to say, "I didn't suggest that anyone should do that.", just tells me you are too busy playing "gotcha" to even follow along.

So look at the Mandalorian as an example. It started out with a bounty hunter. Then it became about something else as a result of what happened as the show unfolded. If we viewed this as an RPG, maybe the player said they wanted to play a cold-blooded mercenary, and so the GM decided to test just how cold-blooded they were by introducing a child for them to care for. And we'll make the child important in some way that the players will understand, even if the character doesn't. Then leave it up to the player if they turn the kid in or decide to protect him.

So? What's your point? You think that's not trad RP? You think that's not the result of trad preparation? You think that's not the result of GM driven storytelling?

In fact, that's hardcore GM driven storytelling. I have a player that would get furious over me pulling that stunt early in a campaign because it works entirely against the session zero preparation. This is something we joke about a lot in the current campaign - "The Mandalorian" is a show about a bounty hunter that doesn't actually follow the character until the end of his bounty hunting career. It never actually bothers to try to explore the premise, and instead becomes a quest-based fantasy right off the bat. If I pulled the stunt of promising a Bounty Hunting game after table agreement that that is what we wanted to do, and then in the first adventure put the characters in a moral dilemma where they either had to give up bounty hunting and go rogue or else be complete SOBs, I'd have several very unhappy players. They'd get over it. They'd go along with me screwing the campaign over like that. But it wouldn't make them very happy. I think I know what my players are trying to achieve better than you do.

If the player decides to turn the kid over to the remnants of the Empire and collect their bounty, then the GM should accept that and not somehow steer things so that the kid shows back up and so on.

There is no disagreement here over that though. It's not a point of debate or something that separates your position from tradition RPing.

My character's Friend and Rival are on my character sheet, just like my Action Ratings and my Gear. And they're meant to come up and to matter, though perhaps not as frequently.

Backstory is character sheet. And you can put Reads Latin or History on your character sheet, but it's up to the GM usually to figure out how to make that relevant.

Right, that's a good first step toward player driven play. I don't think it's all that can be done.

Sure. But I find your argument increasingly incoherent.

What if the GM actively used the Bonds to help craft the setting?

Then you'd have strongly GM driven play, or at the least, it would be at least as strongly GM driven as my play is.

Other games effectively incorporate these kinds of elements into the game such that play of any given game is ABOUT the characters, rather than being about something else and just featuring these characters.

This is such an arbitrary distinction. As for Temple of Elemental Evil, I'm not particularly fond of the adventure as written, as it's a pretty simplistic dungeon crawl. There is a thread around here somewhere where I talk about changes I'd make to the adventure that would allow it to achieve it's aesthetic of play, but also provide for the sort of complex literary scenarios that would allow for more RPing.

What do you mean by GM metagaming here?

Whenever a GM is called to invent something mid-play, there is always the conscious or unconscious temptation to invent what the GM thinks would be good for the game. For example, if the game has a big combat encounter, and the PC's are doing well, the GM experiences the temptation to say invent some reinforcements or some new challenge in the middle of the combat to make it exciting because the combat was supposed to be dramatic. Games the strongly encourage the GM to invent things on the fly tend to strongly become dependent on Illusionism, where the game the players think they are playing isn't the game they are actually playing. As an example of Illusionism, imagine if the BBEG had no hit points but was always defeated on the seventh round of combat. It's Illusionism if the GM keeps asking for damage inflicted and marking it down as if that was relevant to the game actually being played. There is a whole theory of how to be a good GM that depends heavily on perpetrating those sorts of deceptions on the players.

 

[Celebrim]

Yes this approach will often create good stories in hindsight. It's the thinking in terms of literary creation pre-game that is harmful, I think.

I disagree. I don't think you are expressing yourself particularly well. My guess is that what you are trying to say is that as a GM I shouldn't have the forestory plotted out in great detail and be committed to particular scenes, conversations, or twists actually happening and having the dramatic impact I desired or intended. And I definitely shouldn't do this to the extent that I ignore player freedom and agency. If that's what you are trying to express, then I agree. If you think that setting up a story is somehow bad, then I just disagree.

 

[pemerton]

I think the point here is that a game needs a unified motive, a driving force.

Why can't it be done by committee?

With the GM as the "chair", whose job it is to weave various elements together.

I mean, isn't this why Vincent Baker, in Apocalypse World, calls the GM the Master of Ceremonies? And why Christopher Kubasik, in his Interactive Toolkit, calls the GM the Fifth Business?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I have no idea how you concluded any of that from what I wrote. It's just bile and has nothing to do with actually rationally looking at the topic and answering the OP's question.

Here is my take, once again restated: player driven campaigns are driven by skilled players. Whether those develop into strong stories depends largely on skill of the players to personify characters and give them strong dialogue and motivations, and to make strong character driven choices within the setting.

I think it's rather odd to talk about what you can do as a GM to create player driven campaigns and strong player driven stories in those campaigns. Really, what can you do beside let players create their own choices and just respond to that? A GM can't make a player create a good story. A GM can't make a player RP well. A GM can't make a player create interesting choices that will lead to interesting circumstances. We're supposedly talking about respecting a player's agency but we're doing it from the perspective of the GM making all the choice.

I think a better approach would be to focus on what players can do to drive a campaign and create strong stories. The topic really IMO should be, "What can I do as a player to tell better stronger stories?" And I think if the thread took that approach honestly, it would reveal how weird the original post actually is. Like, can you imagine writing an adventure to be purchased by and consumed by potential players? And like how would that actually empower players? What would a player's story look like and how could you communicate it, and if you did wouldn't it cease to be the player's story? And would the player really want to know their own story? How can the player be the secret keeper?

Think about it this way. My PC's are bounty hunters working for the bounty hunter guild. Like, I could run the game by presenting the players with 10 or 20 choices of what bounties they wanted to go after. But even if I did that, I'd still have to invent the scenario. Currently they have been hired by an Imperial Prefect to investigate the disappearance of colonists on a frontier world. Now do the players want to know at the start why the colonists are disappearing? And remember, "We are bounty hunters" was a player driven tagline. The current scenario is running at like 22,000 words of notes plus maps, and most of that is documenting what happened before the PC's arrived and so therefore, what history exists for them to uncover so that they can make real choices based on their own investigation. I don't have a clue what they are going to do, but I do have to document very carefully what is there because the resulting story has to be internally consistent. You got 10 different disappearances and crime scenes and impacted families and communities that need time investment to describe. And, minor spoiler, there is actually an important element of the timing of the crimes that required a lot of work from me to get the outline of the past right. All that world building is necessary if I'm actually going to create a sandbox that also generates the big linked dramatic story that the original poster wants. And this is just for a tiny world - on little corner of a planet in a little corner of a galaxy. The idea that I could ever detail the whole galaxy at such a level that like these complex linked narratives would just naturally emerge no matter what the players did is just impractical. But even if I did, very likely underneath the hood the resulting story would be almost entirely Illusionism, which is the opposite of what the OP says he wants. The idea that I could actually have a database of millions of bounties for the players to look through is just not practical. The idea that you just do this on the fly and not end up with either high illusionism or a series of small disconnected events is also impractical.

The underlying problem is that it's not that fun if the same person who introduces a problem is responsible for solving it. I mean that's the problem with a railroad - the GM both introduces the problem and sets the solution. But the reverse doesn't work either. You can't have the player both introduce the problem and its solution because then there is no drama. Like imagine the players deciding on why the colonists are disappearing and how they figured that out and how they resolved the story if they also wrote the backstory. Imagine the players creating the setting for them to explore. One of us has to be responsible for the backstory and the other responsible for the forestory, and the only way it works out is if the secret keeper writes the backstory and the player's choices creates the forestory. Someone has to decide where the orc and the pie are, and it works best if it's the player who wants to unravel the secret of the pie. It's up to the player to decide what they do about the orc and the pie, but they can't do both because what's the fun of declaring you win? And saying that the player should be able to decide that a dragon comes and eats both the orc and the pie doesn't really solve the problem here, especially in a game with more than one player.

Honestly, we just have radically different ideas as to what the subject matter of 'player driven' is. I agree, a campaign which is designed around a party of bounty hunters is fine, any given organization of the PC's activity and 'calling' can be fine. I don't even think it has to be decided by the players, necessarily, at least not within the context of the game itself, they will obviously decide what sorts of games to play in. It sounds like in your case the choice was arrived at by the players/PCs after the game was initiated. That's cool! I, honestly, and not to be down on it or anything, am not really sure I see what the point of thousands of words of descriptions and inventing 100's of bounties to pursue accomplishes though. I mean, I would imagine things in some hypothetical PbtA/Dungeon World-esque setup if I ran this going something like:

OK, the players got together and built their characters, and then in the course of some sort of 'kicker' scene, they were propelled into the role of bounty hunters. Maybe I as a GM noted some character's issue with miscreants, and framed a scene where the PCs came upon some crime in progress, and got mixed up with local law enforcement (or whatever passes for it in a fantasy setting, perhaps). One thing leads to another, the party is made aware of the fact that a wanted list of criminals with bounties outstanding exists. Perhaps there is also a theme of lack of funds, so the idea of collecting said bounties also appeals. Note that this can mean different PCs enter into the venture with somewhat different goals. Coupled with some variations in 'alignment' or beliefs/bonds/etc. this can be a key part of what comes later on.

So, we now have our party, one that is potentially a bit of a powder keg, will they, can they, pull together? For how long? Will the one seeking vengeance eventually go to far? Will the one who just wants cold hard cash be at odds with the one who always seeks justice? Is the kindly one really cut out for this kind of work? And what about the authorities? Are they supportive, corrupt? Do they think of bounty hunters as worthless scum they will happily rid themselves of at some point? Is that a universally held belief, or do they have 'friends on the force'? Note that I, and/or the players, can easily mine many existing stories for these kinds of elements.

Note that the vast majority of what comes next will be, at least, inspired by player input. I'd ask "OK, did any of you spot an interesting fugitive you want to go after?" Some player(s) will respond with some ideas for people to chase down. Maybe the answer is "lets go for the guy with the biggest reward!" OK, there's probably a REASON the reward is large, he's not likely to be an easy mark! I can also kind of wing it, the game's just starting, maybe if the players are a bit slow on the immediate uptake I just frame a scene where they run into a face they've seen before, on a wanted poster! Maybe one of the players remarks "yeah, that guy is wanted for injuring a City Watchman!" Maybe there's a story here, it will likely come out. Perhaps its not all back-and-white, he was stealing bread to feed his kids, whatever. Or maybe he's just a nasty customer and its a straight up fight. Dice might help to determine which it is, tossed for various checks as the scene plays out, throwing up complications.

This is just to illustrate some things about what MY idea of 'player driven' is likely to entail. Lots of direct in-play input into the nature of the fiction, little focus on elaborate pre-plotting, etc. Not because pre-plotting is necessarily bad, it just necessarily puts that person (GM presumably) in total control of the plot. I'd probably prepare certain things in the above outlined game, now and then at least. I might construct a 'front' that amounted to a criminal organization which the PCs might have to face, and maybe another that was corrupt officials. Maybe certain cases could exist where I've devised a twist of some sort ahead of time, though it would require the players to decide to engage with that plot line. There's nothing HIDDEN in games like this, though there are things that are SURPRISING. Where would such a campaign go? I have absolutely no idea! That's the great part about it, everyone will be surprised by THAT. The characters will have to make choices, grow in depth probably, etc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Blades in the Dark- the players have a lot of say about what will come up in play. This happens in lots of ways. Their selection of playbooks and playbook abilities are cues to the GM to include related elements in play. The group actively creates a Crew with its own playbook, so that will have a huge impact on play. A game featuring Smugglers will be different from one featuring Assassins will be different from one featuring a Cult. Each Crew also has abilities and contacts and friends and enemies that will influence play. The GM will make a note of all of that stuff, and will then use it as material to bring up in play. He's not going to ignore their choice of Smugglers and the fact that they're enemies with the Red Sashes gang and instead have them looking into ghostly possessions of the city's elite. All the decisions the players make when they create their characters and crew should shape the game.

Its always a good example. I've only been in one (now fairly long) BitD campaign, but nobody ever TOLD us what we were doing, AT ALL. Each week we got together, the players started doing stuff, and we came up with a score. Now, often, these scores might be something like "Oh, we're at war with this other crew, and there's also this clock that has 3 ticks left before 'bad thing' happens!" So whatever we do is likely going to have to address at least one of those situations, somehow. Maybe if we're clever we pull off a score that handles BOTH. We're just going to start coming up with stuff, like ideas about what is going on in Doskvol today, etc. The GM is probably going to say a few things, maybe give his take on what's feasible, give us some facts to work with, or just his idea of what might happen next. I don't think there was EVER a score that started out with the GM telling us what score we had for this week, or even a list of options. Maybe it was something like "Oh, guys, remember you were going to do X?" or "that bank still hasn't been robbed!" etc. So, the players, at least in this campaign, have been in TOTAL control of where things went next.

Mostly what happens in BitD is we would get hard up in the middle of a nasty fight and ask for a Devil's Bargain so we could get an extra die. The bargain would always make our lives more complicated, as does fallout from scores, entanglement rolls, and sometimes just plain old "you failed a check, here's a consequence." So, the way BitD works, stuff always builds up. Over time you make enemies, allies, get resources, create problems, etc. The crew has to spin all these plates, and 95% of "where is the story coming from" comes from all those spinning plates. If you don't pay off the Grinders they're going to come over and bust your heads pretty soon (clock). If you don't catch that pickpocket you fingered for that job the Bluecoats are going to come over and bust your heads. Eeennny, meeny, minie, moe! lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, that's another indication about how the game allows players to drive things.... you can start off as Assassins, and then go in a new direction if that's what the fiction demands, or if that's what the players want. My point was not about locking things in so much as whatever choice is made and whenever it's made, the GM and players should be considering that whenever they come up with a score.

I don't even think it was about 'wanting'. Now and then we would remark that we weren't doing much in the way of paid assassinations, and a couple times we even thought up a score that met that criteria, but mostly the game was driving US. I mean, I'd say its about like your in a car plunging down a steep slope. Yeah, you can steer, you can apply the brakes, maybe you can kinda pick a direction things will go in, but you ARE going down that hill! Not to say we didn't make important decisions. A lot of them though were simply things like "well, I can't convince this guy to be my friend, screw it I push him off the cliff!" or "I'm about to die so I submit to the power of She Who Slays in Darkness and kill everything around me!" Both of those created a bunch of fallout for my character and shaped him and his story. Neither involved any planning or deliberation. You will reach a point where something must happen, and something does...

 

[Thomas Shey]

Celebrim's Second Law of RPGs states, "How you prepare to play a game and how you think about a game has a bigger influence on the game than the rules." I'm rather fond of that observation, and I find it holds.

I'd find that more believable if I hadn't seen the wrong choice of game system wreck an otherwise viable appearing campaign.

 

[niklinna]

I don't even think it was about 'wanting'. Now and then we would remark that we weren't doing much in the way of paid assassinations, and a couple times we even thought up a score that met that criteria, but mostly the game was driving US. I mean, I'd say its about like your in a car plunging down a steep slope. Yeah, you can steer, you can apply the brakes, maybe you can kinda pick a direction things will go in, but you ARE going down that hill! Not to say we didn't make important decisions. A lot of them though were simply things like "well, I can't convince this guy to be my friend, screw it I push him off the cliff!" or "I'm about to die so I submit to the power of She Who Slays in Darkness and kill everything around me!" Both of those created a bunch of fallout for my character and shaped him and his story. Neither involved any planning or deliberation. You will reach a point where something must happen, and something does...

The specifics depend very much on how you play.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Celebrim's Second Law of RPGs states, "How you prepare to play a game and how you think about a game has a bigger influence on the game than the rules." I'm rather fond of that observation, and I find it holds.

I think saying that you value your prep over the rules of play speaks volumes.

Would it? I think you get things backwards. Detailed monster stats and spell effects are the product of how people played D&D and not the result of it. People made the maps before they made the other things. They needed the other things because they had maps.

Besides, those are the easy parts of prep. Most of the work doesn't go into those things for most of the things I do in most systems.

What distinction are you making between “product of play” and “result of play”? I’m not following that at all.

Maps and monster stats are needed to play D&D. They’re elements of play that are foundational. You can get away without them from time to time, especially maps, but generally speaking, you need to have this stuff. Armor class, hit points, saves, abilities… how does D&D work without that stuff? You need to determine what monsters are where and have this information at hand for play.

That need to prepare influences how play can go.

Procedures of play is what isn't written down in the rules. It's things that vary from whether or not you count the roll if the dice falls off the table, to whether or not the DM draws maps, to whether or not PC's write out 4 page backstories, to whether you RP in 1st person or 3rd person, to what filters does the group apply to determine what a valid proposition is and how skill rolls are called at the table. It's a thing very different than the rules and which most tables are not even consciously aware of. Most games don't actually change play by changing the rules, but by changing how people think about playing.

Actually, many games explicitly provide procedures of play. They tell you exactly how they’re meant to be played and why, and of the potential impact if you choose to change something. And I’m not talking about table rules like dice off the table and that kind of stuff… I mean as fundamental as establishing how difficult a proposed task will be and essential things like that.

The two aren't separatable. There isn't this either/or distinction you are trying to make. Imagine Star Wars as a campaign. Do you think it matter's if Luke's player knows that Darth Vader is his father from the beginning? Which do you think is more exciting from the player's perspective, setting up all his own story beats or discovering them as he explores the setting? I think it's better if the player just signals his orphan status as an opportunity to explore fairy tale themes, and then let's the GM come up with his past generally with the consent of the player - "On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you want me to mess with you?", sort of thing. And I really hope that the player said 10 out 10, because making Leia a secret sister is so Greek Tragedy, "Yikes!".

Sure, I’m not advocating for predetermine elements. That’s why I only mentioned the first film. We only know the backstory we need to know for Luke’s journey to be meaningful.

My mentioning of Beats was in relation to the Heart RPG. They’re player chosen goals. They’re generally pretty broad, either in description or in applicability. I’m not talking about a player writing their character’s whole story arc ahead of time.

Again, the two aren't separable. The setting backstory isn't the opposite of player empowerment. What the characters do about whatever is always what an RPG is about. But, finding out what their characters are and what they care about is an aesthetic of play that 80% of gamers do not give a flip about. Most players have no interest in roleplaying out their feelings in melodramatic scenes and are already pretty sure what they care about and aren't interested in particularly in RPing out moral or ethical angst, or deciding what relationship that they are going to have with other characters (PC's or NPC's). Most players do not want that as a focus of play. But regardless of what system you are playing, all players have access to that sort of RP if that's what they want. If your aesthetic enjoyment is exploration of character, and you are in a group - like say Critical Roles group - where you have quality improv actors that can do those scenes, well go for it. But you as a GM aren't really in control of that. You aren't the person animating the characters. You don't get to create Raistlin and give him personality and drive and put him into those scenes. That's on the player.

I don’t know where you get your figures from… they sound like you’re just making them up. Many players want play to focus on their characters. Many games set out to do exactly that.

If you don’t like it, that’s fine. But you don’t get to say that it’s impossible. I mean, I’ve done it… many people have done it. That you choose not to believe it doesn’t make it untrue.

Your improv when you one page no longer covers the questions you need to answer and you have to answer things on the fly.

Why would improv contradict anything? Certainly having a detailed 40 pages or more means there’s more to contradict? It seems self evident to me.

I'm not even going to derail the response by dignifying that. But if you'd back up and look at some of my specific objections rather than assuming I don't know things, you might have more interesting things to say. The fact you immediate go on to say, "I didn't suggest that anyone should do that.", just tells me you are too busy playing "gotcha" to even follow along.

Here’s me saying exactly that:

The players don't have to introduce the specific problem, and certainly don't need to know the solution ahead of time.

No one is suggesting that players craft an entire story for their characters, start to finish. No one is suggesting that the GM won’t have to contribute. I’ve clearly been saying it’s about the three elements come together… the players, the GM, and the rules.

So? What's your point? You think that's not trad RP? You think that's not the result of trad preparation? You think that's not the result of GM driven storytelling?

In fact, that's hardcore GM driven storytelling. I have a player that would get furious over me pulling that stunt early in a campaign because it works entirely against the session zero preparation. This is something we joke about a lot in the current campaign - "The Mandalorian" is a show about a bounty hunter that doesn't actually follow the character until the end of his bounty hunting career. It never actually bothers to try to explore the premise, and instead becomes a quest-based fantasy right off the bat. If I pulled the stunt of promising a Bounty Hunting game after table agreement that that is what we wanted to do, and then in the first adventure put the characters in a moral dilemma where they either had to give up bounty hunting and go rogue or else be complete SOBs, I'd have several very unhappy players. They'd get over it. They'd go along with me screwing the campaign over like that. But it wouldn't make them very happy. I think I know what my players are trying to achieve better than you do.

Well as I said, if the player said they wanted to be cold-blooded, then testing how cold-blooded seems appropriate.

There has to be some risk in this type of game. If everyone gets to decide beforehand exactly who their character is and always will be, then I don’t know what’s left to be discovered in play.

Taking the things the players indicate they want to focus on and making them central to play is what I’ve been talking about.

There is no disagreement here over that though. It's not a point of debate or something that separates your position from tradition RPing.

I’d say trad is more prone to it. Or, at the very least, more prone to being utterly indifferent about what’s important to the players.

Backstory is character sheet. And you can put Reads Latin or History on your character sheet, but it's up to the GM usually to figure out how to make that relevant.

I mean that they are actually fields on the character sheet. You have to fill them out just as you do the other attributes of your character.

Backstory isn’t required in many games. Hit points, alignment, skills… those are required. Backstory is usually optional.

In the three games I mentioned, the players mist provide those details.

Sure. But I find your argument increasingly incoherent.

I’m sure.

I’m having trouble following yours. Is it that player driven play is not possible? Or that it’s only possible through traditional play?

Then you'd have strongly GM driven play, or at the least, it would be at least as strongly GM driven as my play is.

How so? I can’t comment on your play since you’ve not said what game you’re playing. So I need to rely on you to explain the difference.

I’m not speaking about your game. My stance is simply that there are games that allow for the players to be the primary driving factor.

This is such an arbitrary distinction. As for Temple of Elemental Evil, I'm not particularly fond of the adventure as written, as it's a pretty simplistic dungeon crawl. There is a thread around here somewhere where I talk about changes I'd make to the adventure that would allow it to achieve it's aesthetic of play, but also provide for the sort of complex literary scenarios that would allow for more RPing.

It’s not an arbitrary distinction at all. I don’t have a strong say about what goes on in my D&D game. That doesn’t make it bad… I’m fine with it. I didn’t sign up for it expecting to really drive play. The story of the game, such as it is, is not about my character. It’s not about any of the characters, really… it’s about the threat of the Temple, and trying to stop it. That goal was set before we began play, and that’s what the game will be about for the duration. It’s very specific.

Whenever a GM is called to invent something mid-play, there is always the conscious or unconscious temptation to invent what the GM thinks would be good for the game. For example, if the game has a big combat encounter, and the PC's are doing well, the GM experiences the temptation to say invent some reinforcements or some new challenge in the middle of the combat to make it exciting because the combat was supposed to be dramatic. Games the strongly encourage the GM to invent things on the fly then to strongly become dependent on Illusionism, where the game the players think they are playing isn't the game they are actually playing. As an example of Illusionism, imagine if the BBEG had no hit points but was always defeated on the seventh round of combat. It's Illusionism if the GM keeps asking for damage inflicted and marking it down as if that was relevant to the game actually being played. There is a whole theory of how to be a good GM that depends heavily on perpetrating those sorts of deceptions on the players.

I think this depends on the game. Many games offer specific principles for the GM to follow that would make this kind of thing against the rules, or at least against the expectations of play.

Other games don’t comment on that one way or the other.

I know which type of game would leave me more concerned about it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Its always a good example. I've only been in one (now fairly long) BitD campaign, but nobody ever TOLD us what we were doing, AT ALL. Each week we got together, the players started doing stuff, and we came up with a score. Now, often, these scores might be something like "Oh, we're at war with this other crew, and there's also this clock that has 3 ticks left before 'bad thing' happens!" So whatever we do is likely going to have to address at least one of those situations, somehow. Maybe if we're clever we pull off a score that handles BOTH. We're just going to start coming up with stuff, like ideas about what is going on in Doskvol today, etc. The GM is probably going to say a few things, maybe give his take on what's feasible, give us some facts to work with, or just his idea of what might happen next. I don't think there was EVER a score that started out with the GM telling us what score we had for this week, or even a list of options. Maybe it was something like "Oh, guys, remember you were going to do X?" or "that bank still hasn't been robbed!" etc. So, the players, at least in this campaign, have been in TOTAL control of where things went next.

Mostly what happens in BitD is we would get hard up in the middle of a nasty fight and ask for a Devil's Bargain so we could get an extra die. The bargain would always make our lives more complicated, as does fallout from scores, entanglement rolls, and sometimes just plain old "you failed a check, here's a consequence." So, the way BitD works, stuff always builds up. Over time you make enemies, allies, get resources, create problems, etc. The crew has to spin all these plates, and 95% of "where is the story coming from" comes from all those spinning plates. If you don't pay off the Grinders they're going to come over and bust your heads pretty soon (clock). If you don't catch that pickpocket you fingered for that job the Bluecoats are going to come over and bust your heads. Eeennny, meeny, minie, moe! lol.

Absolutely. The play itself generates things that happen and offer more to do in future play. That’s been my experience with Blades as both GM and player, and it was my experience with Spire as a GM.

Of course the GM is involved, but typically when they are prompted in some way. In Blades, as a result of a Devil’s Bargain, or a consequence from a roll, or an entanglement, or a clock that goes unaddressed and ticks full.

In my first campaign of Blades, I came up with the first score. It was based on the players’ choice of Crew ability: The Good Stuff. They came into a stash of high quality drugs that they were going to sell, so the first score was getting the stash to the place they’d sell it. I did this so that we had a simple score to deal with because we were all new to the game. After the first score, I think I made a couple suggestions for the second, and then after that the players were pursuing their own agenda.

One of the things I like about GMing Blades… and the same was true for Spire, and is also partially true for Stonetop… is that I feel the job of GM is much more reactive than in traditional play. I have to respond to what the players do and what the dice say in a more fundamental way.

On the player side, I find I feel much more proactive in these games. That I can have a plan or ideas about what we’ll do. Much more so than the typical trad game.

 

[Umbran]

Why can't it be done by committee?

It technically can be, but as a broad observation, committees are not terribly great at making choices. "Design by committee," has a negative connotation due to this pretty common experience.

With the GM as the "chair", whose job it is to weave various elements together.

There are games designed for such approaches, and games that are not. One reason to not use such an approach is that you aren't otherwise using the right tool for the job.

 

[TwoSix]

Why can't it be done by committee?

With the GM as the "chair", whose job it is to weave various elements together.

I mean, isn't this why Vincent Baker, in Apocalypse World, calls the GM the Master of Ceremonies? And why Christopher Kubasik, in his Interactive Toolkit, calls the GM the Fifth Business?

It can be done by committee, of course. It’s simply harder. And the players have to commit to exploring stories that the other characters will have reason to explore even when their personal character may not be the focus.

I just think @Celebrim is right to call out that, in practice, a lot of groups can’t maintain that level of cohesion.

 

[niklinna]

I think the point here is that a game needs a unified motive, a driving force. There might be various plot threads focused on individual characters, but they need to weave together as a coherent whole.

They don't need to weave together as a coherent whole, actually. I've played in a number of fun games where they didn't. If the group wants that, they can find a way, and if they want that, they can even do so without terribly much effort. If a group can't maintain that level of cohesion, there's a problem at a deeper level, one that even a (presumably singly-personified) unified motive, or driving force, cannot easily fix.

Edit: Fixed a typo.