Player-driven campaigns and developing strong stories

[Umbran]

They do want the freedom to find their own ways around those obstacles, to make their own plans, and respond to the narrative how they want to, but they do not - decidedly do not - want to put in the effort to make their own fun.

That final characterization may fit your players, but I don't know that it generalizes well. "Work" is not necessarily the issue at hand.

Creativity comes in different styles, and the wide-open sandbox serves some styles, but not others. Not all folks are particularly creative with "blue sky" options, but blossom when given a framework. This is not about "wanting to put in the work", it is about how they find inspiration.

It is a bit like noting that some folks are good at writing free verse, and others are great with sonnets. Neither one is putting in less work, or is less creative, but they are very different approaches to creativity.

 

[Umbran]

Rules can't fix broken people.

Mod Note:
Folks, the ragging on players stops now.

Not wanting to play the kind of game you do does not make someone "broken", or "lazy", or otherwise indicate the presence of personal flaws.

 

[Darth Solo]

The Microscope rpg solves the OP's problem by 1) eliminating the GM 2) giving the players the tools to create their own setting, timelines, characters and the means to explore the world(s) at their own pace. No pre-written "plots", no railroads, no violations of player agency.

But as payn wrote, this kind of play isn't for all players as some are perfectly comfortable with a measure of plot/railroad in their gaming. The strong foundation of ttrpgs is Heroic Adventure, where the players' characters are on a journey to confront and defeat some great evil. D&D and similar games, the superhero genre, Call of Cthulhu - there's a ton of ttrpgs with settings and adventures designed to have good characters battling evil. The characters are literally the setting's problem-solvers because if they can't stop the BBE, all is lost; and THAT is where the plot emerges.

But again I recommend the Microscope rpg for players looking for freedom from the "norms of gaming".

 

[Yora]

In contrast to "only you can stop the villain and if you don't try there would be no game", what available methods do we have to attract PCs to make someone else's problem their own even though the campaign does not require them to?
If you have an existing group of players and they are asking to prepare and run a new campaign for them, then you can ask them to decide on the pitch and come back to them a few weeks later. But of you want to pitch a campaign and go looking for players, the game needs to be ready to start within the week at the latest.

If not hooks to reel them in, there probably need to be at least some ropes within grasp that the players can pull on to see where they go. At the very start of the campaign it's often best to have the characters in a situation with very limited options and a immediately pressing problem that must be addressed. That gives them some time to get familiar with the environment and a feel for who their characters actually are. But while that helps to get things going, it still only pushes out the moment where the PCs will have to be thrown into the water to swim or sink.
Many game concepts have PCs take on jobs or other tasks for rewards, but it always feels to me that these rarely ever sound actually exciting. They are stuff you accept to do because you understand the game needs you to do so. Again, in the introduction to a campaign, that's not a bad thing once or twice. But if the players/PCs are supposed to become proactive at some point, the world needs to have things that actively sound attractive and exciting. Things that make the players want to drop the safe and predictable options and instead take avoidable risks.

I think that's kind of the goal I am after. Players having every option to just walk away from a situation and keep their PCs safe, but still rather wanting to do that thing that might cost them dearly. Which is why I feel it is very important that the players pick for themselves what they want to get invested in. If it is part of the premise of the campaign that the PCs will be heroes for a specific cause, then the players know that walking away is not actually a real option that they could go with and continue the campiagn.

 

[pointofyou]

A good friend of mine talks about starting campaigns by getting the PCs together and instigating like heck. Then once things are going he starts weaving in things the players have given him as interests whether in the optional backstories or in conversations or whatever. Later he makes sure they have options to choose from as far as what to pursue now and what to pursue later and what to skip entirely. I've played in a few of his campaigns and we've never done anything just as a job in any of them. The closest has been something like an exchange of favors. It helps that my friend makes it clear he prefers GMing for heroic characters so we all know what he expects of us.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think that's kind of the goal I am after. Players having every option to just walk away from a situation and keep their PCs safe, but still rather wanting to do that thing that might cost them dearly. Which is why I feel it is very important that the players pick for themselves what they want to get invested in. If it is part of the premise of the campaign that the PCs will be heroes for a specific cause, then the players know that walking away is not actually a real option that they could go with and continue the campiagn.

I would suggest creating characters as a group. Come up with some unifying element for the characters… they all live in the same town, they’re all members of the same organization… whatever people are interested in. Then let them help in crafting the town or organization or whatever it may be, along with the NPCs needed to get things going.

Establish connections between the PCs and the NPCs. Connect the PCs to the town/organization. Give them existing relationships… friends and relatives that the players help create. They’ll be more invested in the NPCs this way, and you can then use the NPCs to help motivate the characters.

Having a specific location or group helps focus things in a way that’s clearer than just open ended adventure. Having existing relationships gives the players immediate connections to the setting that can be helpful, but can also cause complications. However, don’t use such NPCs purely as damsels in distress… doing it now and again is fine, but if that’s all they ever are, it’ll get old quickly. The PCs should have friends that actually help them when needed.

That’s what I’d suggest for a start. Don’t have players create their characters in a vacuum, and don’t create the world in a vacuum as GM. Create it all together so it seems like one cohesive thing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In contrast to "only you can stop the villain and if you don't try there would be no game", what available methods do we have to attract PCs to make someone else's problem their own even though the campaign does not require them to?
If you have an existing group of players and they are asking to prepare and run a new campaign for them, then you can ask them to decide on the pitch and come back to them a few weeks later. But of you want to pitch a campaign and go looking for players, the game needs to be ready to start within the week at the latest.

If not hooks to reel them in, there probably need to be at least some ropes within grasp that the players can pull on to see where they go. At the very start of the campaign it's often best to have the characters in a situation with very limited options and a immediately pressing problem that must be addressed. That gives them some time to get familiar with the environment and a feel for who their characters actually are. But while that helps to get things going, it still only pushes out the moment where the PCs will have to be thrown into the water to swim or sink.
Many game concepts have PCs take on jobs or other tasks for rewards, but it always feels to me that these rarely ever sound actually exciting. They are stuff you accept to do because you understand the game needs you to do so. Again, in the introduction to a campaign, that's not a bad thing once or twice. But if the players/PCs are supposed to become proactive at some point, the world needs to have things that actively sound attractive and exciting. Things that make the players want to drop the safe and predictable options and instead take avoidable risks.

I think that's kind of the goal I am after. Players having every option to just walk away from a situation and keep their PCs safe, but still rather wanting to do that thing that might cost them dearly. Which is why I feel it is very important that the players pick for themselves what they want to get invested in. If it is part of the premise of the campaign that the PCs will be heroes for a specific cause, then the players know that walking away is not actually a real option that they could go with and continue the campiagn.

There are a lot of 'kicker' techniques (using the term loosely). Dungeon World chargen and session 0 will have produced bonds, a steading, and enough info for the GM to start on a campaign front. The dooms related to that front WILL make stuff happen. The PCs may not directly engage it, but at some point it's going to happen to them.

4e has the players create quests, you can use that information at game start to decide what will engage them should work.

Other games may be more tightly focused.

 

[Celebrim]

If it is part of the premise of the campaign that the PCs will be heroes for a specific cause, then the players know that walking away is not actually a real option that they could go with and continue the campaign.

I disagree. Walking away from the premise of a campaign usually just means that start of a new different campaign, that may eventually come around to intersect the original campaign depending on how things go.

But there is a certain amount of walking away that I can't compensate for. After having to deal with a player who played his character as a cowardly antisocial recluse who just wanted to hide from any danger, I eventually gave up on the idea that players ought to be allowed to play any character concept that they want. In any game, I do insist that even if players aren't heroic in their motivations, that they have at least some motivations for and willingness to risk danger. After a couple of games derailed by having RPers decide they wouldn't be motivated to get the party together because they wouldn't actually trust those strangers, I now also regardless of the game tend to require PC's to have prior relationships with one or more other PC's in the party, thus creating a group of natural allies. Basically, I had a number of games derail early because each player in the group ultimately acted like they wanted me to run a separate solo game for their PC. And then there was that campaign I was a player in because the GM set us lose with the chargen rules, and we all created really interesting PC's with backstories and their own motivations that did in fact work well together as a team and we were all skilled RPers - but all the PC's were ethnic minorities with a GM that had prepared an adventure to infiltrate a white supremacist group and even he didn't realize the problem until he started narrating the situation. Oops.

So I know longer just give players a description of the setting and then have them create whatever they want.

If the players want a different campaign, they should have made that clearer in session zero when we were figuring out what sort of campaign the group wanted and what sort of characters they would play. For example, session zero of the current campaign was shortly after Mandalorian season 1 dropped, and the players unanimously signaled that they wanted to be "Bounty Hunters in Star Wars". My only input to this is that I wanted to be in a different era than The Mandalorian (BY 15, early Rise of the Empire era). The players could walk away from this concept at any point and become pirates, rebels, smugglers, soldiers, or what not. I could still keep the game going. What I couldn't really deal with is one or two of the players walking away from the agreed upon concept while the rest of the party stuck with it.

And that tends to be the more usual problem. Everyone wanting a change of theme isn't a problem. The issue is more along the lines of 6 of the players and the GM agreed to a particular game and are happy with it, and now one of the players decides he wants to be the Chaotic Evil character in a heroic party. I can't do individually tailored campaigns for six different PC's. It's just too much work, and the pacing would be as slow as 'Wheel of Time'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I disagree. Walking away from the premise of a campaign usually just means that start of a new different campaign, that may eventually come around to intersect the original campaign depending on how things go.

But there is a certain amount of walking away that I can't compensate for. After having to deal with a player who played his character as a cowardly antisocial recluse who just wanted to hide from any danger, I eventually gave up on the idea that players ought to be allowed to play any character concept that they want. In any game, I do insist that even if players aren't heroic in their motivations, that they have at least some motivations for and willingness to risk danger. After a couple of games derailed by having RPers decide they wouldn't be motivated to get the party together because they wouldn't actually trust those strangers, I now also regardless of the game tend to require PC's to have prior relationships with one or more other PC's in the party, thus creating a group of natural allies. Basically, I had a number of games derail early because each player in the group ultimately acted like they wanted me to run a separate solo game for their PC. And then there was that campaign I was a player in because the GM set us lose with the chargen rules, and we all created really interesting PC's with backstories and their own motivations that did in fact work well together as a team and we were all skilled RPers - but all the PC's were ethnic minorities with a GM that had prepared an adventure to infiltrate a white supremacist group and even he didn't realize the problem until he started narrating the situation. Oops.

So I know longer just give players a description of the setting and then have them create whatever they want.

If the players want a different campaign, they should have made that clearer in session zero when we were figuring out what sort of campaign the group wanted and what sort of characters they would play. For example, session zero of the current campaign was shortly after Mandalorian season 1 dropped, and the players unanimously signaled that they wanted to be "Bounty Hunters in Star Wars". My only input to this is that I wanted to be in a different era than The Mandalorian (BY 15, early Rise of the Empire era). The players could walk away from this concept at any point and become pirates, rebels, smugglers, soldiers, or what not. I could still keep the game going. What I couldn't really deal with is one or two of the players walking away from the agreed upon concept while the rest of the party stuck with it.

And that tends to be the more usual problem. Everyone wanting a change of theme isn't a problem. The issue is more along the lines of 6 of the players and the GM agreed to a particular game and are happy with it, and now one of the players decides he wants to be the Chaotic Evil character in a heroic party. I can't do individually tailored campaigns for six different PC's. It's just too much work, and the pacing would be as slow as 'Wheel of Time'.

Wow, so, basically it is your world, your story, and your characters. I honestly think you should simply give up the pretense and write fantasy novels.

And how ironic that you post this here in a thread on "Player-driven campaigns and developing strong stories."

 

[Celebrim]

Wow, so, basically it is your world, your story, and your characters. I honestly think you should simply give up the pretense and write fantasy novels.

And how ironic that you post this here in a thread on "Player-driven campaigns and developing strong stories."

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.