Player-driven campaigns and developing strong stories

[AbdulAlhazred]

The important part is to have the players first agree on general goals for the party and then create characters accordingly. That's the one thing where I interfere with players in their freedom to make whatever character they want.

IME players mostly work this out pretty quickly on their own. D&D is rather weak here in terms of building in ways to make it happen.

 

[pointofyou]

The important part is to have the players first agree on general goals for the party and then create characters accordingly. That's the one thing where I interfere with players in their freedom to make whatever character they want.

I have found that you can have the players make the characters before deciding on goals and that works at least as well. These days the only interference among my gaming friends and acquaintances is if there's either some premise we're trying to stick to or if a given GM has something they either specifically want or specifically don't. "At least willing to be heroes" is a common requirement at our tables.

 

[bloodtide]

You are confusing "player driven" with "character driven". The two things are not the same thing. I agree that you can have a campaign that is driven by the personalities of the characters and that the fundamental issue that is always being tested is the personality of the characters and personality conflicts by the characters. But the fact that your plot is "character driven" doesn't mean that your game is necessarily player driven or that character driven stories are the only way to have player driven games.

Very True. The common gamer wisdom and the view of many GMs is the game is character driven. The thought is that a GM can just say "your characters home town is under attack" and the players will jump into 100% full deep immersion to act out their characters saving their home town. Of course the vast majority of players just look at that and are like "eh, whatever".

The same way most players don't care about getting things for their character like in game non material rewards or role playing things. But players REALLY care about getting material power ups for their self insert character that is themselves.

The fundamental problem with "character driven" play is that there is no guarantee at all that that is the desire and primary aesthetics of play of the players. It's not necessarily the case that the players want to see play that is primarily about their characters beliefs, bonds, and personality. They may have no interest at all in testing whether "our party, one that is potentially a bit of a powder keg, will they, can they, pull together?" And if I the GM am deciding that that is what the game is about, well we'd have character driven stories in a GM driven game.

It's rare, for a group of players to agree on some sort of group dynamic, unless it's a negative one like "lets play a bunch of Lone Wolves that hate each other and refuse to work together". Most players want things for themselves first, the group a far second and the game way, way, way beyond that.

Players and characters aren't the same thing. We often confuse those terms and say things like, "I killed all my players last night.", but as the example shows, it's important to keep that distinction.

Well, except the twist here is at least half of all players self insert themselves and play their character as themselves.



Like I said above, a great way to do a Player Driven game is Greed, or even more simply Power. Generally in-game near ultimate power. Dangle this in front of some players and watch them come running to the game and dive in with full immersion into deep role playing. It works great as a default.

"Lesser" rewards also work great. Even more so when you tailor them to the players (not the characters). Even really simple things can entice players.

 

[Thomas Shey]

IME players mostly work this out pretty quickly on their own. D&D is rather weak here in terms of building in ways to make it happen.

Usually. But even when they do, that doesn't always mean its done a benign way. Its not like its hard for more assertive personalities to end up taking the wheel of the campaign direction, and I'm not a fan of letting that happen.

 

[Yora]

I've seen too many anti-social loners who keep fighting the rest of the PCs to not go with them on adventures. They may think it's edgy and cool, but it's really just wasting everyone's time.

 

[Celebrim]

The common gamer wisdom and the view of many GMs is the game is character driven.

I've listened to like enumerable podcasts and "how to DM" videos and read books about DMing theory, and I've come to the conclusion that the vast majority of the ones that think they are running character driven games are really running high illusion GM driven games. I don't want to name names here, because I don't know who is reading, but there are some quite famous GMs in the OSR community and the Nar community who are obviously not running the game they think they are running. A bit of illusionism is fine, and I think for example Seth Skokowski as a GM who is trying his best to balance neutrality with illusionism and seems to be getting a good mixture of both, but so many of the at least public facing and popular GMs advocating for player agency are very clearly saying one thing and then running their game in another. And there are even a couple of designers who I once admired for their innovation whom I've very much fallen out of love with having tried to run their game and apply their principles, and then going back for advice and finding that they just patch all problems with illusionism.

The thought is that a GM can just say "your characters hometown is under attack" and the players will jump into 100% full deep immersion to act out their characters saving their hometown. Of course, the vast majority of players just look at that and are like "eh, whatever".

There are definitely players that do really get into thespianism and exploration of character and melodrama as aesthetics, but they are in my experience the minority. Getting most players to connect with NPCs is hard, and IME very unpredictable. But even when I get players to connect with NPCs, it's very rare for them to value them more than say gear - much less their own PC. And you can play in styles where survival is less of a risk factor and gear isn't all that important and the system narrows down the aesthetics to that thing that the player is supposed to care about, and the majority of players simply won't respond to the system the way they will to one that rewards challenge, competition, fantasy, exploration of setting, and cinematic narratives.

Indeed, there is this weird thing even if you get into the Forge theory, that the theorists themselves will agree that "Story Now" and "Nar" play isn't actually designed to produce long form coherent literary narratives. So there is often a disconnect between what the system is trying to provide and what the table wants to produce that is only mitigated by the fact the table doesn't know any other approach beyond something like a Pathfinder AP and treating the text like gospel. (Which won't work, especially given the highly uneven quality of most Pathfinder AP's.)

It's rare, for a group of players to agree on some sort of group dynamic, unless it's a negative one like "lets play a bunch of Lone Wolves that hate each other and refuse to work together". Most players want things for themselves first, the group a far second and the game way, way, way beyond that.

And you can have a group with intraparty conflict that works, but because most players are playing self-inserts and can't play anything else, then it's really rare to have a group of players that can have intraparty conflict that is fun and not frustrating and inevitably going to turn to real world table conflicts. And this is especially true because in most healthy groups, the guy wanting to introduce intraparty conflict is not the most emotionally healthy, talented, and mature player at the table. Again, I've seen it work, but the trust level has to be really high and the players can't actually be driven by competition as an aesthetic.

Well, except the twist here is at least half of all players self-insert themselves and play their character as themselves.

It's more than half. Conservatively I'd say it's like 80%. The trope called out by 'Knights of the Dinner Table' where every player is playing the same character regardless of system, setting, or rules is so true. Of the 30 or so players I've had the pleasure to game with for a lengthy period, I can really only call out one or two as capable of playing a wide range of personalities and motivations. Mostly they wear attributes like skin suits over their own personalities.

 

[Yora]

I had a thought that somehow never occured to me, as it goes against the orthodox puritanian model of a true sandbox, but what if the PCs don't start out as new nobodies with no reputation and no involvement in anything?
There could easily be people out looking for them and planning to hand out some pain or other major nuisance when they find them?
Frequently this shows up as someone more powerful and lots of goons forcing the PCs to go on an adventure doing a specific thing, if they want to or not. Which of course is really not player-driven. But even when you go with the old (and perhaps tired) of "You own this dangerous guy a lot of money", it does not need to be that the players do a specific task to get the debt cleared, but just deliver the money by whichever means they can think of.
If the PCs primary goal is to stay alive and keep their possessions, heading away from all the action is a sensible approach. But when trouble is already coming for you and will keep looking for you, then that changes the whole situation comppetely. Various places now become much more dangerous for the PCs specifically even if they are not particularly so for other people, and the PCs already have good reasons to look for opportunities to team up with the enemies of their enemies.

 

[dersplotter]

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

I think you've committed an important fallacy.

You see you are confusing 'player driven' with 'character driven'. The two things are not the same thing. You can have a campaign that is driven by the personalities of the characters and that the issue that is always being tested is the personality of the characters and personality conflicts by the characters. But the fact that your plot is "character driven" doesn't mean that your game is necessarily player driven or that character driven stories are the only way to have player driven games. Players and characters aren't the same thing. It's important to keep that distinction.

Concluding, on whatever basis, that the games are not character driven isn't telling us whether they are player-driven. And therefore your conclusions, founded as they are on nothing but assertion, seems both to miss the point and orthogonal to any question of player-driven play.

I'm quite sure you are extremely versed in mistaking player-driven play for illusionism and railroading, however. But very, very far from versed in any sort of narrativist, story now or actual player-driven play.

 

[pemerton]

Design by committee may get you a "player driven" campaign, but it does little to ensure "strong stories". Committees are often very bad at unifying vision.

It seems to me that the beauty of game design like In A Wicked Age, or Burning Wheel, or Apocalypse World - and no doubt many others too - is that strong stories result without the need for a unifying vision.

 

[Baron Opal II]

I've seen too many anti-social loners who keep fighting the rest of the PCs to not go with them on adventures. They may think it's edgy and cool, but it's really just wasting everyone's time.

Yeah, that runs afoul of the Baron's Third Rule- "It is your job to tell me why your character is adventuring, not mine."
(First Rule is "Don't Be a Dick", Second is "The monsters are more likely to eat you if you're not a team.")

The process I go through when starting a campaign usually runs something like:

Step 1: "Am I running my long standing D&D game with my mutant version of AD&D?" - "Yes"*
Step 2: "What do you want to play?" Answer is usually "A campaign of adventure and exploration."
Step 3: "Any particular themes? Noble third children? Scrappy survivors with three coppers, some string, and a broken dagger?" They choose whatever, sometimes I present options.
Step 4: "What do I need to know about your characters?"
Step 5: "Any place you want to start?"
Step 6: "And, here we go!"

I provide three specific hooks depending on where they are and what they have told me about their characters. The goal is that they learn enough about the sandbox that they start choosing what what interests them the most, as well as gain contacts and allies that they may prefer. Those that already know about the setting often eschew these hooks. I also try to have 2-4 "secrets" for them to discover, with undiscovered secrets rolling over to the next campaign. Significant plot lines are seeded, with a timer as appropriate.

This last campaign, the grand story was the siege and investiture of the City-State of Shodan, throwing down the undead horror of the Ivory Queen. This occupied the PCs from levels 5-10, and has been done. The ancestral ruling family has taken control thanking the PCs for their aid. The rest of the party dog-piled the fighter who was promised a countess investiture for taking the city and ready for the Shodan family to tragically fall into a well full of swords. Whether or not this happens in the future is yet to be determined.

The next arc, chosen by a different player, is throwing down the Red-Eyed Walker (aka Ithaqua). It seems to be generating a large glacial shelf that has rolled over some civilization in the past, and currently threatens the city-state of a second player. The party is now 9-11th level, functionally as capable as 14th+ level from a 5e lens, I think. They first heard of this when the party was 3-4th level, and have been slowly investigating it as they party figured out how to deal with the first arc villain and plan for the second arc.

The first arc villain was a bit of an accident when the PCs did something I didn't expect, there were consequences, and they decided to pursue him. The second arc was chosen once they were exposed to the world and saw the pieces that were in motion. One of the players asked, "what do I have to do to become a baroness?" They found out, and decided to go the Great Deed route, picked an amenable duke, and did the deed. A consequence of not choosing a different route is that a frontier town was completely erased by a known hazard. This wasn't the PCs "fault", but it was a consequence of the problem being ignored. The third arc was chosen similarly, the PCs had a number of things that they had heard about and chose one that appealed.

The campaign may be retired during the summer, with a new one in the fall.** We'll have a new exchange student, and the fighter character is itchy to player something different.

* I present other options, but that's what is chosen.
**Which will be me. It's always me. There is a non-zero chance the fighter's player, who is new to gaming, may want to run something. We'll see.