Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Player-driven campaigns and developing strong stories
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8973275" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>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:</p><p></p><p>"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."</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8973275, member: 4937"] 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. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Player-driven campaigns and developing strong stories
Top