Player vs Plot - DM responsibilities

[TerraDave]

...

In the mind of the player he could always right his own epilogue after the completion of the campaign.

And sometimes that is the best approach...

A few times I have worked a particular person or thing--of unusual and specific nature--that was a major backstory element of a PC into the game. And watched as the PC doesn't seem to know what to do about it. Or worse. As I read this thread, I think it was a turn of the tables: instead of the players messing up the DMs carefully imagined story, the DM has now done that to the PC, not by ignoring it (which leaves it nicely undisturbed) but by engaging with it.

 

[Celebrim]

And I meant it when I said, "If you're having fun, keep on trucking." This is personal preference only. If the players are fine with simply being pawns in the GM's machinations and everyone has fun with it, rock on.

- emphasis mine

And we aren't at all poisoning the well in saying that.

A lot of the time I think that we have RPG arguments entirely over theory instead of practice. We are caring more about how we perceive the game and how we describe our game and how other's perceive the game than the actual nuts and bolts of how we play.

I've often wondered whether many of the DMs here that have the biggest arguments over theory in fact have much meaningful differences in the way they run a game, or if it is really just an argument over how we describe what is in practice almost entirely the same thing.

I'm not saying let chaos reign, I'm just saying that DM dictation is the other extreme that I'm not fond of.

I seriously doubt that there are many real advocates for the straw man extremes. Instead, in practice I bet everyone is doing some variation on...

When I set up a game, I get the players together and we discuss as a group what the boundaries of the game will be, and then everyone agrees to conform to those boundaries.

The process probably isn't formalized or even recognized in everyone's game, but its usually there. Everyone's labeling of the process is more telling I think of their biases regarding how that process broke down in the past, than actual differences in methodology. When you put down the actual process, rather than the theory of the process, it gets a lot more nuanced in the reality of the give and take than blanket statements of theory tend to be.

The assumption that the player is right and the DMs wrong, or that the best game comes from being less restrictive or more restrictive is almost certainly wrong not only in the general case but in about half of them. I have right in the rules the option to have in your backstory that you are descended from a deity, or a member of a royal family, or raised by wolves, that you are a misanthrope that only gets along with oozes, or any number of equally disruptive backgrounds. I can't imagine however giving another DM the advice to accept specific disruptive concepts like just because I tend to, and I'm sure there are plenty of DMs that accept backgrounds that I wouldn't and yet profit from it (or sometimes more to the point, concepts not characters). And likewise, I can see benefiting from some tighter constraints, demands on PC's that they conform to the backgrounds and desires of other existing PC's and work existing NPC's into their backgrounds. I've seen two campaigns (one I ran, and one as a player) wrecked for lack of DM dictation regarding character concept. I've seen more campaigns than I can count wrecked because the GM had the theory that the PCs drove the game. I can equally imagine too much of a heavy hand wrecking a game so that its no fun for anyone, though fortunately I've only heard stories about that one. I've seen players bully a table to get their way as often or more often than I've seen DMs bully a table. The notion that its repressive irrational DMs and players who just want reasonable things but are victimized by their DM doesn't represent reality. Players aren't usually all on the same page or even on the same 'team', and ultimately the DM is a player of the game as well. The theory that the GM has even less say over the game than a player is if anything much more dysfunctional (because it ignores the reality of GMing) than the theory that the GM has much more say over the game than a player.

If GMing was so simple that it could be summed up with slogans, not only would we no longer need to write about it, but we could replace the GM with an algorithm or a computer and be done with it.

 

[Agamon]

A few times I have worked a particular person or thing--of unusual and specific nature--that was a major backstory element of a PC into the game. And watched as the PC doesn't seem to know what to do about it. Or worse. As I read this thread, I think it was a turn of the tables: instead of the players messing up the DMs carefully imagined story, the DM has now done that to the PC, not by ignoring it (which leaves it nicely undisturbed) but by engaging with it.

There's a Kickstarter for new genre in here somewhere. Instead of playing a game, everyone gets together to write their own novels.

 

[Umbran]

As I read this thread, I think it was a turn of the tables: instead of the players messing up the DMs carefully imagined story, the DM has now done that to the PC, not by ignoring it (which leaves it nicely undisturbed) but by engaging with it.

Some years ago, in a live-action campaign, the writers had a specific call out to this. They specifically asked players to denote in their backgrounds what things the GMs were supposed to avoid, and things they were invited to muck around with. So, f'rex, your character's missing parents could be your own internal roleplaying angst, or a campaign plot point - you choose.

Since then, I've applied this to my tabletop campaigns.

 

[Agamon]

And we aren't at all poisoning the well in saying that.

Not at all, in fact I play in a game like this. Not normally my cup of tea, but I get to hang out with friends and it's fun in its own right. I'm not running the game so I just roll with it.

The theory that the GM has even less say over the game than a player is if anything much more dysfunctional (because it ignores the reality of GMing) than the theory that the GM has much more say over the game than a player.

The GM has less say? Wow, who's advocating that? If anything, I have the most to say as the GM in my games, but the players are allowed their say, too. That creates healthy discussion.

If GMing was so simple that it could be summed up with slogans, not only would we no longer need to write about it, but we could replace the GM with an algorithm or a computer and be done with it.

Again, where did this come from? Give and take and working with the players takes a lot more than what an AI can do these days (see current CRPGs and how much player agency they allow).

 

[Celebrim]

I think in general the story wins out. Often campaigns end before the character in question dies and the goal he is working to may be unresolved. For example if I have a backstory that says I am a changeling at birth and will some day go back to the feywild to confront my parents, does it matter if that is resolved in a campaign that mostly focuses on goblins?

In the mind of the player he could always write his own epilogue after the completion of the campaign.

This is the sort of player pragmatism that I so rarely see.

So many things can go wrong with player trumping the DM, not with the DMs fun, but with the player's fun.

a) It presumes that the story the player wants is actually one he's going to enjoy more than the one the DM wants.
b) It presumes the player is actually a decent story teller.
c) It presumes that the other players are actually going to enjoy the player's story more than they'd enjoy the DMs story.
d) It presumes that the player's story is compatible with all the other player's stories. At an extreme, it presumes that the story the player wants isn't, "I'm secretly a traitor to the party.", "I'm going to kill all the other PC's".
e) It presumes that there is actually space in the campaign for telling a story focused individually on six different PC's goals.
f) Individual player goals almost always splits the party, imposing difficulties with running the story as forcing players to watch other players play.
g) It presumes that the player actually has a functional model of play as opposed to wanting to DM from the player chair, wanting to always get his own way, wanting to always win, wanting to always win easily, wanting to always have the spot light, wanting to always one up the other players, etc. I've seen literally seen players combine the personality of, "I'm always wanting to win", with the backstory of, "I'm secretly a monster who is going to kill all the other PCs". Yeah, that works so well for everyone...
h) It presumes that the other players aren't expecting the DM to deliver a story, and will be perfectly happy to have another player in the driver seat trumping the DM's story.
I) It presumes this particular PC is going to survive long enough to not only have a meaningful impact on the game, but develop a satisfying story line.
j) It presumes that the campaign is going to go long enough that not only can this one guy fit his story arc into it, but everyone can.

In my experience, 4 times in 5 the guy running the game is the best RPer, most experienced player, puts the most effort into the game, put the most thought into everyone else having fun, and has the most mature outlook regarding table conflict of anyone at the table. It's rare that I'm sitting at a GMs table and I want him to give in to another players demands and ideas.

Right now I have a glut of potential campaigns I could be running based on player backstories. It's taken 4 in real life years just to get where we are now. There is no way I'm going to resolve every possible story line based off of every hook the players have thrown me, and that's to say nothing of effort that was expended on integrating character backstories in to the game only to see the character die off before anything could really come of it leaving orphan story lines where no existing character knows IC about the NPC's and conflict involved. And right up on the horizon I've got a major worry as a DM where one character's backstory is going to force the PC to make a choice between pursuing the villain the players have been chasing for 4 IRL years, or letting that trail go cold and pursuing something of overwhelming personal importance to the PC. It could make for great dramatic RP. It could also completely suck for not just that player, but the whole party.

 

[Celebrim]

Since then, I've applied this to my tabletop campaigns.

Yes, good policy.

I also have had a player come to me and say, "You know how I gave you permission to mess with my character's backstory. Well, last week I was enjoying that, but my dad just died and I'd appreciate it if you stopped because suddenly it's too personal and I can't handle it right now."

"Yes. No problem. Consider that plot line on hold until you say otherwise."

What's more common though I think, and something I think Dave was touching on is that a player has a hook in there backstory or an idea about their fore story that probably isn't the best idea for a story for some reason. Probably the most typical problem I see is that the player puts some cliché in their backstory and has a vague notion of it being used in the most clichéd way imaginable, and a vague idea that that is going to be fun because it worked for the trope setter, when in fact, if you gave the player the cliché he'd be really disappointed because the story had no twist and no creativity, but if you really deconstruct or subvert the cliché then that is also going to disappoint the player because it's not who he saw himself as.

To give an example, almost every player in some fashion draws on the mysterious birth cliché. It's like the default backstory. Sometimes you end up with 6 guys who all have this dangling hook that they are orphans/bastards/or otherwise have missing fathers but their parents where possibly seriously important, which borders on the ridiculous if you pay attention to all of that (unless incidentally, the backstories converge and provide for a conspiracy).

IMO, the only character you actually want to play that cliché straight up on is the one guy that didn't and doesn't see it coming. Everyone else will only really enjoy it if they are ok subverting the trope and giving them a twist If a player sets up his character's dad to be Darth Vader, or sets himself up to be the mysterious orphan whose actually the heir to the throne, often he's going to actually be disappointed no matter what you do with that hook especially in the short term. The guy who wrote the cliché about being the mysterious orphan who is actually the heir to the throne would be just going through the motions if you followed up on that, so instead you should probably leave the plot hook alone and work on fulfilling the real metagoal involved. Or sometimes you can just ignore a hook long enough that the player gives up on the plot, and then you actually can use it.

But in many ways, playing on the player provided hooks is still like writing a novel for an audience. They still don't actually want to know what is going to happen because nothing is more boring than a perfectly predictable story. If you give up on have twists in the plot, then it puts a really heavy burden on the other aesthetics of play to pick up the slack.

In a certain sense I'm in a good place with my current group. All of them are so genera unsavvy and have such poor narrative sense, that everything I pull no matter how clichéd is a twist they didn't see coming. I've got three mysterious birth plotlines going in some form or the other, which I think I a record for a single group, and I don't think any one of the three players has a clue where I'm going to pull the rug out from under them or where I think their story goes based on their backstory.

 

[Umbran]

To give an example, almost every player in some fashion draws on the mysterious birth cliché. It's like the default backstory.

Well, yes. But note that we, as gamers, get our first taste of making backstory while we are still teens, and our GMs are teens. Doing real quality roleplaying around parental relationships still a bit beyond most of us when get get into the gig.

And, while nearly every gamer geek harbors the fantasy of being a Great Author, let's face it... most of us are hack writers

 

[Shiroiken]

I would simply suggest that the player hold on to the character idea for another campaign. I've seen players stubbornly hold on to a character idea that really didn't fit the campaign, only to be upset when the character concept becomes ruined early on.

For example, we played a Thay Slave campaign, so we knew that we would have NO gear at the start of the game, but would have to scavenge up things. One player insisted on playing a wizard (because "Sorcerers suck," and had no spellbook and no components. His character was all but helpless, and he tagged along with us hoping we could get a spellbook somewhere. It was not fun for him or anyone else, but the DM told him in advance that is what would almost certainly happen.

 

[Rod Staffwand]

I would prioritize an enthusiastic player with ambitious goals over secret backstories and late-game reveals every time. In my experience, the first makes for a great game while the second might make for a great game.