Players: it's your responsibility to carry a story.

[The Shaman]

Head to the nearest tavern and wait for something to happen.

It actually makes sense that adventurers, who tend more often than not to be travelling, would in fact begin their adventures in taverns and inns.

Now my question was meant to be a bit silly, but there are a couple of points which can be made from it. First, anyone who's seen or read The Three Musketeers likely possesses at least some familiarity with the place and the period. Presumably if you decided you wanted to play in a roleplaying game about 17th century swashbucklers, you probably bring to the game some idea of the genre tropes.

Now try answering that question.

Second, this is why it's important to forumlate some kind of goals for the character; again, what your character is going to do is far more interesting and useful than what your character's done. If you understand your character's goals, then your next steps flow from that.

 

[S'mon]

But the thing that Merkuri is commenting on is the fact that he dislikes the D&D cliche of "we all meet in a bar" with no plan beyond that. Sorry, but that is a bad way to start play, and even very proactive players can only salvage that so much.

No it's not, you just don't like it. It works very well with players interested in exploration-of-setting rather than exploration-of-premise, to use your Indie talk.

 

[Nameless1]

Presumably if you decided you wanted to play in a roleplaying game about 17th century swashbucklers, you probably bring to the game some idea of the genre tropes.

*snip*

Second, this is why it's important to forumlate some kind of goals for the character; again, what your character is going to do is far more interesting and useful than what your character's done. If you understand your character's goals, then your next steps flow from that.

Sounds like your play flow is:

Discuss theme -> Create characters with motivations -> Something that follows this.

If that something is Action! then it fits how I like to play. If that something includes several hours of wandering around trying to figure out how to accomplish your goals or have some type of Action!, I would think that your games started pretty dull, and I would say that it is your fault. My end of the deal had been fulfilled when I created a character that was a 17th centure swashbuckler who had some goals, and I would even add some relationships. The fact that you made me wander around for hours before you attacked my motivations or my contacts or me would be a letdown.

But that is just how I like to play. Other people like to sit in bars and talk to barmaids. I just think that D'Artagnan would rather his story not include hours of accomplishing nothing.

 

[Nameless1]

You must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to S'mon again.

No it's not, you just don't like it. It works very well with players interested in exploration-of-setting rather than exploration-of-premise, to use your Indie talk.

I like exploration of setting at times too. Just not exploration of taverns.

 

[Orius]

The worst players are the ones that won't bite on any adventure hooks, and won't do anything else either. Either it's because their PC motivation is borked ("My character wouldn't risk his life for money!"), they expect the GM to outright force their PCs to go on the adventure G1 style, or they are just fundamentally boring people.

I hate when players pull that first type. You know, the druid or ranger that refuses to enter a city, a dwarf that won't ride a horse or ship, the klepto thief that just has to steal from the party, or the anti-paladin that has to kill the party. I've only had to deal with this rarely, but it annoys me as a DM, and it probably annoys the players, because it's silly "real-roleplaying" characterization that throws a wrench into the gameplay and grinds the entire session to a halt. You need to build a PC that can be flexible, and by flexible I don't mean sacrifice big long-term character goals, I mean don't be anal and make/play a character that's going to have obstinate difficulty with standard campaign elements or mess with group cohesion.

These exact problems are discussed in a post there called Three Sins of Players. One of the sins is passive players, another is the sabateur. One wrecks a sandbox, another wrecks a plot, and any player can be either or both, depending on the circumstances.

Passive players are alright, if they don't comprise the entire group. It's ok if there's a turtle or two at the table, as long as they go along with the more active players. Some players enjoy playing the game that way. It's when you're playing with a group that's nothing but turtles that it becomes a problem, because no one takes initiative. I've had that drive me nuts from time to time because I'd rather let the players do what they want than put them all on the Orius Express.

It's taking an hour haggling over 5 gp for a spear. It's taking three hours to determine the exact wording of a Divination spell. It's poncing about interviewing every single troopie when hiring a dozen spear carriers to go hunt a creature.

This has always irritated me, quite literally. In the first session of my very first campaign, another player blew a half hour gallivanting around town trying to by a freakin' axe when all I wanted to do was adventure. This sort of crap wastes time and bores the hell out of the rest of the group.

Another example, which happened recently, was this:

You find yourself at the church and see a few people milling around and a ~--Stray Cat--~ sitting on the steps.

Players: I go into the church.

Completely ignoring the cat, which was a side adventure that could have been very beneficial to them.p

As others have pointed out though, that's not really unusual. A stray cat comes off as dressing, like squirrels or birds or other descriptive elements meant to describe an area. A lot of players will just brush it off as fluff, because there's nothing unusual about it. The worst would be the KotD types who'd either complain you're wasting their time or actually kill the cat to see how many XPs they can squeeze out of it. Many players don't pay a great deal of attention to mundane fluff or generic NPCs, because they're just background details, something that's important probably should be called out a bit more or described in a way that stands out.

I'll make a world, but if you don't go find an adventure that's your problem. I don't run YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE campaigns.

I did one of those once, and boy was it a mistake. The campaign did have some good moments, and the players seemed to be enjoying themselves, but it really ended up tying my hands as DM. Then there's the added problem of the "Chosen One" getting a good deal of spotlight which probably ends up sucking for the other players.

To play devil's advocate for a moment, I'd note that I've encountered several players who have been reticent about the call to adventure because, it seemed, they'd been "trained" by GMs who ran killer games to be very wary of anything potentially lethal. A game with a high lethality index can be awfully stressful to some players, and therefore they wind up being kind of reticent about stuff that looks like it could be highly lethal.

A good campaign does throw in some occasional risk to keep the players on their toes, it's just bad when used all the time. Especially with no saving throws, with is just cheap RBDMing. Besides, some of those mind screws come off as so metagamey they end up having their way with verisimiltude.

 

[The Shaman]

What makes RPGs great for me is being a participant in the types of stories that are told in great literature and myths. RPGs =/= literature, but literature is good when it tells great stories, and RPGs are good when they tell great stories. The fact that RPGs =/= literature is not what makes them great.

We are at an impasse, I'm afraid; I couldn't agree less.

The only story I'm interested is the recounting of the adventurers' exploits.

This is not mutually exclusive to pre-established relationships. I am often not a fan of characters with no connection to other characters. There are fun stories to be told of characters with no connection, but they are a minority. Most people have connections. The self taught orphan who comes from someplace else and neither cares for nor dislikes anyone here is a weird character type. Everyone else has some connections.

D'Artagnan shows up in Paris with a letter of introduction to the captain-lieutenant of the Musketeers - he has no friends, no family, no patron. The aid which M. de Tréville can offer proves limited; D'Artagnan makes his fortune on the basis of the relationships he builds following his arrival in Paris, during the course of his adventures.

Pre-existing relationships are significantly overrated, in my experience.

I have a feeling that you misinterpret me here, mostly because I realize that my statement might be a little misleading. . . .

Perhaps.

My preparation consists of creating a web of interconnected npcs, organized by family ties, professional affiliation, political factions, and so forth, a slew of genre-appropriate random encounters, and a rough timeline of future events. That's pretty much it. There are intrigues by the bushel, but none of them presume the involvement, or even the existence, of the adventurers; really, I do most of my prep before I know anything about the adventurers at all. The intersection of the adventurers with this environment is driven by the choices the players make on behalf of their characters.

If you consider this a "theme and situation," then perhaps we share a common approach, at least to some degree.

Creating characters that fit into the situation creates much tighter games. Think of the Iliad. There are already well established relationships and a situation at the start of the story, as well as characters that fit the situation. It is actually the characters and their relationships that create the situation. Finding out what happens is the fun part.

For me, I don't see the need to create "well-established relationships" right at the giddyup. If the adventurers are pursuing their goals, these relationships will spring up around them in no time.

Characters in Flashing Blades may begin with resources such as a Contact or a Secret Loyalty to an npc; in FB terms, M. de Tréville is a Contact with which the character D'Artagnan begins the game. This is the extent of the adventurers' connection to the setting. For the Top Secret, the agents have a case officer as their sole contact; everything else they must build in play.

So I not sure if we approach our games with the same idea of "cohesive background/situation/characters." A theme or basic situation, okay; character motivations, definitely. Relationships? Not really.

It probably takes as long, but I HATE the search for the action step. It is the worst part of any game. It is boring. It is solved through discussion of what kind of game people want to play, group chargen including explicit discussion of character motivations and relationships, and starting play off in the middle of the action.

This is of course an entirely valid approach, but it's not one which I personally enjoy or utilize.

 

[The Shaman]

I like exploration of setting at times too. Just not exploration of taverns.

Whereas that's a passtime I enjoy in- and out-of-game!

 

[The Shaman]

Sounds like your play flow is:

Discuss theme -> Create characters with motivations -> Something that follows this.

Perhaps we're using two words to describe the same thing, but replace "theme" with "genre," and we're getting somewhere.

If that something is Action! then it fits how I like to play. If that something includes several hours of wandering around trying to figure out how to accomplish your goals or have some type of Action!, I would think that your games started pretty dull, and I would say that it is your fault. My end of the deal had been fulfilled when I created a character that was a 17th centure swashbuckler who had some goals, and I would even add some relationships. The fact that you made me wander around for hours before you attacked my motivations or my contacts or me would be a letdown.

And this is where we really differ.

Action! is up to you. I will bring the setting to life around your character; to that end I have genre-appropriate random encounters, so that instead of meeting a water selller carrying buckets suspended from a yoke over his shoulders or drunk laborer asleep in the gutter on the Pont-Neuf, you'll meet an arrogant fencing student or a guardsman courting a beautiful noblewoman or a witty actor busking for coins and shilling for his company's performance that night. It's up to you to turn that into Action! because you drive the game, not me.

I just think that D'Artagnan would rather his story not include hours of accomplishing nothing.

The elder D'Artagnan's advice to his son was, "Fight duels!" My advice to players is, "Make stuff happen."

If you're sitting in a bar doing nothing, it's because that's what you chose to do.

 

[Nameless1]

The only story I'm interested is the recounting of the adventurers' exploits.

Me as well. I just want to make sure that the story is interesting. Hitting on barmaids is not iteresting.

D'Artagnan shows up in Paris with a letter of introduction to the captain-lieutenant of the Musketeers - he has no friends, no family, no patron. The aid which M. de Tréville can offer proves limited; D'Artagnan makes his fortune on the basis of the relationships he builds following his arrival in Paris, during the course of his adventures.

Pre-existing relationships are significantly overrated, in my experience.

You are overlooking the other PCs in the story. The title characters. They have pre-established relationships. So we have one character with only one relationship, and three with more.

My preparation consists of creating a web of interconnected npcs, organized by family ties, professional affiliation, political factions, and so forth, a slew of genre-appropriate random encounters, and a rough timeline of future events. That's pretty much it. There are intrigues by the bushel, but none of them presume the involvement, or even the existence, of the adventurers; really, I do most of my prep before I know anything about the adventurers at all. The intersection of the adventurers with this environment is driven by the choices the players make on behalf of their characters.

I usually dispense with the rough timeline most of the time, otherwise, this is situation creation. You have created a dynamic situation that will change, and the PCs are invited to intersect with it. This is a technique that goes way back, it is just that a lot of indie games have formalized it. This could be a Dogs in the Vinyard situation generation session.

If you consider this a "theme and situation," then perhaps we share a common approach, at least to some degree.For me, I don't see the need to create "well-established relationships" right at the giddyup. If the adventurers are pursuing their goals, these relationships will spring up around them in no time.

As stated before, in-game establishment of relationships is not mutually exclusive to pre-established relationships. The difference is that you create situations that do not involve the PCs, and I create situations that involve PCs, often from the get go, through pre-established relationships. It skips the find-the-fun step.

Characters in Flashing Blades may begin with resources such as a Contact or a Secret Loyalty to an npc; in FB terms, M. de Tréville is a Contact with which the character D'Artagnan begins the game. This is the extent of the adventurers' connection to the setting.

As stated above, this is not true. It is the extent of D'Artagnan's connection to the setting. Every other character has more connections.

So I not sure if we approach our games with the same idea of "cohesive background/situation/characters." A theme or basic situation, okay; character motivations, definitely. Relationships? Not really.This is of course an entirely valid approach, but it's not one which I personally enjoy or utilize.

I think that our games just differ on the fact that I skip the find-the-fun step and say that we already did that. I situate the PCs in the situation. No bars needed.

 

[The Shaman]

You are overlooking the other PCs in the story. The title characters. They have pre-established relationships.

They are experienced PCs, not new characters.

See the difference?