Players: it's your responsibility to carry a story.
- Thread starter Kzach
- Start date
I am interpreting you as being confused as to
(a) where it is (and is meant to remain) wide open, and
(b) where it is as practically focused as most games in the wide world of games, from Mancala to Halo 3.
Specifically, it comes from the field of wargames campaigns. In D&D, you have objectives in general terms (survive and score points), but it is up to you as to how to pursue them.
Advanced D&D introduced a rule requiring conversion of most treasures into cash to score x.p., which apparently has been the cause of much grumpiness.
Suffice to say that what I take for the obvious intent is that players who dare great things can reap great rewards.
Fritz Leiber said:
Whereas the glossary in the 1st DMG offers:S'mon said:
"Encounter -- An unexpected confrontation with a monster, another party, etc."
If we've got to go through ABC... because the GM has determined that we shall, then that is EXACTLY what "railroad" means to me.pemerton said:
I guess this is archaic in a certain subculture, but "normal" people seem still to understand it quite readily:
Where there is game, there is no plot. Where there is plot, there is no game. A thing that is as a whole called "a game" is not necessarily game -- as opposed to plot, or sheer randomness, or something else -- throughout.
Snakes and Ladders or Candy Land is all randomness, no game. The player has no choices, no control.
Star Wars (movie, book or comic) is all plot, no game. The viewer or reader has no choices, no control.
A Choose Your Own Adventure book is much plot and some game. The reader has clearly limited choices, control only over which pre-written chapter comes next.
Interactive fiction tends to benefit greatly from the resources that computerization affords. It's a big leap from CYOA to a sophisticated parser system! A human can do even more, but the power is largely wasted to the extent that there is nothing but plot to unroll. It is the game that calls for a game master.
"Plot, plot, eggs, ham and plot" may have not so much plot as some other things, but it is excluding game possibilities.
The trend I see is toward exchanging the old D&D campaign game for the CYOA model that was pressed into service -- most notably with T&T, and secondarily with TFT, as "engine" -- for solitaire play. When one has no fellow players, not even one to be GM, the expedient may be better than no game at all.
It can also, of course, be entertaining in its own right. However, compared even with such "primitive" computerized efforts as Ultima III it is notably constrained.
Compared with old D&D, it is a world apart.
The Shaman
First Post
Well said.
This also speaks to the point I was trying to make further upthread: if the theme of the game, as you've used it here, B, fits with character creation and the rewards provided by the system, then I believe you're going to get a better experience in actual play. If you're using 1e AD&D, with its emphasis on treasure as the primary means of advancement, then a game in which fey-lovin' is the theme will probably have less looting of old tombs and more something along the lines of a 10,000 gp heart-shaped ruby awarded by the King of the Pixies for a successful courtship.
In this way you're using the strengths of the system to reinforce the themes of the game, and vice versa.
I get the impression here that you really have no experience with games that are run on tight situations. There is no plot. There is no predetermined order, no predetermined events, and in most games that are run in this way, every encounter is created exactly in accordance with what you cite as the definition of an encounter. Namely, that they are not planned out in advance, they are unexpected, even for the GM in those games that still insist on having such traditional structure.
When you prep a situation, it is all about the motivations of the characters, both PC and NPC. When you create motivations at the outset for a bunch of characters, all ponted at each other and including many motivations that are in direct or tangential opposition, it creates an unstable situation. This is where the game starts. Any action undertaken by any of the characters will provoke a response by many other characters. Some will support the action, some will want to oppose it. The game starts with a scene that interests the GM/players. Characters interact. Conflict ensues. The aftermath of this encounter prompts other action by other characters, and suggests new scenes to be framed. It is this evolution of the goals, motivations, relationships, and advantages/disadvantages that drives a situation dependent game. There is no overall goal for the resolution of the situation, and there certainly is no "plot" or order of encounters. It is somewhat like a sandbox in that way, except by its very nature, the situation is not static as compared to most sandboxes.
The true beauty of a situation based game is that the whole thing is unstable. It is dynamic in that any action by any character will create conflict with other characters, will demand a response by other characters, and will ultimately create an evolving situation driving the story forward. This drive forward is not a plot because it is not predetermined. It evolves during play, just like the vaunted sandbox play is supposed to. But it demands action by the PCs by it's very nature, and creates a story like we think of them, all in the absence of a predetermined plot.
The only requirement, as pemerton has stated upthread, is a little preparatory metagaming to create the situation, one that will interest the players and involve the PCs. Create your game not with a geographic map but with a relationship map, and include significant amounts of conflicting interests, and you get all the benefits of a sandbox, with all the benefits of a railroaded plot, but in essence no more prep than a sandbox, and different if not significantly less prep than a plot. Depending on game system of course. D&D is definitely possible to run this way, even if it will take a little getting used to in order to figure out how to properly prep encounters in a situation based game.
I don't really see a character/situation-based sandbox, such as a political game set at the royal court, as any different from geographical sandbox. I tend to think the best games have elements of both. If you look at 3e Wilderlands of High Fantasy, it's certainly possible to extract complex relationship maps of the different NPCs and factions, though it's a pity that more wasn't included in the box set. Rob Conley has very kindly provided a lot of that to me for the areas he wrote up, in the WoHF forum over on the Necromancer Games bulletin board.
The Shaman
First Post
Or your could do this through actual play, instead of metagaming.
Doing this out-of-game is a preference, not a requirement.
Ariosto, I really don't get this. You're writing as if you think I've never read your posts, or the D&D rulebooks you draw on - which I clearly have read - or else as if I have the reading comprehension of a schoolchild - which I will confidently assert that I do not.
As I said in several posts upthread, there is an undeniable difference in scope between D&D as a published ruletext, and D&D as played at actual gametables. The evidence for this is overwhelming - any single page of The Forum in any single number of Dragon from the mid-1980s will confirm this.
The OP's problem is not one of players who read the D&D rulebook and don't know what to do. It is a problem of players who turn up to a game that is badged as D&D and don't know what to do. Telling them to read the rulebook and play that game isn't going to solve the problem. If that was enough, the problem wouldn't have arisen in the first place!
I think that the posts upthread about finding homes for stray cats make my point crystal clear (although I don't think they were actually intended to be evidence of my point!).
Nameless1 has said a lot of sensible stuff in response to this. But I'll add a bit.
Suppose that a player, in designing his mage PC, specifies as part of his backstory that (i) he has a mentor, (ii) that that mentor lives in a tree in a forest, and (iii) that the reason for this is that the mentor is hiding from shadowy enemies who are trying to hunt him down. (Shades of Obi-Wan Kenobi.)
Suppose, then, that I, as GM, start an encounter this way: The PCs are all sitting in the village, having returned home from a bit of orcslaying. Suddenly the wizard PC sees his mentor's raven familiar, covered in blood, flying towards him. (Shades of the Wizard of Earthsea. No one said that situation-based RPG play has to be great or original literature.)
In any group I've ever gamed with, the player of that wizard will infer that his PC's mentor is in trouble, and will try and find out about it - whether by going to the tree, or talking to the familiar, or using a magic ritual, or whatever.
Where is the railroad? I can't see one. I as GM have not determined that anyone has to go through anything. I've responded to a hook that the player presented to me in his character build. He has, in effect, determined that I as GM provide him with something - namely, an attack upon his mentor to which his PC has to respond.
Although there is no railroad, the amount of preparation I have to engage in is nevertheless reasonably slight - I need to know something about who attacked the mentor, and why, and something about what the wizard will learn is he uses magic or talks to the familiar, and that's about it. There's always a chance that things will take a different direction, but to me at least this looks nothing like sandboxing.
Like I said upthread, I suspect the way I play is a bit more traditional than you. I still use geographic maps, for example (but using skill challenges to resolve movement across them makes it play more like an indie game and less like Traveller or 1st ed AD&D).
I also still play within a traditional ongoing 1st to 30th campaign framework, which means the pace of story evolution is much slower than it would tend to be in an indie game.
Which is to say, the situations in my game overall are probably not as tight as in yours.
But that to one side, I agree entirely with what you're saying. My players, when they build their PCs, locate them in the gameworld by reference to communities, and/or religions, and/or mentors, etc. And the play is based on me setting up situations that engage the players by reference to those relationships. Often not in any very sophisticated fashion - if several players are from a village that was destroyed by goblins, for example, then they're likely to respond when they come across a homestead under attack by goblins - or a paladin of the Raven Queen is likely to investigate cursed souls who can't escape to the Shadowfell - but in my experience you don't need much more than a few simple relationships intersecting to produce an overall situation that is quite complex and engaging for both players and GM. Especially if you play in a party-focused game, and some of the intersections play on, or generate, tensions within the party.
As for encounters that are a surprise, definitely yes. In my experience, the surprises occur not at the stage of "what is an encounter" - because these are built based on the evolving PC hooks - but rather in the context of encounter resolution. Like I said in the previous paragraph, the paladin of the Raven Queen can be predicted to take an interest in the cursed souls. But will he blast them or talk to them? The PCs on a mission to rescue villagers from slavery aren't just going to ignore the duergar slavers, but will they fight them or talk to them? (In my game they talked to them, and arranged to purchase the slaves back at close to cost price. As a result they now have to meet the duergar in a neutral city to make the exchange.) What will the mage who hates goblinoids do with the hobgoblin raiders whom he's knocked unconscious when they attacked the village? (In my game he beheaded them all, to the horror of his fellow PCs but the delight of the villagers.)
To me, this is almost the mirror image of a traditional AD&D or Basic D&D game, where the question of "what is an encounter" is up for grabs - because the PCs may or may not show any interest in any particular room, or cavern, or rumour, or treasure map - but the question of "how will it be resolved" is very often known in advance, because the reward system and the alignment system dicate so much of the answer to those questions.
I think there are some interesting edge cases here
Its relatively common for a group to have a character creation session before play proper starts, building their characters together in order to achieve some desired starting condition. I imagine that you do something similar, if only to avoid two players showing up with a nobleman who will have nothing to do with the peasantry and a firebrand revolutionary.
I've done this at least once where this session played out much like a free-form with the GM acting as arbiter.
The planned game pitch was "Veterans in the aftermath of a war" - the character creation session was set during the war itself and played out much like a normal session except at a much higher pace and with little to no mechanical resolution. The large scale outcome of the session was known - the characters would all survive, the war would end in a pre-defined manner and so on, but it allowed for the rapid development of the broad themes of the relationships within the character party and with assorted NPCs.
The question is then, was this actual play? We weren't using the system the bulk of the campaign was but we were certainly roleplaying during that session. If we'd instead held the same roleplay as a "telling of old warstories in the bar" scene as part of the first full session, would that be different?
