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Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, off to a good start
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7610028" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>That's impossible. In fact, it's self-contradictory. By definition, if the player decision - whether smart or stupid - always leads to ever more interesting decisions, then those decisions are not interesting. If regardless of what I choose, I'm going to get an interesting result, then the decision itself is not meaningful. I could roll the dice or flip a coin for every choice. What does it matter? </p><p></p><p>I've heard this sort of thing before, but it always seems to exist in theory and never in practice. In practice, some decisions don't lead to immediately interesting things. You can pursue the players with a story, but you can't make them have one. Heck, I've even ran a game for 5 year olds using a system of my own devising where serious failure consequences were basically non-existent and could always be fixed by "Mom" at the end of the session, and fully prepared to have adventure spring up around them whatever they do, but truth is, you can't make every choice interesting. Turns out 5 year olds will often actively flee anything that implies risk. It's a rational choice, but it's not an interesting one. And I'm not just picking on 5 year olds. I have had the same problem on occasion with adult players, which eventually led to a rule that you could not play a character who primary motivation was to be uninvolved, isolated, and uncooperative. You had to play some sort of character that had a motivation to get involved in risky danger filled activity. You couldn't for example play a character whose response to danger was to go home and hide and then complain that the other players weren't doing a good enough job convincing an uncooperative stranger to help them and that you were bored because you were successfully hiding. Yes, that was an adult, not the 5 year old.</p><p></p><p>Fundamentally, an RPG is a cooperative endeavor that requires a certain sort of active participation by all parties. If the players make interesting choices, you can always have interesting consequences. But there are some sorts of choices you can't give interesting consequences and still have choice be meaningful. Excessively stupid, excessively short-sighted, excessively risk adverse, or excessively passive play must result in logically less interesting consequences if it is persisted in, or else none of the choices matter. There is only so much the GM can do to put in what the players are leaving out.</p><p></p><p>If the player's burn down the house, I can continue the adventure. Things will be different. There will now be rubble where the house was, and the surviving vermin in the house will perhaps come to reinhabit the rubble. The smuggling will continue. Eventually things will happen. But as much as I will try to continue the adventure I can not promise that the decision to burn down the house will be as interesting as the decision to enter it, nor can I promise that the end results will necessarily be as satisfying, nor can I in fact force the players to make some new interesting choice rather than making choice that attempt to evade risk and interest. For example, I can't stop the party from deciding to go fishing. I can in fact arrange for them to have an interesting encounter if they do, but then I can't make the party decide not to flee that encounter rather than interact with it. I can keep chasing the players with the fun, but I can't stop them from choosing passive and evasive behavior. I can try to keep the story moving, but I can't promise that it doesn't end with, "Heavily armed Sahuaghin invade town, surprising inhabits.", while the still 1st level characters who have evaded all interaction evade this interaction, fleeing the consequences of all their choices and perhaps complaining about how unfair it is that they were expected to stop a huge Sahuaghin army. </p><p></p><p>The PC's are still alive. They are still in some sense, "Failing forward." I may be desperately seeking something that they care enough about to make a stand on. I can present them with all sorts of interesting problems. But I cannot guarantee that their choices are interesting, and if I could then in doing so I would have guaranteed that none of their choices are interesting.</p><p></p><p>The only choices that are interesting are choices that have interesting consequences, and to be interesting the consequences must logically follow from the choice so that you can own it otherwise you aren't a participant, and some of the possibilities have to be defeat otherwise there is nothing at risk.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7610028, member: 4937"] That's impossible. In fact, it's self-contradictory. By definition, if the player decision - whether smart or stupid - always leads to ever more interesting decisions, then those decisions are not interesting. If regardless of what I choose, I'm going to get an interesting result, then the decision itself is not meaningful. I could roll the dice or flip a coin for every choice. What does it matter? I've heard this sort of thing before, but it always seems to exist in theory and never in practice. In practice, some decisions don't lead to immediately interesting things. You can pursue the players with a story, but you can't make them have one. Heck, I've even ran a game for 5 year olds using a system of my own devising where serious failure consequences were basically non-existent and could always be fixed by "Mom" at the end of the session, and fully prepared to have adventure spring up around them whatever they do, but truth is, you can't make every choice interesting. Turns out 5 year olds will often actively flee anything that implies risk. It's a rational choice, but it's not an interesting one. And I'm not just picking on 5 year olds. I have had the same problem on occasion with adult players, which eventually led to a rule that you could not play a character who primary motivation was to be uninvolved, isolated, and uncooperative. You had to play some sort of character that had a motivation to get involved in risky danger filled activity. You couldn't for example play a character whose response to danger was to go home and hide and then complain that the other players weren't doing a good enough job convincing an uncooperative stranger to help them and that you were bored because you were successfully hiding. Yes, that was an adult, not the 5 year old. Fundamentally, an RPG is a cooperative endeavor that requires a certain sort of active participation by all parties. If the players make interesting choices, you can always have interesting consequences. But there are some sorts of choices you can't give interesting consequences and still have choice be meaningful. Excessively stupid, excessively short-sighted, excessively risk adverse, or excessively passive play must result in logically less interesting consequences if it is persisted in, or else none of the choices matter. There is only so much the GM can do to put in what the players are leaving out. If the player's burn down the house, I can continue the adventure. Things will be different. There will now be rubble where the house was, and the surviving vermin in the house will perhaps come to reinhabit the rubble. The smuggling will continue. Eventually things will happen. But as much as I will try to continue the adventure I can not promise that the decision to burn down the house will be as interesting as the decision to enter it, nor can I promise that the end results will necessarily be as satisfying, nor can I in fact force the players to make some new interesting choice rather than making choice that attempt to evade risk and interest. For example, I can't stop the party from deciding to go fishing. I can in fact arrange for them to have an interesting encounter if they do, but then I can't make the party decide not to flee that encounter rather than interact with it. I can keep chasing the players with the fun, but I can't stop them from choosing passive and evasive behavior. I can try to keep the story moving, but I can't promise that it doesn't end with, "Heavily armed Sahuaghin invade town, surprising inhabits.", while the still 1st level characters who have evaded all interaction evade this interaction, fleeing the consequences of all their choices and perhaps complaining about how unfair it is that they were expected to stop a huge Sahuaghin army. The PC's are still alive. They are still in some sense, "Failing forward." I may be desperately seeking something that they care enough about to make a stand on. I can present them with all sorts of interesting problems. But I cannot guarantee that their choices are interesting, and if I could then in doing so I would have guaranteed that none of their choices are interesting. The only choices that are interesting are choices that have interesting consequences, and to be interesting the consequences must logically follow from the choice so that you can own it otherwise you aren't a participant, and some of the possibilities have to be defeat otherwise there is nothing at risk. [/QUOTE]
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