D&D General The Alexandrian’s Insights In a Nutshell [+]

[Paul Farquhar]

Okay, let’s try an explain another way. I run story-driven adventures. Not sandboxes, not Story Now. And most of my prep involves describing situations, not writing out plot. Because that is what works. And I generally have multiple hints, because players miss stuff. So I have 43 years of experience of not finding any incompatibility between prepping situations and the “three clue rule”, or the multiple hint recommendation, as I would prefer to call it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That statement leads naturally to the idea that there are multiple levels at which one could prep one way or another. Might be worth exploring whether this layering has functional restrictions on what works and not. Could you, say, have a bottom layer that's all situations, a middle layer of plots, and a top layer that is again situations only? (This is not to say there could only be three layers of course.) Or, can you never alternate from layer to layer...you have have situation on situation, but once you switch to plot, is it all plot the rest of the way up (or down)?

Edited for clarity.

Well, that's a pretty interesting question. I think it might deserve its own thread! I feel like I've kinda helped derail this one to a degree, so I am loath to go off on that tangent here...

 

[niklinna]

It was. Unfortunately it’s disappearing into the black hole that is story-now gaming. Which seems all about jargon and self reference.

Well that's a hard swing in another direction. There's useful stuff in story-now gaming, which in my play experience and reading is about much more than jargon and self reference. I've seen plenty of writing about trad gaming that's full of jargon and self reference.

Not particularly helpful or on topic. Arguing the merits of JA’s points is one thing. The walls of text and multiple post quoting is very off-putting.

Again, I've seen walls of text and multiple quote posting from all sides. I was making a tongue-in-cheek observation, but some people do seem to have an axe to grind. It might be helpful to at least acknowledge that story-now gaming is a legitimate thing, and politely point out that the context is trad gaming, rather than insisting that trad gaming is the only kind of gaming.

Anyhow, back to our continuing revelation of cool things Justin Alexander has written on his blog! Have we hit #4 yet? (I'm still catching up on page 8. Edit: And just a moment after posting I hit your post where you did politely point out that the context is trad gaming. )

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It was. Unfortunately it’s disappearing into the black hole that is story-now gaming. Which seems all about jargon and self reference.

Not particularly helpful or on topic. Arguing the merits of JA’s points is one thing. The walls of text and multiple post quoting is very off-putting.

Did you see anything else? Im going to have to read the blog aren’t I!

Here's a LARGE one:

Smart Prep – Part 4: Campaign Status Documents

Go to Part 1Conceptually, I think of most campaigns as being collections of scenarios. The ways in which those scenarios are organized can radically differ, but at least nine times out of ten ever

thealexandrian.net

There's actually a lot in this, and while some details of what you might track are going to depend a bit on your techniques, a lot of it is quite relevant to anyone.

Honestly, I think this is the strongest area with TA is this sort of organizational advice and specific techniques. None of it is revolutionary and super original but he's tirelessly collected techniques and clearly USES most of them himself, so they're pretty well fleshed out. For this genre of GM advice he really is one of the best sources.

 

[kenada]

To be clear, I don't think what @kenada (or @pemerton or @AbdulAlhazred ) are concerned with is (a) whether JA has "a bit of a messiah complex" or (b) whether "his intent is to suggest that you must follow his rules at all times" or (c) whether there is advice that is going to be appropriate for all the ways to play D&D.

The interest is a very narrow one regarding what this thing (Three Clue Rule) does when actually used and what kind of play does it entail (when actually used):

Does the chokepoint-averting impact on play that The Three Clue Rule provides implicate pre-authored plot being funneled to?

My answer to that is "yes." And I don't think the breaking part of events in that kind of game into plot point > diversion of freeplay and/or benign color and/or book-keeping (like "taverning" or pastry-baking or selecting spells during rest or spending coin at the market to reprovision or whatever) > plot point > plot point > diversion of side quest > plot point > diversion of freeplay and/or benign color and/or book-keeping > plot point is relevant to the question. That is because the trajectory of consequential play is pre-authored (the mystery) and is funneled to via the chokepoint-averting Three Clues (or whatever value).

It’s not so much that I’m concerned about what he’s saying. I can just ignore it after all. It’s more that this is a discussion of his advice, so it seems appropriate to examine where it can sometimes be contradictory or when following some advice might subvert your intent when incorporating other advice he’s given.

For example, there is a joke in my group about “dire tiger storage” in Irovetti’s castle from the Kingmaker AP. The wizard had been exploring ahead when he opened a door, the encounter was keyed to have dire tigers pounce on the person who opened the door, and they did. At the party before my wedding, I had all those players back, so I ran a one-shot in for them. The premise was that Irovetti’s dire tigers had gone missing. The PCs needed to find the tigers and defeat the person who took them. I used the three clue rule to set up the different clues for the PCs to follow in their investigation of the missing tigers. That allowed the PCs to investigate in a naturalistic way, but I still had an end point they needed to reach by the end of the night. (My biggest mistake was failing to have pregens, but oh well. It was still fun and funny.)

The above is an example when what I presented seemed like a situation (‘investigate the missing tigers’), but I had places I needed the PCs to be. Providing multiple ways to figure that out allowed the players to play detective while ensuring the adventure was very likely to be successful.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've only read a few of JA's blog posts, and I don't intend to go back, but did he at any point say, "for this style of play, don't prep plots, but for that style of play, use the three-clue rule", or was all his advice (or the particuar bits being critiqued here) free of any context regard play style?

Judging from what he says in the articles I've read (and I'm like you, I have read only a smattering) TA has a very specific kind of play that he's engaging in. Now, maybe there are others too, but if you look at the article I linked above this, you see how he talks about his tools. I've never seen where he qualifies any statements, he's using all this stuff, and he writes as if his play is all entirely consistent with it.

I mean, maybe he's off playing in PbtA games too and just not writing about it, I dunno. He's certainly well aware of a wide variety of RPGs.

 

[kenada]

I've become convinced that story-now gaming is so fundamentally different from "traditional" gaming that it's not really fruitful to mix the discussion of both modes in a single thread. Clearly, Alexandrian is giving his advice in the context of traditional gaming.

This is why I’ve tried to stick with what Justin is saying instead of trying to examine it through the lens of some other game. The extent to which I’ve acknowledged other play (aside from in reply to those who brought it up) was to include those who prefer it when discussing differences of feel in post #45. I brought up my own campaign as a contrast, but that’s because I find using actual play examples to be more useful than contrived ones. I’ve also mentioned a few way I’ve applied Justin’s advice. It would be cool if more people would do that too. (Especially if they’re using his hexcrawl procedure, which I was a fan of for years, but I could never make it actually work in play at the table.)

 

[TheSword]

Well that's a hard swing in another direction. There's useful stuff in story-now gaming, which in my play experience and reading is about much more than jargon and self reference. I've seen plenty of writing about trad gaming that's full of jargon and self reference.
Again, I've seen walls of text and multiple quote posting from all sides. I was making a tongue-in-cheek observation, but some people do seem to have an axe to grind. It might be helpful to at least acknowledge that story-now gaming is a legitimate thing, and politely point out that the context is trad gaming, rather than insisting that trad gaming is the only kind of gaming.

Anyhow, back to our continuing revelation of cool things Justin Alexander has written on his blog! Have we hit #4 yet? (I'm still catching up on page 8. Edit: And just a moment after posting I hit your post where you did politely point out that the context is trad gaming. )

I’m sure it is a legitimate thing I it’s own right and it’s fans are clearly very convinced by it. However discussion often uses in game jargon which if you don’t play them is frustrating. Particularly in a ‘D&D General’ thread topic where most people are going to be D&D players. I see the subject brought up a lot on other threads and it almost always ends in folks getting drawn into long grass.

 

[overgeeked]

I’m sure it is a legitimate thing I it’s own right and it’s fans are clearly very convinced by it. However discussion often uses in game jargon which if you don’t play them is frustrating. Particularly in a ‘D&D General’ thread topic where most people are going to be D&D players. I see the subject brought up a lot on other threads and it almost always ends in folks getting drawn into long grass.

That's the point of nonsensical in-group jargon.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Okay, let’s try an explain another way. I run story-driven adventures. Not sandboxes, not Story Now. And most of my prep involves describing situations, not writing out plot. Because that is what works. And I generally have multiple hints, because players miss stuff. So I have 43 years of experience of not finding any incompatibility between prepping situations and the “three clue rule”, or the multiple hint recommendation, as I would prefer to call it.

I'm with you. There's a "plot" to my games, but that comes after the players interact with it. Or to be more accurate for the pedant, I come up with a very loose "story seed" plot scenario, but I don't plot the session (which is what I think JA is going for when speaking of plot). If you wrote up the story of the game after it's played it would very much look like it has a plot (because, by then, it would).

Clues/hints are not ways to steer the players to what I want, because I don't want anything in particular. They are ways to flesh out the story/immersion that give the players some ideas of things they might like to do. But the world isn't randomly generated, even if it reacts to the players actions. (Including sometimes adopting ideas that they have that fit, even if I hadn't thought of it beforehand).