D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[Campbell]

What sustaining the momentum of play looks like will vary from game to game. The premise we are exploring will usually involve but might not always center on them or their desires specifically. For instance the conflicts Apocalypse Keys is centered on are mysteries that pit the characters against harbringers of the apocalypse and expose them to the way humans see them in order to test whether the characters will be saviors or harbringers themselves. Hence principles like "Remind them the world does not accept them" and "Hint at the Harbringer they may become". Games like Sorcerer and Burning Wheel are much more player character specific.

 

[soviet]

Thanks. By 'bulk of the fiction,' I'm saying that they, the players, do most of the talking. If one were to be taking dictation and turned the adventure into a book, most of the exposition and dialogue would be theirs.

So the colour text, but not the content.

I wonder if some of the discussion on enworld about 'narrative' games is driven by a desire to pigeonhole D&D and make it fit a strict definition of a style of play, because that gives folks a villain to hate (D&D) and a new hero to like (DH).

You are so on the money here it's unreal, this is definitely what is happening, the narrativist games that began to take off around the year 2000, and all the discussions here about them, are essentially just a hate campaign against D&D and a marketing campaign for an RPG published this year by a guy who streams D&D campaigns.

 

[Campbell]

I cannot comment on anyone's particular D&D game. It's quite possible to run games in a Narrativist even if they are supported by the game's mechanics. Most of us have done so from time to time, though often with certain features of mechanics kind of getting in the way.

I'm mostly just responding to folks who bring up "narrative" games and make gross generalizations about games whose only shared features are that they work differently than the games those folks prefer.

I run and play a fair number of fairly traditional games myself. Not really the current version of D&D, but I really want to bring Imperium Maledictum and Warhammer - The Old World to the table soon.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I present a dynamic situation where some ball is about to roll down some hill and ask players what their characters are going to do about it. Then together we all see how that situation resolves based on what they do.

By no agenda I mean that I don't have any aims for how the situation must resolve or what the players will have their characters do. I just want them to address the fictional situation and then based on that I'll present a new fictional situation that compels action and respects what precedes it. I want to know what happens and will frame situations that sustain the momentum of play, but I'm approaching with curiosity rather than to forward some plot. The player characters and NPCs have an agenda for how things unfold, but we should not.

The only thing that will kill this is if you have players who don't want to engage with the situation at all, and that's a problem in virtually any sort of RPG of any style (yes, even sandboxes; if the players don't want to engage with anything, nothing happens). You presumably have buy-in in advance that people want to, well, play, and that what they want to play is congruent with the basic premise of the game.

Its just a very high improvisation demanding style, especially since if I read it right, you don't necessarily have an extended concept of places it might go or what's behind it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

my experience differs - I'm one who prefers trad games generally, with a little meta currency at times (e.g. Dnd, CoC, WFRP, 2d20 games), but conversations I've seen is that because DnD at heart looks to support a variety of playstyles, but is by default DM driven, it isn't as good a ruleset as other rules dedicated to a certain why of play and more player driven/ authored. It can still be done in DnD, and 4e was especially good for this,.but other systems may require less tweaking.

As I've noted before, while there's some variance here even in D&D, there's been traditionally some pretty active hostility among some participants to the idea that player can even introduce elements to the setting in downtime, and more against them doing so on the fly.

This isn't even automatically a trad game thing; there are genres and trad games where that sort of thing happens all the time. Sometimes its regulated by metacurrency, sometimes it isn't but its understood that there's some scope limits. But even what that means can vary considerably (the last time I ran a superhero campaign, one of my players asked me if I'd done much work on what space cultures and aliens were out there. I admitted I'd only done a tiny bit (and this wasn't as much a given as you'd think given it was a successor to two prior superhero campaigns) so he asked if it was okay to add some material and I told him to go ahead. He added an entire interstellar empire, and I didn't even blink. This was largely because they'd have not interacted with Earth or its immediate vacinity previously, so why not?

Unless I'd gotten carried away and done a world-wide development of countries, I'd not feel much different about another country across a sea in a fantasy campaign if it was supposed to have had only limited contact with the campaign area. But some people get really--itchy--at best about that sort of thing.

 

[bloodtide]

I disagree that only the DM can make up all of that. I dont see why a player can't say 'it is a sign from my god, the god of balls (assuming that was already part of fiction, or not yet established) - he has sent it, and now if we catch it good things will happen like x, and if not bad things will happen like y' and the group agree or use mechanics to establish what the fiction is.
Doesn't feel too dissimilar to a runes example in a prior thread, where the player through the mechanics established what the runes meant, without the DM getting involved beyond placing the runes there.

So you seem to be describing a player just playing a solo game. What does the DM do in your type of game, just watch the players?

If the player is just making up everything, why do they even need a DM there? Why even play a social group game?

Is the DM just there to run NPCs for the player? "here I made a goblin guard, have it attack my character dm!"

I wonder if some of the discussion on enworld about 'narrative' games is driven by a desire to pigeonhole D&D and make it fit a strict definition of a style of play, because that gives folks a villain to hate (D&D) and a new hero to like (DH).

A lot of the 'other' games are made to be not like D&D in all ways, or even more so not like 'triad D&D"'

D&D: DM: "someone...or something has killed Lady Rue and your characters must solve her murder",

Other: Player: "Da'k kills Lady Rue, and my character solves that murder"

 

[pemerton]

I run pretty traditional D&D as far as my role as DM, and I've generally always run homebrew adventures that take the party along a generally linear path while the players create the bulk of the fiction. They interact with my NPCs, decide how to overcome whatever obstacles I put before them, navigate whatever challenges I put before them. They create most of the narration, and to act like their actions aren't ultimately still deciding what happens next would be disingenuous.

Help me out here. If a player in one of my games is walking beneath the copper-tiled rooftops of the market district, threading his way through the crush of merchants and hawkers as the scents of cinnamon, hot oil and sea-salted fish fill the air, and passes a group of dwarves arguing over an anvil’s price. What if, just then, a figure stumbles out of a tavern -- a wiry half-orc with a jagged scar across his jaw? Without warning, the stranger snarls, grabs a dented spear and slams it down in front of the character, blocking his path. If I paint that scene and ask the player what he does next, what style of gameplay would that be? Does it fit neatly under a single label, or can games be multiple styles at once?

From what you've described, all I can infer is what @soviet inferred: you seem to be describing relatively GM-driven play. Though it's not entirely clear: who is the PC in the market? Why does the half-orc do what they do? Who decided that this half-orc is part of the PC's context/circumstances?

Here's an example of a market scene from a session of Burning Wheel that I GMed:

Spoiler

One of the players had bought rulebooks and built a BW PC (a noble-born Rogue Wizard inspired by Alatar, one of Tolkien's blue wizards of the East). I had built a PC for another player to show him what the system was capable of - a spell-using necromancer ranger/assassin (hunter-wizard's apprentice-rogue wizard-bandit).

<snip>

Writing up beliefs took a little while. The rogue wizard, Jobe, had a relationship with his brother and rival. The ranger-assassin, Halika, had a relationship, also hostile with her mentor, and the player decided that was because it turned out she was being prepared by him to be sacrificed to a demon. It seemed to make sense that the two rival, evil mages should be one and the same, and each player wrote a belief around defeating him: in Jobe's case, preventing his transformation into a Balrog; in Halika's case, to gain revenge.

Each player also wrote up a "fate mine"-style belief: He who dares, wins for the sorcerer, and Stab them in the back for the assassin. And each also wrote up a immediate goal-oriented belief: I had pulled out my old Greyhawk material and told them they were starting in the town of Hardby, half-way between the forest (where the assassin had fled from) and the desert hills (where Jobe had been travelling), and so each came up with a belief around that: I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother and, for the assassin with starting Resources 0, I'm not leaving Hardby penniless .

<snip>

I started things in the Hardby market: Jobe was looking at the wares of a peddler of trinkets and souvenirs, to see if there was anything there that might be magical or useful for enchanting for the anticipated confrontation with his brother. Given that the brother is possessed by a demon, he was looking for something angelic. The peddler pointed out an angel feather that he had for sale, brought to him from the Bright Desert. Jobe (who has, as another instinct, to always use Second Sight), used Aura Reading to study the feather for magical traits. The roll was a failure, and so he noticed that it was Resistant to Fire (potentially useful in confronting a Balrog) but also cursed. (Ancient History was involved somehow here too, maybe as a FoRK into Aura Reading (? I can't really remember), establishing something about an ancient battle between angels and demons in the desert.)

My memory of the precise sequence of events is hazy, but in the context the peddler was able to insist on proceeding with the sale, demanding 3 drachmas (Ob 1 resource check). As Jobe started haggling a strange woman (Halika) approached him and offered to help him if he would buy her lunch. Between the two of them, the haggling roll was still a failure, and also the subsequent Resources check: so Jobe got his feather but spent his last 3 drachmas, and was taxed down to Resources 0. They did get some more information about the feather from the peddler, however - he bought it from a wild-eyed man with dishevelled beard and hair, who said that it had come from one of the tombs in the Bright Desert. Jobe, being unable to buy Halika any lunch, suggested he might be able to find some work for them instead.

If you read the whole post, you'll see more examples of the use, by me as GM in framing scenes, of player-provided backstory and concerns.

 

[Maxperson]

Nothing "should" be fudged...but all things "can" be fudged.

Not fudge.

 

[Maxperson]

That seems like a petty thing to do.
I didn't even know it was a thing that could be done.
Play the game the way you like....that's what I was saying.

The drift has to be waaaaaay out in left field. The mods understand that drift happens.

 

[Maxperson]

Fair enough. For me, the past 15 years of discussion here have helped me to try multiple new systems at my tables, and identify what practices lead to the best table experiences.

Both my DMing and playing is better for the discussions I've had here.

Same. This forum has helped me improve as a DM and several house rules came from discussions here.