The Invisible Railroad

[LostSoul]

First, that was a great series of posts, S'mon.

Well, obviously some of you enjoy the 'fly by the seat of your pants' game style, which is fine. But I know as a player, I'd find that to really be lame. To know that anything I do in the game any moment of time will only impact the story right there and then in whatever form the DM is able to improvise around, is really uninspiring. To know that anything I do will not be planned for or taken into account for any session in the future because the DM doesn't want to "railroad" me by actually having a scenario lightly plotted in advance, I'd think would suck.

That's not necessarily the way you need to run the game if you decide not to plot out what happens in advance.

One way is to create an interesting situation as the backstory. The DM comes up with an unstable situation in terms of NPCs who want different things that will change the status quo of the setting. He presents this to the players, who create PCs that will hook into the situation.

(It's possible to do this the other way around: the players create PCs who want different things, and then the DM creates NPCs who provide conflict.)

The DM plays the NPCs according to their goals and beliefs. The players run their PCs the same way. Since everything is tied into each other, and since the situation is unstable, the actions the characters take now change what happens down the road.

The DM doesn't need to improvise a story; a story is naturally produced in the conflicts between the characters.

 

[Pentius]

Defcon: what you're talking about isn't what AFAICT anyone else on the thread is talking about.

He may be making an exaggerated characterization of non-linear campaigns, but it is no more exaggerated than the characterizations of linear campaigns elsewhere in the thread.

unless by some chance my DM is an improvisation savant who can craft 'Lost'-like levels of intrigue completely off the top of his head and have it all make logical sense at the end of the campaign. I dunno about you... but I find those DMs in a bit short supply.

I can do it, but only on a full moon, and only if the players sacrifice a goat to me afterwards, to replenish my power.

 

[S'mon]

I need to go back and follow the thread in detail, so I apologize if the comment has been made:

For all the 'criticism' (and I hope the word is not too severe) being launched at Perkins and his defense of the railroad (in any form), I have to wonder if the critics would really be so miserable as a player in his game. Personally, I'd PAY for the chance.

From this, and from seeing his GMing on the videos, I'd be happy to play in a one-shot he ran; not in a campaign though.

But I'm a terrible player, I have ridiculous standards; I just quit a SW campaign partly due to a few issues with the GMing, and frankly that GM was probably about as good as Chris Perkins - I think most people would be very happy with him. He (the SW GM) is running a railroad, but he knows that and has put in a good bit of effort to make it less railroady. My ex-SW GM is maybe not the greatest at RPing NPCs, and maybe Perkins is great at that for all I know, I don't think I saw any PC-NPC interaction in the videos I watched.

 

[S'mon]

Defcon: what you're talking about isn't what AFAICT anyone else on the thread is talking about.

Of -course- the GM should be pushing the game in certain ways. That's the GM's job (except in a "exploratory sandbox" game where there are no ongoing events at all (and in that sort of game, story isn't the point; play is the point and story is a harmless biproduct))! But the GM should be helping make player actions a core part of the story--making them matter, and allowing the resulting story to be more than the GM's ideas, but a true collaboration.

Nor is story solely the GM's job. It's -everyone's- job.

Yes, indeed. Player decisions in session #1 should effect events in session #9, etc. DMs should take notes.

 

[S'mon]

To know that anything I do will not be planned for or taken into account for any session in the future because the DM doesn't want to "railroad" me...

The whole point of what we're advocating for is to have player decisions have effect on down the line. The GM must build on the players' actions & decisions, not stick to a predetermined script.

In other words, you have it exactly 100% backwards.

 

[S'mon]

First, that was a great series of posts, S'mon.

I write best at 6am on my first coffee. Thanks.

 

[S'mon]

unless by some chance my DM is an improvisation savant who can craft 'Lost'-like levels of intrigue completely off the top of his head and have it all make logical sense at the end of the campaign.

You're coming at it from the wrong end.
I create NPCs who make sense. Their goals make sense, so their intrigues make sense, and so their interactions with the PCs make sense, whatever happens. Naturally.

It's not at all like creating a novel or TV show and having to maintain continuity. All I have to do is be in the mindset of a particular NPC whenever I'm playing him, and what he does will make sense.

This also has the (IMO) advantage that because the NPCs are comprehensible, what happens is comprehensible (unlike Lost, The X Files, etc), and the players can actually understand it, with a bit of effort. And actually I work hard to make things comprehensible, I hate the obfuscatory, smoke & mirrors GM style.

I guess you'd hate my game, but when I do it like that* it always seems to work very well.

*On reflection I've run too many campaigns recently without strong NPCs. I think that phase is behind me, though.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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[delericho]

Incidentally, while I was very critical of his previous column, Chris Perkin's latest column, "The Covernant of the Arcs" is brilliant. He talks about weaving together several story arcs together to make for a very strong foundation of a campaign.

There's only one small mistake I feel he makes: he suggests that you need one arc per tier, and so a Heroic-only campaign would only require a single arc. I think he's wrong about that - I'm pretty sure the campaign would be better served by still having the three arcs as a foundation. Just make them shorter arcs!

 

[DEFCON 1]

Incidentally, while I was very critical of his previous column, Chris Perkin's latest column, "The Covernant of the Arcs" is brilliant. He talks about weaving together several story arcs together to make for a very strong foundation of a campaign.

There's only one small mistake I feel he makes: he suggests that you need one arc per tier, and so a Heroic-only campaign would only require a single arc. I think he's wrong about that - I'm pretty sure the campaign would be better served by still having the three arcs as a foundation. Just make them shorter arcs!

Yup... what he wrote and does is very similar to Dave Chalker's 5x5 campaign story design over at critical-hits.com. Both of them make explicit the point of having multiple story arcs that run concurrently, so that the PCs can move back and forth across them as they please... rather than following a single arc straight through with no chance of deviation.