The Story and The Rules

[Psion]

The players are characters in a choose your own adventure scenario.

The operative word being scenario, vice plot. The GM needs the flexibility to consider interesting events and challenges that will engage the players and manuever players into view or involvement with those. But the players, unless they are the type to "just go along for the ride", will typically require free will or the illusion of free will. Which may mean that they have the freedom to come up with their own solutions to the challenges that the GM faces them with.

The role of the rules here is somewhat important -- it gives the players their only reliable handle to deal with a variety of challenges. If the rules often don't behave the way they expect, you run the risk of making the players feel powerless, or being "swept along with the tide" of the GMs almighty plot and whims.

 

[Mallus]

Yes, but the GM does not decide what the PCs will do, and thus does not write a story in any conventional sense of that word... snip

Ideally, the group as a whole "writes" the story, with the "plot" constantly being revised and rewritten in response to the players actions. I've always thought of RPG's as acts of collaborative storytelling, albeit one where a tactical wargame frequently breaks out. A strange, mix, but no stranger than say, proffesional hockey...

But I don't consider that story. The story is what happens to the PCs. The rest of it is just background.

It's funny, we seem to have the exact same take on the game, but I do call it story. Just semantics, eh? I just don't know what else to call something with characters, dialogue, rising action, conflicts and resolution, and so on. "Story" is the only term that works for me...

 

[Belen]

The operative word being scenario, vice plot. The GM needs the flexibility to consider interesting events and challenges that will engage the players and manuever players into view or involvement with those. But the players, unless they are the type to "just go along for the ride", will typically require free will or the illusion of free will. Which may mean that they have the freedom to come up with their own solutions to the challenges that the GM faces them with.

Which is exactly what I do. That does not mean that I do not create a plot. Plot is essential to a good campaign. When I am writing for my campaign, I consider the character histories of my players and then weave them into the plot. In my current campaign, the players are the driving force, but I have made them want to do what I have planned, by keeping the focus on their characters, tying them into the world and background of the events, and throwing out carrots whenever possible.

They always go rushing in. Actually, I am having a lot of fun with it because they are intensely interested in the campaign. One NPC peed them off early, so our barbarian's main goal is to see him dead. It helps that the NPC has also sent assassins after them. Another PC has a family secret (that she does not know), which has really allowed me to leave clues that get her to chase them.

The great thing about last session is that they completed a major party goal. They finally got to meet the local sage (after many sessions worth of attempts and sidetracks) after they killed his apprentice (evil mystic theurge who had been keeping him locked up and enslaved for the last 4 years).

When I wanted to encourage them to leave the city, their thief found out that the local assassins guild had been contracted to take their lives and now he is the driving force in getting them to leave. (The guy is terrified of the Black Guild.)

A canny GM can direct the game toward his goals as long as he knows how to interest/ influence the characters. As a GM, I have goals. There are things I want out of the game. I can see those goals fulfilled and still engage the characters as you tie them to the events.

Granted, I did not start the game with a defined story line. It started with an adventure and it grew from there, but the game still has a plot.

The role of the rules here is somewhat important -- it gives the players their only reliable handle to deal with a variety of challenges. If the rules often don't behave the way they expect, you run the risk of making the players feel powerless, or being "swept along with the tide" of the GMs almighty plot and whims.

I agree. That is why I enforce the rules for encounters and challenges. I break the rules only to help provide a sense of wonder and never break them during combat etc. I like providing events that are beyond the character's abilities or that they cannot necessarily point to a rule and say "this is what he did." This usually has to do with weird magical effects or the like that have no corresponding spell in the PHB, although should they get high enough level and wish to do the research, then I can always make something up at that point.

 

[Belen]

You are right he does not own the game, he runs it and when all is said and done he/she is the person that has to be answered to. It is a group function, DM and players come together to interact in the game but the role of the DM/GM is the running of the game to the best of their ability for the enjoyment of the group and not just one player, the outcome is to have fun, yet players ask, even demand a lot from the DM/GM, who has to be visionary, prophet, mom, dad, friend and foe, and gods to the group. He does not own the game but he/she is the interpreter and arbitrator of the game.

Exactly.

 

[Belen]

Yes, but the GM does not decide what the PCs will do, and thus does not write a story in any conventional sense of that word. Heck, as a GM, I like to throw multiple plot hooks at the players, with an idea of where they will go for each one, and then as they decide, I start to more strongly develop "the world" down the path they went, but not before. I think maybe we're not that far off really, but are arguing semantics, but in my experience, what the GM does is not create a story. He creates a living breathing setting, that will march on if the PCs don't do anything, and then sees what the PCs do and how they impact that setting.

We probably do have the same take on things except for our different methods of describing what we do. I do not argue that the PCs aren't the focus of the story or that the plot can be modified or even grown out of the actions/ desires of the characters, just that there is a plot/ world independent of the PCs as well.

I agree that we create a setting/ framework. In many ways, that setting or framework sets the tone/guidelines of the game before it even begins.

 

[Psion]

It's funny, we seem to have the exact same take on the game, but I do call it story. Just semantics, eh?

Ayup. Some people, when the word "story" is invoked, think back to some poorly GMed sessions in which a "story" refers to rigid timeline of events in the GM's head given special sanctity and for which the GM will warp reality itself to uphold.

For some people, it's "a cool adventure."

 

[Desdichado]

It's funny, we seem to have the exact same take on the game, but I do call it story. Just semantics, eh? I just don't know what else to call something with characters, dialogue, rising action, conflicts and resolution, and so on. "Story" is the only term that works for me...

Hence the semantic difference. I didn't say that there's no story associated with a session of D&D, or any other RPG, just that the story is a product of the evening, not something that the GM creates on his own. IMO, if --as a GM-- you're writing a story, you've already gone too far. I don't write dialogue ahead of time, and I couldn't anyway, as it's extemporaneous and based on the PCs reactions. The rising action and conflicts and resolution is largely based on what the PCs do.

 

[John Morrow]

The story is what happens to the PCs.

I think that's not a useful definition for making distinctions between several very different approaches to role-playing, at least one of which consciously tries to structure "what happens to the PCs" more along the lines of a traditional story (e.g., the Theatrix RPG was influcenced by a book on screenwriting) while others focus on different considerations (e.g., what would logically happen in the setting, what's the most interesting and fun, what's the most challenging, etc.). A GM can have a lot of influence over "what happens to the PCs" if they want and the issue of style is largely one of how much influence they exert and to what end.

 

[Desdichado]

I think that's not a useful definition for making distinctions between several very different approaches to role-playing, at least one of which consciously tries to structure "what happens to the PCs" more along the lines of a traditional story (e.g., the Theatrix RPG was influcenced by a book on screenwriting) while others focus on different considerations (e.g., what would logically happen in the setting, what's the most interesting and fun, what's the most challenging, etc.). A GM can have a lot of influence over "what happens to the PCs" if they want and the issue of style is largely one of how much influence they exert and to what end.

Well, yeah. But that line is out of context. I said a great deal more. Among them is that this is my preference; and that I don't go in for "narrative driven" play because I think it's often an excuse for poor DMing. Actually, I could fix the part of my post that you quoted by simply adding ideally in front of it. Ideally the story is the product of the game and what happens to the PCs, not something that the GM "writes" before the game even starts. What the GM should write is an interesting backstory and set-up, and then maybe a list of possible avenues that he thinks it likely the PCs will explore with some possible consequences of following those avenues.

But, that's all the ideal, not necessarily the reality. And some folks disagree that that's even the ideal anyway.

 

[John Morrow]

But I still play for the story. If there's no good story at the end of the night, I've wasted my time.

To clarify, I am very interested in "what happens to the characters" and "what the characters do". I'd rarely consider the result a good story, though.

In fact, I'd argue that most role-playing games don't make good stories, which is why listening to other people talk about their campaign or what their characters did last week can be so utterly boring. Yes, some games do make good stories and good writers can also turn role-playing sessions into good stories. But I also think that a lot of people play games that wouldn't be good stories if told to anyone else but they don't care, because story is not the reason they are playing -- but they also aren't playing simply as a tactical board game, either.

But another way, for many people, role-playing is an experience, not a creative excercise. Riding a roller coaster isn't about going from point A to point B (in fact, you often go from point A to point A), nor does it make for a good story. It's an experience. And for a lot of people, the draw of role-playing lies in the experience of doing it, not the stories you can tell about what you did. As another analogy, looking at pictures or slides that someone else took on their vacation can also often be boring because looking at a picture of a volcano, tree, ruin, etc. is not a substitute for the experience of going there.