We stopped playing Daggerheart

[zakael19]

Well, I think you’ve hit a nail on the head there. Brennan was brought up and some other AP stuff as well, and generally in those using D&D they’re playing (outside of combat at least) mainly on vibes (BLM has said that’s basically how he GMs to tell a story). You can do that with any system, and D&D doesn’t do much to support that sort of thing - plus you have the divide over to a tactical combat system that may not suit the story or dramatic moment (cf: @Retreater ’s frequent TPK issues).

Other games are built explicitly to support storytelling first.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That can work sometimes, but you always get players that still want a plot to run with. Even if they will do their own thing most of the time. My first game that is pretty much all we did. We were supposed to collect a rod and spent multiple months doing everything but. I still enjoyed having the plotline though, even if we didn't spend a whole lot of time on it. In the beginning of it at least.

You can and IMO should have story threads the players can choose to follow, but I don't think the campaign should be designed to be about any particular story in most cases.

 

[Retreater]

seems a bit harsh - there are a few actual plays I listen to (not named Critical Role) that use D&D or related systems (Tales of the Valiant, Starfinder, Nimblev2) to tell some pretty great stories. Then again, actual play players are a self-selecting group. Maybe the average TTRPG person or the average TTRPG person who coments on the internet or some other subgroup is more likely to suck at collaborative storytelling with D&D and friends.


Even if we step away from storytelling - if we look at similar system that aren't telling a story, like Dungeon Crawl Classics, don't they usually call the GM/DM a Judge or Referee? Still signifying that it's not you vs players? You just happen to be controlling the enemies because SOMEONE has to. (Until/unless AI can)

When I play games that have a narrative focus (Daggerheart, Dungeon World, Fabula Ultima, Ironsworn, Dread, Stealing Stories for the Devil, etc.), all of them have play aid and support for the group to actually engage narratively instead of the very strict combat engines of games like Pathfinder and D&D.
Yes, on an actual play they are specifically focused on attempting to deliver a narrative experience for an audience. That doesn't mean that the game they are playing is a natural fit for that style of play. (Honestly, it was probably chosen for viewership and familiarity to an audience.)
Just because you can run cosmic horror investigations in D&D doesn't mean that it handles it just as well out of the box as Call of Cthulhu. D&D comes from a 1970s wargame, and while it's changed a bit, there are still the sacred cows that mean it's recognizable as D&D (and recognizable as a 1970s wargame). There is practically nothing added to the rules of the game that give a player any more narrative control or connection to their character than was there in the 1974 brown box. (Maybe Inspiration, which was essentially a minor and forgotten add-on that I've not seen used in a game since 2015.)

 

[Umbran]

Best to prep a setting IMO, not a plot.

Unless your setting is static, there's things going to happen if the PCs don't muck in.

Those things are plots.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Unless your setting is static, there's things going to happen if the PCs don't muck in.

Those things are plots.

But not ones that need to be followed through on camera if the PCs are interested in pursuing them (at least, not until they become big enough to be unignorable). That's what I'm talking about.

 

[Umbran]

But not ones that need to be followed through on camera if the PCs are interested in pursuing them

I suspect you meant, "... if the players are NOT interested..."

(at least, not until they become big enough to be unignorable). That's what I'm talking about.

The point is that you cannot prepare a dynamic setting without plots. So, it isn't preparing plots that's the problem.

Managing player engagement with plots is the actual issue behind the bugaboo you raise.

The terrible, no good, very bad GM who forces players down plots they aren't interested in is, i think, far less common than the group who fumbles communicating like mature adults.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The terrible, no good, very bad GM who forces players down plots they aren't interested in is, i think, far less common than the group who fumbles communicating like mature adults.

The result, however, is often similar.