What a great storytelling DM looks like

[TarionzCousin]

Thoughtful, articulate, and above all else: dedicated to his game.

Pretty much like this:

 

[rogueattorney]

Establish a sense of urgency in combat:
real combat is quick and choppy. Rushed. Each action is NOT optimized and planned for 10 minutes. I have a blog article on making combat faster. Read that, use it, those are the methods.

This is a presentation technique that's independent of the sandbox/not-a-sandbox issue.

Establish a sense of urgency outside of combat:
If the PCs are in a situation where they should feel rushed, because they don't have all night, you should bring in game elements to remind them of that. wandering monsters are a good tool (or any patrol), when the party is in hostile territory and dithering on taking action, when in reality, they would get noticed. If you let the PCs sit in a populated dungeon, in a room and plan for 4 hours, they will not feel like they need to hurry and decide. If they know (because they hear footsteps, or have encountered previously) that reinforcements could come any minute, they will hurry up. Setting a deadline (as in something will happen in x amount of time, if you let it)

Wandering monsters are a staple of the sand-box and a device to make it seem like a living world. After all, those orcs get up and walk around every once in a while. I've more often seen "story tellers" complain of random wandering monsters derailing their plot.

Use Chekov's Gun/Foreshadowing:
If you've got some item or spell that would help defeat the BBEG, make sure it appears in the early part of the adventure (before they really set off to defeat him). This is actually a clue, you're giving them as to one way to beat the bad guy. Don't be too obvious, watch just about any sci-fi show, and you'll see the new trick used early in the episode for something harmless, and later on, it gets used to save the day. That's checkov's gun.

I'll get to the concept of the BBEG in a second, but otherwise, isn't this just about good dungeon design?

Cut to the chase:
if the 100 mile trip to somewhere cool is just a bunch of random encounters along the way, skip it. Just say "four days later, you arrive" Save game time for the cool scenes that advance the story.

Does anyone not do this?

Real action films have less fights than a D&D game:
Cut back on the meaningless fights. Instead, make them tougher. D&D takes a long time to play, compared to watching a movie or TV show. You can't model them exactly, but you can scale back the meaningless fights, to get to just the good ones. Don't pass over them, just don't make so many extra monsters waiting to be attacked. Stock up on action film DVDs and start taking notes. How many fights were there? You'll get a sense of the average count.

O.K. Here's where we get somewhere. This entire paragraph assumes that I'm the one that plans the fights. As a DM, I'm the one that places the pieces on the board. Whether the pcs fight those pieces or not is not entirely in my control. It takes two to tango, as they say.

I don't place everything in the dungeon or in the wilderness assuming the pcs are going to fight them.

All roads lead to Rome
By all means, don't actually do this literally. If the BBEG is south, and the PCs go north, they leave the BBEG far behind. But what you can do, is have the BBEG embroiled in a number of things, that happen to intersect the PCs. This gives multiple vectors for the PCs to pick up on the BBEG and decide to deal with him.

Make it personal.
Whether by chance or intention, the BBEG does something that affects the PCs or their interests. Otherwise, there is less chance the PCs will care to get involved. There are stories where the protagonist just happens to involve themselves in somebody else's problems, but most of that died out in the 80's (unless it was their job). The players, being egocentric, will also appreciate stuf that is about them.

I don't have a "BBEG" in my campaigns and I certainly don't mechanize towards a preordained confrontation with anyone. I have movers and shakers. They go about doing what they do. Sometimes the pcs run afoul of them. Sometimes they run afoul of the pcs. If the pcs decide to confront one of them, great. If not, great.

In my B/X game set in Rob Conley's Borderland PoL setting, there's two sides to a civil war, a little village that's just trying to scrape by, a Duchy that's proclaimed neutrality and is isolating itself, there's a former Imperial governor who's trying to retake his birthright, there's a big group of bandits picking off the remnants, there's a sinister old sage who's predicting the end of the world and may be actively working to make his prediction come true, and there's a whole mess of orcs who see the chaos and are licking their chops. There's also a big ole dungeon that's a prison for fallen gods.

I haven't the slightest idea if the pcs will pick a side, and if they do who it will be, but generally I assume that the pcs will be fighting on the pcs' side and no one else's.

 

[Mark]

Best.Storyteller.Evar

Thoughtful, articulate, and above all else: dedicated to his game.

Pretty much like this:

 

[Ariosto]

Phil Goetz, from Richard A. Bartle: Interactive Fiction and Computers ...
"Interactive fiction does not equal adventures"

Unless players can find reasons to play other than to win, IF will not escape the literary ghettos of genre fiction. Even some traditional traditional-genre stories would lose their charm under the imposition of a different character; imagine The Hobbit with a self-confident and aggressive Bilbo Baggins, or an interactive Father Brown mystery played by a Humphrey Bogart fan.

In particular, truly tragic fiction might never work in IF. I'm not referring to 'tragedies' such as Hamlet, which are melely sad. I'm referring to works such as 1984, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness or Deliverance, in which it is dramatically necessary for the main character to be psychically crushed. The IF player might feel that giving them the freedom to choose how to act had been a cruel farce.

One way to keep players from identifying too closely with the protagonist might be to have them interact with several characters. They might change viewpoints, or might simply have a display panel with a point-and click interface controlling the emotional response of each character (level of anger, contentment, fear, urgency, etc.) and see how the story unfolds. But this defeats the intimacy of IF.

 

[Ariosto]

And for me, that's a hallmark of storytelling in games: consequences. Actions should have consequences. Good or bad, small or huge, what the PCs do should make ripples in the world, and they should eventually see signs of this.

For me, that's a hallmark of the D&D game as a game. Or at least it used to be. The vogue in recent years has been to strip away consequences, to proclaim them "not fun".

I cannot fathom how, "Actions should have consequences," can be seen as opposed to "Provide an interesting and challenging environment for the players to explore and then administer that environment totally impartially."

That's just a few techniques. There's more, and there's variations, and there's more to be said to refine what I said.

Sure, and Gygax said quite a bit in the 1st ed. DMG -- which I'm pretty sure P&P has taken to heart!

"All roads lead to Rome" is the exception. That is 'railroading' -- unless your "not literally" is so far removed from a rigged game that you are just abusing the terminology.

Do you really think the other techniques are what's being rejected in, "The role of a superior DM is NOT to tell a story to his or her players."?

 

[KidSnide]

The story-telling proponents say that they aren't advocating railroading. Fine. But I don't understand what they ARE advocating. I ask for in-game examples and I tend to get the following...

A. You can't railroad the willing. They aren't advocating railroading so much as advocating playing with players who don't care.

B. Illusionism. Rail-road really carefully and hopefully your players won't notice.

C. Funny voices and florid description. As in the initial post of this thread, which have nothing to do with the sand-box/story (or re-active/pro-active, if you prefer) debate.

Well, I'll try to give some examples of potentially good storytelling technique that would be much less commonly employed in a more sand box oriented game. Are they examples of "A" (or maybe "B")? I don't think so, but intelligent people could probably differ on that point. In any case, I think storyteller GMs take more control over what happens in the game. Here are two examples:


"The GM decides what the next adventure will be."

The GM doesn't decide what the next adventure will be in-game. There's no mystical force preventing the PCs from picking a different adventure, it's just that the universe is set up so that the GM's next adventure is the logical thing to do. IME, the most common example is that the PCs work for someone and are invested in their careers. They have the power to quit their jobs and go do something else, but that's a big deal and the GM is on mostly safe ground in assuming that the PCs will do what their employer asks.

The advantage of this is that the GM has more world knowledge than the PCs and is better situated to decide what would be the most fun. Once the PCs get to the adventure, it can be as sandboxy as the GM wants, but it's a big help to planning when you know which situation to prepare. Also - and maybe more importantly - the GM can guide the PCs towards the situations in which they have the most leverage over the game world and their actions can produce the most interesting consequences.


"The GM can include a plan with a situation."

One of the differences that's been discussed up thread is how much time the GM allows the PCs to discuss what they're going to do. One way to "cut to the good part" is to set up a situation and give the players an acceptable default plan. For example, if the PCs are trying to hunt down a notorious pirate (who is otherwise unimportant to the other things that are going on), the GM can say "here's a way you think would work."

The PCs are free to ignore the default plan and spend a couple hours planning an alternative. But, if there are no interesting consequences to the exact manner in which how powerful and well-connected PCs hunt down a less powerful and unconnected pirate, then it's a waste of time having the players figure out the plan, even though knowing the plan is relevant to setting up the subsequent fight.

I don't think this is intrinsically different than skipping over four weeks journey. It's just that a story telling GM has a stronger opinion about which parts of the game will be the most fun to play and so is more willing to designate something "a boring bit" and skip over it.

-KS

 

[Janx]

This is a presentation technique that's independent of the sandbox/not-a-sandbox issue.

I never said this was a sandbox/not-a-sandbox issue.

I've always advocated that storytelling techniques can enhance your GMing. Period.

If you say that a chunk of the techniques I mention are used in your sandbox, good. I say that if you don't use those techniques, a campaign will likely suck.

I think, therefore, we don't disagree.


I don't think I run a true sandbox. I do take player input, and make the "story" about them and what goals they pursue. So once they choose a goal, I CAN predict the obstacles to put in front of them. Thus, I can choose what monsters they will face. At least on paper.

When the rubber hits the road, the players are free to deviate and bypass my roadmap of how I thought they'd get to the BBEG they chose to hunt down.

That's the crux of NOT railroading. It's not about what you got written down, it's about changing the game according to the players choices. Recycling what material you can, but ultimately letting the party deal with consequences. A railroading DM would take my roadmap, and force the players down it.

This is why I feel an AdventurePath isn't a railroad. The DM is. No plan survives contact with the enemy. A railroad DM forgets this rule, and forces the players to stick to the documented plan.

 

[KidSnide]

That's the crux of NOT railroading. It's not about what you got written down, it's about changing the game according to the players choices. Recycling what material you can, but ultimately letting the party deal with consequences. A railroading DM would take my roadmap, and force the players down it.

This is why I feel an AdventurePath isn't a railroad. The DM is. No plan survives contact with the enemy. A railroad DM forgets this rule, and forces the players to stick to the documented plan.

QFT. The difference between a road and a railroad is that, when you're on a railroad, the PCs can't veer left just because it looks more interesting.

-KS

 

[Barastrondo]

For me, that's a hallmark of the D&D game as a game. Or at least it used to be. The vogue in recent years has been to strip away consequences, to proclaim them "not fun".

Or to replace certain consequences with certain other consequences, or simply to adjust the frequency with which they appear. If death is a less likely consequence, be it a factor of D&D edition or of picking a different game as a whole, there's usually other ways to get the players involved in the fallout from their decisions. Champions is a good example of a game with a relatively low mortality rate but with lots of consequences for characters (usually 100-150 points worth that are begging to be used!). Certainly, proclaiming certain consequences like death or energy drain "not fun" doesn't make them un-fun for players who enjoy those consequences — but at the same time, proclaiming them "fun" doesn't make it so for players who don't.

I'm probably more on the storytelling side when I run, though I doubt that word really gives anyone an accurate picture of what my style is. It even varies from game to game. Hints and nudges toward a new adventure get more obvious and pronounced when I've got a couple of players who face long workdays full of decisions and would like not to have to think too hard about picking their next target or unraveling a plot. Hints at what's going on behind the scenes are less blatant when I've got the proactive players who will poke and prod and uncover them without much help. And when it's a gregarious band of social roleplayers given a social situation, we can fritter away hours with nothing of life-and-death consequence happening — but grave and dire consequences such as a wine-stained cravat and an ill-fated engagement? Serious stuff!

 

[The Shaman]

Which, to me, is the hallmark of a traditional D&D campaign. The players act and the environment responds. Go back to your copy of B2 and read the section where Gygax writes about what should happen should the pcs clear out a section of the Caves. That's classic dungeon-delving, "hack and slash" neanderthal D&D, which supposedly is the anathema of "modern, enlightened, story-oriented rpging."

No one who's advocating "sand boxing" is advocating a static game world that snaps back into place once the pcs have left. That's actually contrary to the whole point of giving the players control. You want them to ambitiously pursue their own goals and affect the world in some way.

Yeah, I'm not seeing the "storytelling" here, just evocative descriptions and a sense of what the npcs are doing.

Seems pretty trad to me.