What a great storytelling DM looks like

[Scribble]

so then what's the issue?

 

[KidSnide]

Yes. This is why a story telling GM does not "tell the story". In a story telling game, the players and GM tell the story together (sometimes with help from the dice). As a GM, adjusting your plans and expectations on the fly is part of the fun.

My, but that looks rather like

The role of a superior DM is NOT to tell a story to his or her players.

Well, I can't speak specifically to Papers & Paychecks (other than as a reference to a comic in the 1e DMG), but -- yes -- a good story telling game incorporates many of the same elements that you find in a good "sandbox" game. In either style, the game is interactive. And also, in either style, the players participate in creating the story.

The difference is that, in a story telling game, the GM guides and participates in telling the story. In a strict sandbox game, the GM is purely a neutral arbiter. The sandbox GM's contribution to the story is to create collection of scenarios with which the PCs interact.

That's why the same statement ("The role of a superior DM is NOT to tell a story to his or her players.") can mean different things in different contexts. In a story telling context, it is a reminder that the GM has to allow the PCs to participate and that interactivity is a central part of the game. In a strict sandbox context, it is a admonishment to GMs, telling them to create scenarios, and not to get involved in how the PCs interact with them.

-KS

Edit: tone

 

[Ariosto]

The difference is that, in a story telling game, the GM guides and participates in telling the story.

How does the GM guide and participate?

How does the path of "the story" onto which events are to be guided get distinguished from what is not "the story"?

How is this reconciled with the distinction of the role of GM, the asymmetry of participant powers?

How do the 'players' remain players of a game as opposed to theatrical performers?

 

[Ariosto]

Oh, yes: What makes Dungeons & Dragons a tool of choice for such an undertaking?

This is especially puzzling to me when I contemplate the tremendous amount of time, energy and expense devoted to overturning one thing after another and transforming what Arneson and Gygax designed into something better fitted (by how much even yet?) as a means to the end.

In the meantime, countless other works have been produced free of the "sacred cows" and legacy; free to be uncompromisingly designed for the "storytelling" game.

 

[Barastrondo]

How does the GM guide and participate?

Pretty much like in most other styles of roleplaying game, only with storytelling techniques added to the arsenal. You describe scenes, or offer to let the players describe scenes, you answer questions, you play the part of characters, you determine how the world would react to the actions of the players. You just tend to keep into mind things like tension, pacing, and player interest. So a decision to have an old enemy attack now rather than next session might be driven by the desire to get the action flowing rather than a predetermined timeline or random table.

How does the path of "the story" onto which events are to be guided get distinguished from what is not "the story"?

Remember, "the story" is not a predetermined outcome. It's something that is built in play. Guiding elements of the story involves the aforementioned nudging of elements into more dramatically satisfying configurations, but it's not anything like trying to build or adhere to a script.

How is this reconciled with the distinction of the role of GM, the asymmetry of participant powers?

Play with a GM you trust, basically. Since things are often ad-libbed, there is no player ability to audit the books.

How do the 'players' remain players of a game as opposed to theatrical performers?

There's actually very little risk of the players, no quotes necessary, transforming into 'theatrical performers', quotes probably necessary. Unless you let people who don't know much about said games be the ones to determine where the 'theatrical performers' line is drawn, but I don't really subscribe to that theory. It's sort of like letting people who don't know much about RPGs as a whole determine where the 'stupid waste of time' line is drawn.

Oh, yes: What makes Dungeons & Dragons a tool of choice for such an undertaking?

The group's desire to play Dungeons & Dragons.

This is especially puzzling to me when I contemplate the tremendous amount of time, energy and expense devoted to overturning one thing after another and transforming what Arneson and Gygax designed into something better fitted (by how much even yet?) as a means to the end.

In the meantime, countless other works have been produced free of the "sacred cows" and legacy; free to be uncompromisingly designed for the "storytelling" game.

It hies back to people not playing D&D the same way. There's no real guarantee that anyone will have learned to play D&D in a particular "impartial referee," "the GM leans back" sort of fashion. If they learned to play in a more narrative, "GM leans forward" sort of fashion -- or if they tried both ways and decide they liked the latter version more -- then that's the way they choose to play D&D. It becomes an uphill battle for anyone who doesn't play that way to convince another group "hey, you guys should go over and play another game so that D&D can remain the bailiwick of DMs who lean back." The burden is on the other games to say "This is a better narrative version of D&D", not on other players to say "You're not having as much fun with D&D as you could with other games, so you should go play them."

 

[KidSnide]

Wow, that's a lot of questions...

How does the GM guide and participate?

Many, many ways. The short answer is that the GM plays a role in deciding what the PCs are going to do, principally by convincing the players that certain things will be fun.

But there are plenty of other "story telling techniques" that are part of the GM's "guide and participate" role. I think there's a chapter in the DMG2 devoted largely to this subject. I also suggest checking out the description of PCat's convention game up thread (which I also had the pleasure of playing in). Speaking of up thread, I answered a similar question from RogueAttorney at: http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...storytelling-dm-looks-like-4.html#post5083515

How does the path of "the story" onto which events are to be guided get distinguished from what is not "the story"?

Well, this depends on your perspective. As a trivial matter, events become "The Story" when they happen, but that's no different from a sandbox game.

But I think you're asking how can you tell what events are part of "The Story" before they happen. That's a harder question to answer because (as PCat noted a few posts up) a good story teller GM doesn't have one single idea of "The Story" before it happens. A good story teller GM has multiple ideas for what might happen next and creates new ones on the fly.

That said, a good story teller GM might have multiple dramatic moments that he is guiding the plot towards, with the caveat that - as a good story teller GM - the PCs are given the freedom to choose actions that don't lead to those moments. Those moments (or NPCs, or encounters) are all potentially a part of "The Story."

Things that aren't a part of "The Story" are the boring bits that get cut out. Certainly, I'm willing to tell a player out-of-game that an idea they are proposing will result in boring gameplay with little success or accomplishment. Most players are thankful for not having to play out material that is dull, humiliating and/or pointless.

How is this reconciled with the distinction of the role of GM, the asymmetry of participant powers?

I'm not sure what there is to reconcile. Acting as a strictly neutral arbiter and/or scenario builder aren't the only things GMs can do. They can also act as editors or directors. It's just a question of whether or not they choose to. Either way, the GM has a ton of power, and the only real limit is the GM's ability to make it fun for the players so they don't leave.

How do the 'players' remain players of a game as opposed to theatrical performers?

Players are players of the game because (unlike actors) they make meaningful decisions that have significant consequences. In most (but not all) good story telling games, those meaningful decisions lead to whether or not the PCs are succesful in the primary objectives (and whether they survive the effort).

You could also create a game in which survival and success are not at issue and the real decisions and consequences are all about inter-PC relationships. I'll agree that D&D is probably not a great tool for that sort of campaign.

Oh, yes: What makes Dungeons & Dragons a tool of choice for such an undertaking?

Because D&D includes four things:
(1) the ability to create varied characters with interestingly different abilities, so each PC has a niche of competence/expertise,
(2) a fun tactical combat sub-game (and, less often, a fun non-combat sub-game) that allows the players to employ the tactical expertise to achieve their goals in an atmosphere of tension and excitement,
(3) a collection of mutually understood fantasy tropes that allow the story to proceed in a more easily explained context, and
(4) resources for GMs that make it easier to write fun and balanced obstacles to overcome (or fail at overcomming).

Others probably have a slightly different list, but that's my "top of my head" list of helpful attributes. I'll also note that, IMO, 4e does a better job at providing these features than earlier editions.

-KS

 

[The Shaman]

I tend to start some plots running, and see which ones the players are likely to meddle in. If they ignore a given plot, it will probably affect things later on. However, I'm careful not to have a plot that nobody's interested in turn out to mean Very Bad Things if they ignore them. In my experience, players don't particularly enjoy being punished for pursuing the plots they're more interested in by having to go back to the plots they're not, now with higher stakes. So to some extent there's story guidance rather than strong simulation, because I do want the players to pick the style of adversity they enjoy most, and scale that up accordingly.

I'm leary of using the word 'simulation' on a gaming forum, as it carries a lot of baggage with a certain subset of gamers which may not have anything to do with how I mean it, so let me try to sum up my approach to running a setting like so: the world is what it is and it responds to the players and their characters only as much as they are willing and able, through skill and luck, to influence it.

Put another way, it's the players' role to make the world respond to their characters, not the referee's.

I fully expect the adventurers to set and pursue goals, but I do nothing to tailor the world or tilt the flow of events toward or away from those goals. Consequences flow from the choices the players make for their characters. If a player decides he wants his character to become the greatest swordsman in France, a master superior of the Academie d'Armes, and found his own fencing school in Paris, then that's awesome and I wish him luck, but I'm not going to change the game to revolve around that adventurer's goals. If the player wants to eke out his character's niche, then he must do so amid the swirling tides of the setting.

(I am also not above the old trick of, when the players become excited about a plotline and visualize it as more far-reaching and dangerous than I had originally planned, quietly stepping it up to meet their expectations. Villains modify their plans as the players get involved, or maybe their ambitions were cleverly hid even from me! Sometimes a mountain can turn out to be a molehill, but I also think it's best to avoid players ending up disappointed that something is less exciting than they'd hoped.)

As a referee I won't do this and as a player I find it very disappointing. I like matching my wits against the referee's schemes, and if the schemes are nothing more than illusions created in response to my own suppositions then I am in fact doing nothing more than chasing my own tail. Of course I'll solve the mystery because I'm the one creating it as I go. Feh on that.

If I understand you correctly, your measure of a 'good' or 'successful' game is that players and their characters only face the adversity they choose and their expectations are consistently met by moving the goal in whatever direction they kick the ball, but for me that's pretty much the polar opposite of what I look for as a player, or offer as a referee. Events that are beyond my control challenge my creativity and adaptability; moments of frustration in the course of a game make the achievement of success that much more rewarding.

Very neat work! How would you frame an opening play session in this setting? I'm curious about the ideal new player experience you'd have in mind.

It's up to the players. They make their characters, I'll present them with current events and rumors appropriate to their character backgrounds, and they can figure out what they do next.

The adventurers are in a world humming with activity. They need to make themselves a part of that. Join a fencing school. Join a regiment. Become a courtier. Become a knight. Buy an office. Take vows as a priest. Captain a privateer. Spy for the Cardinal. Spy on the Cardinal. Take a mistress. Form a gang. Visit a fair. Visit the theatre. Gamble. Carouse.

But please, don't just sit there waiting for me to introduce 'the plot.'

If the characters connect with the setting, the setting will respond to them in kind. Push and the world pushes back. That's where adventure is found.

And no, I don't leave this to chance. Part of character creation is not only defining the what the character is, but also what she wants to be, and some ideas on how she might go about getting there.

 

[Janx]

one thing that stands out, particularly in how barastrondo and Shaman just said about getting the players moving, is there are various techniques and expectations from gms and players alike on "priming the pump"

For those who don't know, a hand-pump takes a bit of water to get it working, literally, I've had to pour a bucket of water into the pump, to get ot primed so the does its pumping action. This is called priming.

As a GM, we all have different ideas on priming the pump, getting the players moving. If the GM takes no action to get the players moving, and the players take no action to start moving, you have a very dull game.

If I have players who have no idea of where to start, as a GM, I will create an event (with back story and assumed follow-up encounters) to get them doing something. Attack them, blame them, give them a map, something that will likely make them react.

If I have players who are telling me what they want to do before or as soon as they hit the game table, then I make up a reasonable series of obstacles and encounters to pursuing that goal.

it's not all or nothing. It's push/pull communication. If the party isn't pushing info (goals/actions) to me, I am pulling them to a goal or action.

As a GM, I try to make it "dramatic" whether I'm pulling, or they're pushing. Since it is highly possible the players will choose a goal I didn't prepare for(imagine in sandbox play), I inherently have the right to create challenges to that goal, to make it interesting. Otherwise, when a PC says, I want to run for Sherriff, it'd be pretty boring if I said, "ok, you put your name on the ballot, the election comes, you win, you are now the sherriff"

One of the things I see, is my job is to make challenges to goals, that are fair, reasonable, and make for a fun time. I don't really make the goals, when the players are idle, or at ease, I instigate trouble and make events happen that MIGHT become the players' goals. From there, more game happens.

Making challenges isn't much different than stocking a dungeon for a dungeon crawl.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

I also suggest checking out the description of PCat's convention game up thread (which I also had the pleasure of playing in).

That's awesome; I am apparently meeting EN Worlders all the time without realizing it.

One thing about that game that would make any GM look good is having had great players!

Which suggests some questions for GMs:
- before play starts, how do you communicate to your players what your role in guiding the plot is, and what you expect of them?

- during a campaign, how do you get feedback from your players about what mix of guidance vs. freedom they'd like (given that even people who sign up for a campaign that you accurately describe ahead of time may realize they don't actually like sandbox or storytelling, or have different ideas of what that meant)?

- where does the player's input into what happens next come from: is it all played out at the table such that future directions emerge purely from PC actions, and/or do of-game meta-discussions about player or character goals shape upcoming events in the game?

- if you get feedback that players want more or less of some element in the game, how do you respond?

Actual play examples here are especially useful, I think.

 

[Barastrondo]

I'm leary of using the word 'simulation' on a gaming forum, as it carries a lot of baggage with a certain subset of gamers which may not have anything to do with how I mean it, so let me try to sum up my approach to running a setting like so: the world is what it is and it responds to the players and their characters only as much as they are willing and able, through skill and luck, to influence it.

Sure. I take your meaning.

I fully expect the adventurers to set and pursue goals, but I do nothing to tailor the world or tilt the flow of events toward or away from those goals. Consequences flow from the choices the players make for their characters. If a player decides he wants his character to become the greatest swordsman in France, a master superior of the Academie d'Armes, and found his own fencing school in Paris, then that's awesome and I wish him luck, but I'm not going to change the game to revolve around that adventurer's goals.

I would, but perhaps not in the way that you mean. If a player came to me with such a goal, I would devote more of my attention to making that goal something that was more personal. If someone were to create Jean-Louis from Scaramouche, for instance, I would probably create his rival the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr after he created his character (or work with the player to create him, though perhaps withholding certain key plot twists that occur to me) rather than selecting a potential rival from those that already exist, if that makes sense.

If the player wants to eke out his character's niche, then he must do so amid the swirling tides of the setting.As a referee I won't do this and as a player I find it very disappointing. I like matching my wits against the referee's schemes, and if the schemes are nothing more than illusions created in response to my own suppositions then I am in fact doing nothing more than chasing my own tail. Of course I'll solve the mystery because I'm the one creating it as I go. Feh on that.

Mmm. If a player is beaten or felled by a scheme they had some part in -- defeated by the six-fingered man he described as his father's murderer, or overwhelmed by the conspiracy that I'd expanded to fill a larger role when I saw the delighted glint in my players' eyes -- that's not illusory. The effects wind up being largely the same, I'm just cribbing from my players among other sources of inspiration.

That said, I quite take your point. If discovering things that are set up with the intention that you're probably not going to discover them is a source of delight, yeah, we would have incompatible gaming styles.

If I understand you correctly, your measure of a 'good' or 'successful' game is that players and their characters only face the adversity they choose and their expectations are consistently met by moving the goal in whatever direction they kick the ball, but for me that's pretty much the polar opposite of what I look for as a player, or offer as a referee.

No, not quite. I don't play a "no surprises" game. Unexpected troubles and plotlines arise all the time, things the players don't choose. But I do keep tabs on what players are responding to with enthusiasm. If most of the group is actively disinterested in fighting against the forces of a given religion, then I don't push that conflict as something they absolutely must get involved with. The conflict doesn't magically vanish, but I make sure they have options to, say, get another faction of NPCs to handle the conflict so they don't have to worry about it. Essentially, I've been in the situation where I felt that in-character I was bound to pursue a Very Important Conflict, or bad things would happen, while as a player I had no real interest in that conflict or the antagonists that came with it. I would rather have been in another portion of the setting doing something else. I don't really want my players to feel that way. Wasn't much fun.

As a caveat, though, I play all-but-exclusively with existing friends. So I already know much of what they like, and what they find interesting. Letting one plotline fade gracefully into the background because nobody like the sound of it is a largely theoretical practice, because the situations I tend to set up are ones that the players generally get quite enthusiastic about.

If the characters connect with the setting, the setting will respond to them in kind. Push and the world pushes back. That's where adventure is found.

And no, I don't leave this to chance. Part of character creation is not only defining the what the character is, but also what she wants to be, and some ideas on how she might go about getting there.

Planting the seeds of the first session during character creation is indispensable, no argument here.

So would you start that first session with the question of "Where are you, and what are you doing?", or are you more inclined to get them all in one place first and see what happens? For that matter, would you encourage players to pursue goals as a group, or would you expect the average session to have them scattered across the city for most of the evening?