What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Lanefan]

I think a reasonable GM would be amenable to a player saying "hang on boss, can we approach carefully?" Yes, in some minor degree he's let the cat out of the bag by stating that there are some giants who will spot the party, but that's hardly surprising news and even relatively stupid and unwise characters would be likely to anticipate that possibility.

Still kinda ruins the setup, though; if for no other reason than the party sneak doesn't get a chance to do her thing with some stealthy scouting. The pre-frame of increasing heat and smoky smell, followed by a chance to prepare and-or pre-scout is the far better option IMO.

I'd also point out that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] invented this example off the top of his head and maybe it isn't very 'polished' in that sense.

Fair enough; some of the examples I've tossed out in this thread have been similarly off-the-cuff. But the point remains, it's too fast of a jump-shift.

Anyway, we agree that the players should have some chances to assert 'character agency' in terms of stopping, preparing, etc. I don't think its necessary to let them turn aside or change their plans in between significant scenes because they've already declared what they want in that respect. Telling them they reach the other end of a road they already chose to travel down isn't 'railroading' for instance. If the players wanted to have stipulations "we won't travel more than 1 day's riding down the road before stopping and reconsidering" they certainly have a chance to interject that sort of thing in play.

All that's needed is for the players to say to the DM "Tell us if we see anything unusual or interesting along the way"; or for the DM to simply do this unprompted, as standard procedure.

I would call it a negative characteristic of a GM if they really try to jam the action forward so forcefully at the table that the players never get a word in edgewise to say theses things.

Ditto.

Which is part of my issue - it seems in some of the examples we've seen that the players/PCs aren't always getting the chance to say/do these things. The giants one is, as we've seen, a rather obvious case in point. The reliquary one is another - no chance given to find a different or more stealthy approach, no chance given to pre-scout or pre-buff, and so on...though in fairness we don't really know how much the guiding angels had to do with that in the actual run of play whose log we've seen. I mean, if they just marched the PCs up to the reliquary entrance without so much as a by-your-leave then the PCs are kinda stuck with that, and so be it.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

We are not assessing anything by any 'lens', we are measuring OBJECTIVELY how much actual control the players have over the actual narrative in actual games of different types. The fact of control over the narrative is independent of the type of game, I can easily define it and measure it in a way that references nothing more than the essential facts of RPG play (that there are characters played by the players and a narrative that they participate in).

His point, as I understood it, had nothing to do with narrative control specifically.

I'll try to put it in my own words: different games - including but not at all limited to RPGs - each give players a certain amount of agency within that particular game as defined by that game's rules; and while in many games the players can choose either to exert less agency than the game rules provide or to exert what they have badly (though either is almost always a suboptimal thing to do) they can never choose to exert more; and if they do they are cheating.

In chess I have the agency to move my pieces as the rules allow, one per turn. If I try to move two per turn I've cheated by exceeding my agency. Chess does not allow me to exert no agency (i.e. skip my turn) but it does allow me to exert it very badly by making a series of meaningless or flat-out awful (or randomly determined!) moves on my turns.

In most normal RPGs the game rules give me as a player the agency to - within the rules - roll up whatever character I see fit to in a mechanical sense (stats, race, class, etc., depending what the dice or other char-gen system give me to work with) and then give it whatever personality I feel like. Those rules also then give me the agency within the game to:
- play that character within the fiction as presented (inhabit its persona and interact with the game-world on that basis)
- play that character mechanically (roll the dice, track its h.p., etc.)
- advocate for that character (state its actions)
- reasonably expect the DM to play in good faith

To go beyond this - e.g. by playing someone else's character or falsely tracking its h.p. or demanding that stated actions that are impossible succeed anyway - is exceeding my agency, and may quickly veer into cheating if it's not there already.

In story-now RPGs the agency expands to include some control over content of the fiction along with the other things noted above. Whether or not this is a good thing (and by extension, whether or not the story-now concept overall is a good thing) is probably the root of this whole debate.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Eh, I guess. I mean, I don't put a huge stock on the way I stated it myself. I'm happy to state it as "the GM needs different players", as that is equally the case. I don't really 'take sides' in those sorts of questions, normally. I just see it as a failure of consensus on agenda. The group should be reformed with different people in it.

OK.

Well, I don't see why in a Story Now game this wouldn't or couldn't also transpire. If said weapon is understood to be powerful and rare, wielded only by an extremely elite type of person, then I would say genre convention would virtually dictate that acquiring it would be a difficult task.

Alternatively you could go all 'Elfstones of Shannara' on the whole thing and hand it to the PC on day one. Now he's got to deal with figuring out if he can use this McGuffin, living up to the expectations of its wielder, and constantly in fear of those who mark him for possession of it. He may well be 'fated to wield the Sword of Sir McGuffin' but that doesn't have to be a cakewalk!

The Shannara reference is lost on me. I once many years ago managed to get through about half of one of those books before giving up, and have never tried again. But even with that, I see what you're saying; and it's certainly an option.

Hehe, Some of this conversation can be a little frustrating, but I always feel like at some level we can all just play together. That's always been my strength as a gamer, only the most horrible game won't amuse me and be fun. Anyway, I'd love to run one of mine for you and some of the other people in this thread. Doubting that will happen, but its an amusing idea at least!

Well at least you and I are on the same continent, even if not by much...

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

YOU took pity on them and YOU decided to intercept the teleport to give them items. How is that not YOU engaging in DM agency?

It is GM agency, although (i) the agency is mostly being spent imlementing the treasure parcel guidelines, and (ii) some of it is influenced by player item wishlists.

In 4e, magic items are an asepct of PC build that occupy a different space in relation to GM and player agency than (say) feat selection.

Which also reminds us that this is GM agency over PC build, not so much over the content of the shared fiction. (That the Raven Queen is allied with the PCs, and wants to help them defeat Orcus, is something that has already been established in play and is significantly player-driven.)

 

[pemerton]

No blocking is being done by nothing being at the bazaar. There are many other ways to achieve the goals.

All I can really do is reiterate:

The player's goal for his/her PC is to find an item that might be useful. The game could cut to that chase. Or the player could jump through GM-establilshed hoops (whether pre-authored or rolled for) before getting to that outcome.

I don't understand by what criterion you suggest that the first undermines player agency over the content of the shared fiction while the latter affirms it.

No, it's not subsumed within their characters' dramatic needs. If my wife has something important to her that she cares about, it becomes important to me and I care about it. My care doesn't strip it away from her and make it about me. D&D is no different other than the DM is the partner with the players. If I introduce something that the players come to care about, it doesn't become theirs. It becomes a partnered care, just like when I care about something they've established as a important for their character, what they established doesn't become about me.

I don't really follow your point here. What I was saying was a response to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] contrasting "PC dramatic needs" with "the game/campaign as a whole". My point was that if that stuff is something the players actively care about and want to engage with, then it itself has become (on aspect of) PCs' dramatic needs. (Eg if Lanefan mentions slavery, and the players decide to have their PCs fight in the cause of abolition, then ipso facto abolition has become one of the dramatic needs of these protgaonists.)

Hence it follows from Lanefan's contrasting of it with dramatic needs that it has not taken on such a status; and hence is something primarily of interest to the GM. The players may or may not want to go along with it, but if they do that is not any exercise by them of agency over the content of the shared fiction.

when going down a passageway, an intersection represents a change in the environment that I would alert them to.

This is just your opinion on what is salient. You (and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]) care about passageways. I find that they very easily become boring, and if there is nothing at stake and the players don't ask about them I'm happy to disregard them. In my Burning Wheel game I will cheerfully resolve an hours-long trek through the catacombs with a single Catacombs-wise check.

If the player wants to know the layout of some particular place for some particular reason, we can get to that level of detail and work something out (most likely along the lines of "I make a Catacombs-wise check to find the six-way intersction I've heard about underneath the cathedral"); but no one is interested in cataloguing every intersectin down there for the sake of it.

I'm not rushing them from place to place

Again with these meaningless metaphors. Narrating "OK, so you go through the door back into the corridor" and "OK, you travel through the Underdark and arrive at the lava-filled cavern the dwarves described to you" are identical narrativbe processes. Neither leaves out more information than the other, or railroads anyone more than the other. That's a fundamental difference between fiction and reality. In reality, every square inch of every surface someone traverses exerts causal influence over them, and they exert the same over it. But in a fiction, there is only what is narrated. You don't give the players more opportunities for choice by narrting only things that are nearby rather than things that are geographically distant!

I would already have told them about the flagstones on the floor

Do you mention every floor covering in every room? Every road surface? Every species of plant in the wilderness? ("Hang on, that's not normally found in these parts! What animal - or evil druid - spread it to here?")

Every wall surface - stone, brick, plastered, painted, bare, scrubbed, filthy, etc? (Think of the plastered wall in ToH for a concrete example of a module which turns on this.)

To be honest I find that impossible to believe.

I would tell them if the flagstone passage turned into a smooth cave like floor.

I live in a typical urban neighbourhood in a multi-million population industrialised city. Walking 100 m down my street involves passing multiple sorts of road and footpath surfaces (cobblestones, asphalt, concrete) plus various "hatches" (some concrete, some metal) plus heavy metal ramps laid over driveways (that my girls love to jump on so as to make a noise). No GM in any modern or sci-fi game every narrated things in that degree of detail.

I've never been to a mediaeval city (obviously), but I've walked through cities that more closely resemble our fantasy cities than does modern Melbourne (I'm thinking especially Fez, Zanzibar and Nairobi). Street surfaces are sometimes dirt, sometimes paved or cobbled, sometimes muddy. Building are sometimes stone or brick, sometimes timber - or a mix of both. Some are permanent, some at least look more temporary (eg rough-hewn timber bound together with cord). There are balconiies, and shutters of various sorts, and cords running across the streets or between buidlings, etc.

No GM in any fantasy game ever narrated all this stuff when the PCs walk down the street. Yet all of it is potentially salient. Is it railroading not to do so?

You gave them no opportunity in your example.

<snip>

You gave them no opportunity to tell you that they were stealthy in giant territory.

The problem I have is that if they don't get the "front porch" scene, then unless the players are expected to declare all manner of moves in advance about what might possibly happen, the DM is railroading the players through places by making decisions for the PCs. If they are expected to declare those moves in advance, the game becomes a giant game of chess where you have to stop the momentum of the game so that the players can strategize about every situation they might encounter and give the DM a plan. That wastes a bunch of time on things that the players won't ever encounter.

Are those last sentences based on your experience with "story now" play? Or are they just more conjecture?

If the players want to approach the giants stealthily, they can do so. In a 4e game, the whole trip is probably being resolved as a skill challenge, and if the PCs want to put a group Stealth check in there to try and achieve the result we see the giants before they see us, they're welcome to. But they don't need me to remind them to do that. They're the ones playing their PCs, and they're the ones who know what they want their PCs to do. They can make these calls if they want.

I would call it a negative characteristic of a GM if they really try to jam the action forward so forcefully at the table that the players never get a word in edgewise to say theses things. I don't think Pemerton would object to that characterization.

This is why I asked [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] if, at his table, the players need permission to speak. In my experience, if the players want their PCs to do something they will say so. Conversely, if they're keen to get from A to B because that's where the action is, it adds nothgin to the play experience for the GM to mention ten different intersctions to fill half-an-hour of the session before we get to B.

In part under the influence of other posters who play more avant-garde games than I do, I've become a big fan of "OK, yep, you did that, but now what about . . .?" - that is, if the players want to make potions or stock up on assault rifles or whatever it is, let's just write it down and knock off the ritual components or credits or whatever it is, but I'm not that interested in the players using this sort of hemming and hawing as a way of putting off hard choices. Or of seeking in-advance assurances from the GM that, if only they pack the right gear, then everything will turn out how they want. I push them towards "story now" rather than "story already written via the equipment list".

That doesn't mean that there are never hour-long logistics interludes in my 4e game, but I prefer to keep them to a minimum.

 

[pemerton]

And the closer that game world is set up to resemble a real world in how it operates the better: more consistent, more believable, and easier to relate to.

And before you say "the real world doesn't have magic ... [etc.]" ask yourself - what if it did? How would the real world look and function if it had D&D-style magic in it, but very little or no modern technology? Answer that (in whatever manner suits you) and boom: you've got a starting point for building your world.

I don't care about magic or jump drives.

My point is this: the real world is a real thing. I interact with it via causal processes.

The fiction is fiction. I "interact" with it (that word is a metaphor in this context) by either (i) making it up, or (ii) having someone else tell me something they made up about it.

If someone has made up dozens of facts about flagstones in that imaginary world then good for them, but I don't think I can envisage a scenario in which I want them to tell me about it!

the difference between having just the item you need handed to you on a platter because your successful action declaration authored its existence, or the serendipitous joy on realizing this item you found on a seemingly-unrelated adventure is in fact exactly what you've been looking for all along.

That is not quite right, because "handed to you on a platter" is not just metaphor but a pejorative one.

Playing a RPG is playing a RPG. It's not noble struggle, or dingity-conferring labour. Working your way through the GM's dungeon and serendipitously finding that the GM wrote something in that you care about is not some more virtuous than playing through a sequence of challenging situations with the reward emerging (or failing to) at the end of it.

Would my BW game have been better if the mage PC had inadvertantly blown his brother up with a fireball spell because his brother happened to be tied up in a niche down the corridor; rather than the PC seeing his brother slain before his eyes by an assassin who got there first, and all because the mage chose to travel through the catacombs and got lost in them? Personally I'm not seeing it.

The reliquary one is another - no chance given to find a different or more stealthy approach, no chance given to pre-scout or pre-buff, and so on...though in fairness we don't really know how much the guiding angels had to do with that in the actual run of play whose log we've seen.

I'll paste it again:

It also became clear to them that there were chaotic forces within Mal Arundak as well as outside it - connected, they assumed, to the Ebon Flame, which they knew to be locked up inside the bastion and believed to contain the essence of the Elder Elemental Eye.

The "angels" showed the weary travellers to a room where they could rest and freshen up. The invoker/wizard used Purify Water to remove the corrupting sludge from the fountain in the room, and they took a long rest (they also may have done some divination, but the details escape me).

Reinvigorated, they went back out to speak to the angels, and presented as their principal concern the need to check the bastion's defences, and reinvigorate them if necessary. The paranoid "angels" began to suspect them, however, of wanting to be shown the way to the Flame so they could steal it. Matters came to something of a head when the invoker/wizard, as part of "reinforcing the magic wards", raised a Magic Circle vs Demons at the entrance to the reliquary where the Flame was stored - the angels could sense that they couldn't cross it, and accused him of treachery, but he (and his fellows) retorted that the angels has been corrupted by their long labours on the Abyss, and insisted that they join in a ritual of purification and reinvigoration in the spirit of Pelor. (This had been resolved a social skill challenge, in which the PCs were successful so far.)

The invoker/wizard then used his Memory of a Thousand Lifetimes to recall a teleport sigil from Pelor's hold in Hestavar, and opened a Planar Portal directly to that point (successful Arcana check), allowing Pelor's divine power to wash over the PCs and the angels. A successful Religion check purged them of their corruption, and they duly thanked the PCs for purifying them, and allowed them to enter the reliquary to learn where the chaos was coming from.

Where is the railroading meant to have happened? What choices were the players denied?

The impression I got was that he was trying to apply his theories to all RPGs, including all versions of D&D.

Eero Tuovinen is describing a particular approach to RPGing - "story now", as achieved by means of the "standard narrativistic model". (There are other approaches to "story now" - eg Apocalypse World and its offshoots, which [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] - of posters in this thread - is probably best qualified to expound on. But the "standard narrativistic model" is what I'm most familiar with, in part because I broadly worked it out for myself c 1987, although reading and play since then have helped me improve my technique somewhat.)

It is possible to adapt D&D to "standard narrativistic model" play - that's what I did in the late 80s - but some aspects of the system will push back. And it's very far from the default approach to playing D&D, as Eero Tuovinen notes. And as this thread has brought out (if there was any lingering doubt).

 

[pemerton]

This is Eero's definition of advocacy:

"Character advocacy
Players can have different roles in a roleplaying game. Typical overarching categories are “player roles” and “GM roles”, which are fuzzy and historically determined expressions of natural language. One type of player role is when the game requires a player to be an advocate for a single player character – this advocacy thing is an exact theory term, unlike the fuzzy concept of “player role”. When a player is an advocate for a character in a roleplaying game, this means that his task in playing the game is to express his character’s personality, interests and agenda for the benefit of himself and other players. This means that the player tells the others what his character does, thinks and feels, and he’s doing his job well if the picture he paints of the character is clear and powerful, easy to relate to."

This doesn't require anything on the part of the GM to respond to it in any specific way.

Yes it does. At a minimum, it requires the GM to establish situations which permit the player to paint a picture of his/her character that is clear and powerful; which permit the player to express his/her PC's personality, interest and agenda.

This is why, for instance, one might open a campaign with the PC in a bazaar with an angel feather being offered for sale - this permits the player to paint a clear and powerful picture of his PC, expressing the PC's interest and agenda - rather than in a "neutral" setting where the first action declaration ("I look around for a bazaar") doesn't really do any of those things at all.

Rogue: I want to get in the castle undetected. I think there's a secret door here. I'm going to search for a secret door here. Even, "I think that there ought to be a secret door as an escape route, and will go to what looks like the most logical place for it." The GM could frame the scene at "the most logical place for it" and there still not be a secret door. No loss of agency, the player still had full advocacy of his character.

What does this rogue think and feel? What is his/her agenda? Why is s/he trying to get into the castle? What might s/he sacrifice to do so?

The situation you describe does not involve advocacy of the sort that Eero Tuovinen talks about. As you present it, there is barely a character there at all!

In terms of advocacy in the standard narrativist model, Eero even clarifies at the end of the essay:

"For these purposes it is useful to example games in close reading and find out what it is, actually, that the game requires of a player. This whole post has actually been an overview of how certain types of game require players to be engaged in the role of advocacy (“I play my character to express him into the story”) as opposed to authorship (“I play my character to fill the narrative role allotted to him”). Both are called “playing your character” in different game texts, but psychologically and practically they are rather different processes."

He spends quite a few words about why authorship, particularly shared authorship by the players, is a problem in games like these, and then arrives at the point that the "job" of the player is one of advocacy. He is clearly separating advocacy from authorship here.

Eero Tuovinen distinguishes advocacy (broadly, first person inhabitation of the PC) from authorship (broadly, thining about the PC as a protagonist in a story). This has no bearing on action resolution. Nowhere does he say that players can't declare actions which might succeed!

If your group of 1st level characters in a standard narrativist game decides they want to go kill an ancient dragon, are you implying that the players lack agency if they fail to kill the dragon when they wander into its lair and get barbecued? Agency cannot be tied to success, because there's no game if the players can simply declare what they want and then achieve it.

By talking about "1st level characters" you're already assuming a particular sort of RPG system.

It is part and parcel of agreeing to play a D&D game (or a game with a similar level device) that story elements are, in some fashion, level-relative. In the "story now" context, this makes long-term pacing a signifcant element of play; and its workability depends upon there being appropriate ways at all levels for the players to engage their dramatic needs at al levels of play in a way that both maintains verisimilitude while not making the later levels of play redundant. This is a non-trivial design challenge. Of level-based games that I'm familiar with (which are D&D and its variants, T&T, RM and DW) I think 4e really pulls this off the best, because of its thorough integration of mechanics with cosmology via the "tiers of play". (Though I may be being unfair to DW here - I don't have the best handle on exactly how its level advancement works.)

Failure does not equal lack of agency over the content of the fiction.

Of course not; not every move in a game is guaranteed to succeed. But failure because the GM decided that the fiction was otherwise certainly does.

The content of the fiction is the combination of the contributions of all players (including the GM) in an RPG. For example, the secret door:

The rogue searches the area where he suspects a secret door carefully. Any cracks that look out of place? Scuff marks indicating a door that might slide or swing out here? Perhaps the mortar is different, lighter in this area? Despite his best efforts, no secret entrance is found. The wizard indicates that he should move aside and casts passwall.

The player of the rogue contributed to the fiction, and the narrative continued. The player of the wizard did too, and also changed their current situation.

In your example, the rogue player's contribution is to say "I search carefully." And then to ask the GM to relate a few things that the GM has authored. That is extremely modest agency. The rogue player didn't actually establish any fiction except a few facts about mental states and bodily movements of his PC, which ended up having no impact on the actual state of the game.

The reason why the rogue failed is really irrelevant here with regard to player agency. Whether the GM knew ahead of time, decided it in the moment, or it was the result of a failed skill check, it just doesn't matter.

It may not matter to you. It is fundamental to me.

Imagine we were talking about a combat between the rogue and the orc - and that you posted "The reason why the orc killed the rogue doesn't matter - maybe because the GM got lucky in the combat rolls, maybe because the GM decided on the spot that the orc was a better fighter than the rogue, maybe because the GM had written that down ahead of time." I think most RPGers would actually dispute that claim.

Well, I dispute it in the case of the secret door for exactluy the same reason. Given that the principal activity of RPGing is sitting around telling one another made-up stuff, the question of who gets to make up which stuff is fundamental.

Why do the caves have to be ignored in a Story Now game? Are you saying that the players are not allowed to create characters that are there for the very (basic) premise of the module itself. That you are actively taking away their agency to play that scenario in that manner?

The fact that you ran it twice as a Story Now game, and didn't engage those parts doesn't mean they can't be.

I ask again, have you done it?

I can tell you why I don't think it can be done with the Caves as written - because (with the possible exception of the cutlist cave) they don't engage with any dramatic needs nor express any thematic content.

Maybe someone could take one of the orc caves and do the same thing to it as I've done with the cultists - turn it into the site of activity in a game in which war with the orcs is an underlying premise. But that wouldn't be to use the module in anything like the way it is is written or presented for play. (The contrast with Night's Dark Terror, by the way, is very marked here. The goblin caves in that game are very different in this respect, and lend themselves much more straightforwardly to "story now" RPGing - for a start because they are smaller, and separate, and so can be played with a thematic dynamism that doesn't risk swamping the PCs nor turning the thing into a purely operational/logistical slugfest.)

More likely, it was exactly what I describe in my campaigns: The characters found themselves in whatever situation they were in, and decided to do something other than what was authored in the module.

Or you could read the post I linked to - then you'd actually be able to learn what happened instead of making it up!

Even Eero's examples can clearly fit B2 as written:

"The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.

The player’s task in these games is simple advocacy, which is not difficult once you have a firm character. (Chargen is a key consideration in these games, compare them to see how different approaches work.) The GM might have more difficulty, as he needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences)."

The premise of the setting is a that a keep exists on the outskirts of civilization, and it's rumored that there's a monster infested cave filled with treasure.

The players have established a fighter, wizard, cleric and thief. They arrived at the keep this morning. The fighter wants to test his skill and help clear the region of monsters in the hopes he'll be able to one day build his own keep. The wizard is looking for some rare ingredients and components, and scrolls, spellbooks, magic items, etc. The cleric wants to aid his friend the fighter in his quest, and his hope that he'll one day lead a temple in the fighter's keep. And the thief is a childhood friend that's looking for a way to fast riches with little work.

There's nothing that indicates any issue with using preauthored material to present to the characters.

Chapter #1 The Keep. The characters are free to explore, meet the locals, purchase equipment, and learn of the local lay of the land and potential threats, rumors of lost treasure, etc.

Chapter #2 The Wilderness. The characters have learned that there is a mysterious place called the "Caves of Chaos" nearby. Or at least that's what the rumors say. If any have found it, none have returned. Their most specific information is that it lies to the northeast, but the trustworthiness of the source was a bit suspect. But it's the best information they can go on.

Chapter #3 The Caves of Chaos. The PCs locate the caves, and find that they are indeed infested. However, they survived their first foray, and claimed some treasure before narrowly escaping death. While they could set up camp and stay here, they feel it's better to return to the keep to recover. They decide to conceal their treasure, and tell anybody who asks that they didn't find the caves, but did get attacked by an orc warband. To further support the ruse, they choose to circle around and approach the keep from the northwest.

Chapter #4. The Keep. Resting and reprovisioning, and searching for more rumors. The thief goes behind the others backs to bribe a local to learn any secrets regarding the keep and the caves. Why haven't they been discovered, and why have the monsters been allowed to flourish there?

Maybe not the most compelling story, but all quite possible with the adventure as written.

<snip>

A Story Now or Narrativist approach (one that's actually utilizing the caves) might skip the Wilderness part altogether. "We want to find an explore the Caves of Chaos" the players/characters declare. "So after hours (or days) of searching, you find yourself entering a small box canyon well hidden by the surrounding forest." For a great deal of us, that's significantly taking away player agency. Why? Because even though they said they wanted to go to the Caves, it doesn't mean that something else might alter their course - voluntarily or involuntarily. They might have had plans to do something else on the way, which hadn't been expressed yet.

The issue is not whether the story is compelling or not. It's that what you're describing here does not fit the model.

You have not identified any scenes framed to speak to your PCs' dramatic needs (a fighter who wants to test his skill and help clear the region of monsters in the hopes he'll be able to one day build his own keep, a wizard is looking for some rare ingredients and components, a cleric wants to aid his friend the fighter in his quest, and a thief who is a childhood friend looking for a way to fast riches with little work). Your chapters 1, 2 and 4 contains nothing that speaks to any of this. And nor does your chapter 3 - just one sign of this is your use of the plural pronoun ("they conceal their treasure", they lie about the caves, etc - how does lying about the caves even fit with the agenda of the fighter and cleric? and where is the mage's agenda in all this?).

And that's before we get to any discussion of consequences, and how these might be established given the mechanical and fictional components of the module.

To get "story now" play out of the Caves of Chaos would require a complete rewriting from the bottom up.

 

[Maxperson]

It is GM agency, although (i) the agency is mostly being spent imlementing the treasure parcel guidelines, and (ii) some of it is influenced by player item wishlists.

In 4e, magic items are an asepct of PC build that occupy a different space in relation to GM and player agency than (say) feat selection.

Which also reminds us that this is GM agency over PC build, not so much over the content of the shared fiction. (That the Raven Queen is allied with the PCs, and wants to help them defeat Orcus, is something that has already been established in play and is significantly player-driven.)

They were trying to get somewhere and you stopped it and added another step, albeit an easy one. You called that blocking to me earlier in the thread, since the player desire didn't resolve immediately. It also does add to the fiction, since the event occurred in game and the fiction was altered by it. The teleport was interrupted, changing the fiction of travel instantly from one place to another, then they encountered the Raven Queen and had that encounter, which added to the fiction, and then they were given items to use in the fight that they would not have had otherwise, which certainly had an impact on the fiction.

 

[Maxperson]

The player's goal for his/her PC is to find an item that might be useful. The game could cut to that chase. Or the player could jump through GM-establilshed hoops (whether pre-authored or rolled for) before getting to that outcome.

I cut to the chase. You cut to the catch.

On a more serious note, I've explained repeatedly how they are not in fact DM established hoops, but you continue to willfully ignore those explanations.

I don't understand by what criterion you suggest that the first undermines player agency over the content of the shared fiction while the latter affirms it.

If you don't understand, it's because of the willful ignorance you've decided to engage in for some reason.

This is just your opinion on what is salient. You (and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]) care about passageways. I find that they very easily become boring, and if there is nothing at stake and the players don't ask about them I'm happy to disregard them. In my Burning Wheel game I will cheerfully resolve an hours-long trek through the catacombs with a single Catacombs-wise check.

If the player wants to know the layout of some particular place for some particular reason, we can get to that level of detail and work something out (most likely along the lines of "I make a Catacombs-wise check to find the six-way intersction I've heard about underneath the cathedral"); but no one is interested in cataloguing every intersectin down there for the sake of it.

It has nothing to do with what is important or not, and everything to do with the PCs will almost surely notice an intersection and it becomes a decision point for the players, important or not. It's not my job to determine what is or is not important to the players/PCs. It's my job to give the players, through their PCs, all the information they need to make the decisions they want to make based on what is important to them.

An intersection is one of those things. I let them know that they've come to a 4 way intersection and they decide which way they want to go. If it's not important, they'll take about 0.5 seconds to tell me that they continue straight.

Again with these meaningless metaphors. Narrating "OK, so you go through the door back into the corridor" and "OK, you travel through the Underdark and arrive at the lava-filled cavern the dwarves described to you" are identical narrativbe processes. Neither leaves out more information than the other, or railroads anyone more than the other. That's a fundamental difference between fiction and reality. In reality, every square inch of every surface someone traverses exerts causal influence over them, and they exert the same over it. But in a fiction, there is only what is narrated. You don't give the players more opportunities for choice by narrting only things that are nearby rather than things that are geographically distant!

That's just wrong. Going through a door might leave out, "You see the door jamb as you pas through.", but that's about it. Traveling through the Underdark is going to leave out tons of information during the travel. Flora, fauna, passages, possibly surface wealth in the form of raw gems, and God knows what else. Regardless, it's going to be a lot more than just a door jamb.

Do you mention every floor covering in every room? Every road surface? Every species of plant in the wilderness? ("Hang on, that's not normally found in these parts! What animal - or evil druid - spread it to here?")

Every wall surface - stone, brick, plastered, painted, bare, scrubbed, filthy, etc? (Think of the plastered wall in ToH for a concrete example of a module which turns on this.)

To be honest I find that impossible to believe.

I hope so. Do you really expect me to answer those questions again?

I live in a typical urban neighbourhood in a multi-million population industrialised city. Walking 100 m down my street involves passing multiple sorts of road and footpath surfaces (cobblestones, asphalt, concrete) plus various "hatches" (some concrete, some metal) plus heavy metal ramps laid over driveways (that my girls love to jump on so as to make a noise). No GM in any modern or sci-fi game every narrated things in that degree of detail.

False Equivalence going on here. Modern society with modern materials and building techniques differ a lot from what was available in the Middle Ages. You're also talking about many different buildings and materials, which involves far more diversity than the construction involved in a single building or subterranean construction. It's easier to note the difference in construction when there are far fewer of them.

No GM in any fantasy game ever narrated all this stuff when the PCs walk down the street. Yet all of it is potentially salient. Is it railroading not to do so?

Why would it be? I've never claimed it was. I have, however, repeatedly explained the difference between what you are describing now and what you described involving the giant trip. Willfully ignoring what I've said to you in favor of repeating this for the umpteenth time is unbecoming.

Are those last sentences based on your experience with "story now" play? Or are they just more conjecture?

I'm going by what you described to us in your example.

If the players want to approach the giants stealthily, they can do so. In a 4e game, the whole trip is probably being resolved as a skill challenge, and if the PCs want to put a group Stealth check in there to try and achieve the result we see the giants before they see us, they're welcome to. But they don't need me to remind them to do that. They're the ones playing their PCs, and they're the ones who know what they want their PCs to do. They can make these calls if they want.

First, that's not what you described to us. Second, reducing travel through the extremely dangerous and diverse Underdark to a skill challenge seems like you are cheapening the Underdark considerably.

 

[Maxperson]

Playing a RPG is playing a RPG. It's not noble struggle, or dingity-conferring labour. Working your way through the GM's dungeon and serendipitously finding that the GM wrote something in that you care about is not some more virtuous than playing through a sequence of challenging situations with the reward emerging (or failing to) at the end of it.

Would my BW game have been better if the mage PC had inadvertantly blown his brother up with a fireball spell because his brother happened to be tied up in a niche down the corridor; rather than the PC seeing his brother slain before his eyes by an assassin who got there first, and all because the mage chose to travel through the catacombs and got lost in them? Personally I'm not seeing it.

It might well have been better, yes. Imagine the horror of realizing that you just killed your brother with your magic. How would you react? Would you abandon your magic? Would you dedicate your life to helping others with that magic? Would you continue to use fireballs? Would you seek out burn victims and help them get healed? Would you become depressed? How would that depression affect the rest of your goals? Would you become angry and seek vengeance? The list goes on.

Seeing the brother killed by the assassin is ALSO a huge turning point for the PC, but it's hard to say whether it was a better way to go or not.

Where is the railroading meant to have happened? What choices were the players denied?

Again, since you've "missed" it the first few times. Not everything you do is a railroad. That's not what we are saying. However, when you jump around from scene to scene as you describe, it's very easy to accidently railroad the players the way your giants example did.

It's far easier to accidentally railroad someone in your playstyle than it is in mine. In my playstyle, because I point out so much more and they actually travel from place to place with much more detail about the spaces in-between the larger story/character points, I actually have to go out of my way to try and railroad them. It's hard to accidentally force the players down a particular passageway when I'm letting them know about the intersection and giving them the choice on which way to go. It's easy to accidentally force them down a particular passageway if I'm just moving them to the end point and not giving them the option.