Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7340914" data-attributes="member: 82106">I suspect, since most of the DMs of 2e/3e/5e games I've played in work something like this, that in [MENTION=34194]byron[/MENTION]'s play process the players are making pretty high-level decisions about where to go and what to do, probably often informed by intelligence they have acquired about different areas of the GM's world. So in effect you could model it like a 'dungeon maze' where the players have maps and descriptions of some areas and a fair idea that going left or right at the next passage will lead to areas with some specific character to them, or something that they want. Also, being an RPG, there's always the alternative of subverting some of the GM's arranged material. In 'dungeon maze' terminology someone prepared a scroll with 'Passwall' on it and can use that to partially rewrite the map at some point if they don't like the direction things are going. Players are also likely to find ways to have their characters exercise significant agency in terms of restructuring the world at a higher level, building a castle, conquering a city, assassinating a king, whatever. As long as the GM in question doesn't fall to exercising force and illusion to artificially limit this, then its cool. This is a treacherous problem though because there's always SOME logic inherent in the situation for resisting player-established goals. I mean, it wouldn't even be exciting in a challenge sense (which is part of this modus of play to one extent or another) to simply allow the PCs to roll over things and get what they want. Where is the line between challenging and railroading/controlling? Its a big grey area. Clearly fudging die rolls in order to limit (or enhance) character success crosses into force/illusionism, but there's a LOT of territory short of that.Lets suppose the PCs decided to assassinate the king. Just how strong are his bodyguards and what precautions does he take? That probably isn't established in advance, at least in detail. The GM now is in the position of effectively deciding if the task is within the resource limits that the PCs can deploy (and those are purely in-game resources, the players have no meta-game power outside of 'convince the GM to let us do X'). Now we begin to see clearly WHY the alternative forms of play evolved. In MY game, this would simply be cool beans. The PCs wouldn't know if they were going to succeed or fail ahead of time, but the players and GM could establish that the risks were "either you succeed and the kingdom falls into chaos as you wish, or you fail and the King's army will lay waste to your lands and besiege your castle!" Maybe there's a 'lesser risk' version where the PCs hire some guy to try to poison the King, little chance of success, but maybe even the attempt is a useful ploy, and no real chance it gets back to them either. This can all be established using the sorts of techniques I've noted here and in other threads, and/or with those of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] or [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] (which are substantially similar though maybe not identical). IMHO the problem with the 'classic' approach is it ALWAYS ends up falling to the DM's shoulders. Even if the players are substantially driving the story with in-game decision making on a big stage there are limits. The GM is always free to derail them at any time, there is always the great likelihood of unknown, maybe unknowable,  backstory entering into play to thwart them, etc. AT BEST in the final analysis it is a GM-gated story.The 'story driven' approaches DO go outside this limitation. By establishing some level of focus on character needs and player interests, and always allowing those to be entirely the scope of the players to establish, the role of the GM shifts to 'provider of narrative framing'. Instead of presenting fictional elements as pre-established world canon the GM is throwing up story elements to act as food to feed the agenda established by the players. It could go ANYWHERE. In the assassination example above its still within the GM's scope to declare the consequences of actions, but that will be within the framework of 'say yes' or 'roll the dice'. The ultimate result can easily be that the character's plot is foiled, they are unmasked, and their castle is laid in ruins and they flee into exile. That's a fun outcome! It is of course likely that the players are partisan to some degree and WANT to succeed in the character's plan, but they still have to wager, and part of the fun in that is the possibility of failure. If they fail then they'll have plenty of material to fuel further conflict narrative and perhaps in the end they will triumph in some other fashion, or simply go on to other concerns and leave that incident as a backstory element. I think you could do all of this using 2e if you were really focused on it and know the techniques well. It just doesn't HELP you.</blockquote>

Verification