what works in fiction but not rpgs or vice versa?

[ThirdWizard]

casual return from death as a slightly less powerful but otherwise unaltered person.

For the most part you're right. Note how D&D books even don't have people being raise in them. I want to bring up J'hreg (Jh'reg? J'reg? J'rheg? can't... remember...), though, as a great book/series with simple ressurection. The main character is an assassin and getting killed is generally a, "Drat, someone is upset with me," kind of thing as I recall. It also has familiars.

Things in a game that might not go well in a book:

Player whim: Sometimes it makes no sense, but it can be fun. The players decide they want to go to the forest one day, kill stuff or explore, then go to the lake, then go to the quarry, then go to the beach, etc etc with no real goal or path. They can ignore plot hooks that would drive a book while grabbing plot hooks that you least expect. Some say they're insane. Others say they're just evil.

PC death: Okay okay, maybe this isn't something that's everyone's cup of tea in RPGs but it can happen. Players die. And while they die in books, usually it isn't the same. PCs die by random kobold arrows that noone expected, falling from cliffs where they shouldn't have been in the first place, and to various other unspectacular and unexpected occurances. Also, the TPK. I don't recall many stories with a TPK, though Hamlet does spring to mind as at least a near TPK.

"I'm wearing boots of escaping!" AKA "I'm attacking the darkness!": I don't think I've ever heard such quotes in a novel, but they seem to pop up a lot in games.

 

[LostSoul]

It seems that some games can create "stories" that are more like what we see in novels/on the screen better than other ones. D&D seems to have many eccentricities that makes it poor for creating those types of stories.

 

[The_Gunslinger658]

Hi-

The hardest part I have with D&D is trying to emmulate chases, on the big screen it's a hart pounding race to catch or run from your protaginists, in D&D it seem's there quite a few rules that really detract from the overall effect. YMMV of course.


Scott

 

[LostSoul]

The hardest part I have with D&D is trying to emmulate chases, on the big screen it's a hart pounding race to catch or run from your protaginists, in D&D it seem's there quite a few rules that really detract from the overall effect. YMMV of course.

I think one of the keys here is using terrain. Jump checks, Balance checks, etc.

 

[Umbran]

Character internal monologue. Sure, each player has an internal monologue, but it isn't like the entire audience sees what's going on inside the head of each PC lkike you can have in a novel. It would be difficult for players to edit out the informationtheir characters didn't actually have...

Full disclosure of what the BBEG is doing to the audience, but not the characters - for similar reason as the above.

Certain artful structures of written fiction (like in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, where two stories widely separated in time are told in synchrony) simply fail in RPGs.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Hi-

The hardest part I have with D&D is trying to emmulate chases, on the big screen it's a hart pounding race to catch or run from your protaginists, in D&D it seem's there quite a few rules that really detract from the overall effect. YMMV of course.


Scott

Even if you have good chase rules, how often do PCs run? Only if completely outclassed, and only when they've seen evidence of this (eg they've had their butts handed to them, and many have died).

 

[Henry]

Even if you have good chase rules, how often do PCs run? Only if completely outclassed, and only when they've seen evidence of this (eg they've had their butts handed to them, and many have died).

Who says it's the PC's being the prey? PCs as predator in a chase works quite well (especially when liberally stealing from Spycraft).

I've had PCs run ONE time en masse - they wanted to help a town against a giant stronghold, underestimated the size of the giant enclave, and after two of the party was down and they were outnumbered 3 to 1, they fled. They fled all the way down a mountainside, into the town's nearby sewers and stayed overnight while the town burned, and snuck away the next morning. Wasn't their finest moment, but it made for some adventurous storytelling.

 

[ruleslawyer]

I have run cross-cutting, scenes separated by thousands of years, and numerous other "novelistic" techniques IMC. Loads of romance, enough surrenders, etc. I've certainly had PCs surrender because the bad guy had "the drop" on them, but that's only because I use certain house rules regarding surprise and "covering" with ranged weapons and because I am a big fan of hostage situations.

As for respecting NPCs, my players have always been good about this. We've had multiple relationships, important mentors and father figures, significant local tradesmen, semi-adopted urchins and "groupies," chaste "romances" in which players have leapt to defend the honor of x tavern wench against impugners even though they have no personal romantic attachment, et cetera.

Either way, I don't want to see "the pursuit" over and over and over and over and over again. It's twice as bad when the protagonist has just barely achieved puberty.)

Well, in the context of a lot of crappy fantasy books, yes. But "boy meets girl, boy chases girl" (or vice versa) is sorta universal story material. Think of how many individually GREAT songs and poems come out of it!

The one biggie I see repeated here with which I'd have to agree is party asymmetry and/or rank. I really don't think this works well in most groups; however, I can easily imagine a game in which it's a stated situation from the outset, and where the players all agree to it. Such a game MIGHT be fun to run, but I still see the strain. The one big universal rule I've developed after 20+ years of gaming is that all players need to feel that they (a) have something to do and (b) are on a reasonably level playing field.

Because I appear to be picking on PsiSeveredHead today:

I guess I should add another one: obvious competence. In a lot of fantasy novels, the big good guy is obviously more competent or somehow superior to the bad guys. The good guys are only in danger when the big good guy (Nevyn, Gandalf, resident Chosen of Mystra, etc) are away from the scene.

Well, Gandalf isn't actually superior to the bad guys in LotR. He beats the Balrog, but it's an epic struggle. He is less powerful than Saruman (until his death/rebirth/apotheosis/assumption of Saruman's persona), and certainly no match for Sauron, who is, after all, the true "epic-level character" of Middle Earth.

There's also the situation where two fighters "evaluate each other" to figure out who is better. Not only does that not happen in campaign due to lack of appropriate rules, but it would also lead to metagaming. In some novels, the good guy and a henchman met and fought ten years ago, with the good guy winning. So of course we know he'll never lose to the henchman again. That makes the upcoming combat between them really boring/

Hmm? As for assessing an opponent, I allow this as an application of Sense Motive (and have allowed it as a fighter and rogue class ability in 2e). It hasn't led to real trouble, since I don't make it any more precise than the novels do. As for good guy vs. henchman: I don't really get your point. I thought it was usually that the good guy gets his butt kicked, and then comes back for revenge.

Novels let you see things from the bad guys' perspective. It's really hard to get the PCs to respect the NPCs or even know what they're doing because the info available to them is usually pretty limited. (It has to be - otherwise the bad guys would have been arrested, roasted by Elminster, or whatever is in your setting.)

I do "bad guy perspective" stuff all the time through two devices: cutscenes and "I alone am escaped to tell thee" scenarios. For information that's unlikely to wreck the campaign, I'll often lead off a session or get a session together after a break with the description of an "offstage" scene involving a particular bad guy. For information that I want filtered in some way, escaped (often deranged) prisoners and double-crossing followers make great storytelling outlets.

 

[Li Shenron]

So a well run rpg makes a nice story (at least in retrospect if you're a on-narratavist player) but not all stories would make enjoyable rpgs, at least in my opinion. So what recognizable story tropes don't import so well to role playing?

These are what I personally have missed most in D&D, but they are more situations than story issues:

1) Chase scenes: I suppose that other RPG than D&D could have good rules for them, but in D&D we've never had a memorable scene about chasing the villain or running away from a boulder trap like Indiana Jones.

2) PCs in mass battles: whenever I see a book with rules for battles, it is always about determining the outcome of the battle but has little to do with the PC roles in it. Heroes fighting in wars is a classic from ancient epic literature to the latest Hollywood movies, but it's never seriously part of RPGs.

3) Death speeches: you just cannot have a PC or NPC perform his last-breath speech like in movies, unless you change the dying rules, but if you do so you get other problems.

 

[fafhrd]

Certain artful structures of written fiction (like in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, where two stories widely separated in time are told in synchrony) simply fail in RPGs.

Isn't that essentially the premise behind that Fireborn game?