When Player Driven Adventures Don't Pan Out

[zakael19]

Players adding to the fiction, especially setting, is not player-driven? I'm definitely listening.

It's not. And that was why I asked the question and have several other posts positing that player-driven is the same as simply playing with a good table. They are the same. Now, rulesets can ease player-driven or make it more difficult, but from the descriptions of player-driven from @RenleyRenfield and @Campbell, it is the same as playing a campaign of D&D with session zero and a character backstory. I have responded to both of them, which is how I came up with my initial take.

And thank you for Wuthering Heights example. Seemed like a cool session. The mechanics seem interesting, as does the storyline. I like the ghost, and in particular, the comments on the story about using it for a Vampire game. It seems like it would fit in well to that type of narrative.

Players can add color to the setting without having any measurable impact on where things go. Like taking a sheet of paper with an outline printed and filling it in. There's a difference between "collaborative world-building" and then active character-drive play imo. For instance, I do a lot of the former in my Thursday Daggerheart game, but the actual structure of how I'm designing scenarios is pretty classic "situations not plots" where the flow of narrative writ large is following from what I posited as premise & themes of the game.

I'm taking into account what the players said when they built their characters to add like, NPCs and situations, but they're not really driving where things go, yeah? Here in the city of Verella, they're going to resolve the Cultist activity. I left the like, how do you find them, and who do you approach and all that to them, but that's as you said fairly classic play.

Contrast above (GM fronted scenarios with space for players to make small scale decisions) with stuff @pemerton has talked about before in some 4e games, where the like themes of play directly follow forth from a character's priorities and background. A player making their character a paladin of Pelor with a goal of "I must overcome the darkness that's beset my order's former home" means that now we're going to play to find out "can the paladin overcome the darkness in their order's former home" and the GM is going to make some thoughts about what that might be, and then we'll figure out what similar priorities the other PCs might have that coincide.

I think that makes sense? Does it show the kinda difference in how character-driven play might be done vs GM fronted "situation not plot" play?

Edit: here's another more high level example. In Stonetop, the player set goals they'd like to try and accomplish. "Unlock this Arcana," or "find an Exceptional Engineer to build that Mill" or whatever. Proactive things they want to do within the space of the game. As the GM, I'm also called upon by the game to "make their lives not boring" and bring Threats into play as the game demands. For their goals, I offer ideas on how we might go about doing that ("ok, you want to find an Exceptional Engineer? I think Gordon's Delve would make the most sense there based on its mines. Do you want to like, plan an expedition and ask around or just send your Followers on a trading caravan?"), for the Threats I take what was established by the players as the themes and threads of the setting that they highlighted via Playbook choice and explicit session 0 desires and build forth directly.

 

[Scott Christian]

Players can add color to the setting without having any measurable impact on where things go. Like taking a sheet of paper with an outline printed and filling it in. There's a difference between "collaborative world-building" and then active character-drive play imo. For instance, I do a lot of the former in my Thursday Daggerheart game, but the actual structure of how I'm designing scenarios is pretty classic "situations not plots" where the flow of narrative writ large is following from what I posited as premise & themes of the game.

I'm taking into account what the players said when they built their characters to add like, NPCs and situations, but they're not really driving where things go, yeah? Here in the city of Verella, they're going to resolve the Cultist activity. I left the like, how do you find them, and who do you approach and all that to them, but that's as you said fairly classic play.

Contrast above (GM fronted scenarios with space for players to make small scale decisions) with stuff @pemerton has talked about before in some 4e games, where the like themes of play directly follow forth from a character's priorities and background. A player making their character a paladin of Pelor with a goal of "I must overcome the darkness that's beset my order's former home" means that now we're going to play to find out "can the paladin overcome the darkness in their order's former home" and the GM is going to make some thoughts about what that might be, and then we'll figure out what similar priorities the other PCs might have that coincide.

I think that makes sense? Does it show the kinda difference in how character-driven play might be done vs GM fronted "situation not plot" play?

Yes, it does. Thank you for the detailed explanation. I appreciate you taking the time to detail the difference.

 

[zakael19]

Yes, it does. Thank you for the detailed explanation. I appreciate you taking the time to detail the difference.

No totally, thinking through stuff like this helps me kind of evaluate my own games and how I’m running them differently for different tables!