Why we like plot: Our Job as DMs

[Hussar]

Well, since you asked so nicely.

I'm currently playing Sufficiently Advanced. You can find it here for free and legal

In SA, you are agents for a time traveling omnicient AI. The AI sends you on missions and will dictate particular terms to you regarding that mission. For example, the mission might be, "Travel to Planet X. A terrorist is going to plant a bomb in a crowded bus station. Observe the terrorist and aprehend him or her after the bomb explodes."

Players are expected to abide by these terms within the game. The entire point of the game is how do you justify these things? The AI are omnicient. They are attempting to bring about a perfect utopia future by sending messages back to their past selves who then send the players out on various missions.

In the above scenario, we know exactly what's going to happen. And the players are not allowed to stop it. The purpose of playing this scenario is to examine the moral implications of the situation. There is no win or lose condition here since the players have the ability to declare at any point that they have caught the terrorist. Note that the story of the game will change depending on which theme they choose to use to catch the terrorist, but, catching the terrorist is never, not for a second, in doubt. It's using the game to explore a philosophical point.

So, yes, these games do exist.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well, since you asked so nicely.

I'll read it.

For example, the mission might be, "Travel to Planet X. A terrorist is going to plant a bomb in a crowded bus station. Observe the terrorist and aprehend him or her after the bomb explodes."

The victory conditions here seem to be "aprehend him or her after the bomb explodes". Do the players know exactly what's going to happen with relation to the victory conditions?

If not, you are mistaking the framework for the game.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'm currently playing Sufficiently Advanced. You can find it here for free and legal

I've given it a brief skim, and will be happy to look at specifics if you like. One of the first things I noted was the resolution mechanics in place for determining whether or not you meet the victory conditions of the scenario.

As an example of a game where the outcome of the story is uknown, this seems to be an epic fail.

Again, you seem to be mistaking the framework for the story. In chess, I know that the knight will not turn into a queen. That doesn't mean that I know the outcome. In Monopoly, I know that a thermonuclear war will not break out, destroying all the properties. That does not mean that I know the outcome. It only means that I know the framework in which the outcome can occur.


RC

 

[pawsplay]

Well, since you asked so nicely.

I'm currently playing Sufficiently Advanced. You can find it here for free and legal

In SA, you are agents for a time traveling omnicient AI. The AI sends you on missions and will dictate particular terms to you regarding that mission. For example, the mission might be, "Travel to Planet X. A terrorist is going to plant a bomb in a crowded bus station. Observe the terrorist and aprehend him or her after the bomb explodes."

Players are expected to abide by these terms within the game. The entire point of the game is how do you justify these things? The AI are omnicient. They are attempting to bring about a perfect utopia future by sending messages back to their past selves who then send the players out on various missions.

In the above scenario, we know exactly what's going to happen. And the players are not allowed to stop it. The purpose of playing this scenario is to examine the moral implications of the situation. There is no win or lose condition here since the players have the ability to declare at any point that they have caught the terrorist. Note that the story of the game will change depending on which theme they choose to use to catch the terrorist, but, catching the terrorist is never, not for a second, in doubt. It's using the game to explore a philosophical point.

So, yes, these games do exist.

Since I am not an omniscient AI and the players, from the vantage of the present situation, do have free will, this seems destined to not work out from time to time.

 

[CharlesRyan]

Somewhere along the way, without me consciously realizing it (I'm like a frog in a pot of water, I guess), the concept of "having a plot" has become synonymous with "knowing how the game will end." I've contributed to it myself, by running with the D-Day analogy and ruminating on whether knowing the outcome matters.

So let me backtrack and clarify my own position:

I view plot in RPGs as providing structure and a method for introducing and playing out elements that create a satisfying experience for the players based on classic story structure.

That means I have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen in the third act of my campaign. Metaphorically, I expect the hobbits to reach the volcano in an attempt to throw in the ring.

That does not mean that I have predetermined whether they'll succeed or fail. Honestly, I think they probably will, because like most GMs I'll put together a challenge that's tough, has its share of surprises, and really puts the PCs through the wringer--but will be scaled appropriately to the capabilities of their characters. (In fact, it's safe to say that if they fail in the final encounter of a 3-year campaign, I will feel I've failed as a GM. But I will also feel I've failed if it's too easy and seems anticlimactic.) But I don't know for sure, and finding out is part of the fun for me as much as for the players.

EW, I agree with your sports analogies. Dramatic tension is important in an RPG, just as it is in fiction, and a known outcome spoils that tension. (Of course, "predetermined" is not the same as "known.") So I want to clarify that I've never advocated a known or even predetermined outcome. And I don't believe that predetermination of outcome is a necessary part of the use of plot in an RPG.

 

[maddman75]

A role player who says things like:
"I punch the Overking in the face"
"I jump between all four trolls and poke one with my epee"
"I leap off the 2,000 foot cliff and aim for a snow bank"
"I tell the dragons that they're a bunch of sissies"
... is not playing Batman. He may think he's playing Batman, but he's actually playing a schlub who thinks he's Batman.

This matters a great deal as to which game one is playing, doesn't it? Thinking of the games I run, in say Call of Cthulhu this is going to end up with a dead character. In other games, such as Buffy or Exalted, there are metagame mechanics that make this sort of 'awesome for the sake of awesome' doable, as well as turning them into the kind of game mechanic one can play with.

For example, you could start with all the games whose gameplay engines don't require the use of frequently fickle, subjective, human arbiters wearing viking hats.

I don't normally wear a viking hat when I GM, but dammit maybe I should start!

Since GNS has nothing to say about that, GNS has very little worth saying. Any theory that purports Vampire was a bad design is a theory in conflict with reality.

That to me is one of the biggest weaknesses of GNS. According to the theory, both D&D and Vampire are terrible games, and therefore should not be successful at all. In reality, they are two of the most popular games of all time. You can either conclude that there's a problem with the theory, or smugly declare that all these sheeple don't get what gaming is really about.

 

[CharlesRyan]

The game part of rpg implys that the outcome of the experience is not known at the start.

I wonder if part of our disagreement may be that we're glossing over the concept of "outcome."

In the analogies used in this thread, Batman catches the Joker, the Allies take the beach at Normandy, the Ring is thrown into the volcano, and Team A won 7-6. Those are the outcomes we've talked about, and they're pretty cut and dried.

But at the RPG game table, the concept of outcome may be more nuanced. The good guys take out the BBEG, is it a clean sweep or a near-TPK? In the last 3E campaign I played, my character threw himself into Xoriat to save the day at the end. I don't think any of us saw that coming, even if we all, tacitly, expected that the heroes would end up victorious.

So, my previous post notwithstanding, I might argue that even when a final victory/loss result is known or assumed at the beginning of the game, that's a far cry from knowing the outcome in the full sense.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think that we are nearing agreement, except that I would note the following:

In the Batman catches the Joker example, assuming the player is taking on the role of Batman, what the player knows is that he has all of the resources necessary to catch the Joker, assuming that he can employ them effectively. The element of sacrifice (and the thematic component of the game) comes from the tension between the desire to avoid sacrifices (and thus preserve Batman's humanity) and the desire to employ resources effectively (and thus capture the Joker).

If the player knows aforehand that Superman will swoop in if he fails, the player may still invest, but will not (I would argue, cannot) to the same degree as if the player's decisions actually determined the final outcome.

In BB:RotJ, what happened to the Joker when Bruce Wayne was Batman is part of the framework of the story. Whether or not the new Batman can stop the new Joker is very much in doubt. It is this doubt, and the consequences for failure, that provide motivation for the good guys. Could the new Batman know that the animator would suffer a fatal heart attack, and the cartoon terror be no more, he could have simply left the Joker alone (as Bruce Wayne wanted him to).

Reading through the rules of Sufficiently Advanced, it is clear that the same is true in that game. The players have some ability to control what elements of the game they wish to interact with (and thus have some control over what the victory conditions of any particular scenario are), but the outcome of those victory conditions is very much in doubt.

The game demonstrates that the author is aware that PCs must face difficulty (doubt) about the outcome of the victory conditions in order to make the game work. This is discussed on page 167 (Inaccessible Stories), although the author doesn't mirror the terminology I am using.

There are certain stories that are much harder to tell in Sufficiently Advanced than in other role-playing games. Some of them are much-beloved standbys of both fantasy and science fiction, so it’s worth mentioning them before you try to use them. Some are merely difficult to use; others become all but impossible to tell.

A story about a journey through unknown places is exceptionally hard to do. Players often have access to wormholes, and those that do not usually have a replicator available, which which they can make motor vehicles, ultralight aircraft, or other transportation. To tell a story that involves a lot of travel by foot, you’ll need to strand the characters without access to a replicator or the infosphere, and that’s not easy.​

IOW, if the players have the means to defeat the plot without being forced to interact with it, you don't have a game.

Frankly, it boggles my mind that this observation is in doubt.



RC

 

[Ydars]

I agree with CharlesRyan: that plot is not necessarily equal to railroad but think that we need to think deeper about outcomes.

If the resolution of every scene/fight/situation/roleplay in an adventure is defined as an outcome, the design problem becomes how to allow as many outcomes as possible from each scene, whilst still creating a situation where it makes sense for scene 1 to follow scene 2 etc (or at least allowing the DM to get some play out of his pre-prepared locations/NPCs etc.

What I am saying is, is I want the resolution of each scene to be meaningful and not just the resolution of the whole campaign.

For that to be true, each scene has to have multiple outcomes and if that is true, you are going to end up with many roads/locations/logic paths that are never followed or played: this is a serious waste of GM prep time.

This is why the "sand-boxers" would argue that we should concentrate on designing a reusable environment for the players to interact with rather than using plot to corall the action to certain times and places.

I don't entirely agree with them, but think that we need some better general strategies for allowing adventure writers and DMs to create plots that have a backstory without pre-determining the outcome of any scene/fight/roleplay.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Here's something else from the Designer's Notes, page 170:

On the Main Balance

Characters with high Capabilities have lowerrated Themes, and take worse Complications
to get Twists that do less. Why?

On one level, this is the same thing you see in a point-balanced game (like GURPS or Hero). Blow all your points on attributes and you have nothing left for spiffy tricks. It’s one thing to play an Old-Worlder when you get some kind of benefit from it, but if all you get is the shaft, it’s just not fun. It’s game balance, because you’re playing a game.​

IOW, the abilities of various players to manipulate the game in order to meet victory conditions should be relatively equal. That's what game balance is.

If there was nothing in doubt, there would be no reason to worry about who could do what. It wouldn't affect anything, anyway.


RC