Why we like plot: Our Job as DMs

[Ariosto]

I simply asked a question - how do you achieve depth in your campaigns where the campaign is divorced from the players? How do you achieve depth in a campaign where characters are interchangeable and replacing one with another changes nothing?

How can there be an "over the horizon" when the Earth is flat? How can there be a round shadow on the Moon when the Earth has four corners?

Hmm ... if only we had a clue!

 

[Hussar]

What do you mean by depth?

IMHO, character depth comes from his/her philosophies, motivations, goals, fears, etc. and how he/she applies those (reacts) to the events that are transpiring around him/her.

For eample, my current character's goal is to become a deity. Short of that he is willing to consider lichdom as a possibility. He fears death and the eternal servitude that comes with it. In general he is cautious and calculated but will take risks if he feels that it advances his over-arching goal. He acts aloof in his dealings with people but secretly notices everything and takes great pains to right any percieved wrongs. He is a stranger in the country he is adventuring in.

IME this character has depth - and yet he adventures in a sandbox (one created before I made this character). I don't know if he will succeed or fail - to me that is part of the fun.

Ahh, now we're getting somewhere.

I agree, this character has depth. He has goals and a personality. I might argue that he lacks a bit of relationship with the other characters and the people in the setting, but, that's a quibble and not terribly important.

Now, how will he succeed at this goal? What in this setting will allow him to achieve this goal? How, specifically, will this particular setting allow him to achieve this goal? Other than the standard D&D thing of simply killing your way up the levels until you reach godhood or lichdom, which can be done in any setting.

This is what I'm talking about. To me, another way would be to have a setting where your character is on his road to godhood of a specific people. You would have ties to those people, links, history, a background stretching back. Your achievement of godhood would likely be pretty much guaranteed, so long as you continue playing.

However, the campaign wouldn't be about that specific goal. The campaign would be about building your following. What kind of god would you be? How does becoming immortal affect you?

Look at the new Dr Who series. Many (if not most) of the episodes revolve around the Doctor's incredible loneliness. The fact that he's the last Timelord and nothing he does can change the fact that he's alone, for all time. It's an incredibly sad story.

In the "I'm gonna be a God" story, we would work together to lay out some themes and concepts that should be brought up during the game. The game would be about the exploration of those themes.

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Another weakness of this approach is it really doesn't work well with large groups. You'll never get a group of six or seven people to be interested in such a limited storyline. It really won't work for any length of time. However, in smaller groups, particularly in smaller groups with similar interests and playstyles, this can work very well.

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The Ghost - I'm not in any way saying what you are doing is wrong. There's been a few people here who are trying to paint this as an either/or sort of thing and it's not. I'm simply bringing up alternatives.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Hang on a tick here. Excellent post btw, but, I wanted to tease this out. You're saying that nothing in the game world exists until the PC's interact with it and that game world elements can and will be changed to suit the particular group of players and characters.

This is not how I have seen sandbox detailed in the past. To most people, a sandbox world exists independently of the PC's and details are fixed. That spooky castle has whatever the DM has put in that spooky castle regardless of what group is playing.

If your sandbox is maleable to the group playing, then I'm not sure if it counts as a sandbox anymore.

Thanks, I try to post only when I have something to say... something I occasionally fail at

But yes, my world setting is fixed only in broad strokes... along the lines of 'here be dragons', until the PCs get close enough to start interacting with it. The closer they get, the more detail gets created. This means I can tell the players that there is a trading port to the north that is oft called Trafalgars Troubles. If the PCs choose to investigate, I will decide who Trafalgar was, why there are troubles, and what sort of adventures are in the ports local area.
If the PC's don't go there.. the port stays rather vague.
Once they do, the port becomes a known quantity in the world and future adventures, with other PC's, can visit the port and possibly see the impact the previous party left on it.

This means I don't have to build an entire world.. just the bits my players visit.

 

[Ariosto]

You are the one implying judgement where none exists.

I think what most of us are doing is noticing how you keep slapping us with the equivalent of, "Well, have you stopped beating your wife yet? I'm just asking a question!"

 

[Tistur]

Hi all,

I've been reading this thread for 23 pages now, and I am wondering what people's thoughts are on the following scenerio (which mostly happened to me last winter). I think I've teased out the differences and can predict who will respond how.

A friend of mine anounces his attention to start a game in his ongoing campaign world, in which he is currently running 2 games. I express an interest, and he sends me a general overview of the country we will be playing in and asks what I would like to play. I see a piece about magical experiments being done on criminals, and run with that.

In a series of emails, we work out that my character, Katrin, was born into a small noble family with lands but little money. She has two siblings, a sister whom she loves and a brother who would go out of his way to remove his sisters from the inheirtence. So when Katrin went traveling with a friend, her brother arranged for them to be convicted of a bogus crime, and Katrin became an experimental subject (her friend died.) She escaped and went to find her sister, but her brother saw her and arranged her recapture. She has recently escaped again, and stays away from normal society because of her obvious physical differences (from the experiments.)

The DM told me what she knew about her captors and place names and locations. Now, Catrin has several NPCs built into her background, both friendly and hostile. She has motivations of her own, as well as fears and goals (revenge, restoring her body and her rank, and eventually stopping all experimentations near her lands).

So, this would seem to be the first part of Hussar's style (as I am reading it). Except that later in the game, we passed a statue, and another player explained it was of his PC in one of the GM's other games, who saved the village. If Catrin succeeds in stopping experimentation, his PC in that game will have to leave the country when he retires, because his goal is to found a magical medical school, where he will - you guessed it - practice "human" experimentation. This would be, as I understand it, very much like the AD&D approach to worlds, where several groups of PCs (with different players) may be active at any given time.

So, the world was pre-built and pre-existing, but after disscussions with the DM I was able to build a character based firmly in it, with ties to several groups of NPCs.

 

[Ariosto]

Tistur, whatever rocks your group's boat rocks for y'all.

And you're not trying to tell me that I've got to play just like you or else my game "lacks depth" or some such baloney.

That's excellent!

 

[Raven Crowking]

1. For a goal to be a real goal, the achievement (or failure to achieve) that goal must be unknown.

2. All games must have goals in order to be games.

See, I agree with both these statements.

And this is where we disagree. I do not think that the ruleset needs to be altered. Thus, I don't think we're ever going to agree on this one.

Oh, I know, because for you, the goal of a game and the rules of the game require no linkeage. So, if you play Candyland with the goal of putting your opponent in checkmate, and with no rules to allow you to do so, that's a perfectly legitimate game.

No, we are never going to agree on this one.

I wonder if anyone agrees with you here?



RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think what most of us are doing is noticing how you keep slapping us with the equivalent of, "Well, have you stopped beating your wife yet? I'm just asking a question!"

If only it were that simple.

Note the "such a limited storyline" below.

How, oh how!, will we deal with our limitations!

Another weakness of this approach is it really doesn't work well with large groups. You'll never get a group of six or seven people to be interested in such a limited storyline. It really won't work for any length of time. However, in smaller groups, particularly in smaller groups with similar interests and playstyles, this can work very well.

Well, if fourteen people is too small........ Because I've run sandboxes with that many players engaged at the same table.

Currently, there are six players engaged in the RCFG playtest, and I have reached the point where I am turning players away.

How many players do you have?

How many players did you have while running the WLD (which is, essentially, a limited sandbox)? How did you keep them engaged? Are you ever going to answer any of these questions?



RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

@ Tistur:

I am not sure what you are seeking here.

It sounds like a good game, and it doesn't sound like Hussar's approach to character creation at all.

In Hussar's approach, the players decide what characters they want to play, and then the GM crafts a world to match those characters.

In your GM's approach, the GM crafts a world, and the player designs a character who fits into that world (something which Hussar, apparently, cannot fathom).

It seems like it's working for your group, though!

I wonder if your GM can keep "six or seven people to be interested in such a limited storyline"?


RC

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

WLD (which is, essentially, a limited sandbox)?

Really? I never thought of any of the "mega-dungeons" as sandboxes. I think this is further evidence to me that our playstyles (yours, Ariosto's, mine) are more similar than they seem in this thread. As you said, if we all sat down for a beer, or better yet a gaming table, we'd probably find the gaming experience quite enjoyable.

And I'll take a stab at your playstyle Ariosto: Create your world (or site in the case of a WLD) and let the players explore.

The flipside of that would be: Create your plot (like an Adventure Path) and let your players explore.

Both can be quite enjoyable. The key is letting your players approach either the world or the plot in their own way without railroading them.