Why we like plot: Our Job as DMs

[Ariosto]

Moreover, I have yet to see an example of how a reasonable background does anything other than enhance the game. Would anyone care to provide one or two that we can examine?

Better that you should do so, else it looks as if you simply define "reasonable" as "not doing anything other than enhance the game".

 

[The Shaman]

Player input is definitely the best thing to happen to my D&D games.

Player input is the best thing to happen to my games, too.

I'm constantly seeking input, usually like this: "Okay, what do your characters do now?"

My games wouldn't be the same without it.

 

[fuzzlewump]

What happens around the table should always be more interesting and more exciting and more troublesome and more glorious to the players and their characters than stuff that never happened except in one person's imagination.

...

The depth in a status quo setting comes from the relationships the adventurers build during the game. Again, it requires proactive players who understand that the game-world is wide open to their machinations, that friendships and rivalries result from what the characters do, not who they are, in particular not who they are based on what the player wrote down on the character sheet before the first die was thrown with real consequences on the line.

What the characters do should be based on who they are, which should be based on what they wrote down. If you write down that you're character has a very strong defensive nature, he defends his friends when insulted by a drunkard in the tavern. It also can mean he opens his mouth to the duke when the duke calls his friend a 'street rat' or whatever. Yes, you can develop a personality while playing, but you won't claim you became "loud-mouthed" or "defensive" out of nowhere. Most people would claim that trait had been around for awhile, and thus, have a background beyond motivation as you strive for.

The point is, not allowing background to intrude into the game means that the players are just trying to find the path of least resistance. They would never reach back under the falling door in order to grab their hat like Indiana Jones, it's just a bad idea with not much reward. They would never be the last one out when facing a dragon in order to make sure their team gets out. If they do, then they have at least some kind of rudimentary background beyond simple motivation. Without a background, how can you know what your characters will do? Isn't always calculating and making the best choice no matter what you are playing 1. not very interesting and 2. not human?

 

[Doug McCrae]

For me, characters feel more like real people when their backgrounds are largely unexceptional; it's what they do at the table that makes them exceptional, not pre-game fiction exercises.

Don't D&D PCs have to be exceptional? They have to be prepared to go down monster-infested holes and kill what lives there. And they can't stop after their first big score, they have to keep doing it, so great is their lust for gold and/or monster killin'. These are in no way ordinary people, they're greedy psychopaths. Also even at 1st level they possess monster killin' talents beyond those of the typical peasant farmer who presumably makes up 90% of the population.

This is in fact more true of a sandbox than of a heavily plotted game. In a sandbox the PCs have to be 'self starters', more highly motivated than in a plotted game where one can expect the adventure to come to the PCs.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Better that you should do so, else it looks as if you simply define "reasonable" as "not doing anything other than enhance the game".

Upthread I gave some examples of things I would not allow.

In a nutshell:

1. Anything that breaks/damages the setting,

2. Attempts to gain special advantage over the other players and/or setting.


RC

 

[Ariosto]

Having tried both extremes on the "ante-game biography" spectrum, I definitely lean toward the lean for D&D.

Yes, that goes for NPCs as well!

It's no skin off my nose if the DM has written the bloody Silmarillion -- so long as I don't have to sit through a recital or do a homework assignment. I come to the table to make history!

I feel the same way about "the story of what Character X did before the game". Do I dig playing the character-generation solo game in Traveller? Yes! Do I want to spend group-game time listening to you rattle on about your character's previous career? Probably not.

If it happens to come up in a context and with such brevity as to make it an interesting anecdote rather than a boring saga, then so be it. I have had far too many encounters with Drolls, though, in my role-playing career.

 

[Ariosto]

Upthread I gave some examples of things I would not allow.

In a nutshell:

1. Anything that breaks/damages the setting,

2. Attempts to gain special advantage over the other players and/or setting.

Yes, but do you now mean to say that you consider those reasonable? Or is it a post for which only "True Scotsmen" need apply?

 

[Oni]

What the characters do should be based on who they are, which should be based on what they wrote down. If you write down that you're character has a very strong defensive nature, he defends his friends when insulted by a drunkard in the tavern. It also can mean he opens his mouth to the duke when the duke calls his friend a 'street rat' or whatever. Yes, you can develop a personality while playing, but you won't claim you became "loud-mouthed" or "defensive" out of nowhere. Most people would claim that trait had been around for awhile, and thus, have a background beyond motivation as you strive for.

I've hashed this out in other threads, but I think it's safe to say there is more than one way to approach this. Are a character's actions based on who they are, or is who they are based on their actions? Why can't you discover a the character your playing is a loudmouth over the course of play, why can't emerging patterns over the course of play define a character just as easily as setting the parameters before the start of play? You needn't claim any trait out of nowhere, it simply is.

The point is, not allowing background to intrude into the game means that the players are just trying to find the path of least resistance. They would never reach back under the falling door in order to grab their hat like Indiana Jones, it's just a bad idea with not much reward. They would never be the last one out when facing a dragon in order to make sure their team gets out. If they do, then they have at least some kind of rudimentary background beyond simple motivation. Without a background, how can you know what your characters will do? Isn't always calculating and making the best choice no matter what you are playing 1. not very interesting and 2. not human?

This is only true if you accept that characters stop developing once play starts. I do not. How do you know what a character will do? Maybe you won't until he's done it. Just remember, today's adventure, is tomorrow's background.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

But by assuming that it's up to the DM to "tell a story" and the players to go along, we get ...

and Some of us, though, have been adults for a long time -- and for a long time enjoyed the original saying that it is up to the players to choose what their characters undertake, to act as self-determining protagonists rather than like fish being played..

I don't think it needs to be an either/or problem. I don't think that simply because the DM has a story in mind that I'm somehow a "fish being played" any more than I'm somehow being played when I sit down and watch a movie or read a book because I don't tell the movie or book which way I want it to go.

I think DMs who have a story in mind can leave enough leeway in their story for me to make a meaningful contribution to the way the story goes and I think DMs who have no story in mind can still play me like a fish.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Yes, but do you now mean to say that you consider those reasonable? Or is it a post for which only "True Scotsmen" need apply?

By defining what is not reasonable, one defines what is reasonable as well.

C'mon, Ariosto, is this sort of wordplay necessary? I can certainly understand not wanting to have each player hand you a novel....but is a brief paragraph....a line even? so bad.

"My family was slaughtered by orcs, so I came to Raven's Hollow to learn the ways of a fighting man and get revenge." Hmmmm. I really can't see where this is going to harm the game. And, if near Raven's Hollow the DM has placed the Bleeding Eye tribe, I can't see where the DM mentioning that the PC recognizes its standard is going to do harm.

Could you explain it to me?