Narrativist D&D Poker Night: Any ideas? (Also, "Hi, I'm new.")

[Jarrod]

Hey all, I've been reading posts from this here forum for well over a month now and I've finally decided I might have something to contribute (or request assistance, at any rate).

I guess I should first explain the gaming group and its' needs before I tear into our proposed solution. There are five of us, each a DM in our own right, who've not entirely gotten tired of running games, per se; it's just that we want to make it a sporadic, fun event rather than a right vicious commitment. We each run a game a week in another obscure setting with a system of our individual designs, and we're just kinda wanting to play some games and be more narrative about it.

So,
(1) We want a poker night.
(2) We're tired of playing poker.
(3) We all like DM'ing, and don't want to DM.

Here's the solution, so far.

We've agreed that the system to use is good ol' fashioned D&D 3.5, because we all know it by heart and this isn't supposed to be a learning experience. :) Each player's homework is to bring four archetypical characters: Warrior, Caster, Healer, and Support. Doesn't matter what class or race or such; as long as we immediately recognize each other's characters from the (admittedly highly narrative) required descriptions, you're golden. In addition, every player needs to bring an entirely homebrew module which may not exceed two sessions under any circumstances (it's assumed that the characters shrug, give up, and head home). The last requirements for the opening session are five buildings or sites of original design, which will play important roles in later site-based adventures, or provide background locales for characters.

The setting is a huge, sprawling metropolis, miles in every direction with millions of people; but the map starts empty. Whomever elects to run first places a building downtown in our empty map, and explains the location. We take turns down the line to the last player (who runs the last game in the cycle), and then start from the top adding locations. Each normal session, another location for each player is dropped, and any personnel changes are announced (i.e. "my fighter isn't working, so he'll be sitting in the inn from now on playing chess; everyone meet my new Barbarian"), the DM is chosen, and play begins.

After the locations for the session are dropped, the DM for the night debates with the players on who fills your four basic roles, with no duplications. So, Player 1 wants to run his Support (a bard), and thus player 2 leaves his rogue back in the setting and controls his Healer (a cleric of Insert-Deity-Here). After the four niches are filled, play begins. During play, any inactive character may serve as an NPC.

When the session is wrapped, players either continue the character (add a level) or retire the character (affix the character to a location and make a new character of a different level for next time).

The jist of it is: Every niche is always filled, nothing is commital, all the characters are well fleshed out (this being due to our meticulous natures for building PC and NPC alike), and every week the defined area of the city grows larger and more detailed. In December, we blow the place up in a cataclysmic übersession, involving the consumption of alcomohol and negotion over whether the town survives or the whole damn thing falls into oblivion. End of season; next one starts in January.

I think it's a pretty fun idea to keep us from the doldrums of constant stories without leaving our strong narrativist tendencies behind. Also, since characters can be abandoned, NPCs spring up like clockwork. Regarding level of encounter, we each agree to bring modules for appropriate level; if everyone wants to play higher, everyone gets five whole minutes to level up, then we roll. Playing through is the important part. :)

Any thoughts? Criticisms? Questions? Feel free to assault my poor post, I could use the feedback before the season starts!
-J.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello, and welcome!

I'd like to comment on this, because I tried several different ways to impose structure a few years ago, some of them pretty elaborate. But to do that, I need to ask a few more questions to get a better idea of the issues that you guys are trying to solve.

1. What has led to the fatigue of DMing, in your case specifically? What doesn't seem to work out, or pan out, relative to the effort you're putting into it? I especially would like to know what you mean by the "doldrum of constant stories" - with examples, please.

2. You refer to Narrativism several times, including your thread title, but at the moment, I'm not at all confident that you're using the term in the same way that I'm reading it. Can you explain what you mean without using the term at all, preferably through examples of real play? I'd rather focus on what you want to talk about and to preserve in the group, rather than what the term means here in a jargon sense.

Best, Ron

[Jarrod]

Thanks so much for your response! I'll see if I can't clarify.

Last question first. By Narrativism I mean that the game is driven by the participants' drive towards a story and seeing their characters rise as heroes, largely irrespective of mechanics. Which is not to say that we're wanting to freeform the game; it's more that if a rule prevents an interesting event from taking place, the mechanic is suspended or removed altogether.

Example: In our d20 Modern game, many of the players found the firing rules restrictive to the John Woo style we wanted to emphasize. So, we decided that if a player can describe in detail six seconds of action and the other players agree that it's beneficial to the scene (or, to use a technical term, rad) and isn't an unreasonable action for the character to take, we decide the roll(s), make the roll(s), and see what happens. There's still the feel of an action being attempted and resolved through game mechanics; but the mechanics can be bent to allow the hardened cop to flip over the bar as he unloads both clips into Yakuza.

In the Narrative/Gamist/Simulationist sense, our priorities for our individual groups and with our poker group all seem about 2/3 Narrative, 1/3 Gamist, and strict realism for the most part gets no love.

As far as the 'doldrums of constant play.' We each enjoy running our longstanding campaigns. If anything, we're a little overenthused at times. :) But each of us has wanted a little more playtime, and each of us has expressed wanting a playstyle that allows us to craft living short stories, as opposed to the living novels we're crafting in our dedicated campaigns.

Example: d20 Battletech campaign. Uses a hybrid of d20 Future, CBT, and a half dozen other snippets. I DM the game, with four other dedicated players. We're all in our late 20's, and are more story-oriented. The characters have escalated from 4th level no-names to 16th level heroes of Solaris VII. The story has led them through several star systems and challenged my writing skills, and the roleplaying skills of the players, more than any campaign I've ever run, or that they've ever played in. We're all extremely happy with the mechanics and story world we've created as a team. However, two events occurred which began framing this idea with the other playgroup, the members of which have all had similar encounters.

1) I passively mentioned wanting to play in the next story arc instead of DM'ing, and asked if anyone wanted to pick up the next campaign for a few sessions to give me a short reprieve. The abject horror was palpable. I had to assure everyone, yes I enjoy running the game, no I'm not bailing, no I'm not nuking characters to have my sunday evenings free. I love the guys, and really I didn't want to stop running the campaign; I just wanted to play for a bit is all.

2) I recently took a poll as to whether we wanted to start over at a low-level and build a new story arc, preserving the current characters' story as something akin to legend. Zero takers. The reason was a little surprising: I had worried this particular group of players would want to maintain their level of power, but instead they wanted to retain the depth of their characters. One player told me he still had months of plans for this character, and was confident enough in our consistent play and story to plan into the new year (for me, this was as high-handed a compliment as I can receive). Another player told me he felt his character to be so iconic that he simply couldn't imagine not rebuilding him if we switched parties.

It certainly isn't that I don't enjoy the epic story we've all been on; really, I'm only inputting half of what happens, if even that. I'm just driving the game, and miss being in the passenger seat from time-to-time. I generally frown on character insertion in a campaign, as I believe it to be an easily unbalancing factor when a DM loves an NPC just a hair too much; but the players have confidence I'd keep it balanced. It's an option, but not the most appealing; I want the game to be about them.

The other players in my poker group agree that they've had similar situations. One has been running two games for extended periods of time, and his player pool requires much more steering and so sometimes leaves him stressing for new plot hooks. Another likes running a game but is a little rusty, and so would like to just drive a session or two at a time.

The bottom line is that we all want to have our cake and eat it too. We like controlling our world and its' setting; but we also like being the hero from time to time. Also, we're all old-hat homebrew system engineers, so we're wanting to avoid a newer system and touch base with our old friend D&D, leaving more time for me to sink into Dogs in the Vineyard (the original candidate for poker night) while Chris tweaks Exalted to look like Shadowrun With Ninja Angels (from what I've seen, cooler than it might sound).

Our solution to shared control of the world is to make the world design itself part of the game. We're essentially rotating in turns building the city to suit our ideal setting, and to counter the ideas of other players. It has a fun, diplomatic slant to it (one player drops a Cathedral of Bahamut, the other plants a Temple of Tiamat, everyone else cringes and braces for vicious plot hooks).

As far as character development goes, each character is lovingly built, make no mistake; it's more that we want to careen our cast on short, punctuated adventures which feel more like one-shot comic books than longform ballads. Also, GM-less gaming was a thought, using a more strictly narrative model, i.e. a bid system or a Shab al Hiri Roach meets Three Dragon Ante fantasy game; but we're all just trying to keep it old school, and besides we're all DMs at heart.

I hope I addressed your concerns, and can't wait to hear your feedback!
-J.

[Jarrod]

Also, to clarify the role of GM in our game, since the term is, as you've addressed, often misused.

The goal is to rotate leadership from week to week, while evenly distributing authority over what can and cannot happen. This of course requires a more amicable group; but since the point of this whole thing is to relax, drink some wine and play a game with friends while weaving together the history of a town, I don't think distribution of authority will be an issue. None of us are intensely mechanically inclined, and we're intent on keeping the group away from too many layers of hard math clogging up our storytime. :)

[David C]

Ok, first I have to say, I'm not entirely sure what's going on anymore. This is what I think I read.
1. You play poker with a bunch of other GMs, and talk about your games at poker night.
2. Each of you has a seperate group.
3. You are/were running a battle tech game until you were tired.
4. You want to try this new idea (or already have?) with your poker buddies, whom you don't normally play RPGs with.

I think what's happened is that your players wanted more of the same, and you wanted a change. Your players are probably right to be fearful though, in all my years of playing, I've only ever seen one "on time out" campaign come back to life. Here's what I recommend trying with your regular group. Suggest that another player becomes the GM for the same game for awhile, he's in charge of running a story arc that lasts approx X sessions. You become a player of equal level. The GM always gets XP for his character while playing, and also gets to choose one epic reward for when he comes back. This reward could be (in D&D terms) a magical item that adds to his character (He's a thief, and now has a dagger that senses gold) or a bonus feat or something of that caliber. It should be singular, add to the character's personality, and be "cooler" then anything he would have gotten as a player. Then, after his arc (4 sessions is my recommended number) another player becomes the GM. Also, it sounds like your players need to help add contacts and plot hooks to your game. I recommend giving them a reward (50 xp!) or something for coming up with meaningful additions. You'd be amazed how a little motivation would cause excitement. Lastly, make sure your players know how important it is to give feedback to their GM and each other. A lot of the motivation for GMs is that moment they hear "Wow, I had so much fun!" and the players like it too when they go "Man, it was really cool how you ran in and pulled him out of the fire!"

For your poker buddies, it sounds like an interesting idea, if you've played it, was it fun? If it was fun, then it was fun. :D If you haven't played it, how can any of us know if it will be fun?

[Callan S.]

1) I passively mentioned wanting to play in the next story arc instead of DM'ing, and asked if anyone wanted to pick up the next campaign for a few sessions to give me a short reprieve. The abject horror was palpable. I had to assure everyone, yes I enjoy running the game, no I'm not bailing, no I'm not nuking characters to have my sunday evenings free. I love the guys, and really I didn't want to stop running the campaign; I just wanted to play for a bit is all.

Do they actually know what you do when you GM, for them to do it as well? I mean, abject horror - it sounds like they see you as the only source doe this game you GM with them. As soon as you stop doing it, it's lost...forever!

Are you interested in turning into procedures, ones for example which even I (who's never been in one of your games) could follow?

[Jarrod]

quote author=Callan S. link=topic=22874.msg227804#msg227804 date=1167787373]
Do they actually know what you do when you GM, for them to do it as well? I mean, abject horror - it sounds like they see you as the only source doe this game you GM with them. As soon as you stop doing it, it's lost...forever!

Are you interested in turning into procedures, ones for example which even I (who's never been in one of your games) could follow?

Great questions! All of the players are veteran gamers, and most have run games themselves (in fact one of them is responsible for my membership to this nifty site!), but I believe upon further reflection that it's simply a matter of chemistry. My passion for crafting the world is equally matched by their passion for fleshing that world out - I'm simply providing a skeleton and they're applying the meat.

It's not that I have any plans to cancel on this campaign; indeed, I think if I were to play in this particular world I'd be doing myseld more harm than good, sacrificing a powerful creative outlet for the hopes of a less-engrossing amusing time.

The "poker group" has expressed the same concern as we discuss our games. They're akin to the paradox of some long-term marriages: we want to keep those traditional bonds unbroken, but we're also wanting some adventurous philandering on the side. We're looking for a way to "cheat" on our core groups and explore the binomial relationship between GM and Player, and ways to break it down and dissolve it. This is old-hat for most of the Forgites, I'm seeing; but our playstyles are a bit *cough vaguely embarrassed cough* steeped in tradition, and we're all wanting to play with the formats we've come to love so well. So, I guess you could say we're adding some light competitive play in our city-building exercise, and we're distributing the core roles of the DM through the five of us evenly, so that the storyteller can focus on introducing the conflicts of the story and the players can resolve those conflicts easily. While I understand that D&D is seen primarily (and rightly so) as the "kill monsters and take their stuff" system, we've used it for much more than that at times, and it'd be nice to play a fun gamey game and serve our creative egos in the process by helping each other flesh out the stories of the gaggle of characters entering the world. Wash, rinse, repeat, and voila! traditional D&D campaign setting, un improviso.

And I'll let you know how it plays soon! <3
-J.