[D&D] I quit DMing.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Got called to the morning staff meeting before I finished all my brilliant, brilliant thoughts.

...the bit about being disgusted about bad guys claiming to have changed -- that's really just one player in particular, Nik, who played one of the two monks who belonged to the monastery.  ...he told me after the game that he really liked that his character cut down Kault, as he thought it mirrored his own desire for his character's redemption.  He himself was playing a character who was once good, and slipped onto the path of evil, and he had plans for his character to atone.

This is awesome. Not just that you and Nik are into the same coolness, but that Nik came out and said so explicitly after the game. That's good feedback. The only thing better would have been if Nik had said so in front of the whole group so everyone could chime in.

I think I was on the wrong track with the whole monastery adventure.  I mean, there was the barest hint of situation, and then the players understandably rushed in with guns blazing....

Question: What did Kault, as a character, want? Specifically, what did he want from the player-characters? (Thinking about NPCs this way is a core technique I got from Vincent Baker's superb Dogs in the Vineyard). If the answer is "to be left alone," that's like a basketball with half of the air out: Throw it all you want, it ain't gonna bounce.

What's a lot more fun is to set up a situation where the major NPCs all want something to change. If Kault really wanted the player-characters to endorse his conversion, that'd be more of a challenge than him sitting there praying and waiting to die. For that matter, it'd be more interesting if Kault rushed out of the monastery to meet them saying, "I am a wicked man - you are servants of justice - I beg you, slay me!" Sure, they might've said, "Works for me" and whacked him right there, but even a hardcore crusader type might've said, "Waaaaait a second -- is this some kind of trick?"

[Will Grzanich]

Hi Sydney,

Will, happy to be helpful. Let me restate and reemphasize: It's only "railroading" if the GM assumes in advance what the players' decisions have to be. If all the players say at the end of a session, "Now we want to go to Orc Town and kill the chief!," and then you go home and prep up Orc Town with a special emphasis on the chief's combat abilities, you're not railroading, because you're responding to a decision that they already made.

Nod nod.

I disagree with Gareth (contracycle) 100% -- as I usually do: It's kind of creepy.

Okay, so here's my question:  if you and Gareth disagree 100%, how can I agree 100% with both of you?!   

I think I interpreted Gareth as meaning "improvise" in a particularly big sense.  In the "Hello, leader of a village that Will just made up two minutes ago.  Tell us about your many serious problems, so we can help you!" sense. 

Otherwise, yeah, everything you said, totally into it.  It seems so easy when I'm reading about it or thinking about it in the hypothetical, but when it comes time to put it into practice, it ends up feeling way, way harder.

This is awesome. Not just that you and Nik are into the same coolness, but that Nik came out and said so explicitly after the game. That's good feedback. The only thing better would have been if Nik had said so in front of the whole group so everyone could chime in.

Definitely.

Question: What did Kault, as a character, want? Specifically, what did he want from the player-characters? (Thinking about NPCs this way is a core technique I got from Vincent Baker's superb Dogs in the Vineyard). If the answer is "to be left alone," that's like a basketball with half of the air out: Throw it all you want, it ain't gonna bounce.

You're right.  He wanted the status quo, more than anything.  In fact, I even remember thinking about that very thing you mention, and that's why I came up with a bunch of supporting NPCs.  If the players had approached the monastery with less violent intentions, they'd have found Kault not to be the driving force. 

But, yeah, maybe this was just bad luck?  The PCs were full of vengeance, and chose to kill first and ask questions later, and that's that.  Although, as you say...

What's a lot more fun is to set up a situation where the major NPCs all want something to change. If Kault really wanted the player-characters to endorse his conversion, that'd be more of a challenge than him sitting there praying and waiting to die. For that matter, it'd be more interesting if Kault rushed out of the monastery to meet them saying, "I am a wicked man - you are servants of justice - I beg you, slay me!" Sure, they might've said, "Works for me" and whacked him right there, but even a hardcore crusader type might've said, "Waaaaait a second -- is this some kind of trick?"

Yeah.  Perhaps "what did Kault want?" was a more important question than I realized, even with a supporting cast of crazy desperate people.  And maybe if I'd really pushed to throw Kault's situation at them right off the bat, rather than subtly implying it and hoping they were interested, it would have been more interesting.

I don't know.  It was pretty interesting as it was.  The looks on the players' faces when they realized not only wasn't he fighting, but he was praying to elven gods and apologizing for sins for which he could never be forgiven... 

Thanks again, Sydney.

-Will

[Sydney Freedberg]

Okay, so here's my question:  if you and Gareth disagree 100%, how can I agree 100% with both of you?! 

Light is both a particle and a wave. The jewel is in the lotus. There is no spoon.

[Andrew Cooper]

Okay, so here's my question:  if you and Gareth disagree 100%, how can I agree 100% with both of you?! 

Light is both a particle and a wave. The jewel is in the lotus. There is no spoon.

Schrodinger's cat is both alive and dead.

[The Dragon Master]

Okay, so here's my question:  if you and Gareth disagree 100%, how can I agree 100% with both of you?!

Light is both a particle and a wave. The jewel is in the lotus. There is no spoon.

Schrodinger's cat is both alive and dead.

If pavlovs dog drools when it hears a bell, for whom does the bell toll? (sorry, couldn't resist lol

I just wanted to chime in here and say that I really appreciate all this information. I'm supposed to be running my first game here in the next couple of weeks and have just been dreading it (only have about 20 sessions of play under my belt in a group that has been gaming for about 12 years, I'm the newbie and drew the short straw when the usual GM said he wanted to "play" not GM a game of MURPG). But reading over this thread, and a couple others on the site, I think I'm beginning to get a feel for how prep should be done. It means throwing out everything, or nearly so, that I've done. But it should be worth it.

Though it will probably be a whole new experience for those I'm running it for (very much a GM is God group).

[Will Grzanich]

Best of luck, TDM.  Hope it goes well -- come back afterwards and let us know! 

-Will

[Adam Dray]

What is missing from the report, in my opinion, is what the players are doing -- what they're deciding -- and how that affects what you do. Low-prep games run very well with this kind of give and take.

Hmm.  Could you please elaborate a bit on this?  I'm not sure what you're asking. 

You talk a lot about what you did during the game. I don't feel you're talking much about how the players reacted to things. I don't know if that means that the players were really passive most of the time and did exactly what was "expected" of them or if you just didn't explain what they did very well.

In an actual play report of any kind of Narr game, I'd expect to see stuff like, "So I knew that Bob's fighter liked puppies, so I had the bad guy grab the puppy and put his dagger to its throat and say, 'Hand me the Ruby of Shiny Garnet and I'll give you the puppy, and everyone can go home.' And, can you believe it, Bob handed the artifact to him!  The bad guy, true to his word, handed over the puppy. Then all hell broke loose, but everyone was surprised that Bob did that!"

Basically, if you're doing Bangs, I want to see the fallout of those. You pull the pin out of the grenade and toss it, but only the players can make it explode. Where's the Earth-shattering kaboom?

[Rob Alexander]

If I'm improvising, then my plan has failed.  That is not a desirable outcome, that is the outcome I am trying desperately to avoid.

Gareth, why do you see improvisation as necessarily a bad thing? Have you had exclusively bad results when improvising like this in the past? I know that the sessions where I've improvised heavily have accounted for most of the best sessions I've ever had.

I simply cannot in honesty suggest to the players that we should play a game if I can't GUARANTEE that I can deliver my side of the bargain.

I kind of get the impression here that, like Will, you're setting the bar impossibly high for yourself. I'd really like to see an AP thread about your (in your eyes) unsuccessful attempts to use this style. I'd particularly like to know what the players thought of the game, and how they thought it compared to games you'd run with e.g. linear plots or controlled environments (e.g. dungeons).

[Rob Alexander]

Will,

I know at least one of my players, Nik, isn't into that sort of thing, though I've struggled to understand why.  I remember a conversation in which he basically said that he feels that such things should come from the GM, so he can be surprised by the events as they unfold.  I don't understand why the two are related -- isn't it just as surprising if a fellow player comes up with the idea?

Hmmm... as a GM, you can provide controlled, gradual, exposition of "what's going on". If another player proposes it, it's all revealed at once, up front. Spontaneous player-authored content may also challenge Nik's sense that the game world is 'out there', 'real', and self-consistent. I.e. if you encounter a cave that you placed there he can believe that it was "there all along", or that it at least makes sense in terms of the (abstract) world model that you have in your head. When another player proposes it right there at the table, it's obvious that none of this is the case.

Is Nik the player who you think is "hardcore Sim"?

I can relate to these concerns, but they're something I'm happy to cast aside in return for other things that I see as more important. (For example, being able to make player decisions absolutely central, ensuring that players get to experience things they think are cool, and making world creation at least partly a collaborative activity). As ever, people are going to differ on this.

It is kind of railroading, only I'm asking them where they want each very short section of track to lead before I lay them down, a little bit at a time.

I think that the term 'railroading' is (because of its negative connotations) only useful to describe behaviour that's restrictive enough to be unpleasant for many players. The Forge provisional glossary defines railroading as:

"Control of a player-character's decisions, or opportunities for decisions, by another person (not the player of the character) in any way which breaks the Social Contract for that group, in the eyes of the character's player."

...and I think that's bang on for the distinction we need here. Working with the agreement and acceptance of all involved, there are various degrees of "scope restriction" that are possible, and I think that these are key to reconciling effective prep with player freedom.


rob

[Rob Alexander]

1.  One of the things I liked most about GMing back when I started that first campaign was that I felt it was my opportunity to run D&D the way I felt it should be run.

Man, I can relate to this. I wouldn't use the term "should be run", but I am aware that I've got pretty narrow interests in terms of the kind of rolegames I'm interested in playing or GMing. I think that the style I'm working towards is one one that can be enjoyed by a wide range of players (significantly, many people who are attracted to rolegames in theory but who've been driven off by the playing styles they actually encountered), but until I get good at it I'm worried (I think rightly) that my games will be unsatisfying to everybody.

Alas, this is a path we have to travel. Gaining competence in a new style of any complex activity, especially when you're not surrounded by peers and mentors thinking the same way, is always going to be a tough ride.

Have the players in your D&D game previously expressed dissatisfaction with the other games that you or others have run, in other styles? Or are they content with the fare they're getting/providing?

Thanks for asking that.  I'll have to think some about it all.

Given the levels of anxiety you've described, I suggest that an important thing to look at is how this game relates to your longer term plans, hopes and ambitions. For example, I believe (with some confidence) that if I can master a style of running games that consistently works really well, then I'll have little difficulty finding players (and good players, whom I get on with) in the future. But right now I can't confidently recruit people because I think that most of the games I've run in the past have been pretty dull for the participants.


rob

[contracycle]

Gareth, why do you see improvisation as necessarily a bad thing? Have you had exclusively bad results when improvising like this in the past? I know that the sessions where I've improvised heavily have accounted for most of the best sessions I've ever had.

Well, as I mentioned previously, it is very important to my scene setting and descriptions, but it can apply to things as trivial as coming up with someones name on the fly.  If I know that play is going to move to town X, then I can prepare descriptions of town X, think about who is in it and what might be going on.  If I had no expectation that play would move to town X, and the players take it there, then I am compelled to improvise; and because I have less time, and no ability to edit what comes out of my mouth, these descriptions will be less interesting and less engaging than they would have been if I had had sufficient time to prepare.  Worse, I risk a slip of the tongue or some omission of memory introducing inconsistencies or contradictions of previously established data.

So even if I pull it off, and play largely works, it is less interesting and engaging than a prepared game, and for my part substantially less relaxed and much more tense.  Which makes the whole experience stressful and Un Fun.

I kind of get the impression here that, like Will, you're setting the bar impossibly high for yourself. I'd really like to see an AP thread about your (in your eyes) unsuccessful attempts to use this style. I'd particularly like to know what the players thought of the game, and how they thought it compared to games you'd run with e.g. linear plots or controlled environments (e.g. dungeons).

I'm not sure what to offer for a AP account because almost by definition these are games or sessions that have tailed off into nothingness.  But I can certainly tell you that the outcome is so predictable that my regular playing group simply will not accept a proposition that we try to just play and hopes that it kicks off.  As they have said, they are tired of making characters for games that never go anywhere.  And I cannot fault them for that, I am tired of  the same thing.

There was a game set in a world I found interesting and which I would like to return to some day; it was intended as an exploration of what Celtic society might have been like if it had been left to develop into the feudal era by itself.  There were elements of the Crusades and the Golden Horde to provide external adversity, and I had maps, I had documents discussing the internal economy, political dispensations etc.  But what I didn't have was plot; and so I sent the players off to fight some stock bandits, which they enjoyed, because I had thought about how it was going to go and had descriptions ready.  But then things tailed off; left to their own devices the players do not seek out high adventure or dramatic experience, they make mundane arrangements and solve mundane problems.  In short order I was back to this-happens-that-happens while everyone was hanging around doing nothing.

If the bar is that the game proceeds and everyone has fun, how can that be too high?  Thats the bare minimum, surely.

[contracycle]

First of all, you're always going to have to improvise something: No GM knows their players so well, and has so much time to prep, that they have a preset reaction to every sword-stroke or line of dialogue the players offer. The question isn't whether or not to improvise; it's how much to improvise.

I also have to go to the dentist from time to time.

Second, and more fundamental: People improvise in RPGs all the time. They're called players. Why is this good for one type of participant and bad for another? The GM is just a special kind of player.

Right. And the difference is precisely because the GM is a special kind of player, one fulfilling a different function to that of the other players.

Now, how do players balance improvisation and prep work? Good prep for a player consists of having a solid character concept with whatever mechanical details worked out that the game's character generation system requires: You know who your character is, what he or she wants in general, and what things he or she can do. Then, when the GM presents you an unexpected situation -- or, for that matter, another player does something unexpected -- you have a solid foundation from which to improvise.

Yes but the quantity of information they need to track in order to do so is trivial by comparison to the amount the GM has to track.

The GM should do the same thing as the players. Sure, you have more characters to be responsible for, but each of them should be simpler than any of the player-characters, because they don't need to be heroes and protagonists in their own right; the GM's characters' exist only as foils for the player-characters. In Orc Town, you need to know what the Orc Chief wants -- let's say, keep the tribe strong, which means picking his fights and if necessary buying off or running away from tough adventurers -- and what he can do to get what he wants -- his combat and leadership abilities, primarily -- and likewise for a few other characters, say the crazy Orc Shaman who wants to destroy all Elves regardless of the cost to his fellow Orcs, or the young Orc Warrior who wishes to kill the Chief and usurp his position and is willing to betray him to the adventurers. Then, whenever the players do something unexpected, you have a solid base from which to improvise.[/quote]

NPC motivations and the like are not the issue, the issue is how and why players interact with them.  If you started these orcish plots running, and the players have no buy-in, then they are reduced to being spectators of the metaplot.  And its all very well understanding which doohickey is connected to which whatsit by which means, such that cause and effect is apparent, but that is just a matter of moving the props and sets appropriately; the question is, are the players doing anything at all?  What is it that they are motivated to do?

All I'd prepped was the map of the bridge area and the hordes; I literally had no idea what the players would find inside the city. Then, based on what the players had shown they were interested in, in both character generation and in that short bit of actual play, I came up with about half-a-dozen major NPCs, each associated with a different location in the city, and each with their own agenda (I tended not to prep stats until I knew the players were headed to that specific location). Every time the players chose a path to follow, knew what NPC's sphere of influence they'd be entering, and I knew what that NPC wanted and what the NPC's initial approach would be (ambush, negotiation, seduction, sorcery...), but I didn't know what the players' reaction would be (fight back, run away, reject, accept), and I didn't have to, because I knew the NPCs well enough to improvise their reactions just as if I were a regular player running my own PC.

Well ok, but in my experience I will not bet that I can indeed do that myself on the fly.  But more importantly, I can't see how this is not vigorous railroading - the outcome of entry into the city was a fixed point, determined and imposed by the GM. And where i have situations that are so predictable, I can and will do the city detail beforehand, not least so I can foreshadow and pre-link elements that will appear in the city in the earlier game.

Thus every campaign should begin with a clear discussion of what everyone wants from the game before you even create characters -- not just "here's my pitch, read it and make a character who's X level and has a plot tie to Y," but everyone sitting around the table brainstorming as equals.

But there is no guarantee that this process will result in such sudden inspiration that a game ACTUALLY appears.  You can discuss, and discover that you seek different things.  In my experience, it is far batter to set expectations at the beginning and then realise them.

[contracycle]

sorry for botched quoting above

Contracycle:  Geez, man.  I am totally with you.  100%.  So much it's creepy.    I'm in particular agreement with the idea that one-shots and "miniseries" would be way easier than open-ended (or, as in my case, closed-ended, but very long-term) campaigns.  By the way -- could I ask you post a link to the AP you mentioned?  I'd love to read it.

Here you go:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=20798.0

[Filip Luszczyk]

contracycle,

Well, as I mentioned previously, it is very important to my scene setting and descriptions, but it can apply to things as trivial as coming up with someones name on the fly.  If I know that play is going to move to town X, then I can prepare descriptions of town X, think about who is in it and what might be going on.  If I had no expectation that play would move to town X, and the players take it there, then I am compelled to improvise; and because I have less time, and no ability to edit what comes out of my mouth, these descriptions will be less interesting and less engaging than they would have been if I had had sufficient time to prepare.  Worse, I risk a slip of the tongue or some omission of memory introducing inconsistencies or contradictions of previously established data.

I find this interesting. Such things like the difficulty with coming up with names on the fly or producing engaging descriptions were a stumbling block for me too, initially. But at some point, as I examined my sessions, it occurred to me that at least in their context, these were never real problems.

I.e. we hardly ever give attention to names. Most often the group forgets the name soon after introduction, and we instinctively refer to NPCs or places by general labels. Consequently, I've found it more efficient to simply use labels instead of forcing myself to think up a name (or, occassionally I ask players if they had an idea for a name, or use some pre-generated list, if a distinctive name is needed indeed). During last years I had only one player who actually kept asking for names, and later on he wasn't using them anyway.

Also, we simply edit things that come from our mouths, and retcon established data if there is such demand. Once it became an accepted procedure, things got much easier.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Gareth is from Mars, I'm from Venus, or something. Will, I hope you don't think it derailing your thread if Gareth and I go back and forth like this a bit more. First:

I can't see how this is not vigorous railroading - the outcome of entry into the city was a fixed point, determined and imposed by the GM.

In this technique, where the player-characters go next session is chosen by the players at the end of the last session. The only restriction the GM needs to place on them is to stick with that original decision. So the players provide the "fixed point," whether that's "We're going to go to place X" or "we want to rob a bank" or whatever. Then the GM preps the things they'll find there -- but with no preconception of how it's going to turn out.

When I GM this way, I know what the player-characters are going to do next, of course -- because the players just told me. That way I can then figure out what my characters are going to do in response. I never had any idea how the players were going to respond in their turn, let alone how my characters would respond to their response to my response. Usually within 30 minutes of starting play, I was having my NPCs do things I'd never expected them to do. But I could do it, because I knew those NPCs as people, just as if each of them was my PC and I was a regular player, so just like a regular player acting out his PC in the face of the GM's surprises, I could act out my NPCs in the face of the players' surprises.


Second:

If you started these orcish plots running, and the players have no buy-in, then they are reduced to being spectators of the metaplot...

Ah, I've not made myself clear. There is no "plot" in the sense of "a bunch of things I know are going to happen," and there are no "plots running" in the sense of "events happening independently of the player-characters." There are a bunch of NPCs with desires and abilities (motives and means, if you like), but they're all inert -- effectively in suspended animation -- until the player-characters interact with them. If the players find a particularly NPC boring, I usher that character out of the story as quickly as possible; if the players find a particular NPC interesting, I have that character interact with them more and more.

For example, in my "ruined city" campaign, Tony played the traumatized waif-assassin Yuri, and Jen played Khaidu, the noble savage and shapeshifter. (Yes, a man was playing the female character and a woman was playing the male). They set things up in character creation so that Khaidu felt protective of Yuri, but Yuri had a huge crush on Khaidu, as yet unreciprocated. I knew Tony liked teen angst drama, and that Jen had wanted more "doomed romance" out of our past games -- I knew because they'd told me -- so I set up two romantic rivals for Yuri. One was a werewolf princess of the shapeshifter people, Death-Her-Gift; the other was Yuri's long-lost sister, an uptight paladin and the true heir to the human throne, Kaina. I knew enough about each NPC's abilities and desires (for Khaidu's attention) to play them as if they were my own PC, and I threw them both at the player-characters a few times over the course of two sessions. It became quickly apparent that everyone found Death-Her-Gift uninteresting and Kaina really cool, so after that I never had Death-Her-Gift show up again, while Kaina became a member of the "party" and interacted with the PCs constantly.


And a very important point:

Through all of this, I'm only focusing on major characters -- or rather, NPCs who I think have the potential to be major characters, but it's up to the players to decide if they actually get to be major characters or not. I'm not worrying about what street connects to what avenue -- I only mapped out the city in the roughest detail -- or about a host of minor characters. So when Gareth says

the quantity of information they [players] need to track in order to do so is trivial by comparison to the amount the GM has to track.

it's actually not true in my case. In any given session I have three or four fully statted-out characters to keep track of, but each of them has much simpler motivations than the player-characters -- because they're foils, not protagonists in their own right -- and a bunch of generic mooks I can rename for any occasion, and maybe a rough sketch map. The system I was running was The Shadow of Yesterday, and I'm not sure you can get away with this little detail in D&D. But I am sure you can limit the amount of trivia you track and concentrate on characters, which is what make the game go.