player-directed exploration of GM-created world

[Alfryd]

Failing that, I'd like to get the players to constrain themselves, by saying, "Here's what we wanna do," and accepting that it'll fuck things up (probably by halting play) if they change their minds.

That's what I mean.  If the players decide they're going to attack the town guards (and have reasonable knowledge of the likely consequences,) then they just placed a constraint upon themselves.  The point is that the players can't simply fast-forward past unpleasant ramifications, if their characters wouldn't have the option of handling them trivially.

As for repercussions of previous actions in the medium- or long-term, it should usually be plausible for players to simply run away from those.  We do one mission over here and piss everyone off, but then we do another mission elsewhere, and it's all good.

Well sure- if you can run away from those problems, by all means do.  But if you can't manage to do so, then I think the players should be obliged to role-play their escape, regardless of whether they think it will be fun.  Otherwise, what's the incentive to respect the world?  I just don't see what's so magical about a single session when it comes to enforcing cause and effect.

On the other hand, if you assault the town guard because they (as controlled by the GM) provoked you, then the GM oughta have a fun jailbreak prepped, which gives the players info about the Cave of Wonders to boot.

I agree, broadly speaking.
I mean, certainly the GM shouldn't trap the players between a rock and a hard place (if not of their own choosing.)  And if the players go to jail, it's the GM's responsibility to provide some viable escape route.  But there's a difference between the town guards provoking the PCs, and the PCs being obliged to attack them.  Going back to the Firefly example, Mal could have chosen to deliver the cargo to Niska, (thus improving relations with a powerful crimelord,) whereas the miners were a relatively small and unimportant local faction, (so pissing them off would be pretty low-risk.  It just went against Mal's moral code.)
Now, if the Guards were so belligerent (and well organised) that the only alternatives to killing them were being imprisoned, molested or (insert disaster scenario X here,) then yes, that would be foul play on the GM's behalf.

My other concern would be... what if the players nominate to explore something that the GM knows would take multiple sessions to get useful information about?  I mean, if you opt to visit the village down the road, fine, there's an obvious and immediate route for getting from A to B.  But what if- due to factors the GM has already described- there's no plausible way to find out about orc tattoos, or visit a cave of wonders, or to climb the summit of a distant mountain range, or topple a world-girdling empire, during the next session?  If that happens, the GM will have to sketch out multiple scenes (in varying degrees of detail) to satisfy the player's demands, which may have to be scrapped if the players lose interest.

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[Alfryd]

Failing that, I'd like to get the players to constrain themselves, by saying, "Here's what we wanna do," and accepting that it'll fuck things up (probably by halting play) if they change their minds.

Oops.  I misunderstood your point here.  Strike my 'unpleasant ramifications' remark.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  Yeah, I don't think the ditv design mechanic could or even should work for every game. But, I do think that you have to play it to appreciate what it can and can't do. Also, once you see it in motion, maybe it might inspire you to come up with a system that does do exactly what you want.
  As to the mechanics, it's not as much of a dirty-hippie game as it sounds. Once the dice are thrown, the action really breaks down to mini-task resolution with the authority and scope of the action determined by the dice (just like in a trad game). And just like in a trad game, everyone, GM and players, have the option to say, that narration doesn't really match the dice thrown. Surprisingly, that doesn't happen very often, but it can and does. Just like in a trad game (or any other game for that matter).
  Have fun man!

[pells]

David, a couple of points, but I'm not sure I understand you all the way ...

I read your website.  I would love to play in your game, but I would hate to prep it!  As you said, prep results from this might make a good product.

If you can provide a DM with a complete product (which means a lot of work from the author's/designer's part), then prep, using Avalanche's design, is very, but very easy !!! And very fast (by the way, that's one the main goal of the project).

I am curious: how do you refer to your planned events during play?  Is it like, "Okay, the PCs went to sleep.  Cross off February 10th on the calendar.  Ah, I see on the calendar that February 11th contains a blizzard!"?

First, for more on the subject, see those (I'm explaning how to use the web of events for writing/reading/DM's prep/play - which is incomplete at the moment). But, to give you an idea, I provide between 20 and 40 events for any given week (and Avalanche is built on a full year calendar), for all the locations in the scenario's region. Now, those events don't happen on a specific day, but either in the beginning, middle or end of the week. Using specific days would be too much of a constraint.
Also, there are two types of events : specific and generic.
Generic would be something like : Uproar in the city - there are battles happening in this town between group  X and Y.
Specific would be something like : The king is killed.
How to play it ? First, yes, you must play day by day (so, yes, "Cross off February 10th on the calendar" is the way to play). Let's say this is february 11th. As a DM, you take a look at the events of the calendar, for the location of the player, for the middle of week two of february (note here, you can pinpoint). For general purposes, you can use events that are at the end of this week. Events have a one week opportunity window. Seeing those events, according to what the players are interested in, and what they do, you might or not, present some events listed.
That said, I like to challenge the players : if they are in town T1, interested in plot P1, and I can play an event happening in plot P2, I'll present it, most of the time. That way, the PCs need to make a clear decision. Are we interested in P1 ? Because, remember, they can't take part in P1 and P2, for a given week (in fact, they take part in P2 later in the calendar, but the plot would have advanced, and thus their influence would not be the same on it).
I'd say that playing that way, I see the role of the DM very differently. You sit back, pinpoint events, challenge players and manage their impact on the various plots. This is very easy, as the information is recovered very easily (very fast).

That's an interesting notion, but I agree with David that I'm not certain how it could work out in practice.  Perhaps a small (but comprehensive) example or two on the prep involved would be useful?  I was hoping that the process of gradual refinement I mentioned would allow a compromise between flexibility and preperation.

Examples ? Yes, sure !! Here are one, at the very last page of the teaser. That said, the prep works a little bit like play : you pinpoint and prep according to the player's current location and current time on the calendar. You don't have any idea how this is easy !!!

If I had a virtual world on my computer telling me what was around every corner, and all of it made sense and had a decent level of texture and richness, I would say, "Zero constraints!" 

That's one the goal of Avalanche : to provide a service based web. And the most important thing in it are not the details, but the credibility of what's happening in the world.

About the prison and the guards' problematic : there are two things there.
1. the reasons the PCs got in jail in the first place (I could see an event in Avalanche where guards arrest anybody that is armed in a city, in response to an uproar).
2. how they get out of jail

As I see it, 1 could be managed thru plot, but 2 would need a system, no ? Thus, I repeat my question David : are looking at a mechanic or a design to write/structure a scenario ? Or both ?
This seems to me like a structuring question to the answers we can provide to your concern.

Finally, about your "player-directed exploration of GM-created world", I do think it is the exact same concern as what I call "our story (player-directed exploration) within the adventure (GM-created world)". Or how is it possible to come with a prewritten scenario, that would give me, as a DM, the texture (credibility) I need without directing the PCs ? Or, how to come with a plot that doesn't come in the way ?

For me, this is a fluff matter, not a crunch one ...

[David Berg]

what if- due to factors the GM has already described- there's no plausible way to find out about orc tattoos, or visit a cave of wonders, or to climb the summit of a distant mountain range, or topple a world-girdling empire, during the next session?  If that happens, the GM will have to sketch out multiple scenes (in varying degrees of detail) to satisfy the player's demands, which may have to be scrapped if the players lose interest.

If your goal is to topple an empire, you need to set a one-session(ish) goal or interest that you think furthers that.

Re: "no plausible way to find out", I think a gimmick is required here, along the lines of an oracle that gives PCs just the right amount of information to get to the next scenario.  I have some ideas on how to make this as non-contrived-seeming as possible, but I'm gonna wait a bit to present those (might need a new thread).

[contracycle]

Well sure- if you can run away from those problems, by all means do.  But if you can't manage to do so, then I think the players should be obliged to role-play their escape, regardless of whether they think it will be fun.  Otherwise, what's the incentive to respect the world?  I just don't see what's so magical about a single session when it comes to enforcing cause and effect.

I do not think this is a helpful approach.  The GM is there to be a facilitator of fun, their own and that of the players.  Taking a moralistic tone and attempting to drive home "lessons" makes the relationship between GM and players contentious and hectoring.  Cause-and-effect is there to be explored, not enforced.

I think that if/when you see players making decisions like attacking guards that trivialise the world you already have a problem in terms of the social contract between players and GM.  More likely than not, this has occurred because the players are not finding the game fun, and are therefore making their own fun.  That problem is not going to be solved by the GM taking on the role of a policing authority and attempting to teach them the error of their ways.  I don't think GM's should ever be in the position of punishing players, that is simply not healthy at any level.

[contracycle]

I think maybe the key here is that the flexible situation needs to be interesting enough that the closed situation isn't resented.  I mean, I've had plenty of games where failure to get off the island would have frustrated the players, and finding the way off would have met with, "About fuckin' time."

Agreed, but: it seems to me that in practice all game of this type have some kind of boundary, but in this case the boundary arose in an explicit manner, with its own rationale, rather than being imposed for its own sake.  It was neither a case of the GM saying "you just can't" or trying to leap through hoops to redirect players away from an "invisible wall"-type boundary.  The limit thus had buy-in from the players and was not experienced as a constraint on play so much as a property of play.

Do remember your methods for this?

Mostly it was exploitation of their contacts and the like that made them aware of the situation.  So, once they realised that they were in some kind of trouble (not in itself unexpected given the genre and so forth), the Fixer of the group starting hitting his contacts to see what could be done, and those contacts starting telling them the heat was on, and eventually started refusing to talk to them.  They also went and staked out the ports and spotted suspicious types hanging about; there was some open, world-clarifying discussion between us as to the nature of security devices in the setting and therefore what kind of hurdles there may be to surmount.  In  addition, they already knew the enemy had air power, which had been illustrated in the very first scene in which they acquired the mcguffin, and would be able to hit a boat on the open water with ease.  So they kept a low profile and carried out some light-touch probing of the perimeter, rather trying to break out directly themselves.

Two significant events played to this.  The first was when I told the players that they had apparently been photographed by some "tourists", and they spent quite a while investigating said tourists, right down to finding out the name of their dog, before they became convinced that this was a coincidence.  I had intended this to be a throw-away event and had to ad lib quite a lot more detail about the tourists than I had prepared.  Secondly they made direct contact with the head of security of the corp that was after them and tried to negotiate a way out, so I played the security guy as sufficiently creepy and menacing that they just didn't trust him to let them live, and broke off discussions of their own volition.  Again he was not a defined character, but improvised for the moment.

The most reliable contact they had was a hacker (there was no hacker in the group) who had no physical presence on the island and therefore was somewhat beyond the range of the hunt itself.  This served as a conduit to bring in outside resources, the Russians on the mainland, who were able to get them off by virtue of having a fully stealthed smuggling boat which would be able to avoid the corp's fighter cover.  I didn't give them this right away, I had him only promise to "look into it" after significant promises of cash and favours were offered.  Eventually he directed them to the Russians who "might" be able to help and the players conducted their own negotiations.  In this regard it was no deus ex machina[/], the players did not feel themselves to have been rescued, they felt that they had successfully used their own resources, primarily the Fixer's contacts, to develop a solution.

I am assuming that, if you had done a worse job at this, the game would have been much less successful.

Yes, although in this regard the framework served me well.  For example, because I had a particular kind of "out" in mind, which was specified purely to set up the next act, when I ad libbed the security guy I already knew that I wanted the interaction with him to come across as negative.  So I knew what I was doing with that scene, what kind of impression I wanted to convey, and therefore what purpose the NPC was there to serve.  That gave some direction to my improv, it was not purely "what would happen", it had an aim of a kind driving and informing my own decisions.  That, I think, is the primary virtue of having the pre-linked structure.

Was this three sessions of play, or one?

Yes three, of which the first was the longest.

I have an idea that basically gurantees every five or so scenarios will add up to more than the sum of their parts.  "Ah!  We learned in Mission 5 that the potion of visions from Mission 1 will allow us to see the door that the key from Mission 2 fits!"  That kind of thing.  Not quite as tidy as what you describe... but it might hit the same virtue, which I think is cumulative progress over continued play...?

I think there are two things here.  The first is that there was a sense of direction which guided my improv, as above.  In the light of the discussion of players fighting guards and so forth, I would say that what this facilitated was that I was not purely governed by "what WOULD happen", but also what SHOULD happen.  If I already knew that getting thrown in the clink was not what I wanted to happen, I would start thinking of a way out as soon as a scuffle with the guards broke out.  My job then becomes one of plausibly rationalising a way out of the dead end, because I already know it is a dead end.

The second is that the thematic link-back gave the whole thing a much more satisfying structure after the fact than it would have had if it had been purely cause-and-effect, with no other considerations.  The overall arc of play reinforced itself, and so more so than with most of my games, it was a thematically united whole instead of just a series of events.  That is the component that I think "cumulative progress" provides, and extra dollop of thematic and story-like fun that supports and reinforces the sense of internal consistency.  Thats not usually the way I think, and having this established for me as a goal by an external author allowed me to concentrate on making it happen, without giving away the fact that I was making happen.

Did the mod (or novels) prep the casino for you?  Are you just really good at logical ad-lib?  Did your players not care about plausibility?  Or is there some other explanation for your group's success?

Yes, there was already a plan, and the players just had to carry it out without making any mistakes or getting themselves into undue trouble.  This was arguably the least interesting and most dungeon-like of the 3 mini-plots, but worked well enough, and the players introduced some elements of their own so they could cash in themselves as well.  This was mostly a case of running the scenario as writ and simply playing the parts of NPC's and providing physical descriptions and the like.  The only concern was that they shouldn;t bite the hand that fed them, but they were sufficiently grateful that they didn't have any desire to do so anyway.

[Alfryd]

@ pells

Examples ? Yes, sure !! Here are one, at the very last page of the teaser.

Uh.  Yeah.  Just to point out- I would not personally consider 1.7 megs of data to be a small example.

I'll look that up and get back to you.

@ contracycle

I do not think this is a helpful approach.  The GM is there to be a facilitator of fun, their own and that of the players.  Taking a moralistic tone and attempting to drive home "lessons" makes the relationship between GM and players contentious and hectoring.  Cause-and-effect is there to be explored, not enforced.

I'm sorry if I came across as high-handed or overbearing, and if you are comfortable with non-enforcement of cause and effect, by all means leave it out.  But it seems to me that cause and effect which isn't enforced isn't really cause and effect at all.  The intention here is not to berate the players for alleged misdeeds, but simply maintain a believable setting.

To take an example in miniature- say the players are in combat- within a single session- and a player finds himself going toe-to-toe with a heavily armoured knight.  The player's character swings his sword, but the knight's damage reduction/AC/whatever is much too high for this to have a decent chance of success, and he deals no significant damage.  If the players, at this point, say 'can't we just fast-forward to the bit where we loot the bodies'?  The GM is fully entitled to ask 'How?' -and if the players can't provide a plausible explanation for how they dispatch their enemies and swagger off laden with swag, all in one fell swoop- then the GM says 'the knight, only angered by your efforts, proceeds to smack the crap out of you' on the next round.  Asking whether the players consider this immediate prospect enjoyable is missing the point.

This isn't intended as some arbitrary punishment.  It's just a realistic depiction of how the world works.  The whole point to that knight having high armour class was never to fuck the players over, but to provide a challenge that must be worked around through variation in tactics.  Freedom exists to allow that variation, but structure is needed to make it interesting.  Otherwise, you have the following.

Player 1:  "Awww... my attack roll wasn't high enough.  Phooey!"
GM:  "Yeah, looks like that Knight will be pissed now. ...ah, what the hell.  When he's getting up, -the Knight trips over on his own shoelaces!"
Player 2:  "Hooray!"
GM:  "And then he dies of a heart attack!"
Player 1:  "Yaaay!"

What are they, children?

[David Berg]

Alfryd,

Your example is a perfect demonstration of what contracycle posited -- there is already a social contract breakdown, based on lack of shared fun ("you thought I'd enjoy fighting a knight, but I don't").  I agree with him that social disconnect cannot be repaired by in-game anything (e.g. causality enforcement).  You need to stop play at that point and fix the agreement about what people find fun.


Contracycle,

I'm mulling your play example.  It seems like I should be able to deduce some useful "do"s and "don't"s from that, but it may take me a while.  If you have any generalizable takeaways from this game beyond what you've stated thus far, I'd love to hear 'em.

[Alfryd]

I never said that, in this hypothetical session, the players didn't enjoy themselves.  Maybe, after taking a beating, they realised that the knight was slow enough they could use hit and run attacks with slingstones, or was susceptible to illusion magic.  Maybe the fact this initial obstacle cropped up actually made the session more enjoyable, since they can now pat themselves on the back for being so cunning, (as opposed to the standard 'I hit it with pointy implements' routine.)  Obstacles sre fun.  But they have to carry consequences in order to be obstacles at all.

[David Berg]

An interest in answering "How?", and a desire to have that answer arbitrated by in-game causality, represent one specific play style.  Yes, that is the play style I'm going for.  If all players are clear on and agree to this, everyone at the table will desire that obstacles carry consequences.  If certain players do not understand this, conversation is required.  If, understanding, they decide they don't like it, they should go play another game.

My game will endeavor to create said understanding and agreement.  For the purposes of this discussion, let's just assume it works*, and everyone wants obstacles with consequences.

What interests me here is how to deliver said obstacles.  I think we've had some good discussion of that, and I hope it continues.

*feel free to start a new thread to tackle that issue! -- just don't use this one

[MKAdams]

What I want is for the players to be able to go learn something interesting about Orc tattooing.  Not maybe, not if the GM feels like it.  They absolutely do determine where to go and encounter an opportunity there to learn what they seek.

Assuming that's possible, do you see the appeal?  Can you envision how that might be cool in a new and different way?  Or have you played something that accomplishes this already?

If you mean a system that allows the players to create their own content, then there's Donjon and similar games.  But that doesn't seem to be what you're getting at. 

It seems like you want a system that produces content from the GM on demand, regardless of the GM's desire or ability to produce that content. That's not possible.  It can't be done. Can't happen.  You'd need a magic wand.

What if the GM is stumped by the player's desire to explore orc tattooing?  What if the GM doesn't actually know anything at all about tattooing?  What if they haven't thought out the full details or orc society?  You're going to create a game system that generates content without player input or GM input?  The absolute best you could hope for is random charts to create content, but it will always be possible to bust such a system.

[contracycle]

Well there's content and there's content, I think.  I don't think answering a question like the orcish tattoo's would be a problem for me as such; even if I have nothing prepped about the tattoo's, coming to a decisions as to whether they are magical or mundane is not a real problem as long as I have some time to make that decision.  What will be much more difficult will be to construct an entertaining sequence of play that answers that question.  For example, maybe a way to answer the tattoo's question is to set up an Indiana Jones type scene in which the PC's crouch unseen on a ledge watching an orc shaman bestow such tattoos on a champion, or maybe "activates" them through some magical process.  The question is then not so much about the nature of the tattoos themselves, as to the mechanism for displaying and conveying that information - how do I get the players into that position so they can make that observation. The problem then is not the establishing of facts, which I think is pretty easy, but instead a mechanism for actually introducing those facts into play in an elegant manner.  A somewhat harder example might be if the tattoos are mundane and indicate status things like ranks or scout badges; in that case you might need to understand a fair bit about orc society before the information the tattoos are conveying (to other orcs) is comprehensible to the players; maybe in that case you really want to bring the players into contact with some old sage who has the equivalent of anthropological knowledge about orcs and tell you how to recognise and interpret the meaning of those tattoos.

Working from a sufficiently large body of established data, answering or creating such detail is I think the stock-in-trade of Sim GM's and few will encounter real difficulty answering a specific question.  Far more problematic, I think, is constructing a process of play that introduces that information into the SIS in the form of a game that is entertaining to play.  The answer itself is probably not going to comprise a very large part of a session of actual play, ands its the rest of the session that needs to be built to support the delivery of that answer.

[MKAdams]

Well there's content and there's content, I think.  I don't think answering a question like the orcish tattoo's would be a problem for me as such; even if I have nothing prepped about the tattoo's, coming to a decisions as to whether they are magical or mundane is not a real problem as long as I have some time to make that decision...

It wouldn't be a problem for me either, but I (and presumably you) know something about tattooing amongst early civilizations, and could wing it pretty easily.  But there are plenty of subjects that I know very little about, and I'd have to do some research before I would feel comfortable answering questions about, say, the function of courtiers in the court (I have no idea what courtiers actually do).

Given time to think, research and prepare, a good GM should be able to detail out most anything enough to make an adventure out of it.  I mean I can go read up a bunch on courtiers, and figure out exactly who they are and why kings bother with them.

But David seems to be asking for something other than that, something that forces the GM to provide content on demand.  Maybe I'm misreading him, but it almost sounds like he wants to create a system that treats the GM's creativity like a slave to the desires of the player.  Which bothers me a bit, as it doesn't seem to show much respect to the GM as a person.

[David Berg]

The "on demand" issue: in general, yes; at every instance, no.  (I said it better earlier... maybe got lost amongst the pages of posts?  I bet you can find it...)  The players' statement that they wish to learn about Orc tattoos says nothing about how they'll learn.  It's still up to the GM to decide whether tracking some nearby Orcs will reveal their secrets, or whether saving a princess from an astrology cult's golem will give them the info they seek (turns out the princess was hiding from the golem in an ancient Orc graveyard, complete with notes on the deceased!).

Why would the PCs go to rescue the princess?  Because they know that somehow, they will have an opportunity to learn about Orc tattoos.  How do they know this?  See the oracle gimmick.

...at least, that's my current best idea.