Is story arc, and open ended (scenarioless) play viable?

[simon_hibbs]

My current campaign is based on a number of story arcs, and this has lead to a number of problems.

Firstly when we switch from one story arc to another, there's often dissatisfaction that the other story arc has not been fully resolved.

Secondly each story arc is quite long term. Since I'm not using clearly defined scenarios in the traditional sense, the players seem to miss the feeling of catharsis that comes on completing a scenario. This is exascerbated by the fact that solving one puzzle, or finding out one set of information often simply leads directly into another enigma. It's not as simple as a case of 'obviously we have to kill these guys', it's more like 'ok, this is what these guys are up to. Do we kill them? Ally with them? Subvert them? Ally with someone else against them? - GM, what are we suposed to do?'. Is saying 'Well, that's realy up to you!' a fair answer for me to give?

Thirdly the players have been given some general goals. They're pathfinding in a city, in preparation for it's annexation. Thy've been given very broad autonomy in how they go about this (who they ally with/assassinate/subvert/destabilise), and this is leading to a lot of 'What are we supposed to do next?' situations.

I can see that a lot of this is my fault. It's easy as GM to think that there are some fairly obvious strategies or approaches the players could take, but then I'm intimately familiar with the setting and know the secrets of all the factions and their plots. It seems as though an audience will accept the fact that in a TV show the protagonists can be in dilemas and have to make judgements based on limited information, and will enjoy considering this as an intelectual excercise, but when put in the same situation themselves get a bit lost.

Bear in mind that my viewpoint on this probably isn't being fair to them and the situation as they see it.

There are big situation-changing events on their way, but as in something like B5 for example, these are scheduled for 'end of season 2' (we're currently at the beginning of season 2, so to speak), not after a just a few sessions, and it's clearly getting frustrating for the players.

Has anyone else had experience of running a campaign in this way, or come up against similar kinds of problems?


Simon Hibbs

[Ian Charvill]

I have worked with multiple storylines in the past and I find it best to keep everything moving, and to have regular pay-offs.  If you're running three storylines through ten sessions, don't pay them all off in session ten, pay one off in session three, one in session six and one in session ten.

It seems as though an audience will accept the fact that in a TV show the protagonists can be in dilemas and have to make judgements based on limited information, and will enjoy considering this as an intelectual excercise, but when put in the same situation themselves get a bit lost.

Characters in a TV never have limited information in the sense that the players in your game do.  They are being written by someone who has all the information and has 'given' the characters enough information to make interesting and dramatic choices (hopefully, otherwise the show will suck).

The limits you place on the information the players have, are limits you place on the choices they make.  Note, that I'm talking aout giving information to the players not the characters, and note that I don't consider the limits to be bad things, in and of themselves.  The limits are only bad insofar as they're stopping fun at the table.

I'm not saying tell the players everything, I'm saying you've self-diagnosed as not having told them enough yet.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Simon,

Since I'm not using clearly defined scenarios in the traditional sense, the players seem to miss the feeling of catharsis that comes on completing a scenario. This is exascerbated by the fact that solving one puzzle, or finding out one set of information often simply leads directly into another enigma.

One thing you might try is not cutting from a story arcs at the point that the sense of confusion/enigma has been heightened by some cryptic revelation about what's really going on. Try cutting at the most tense moment of conflict possible. "The boy prince has fallen from the ledge!" Cut! "Reinforcements have arrived!" Cut!

Thy've been given very broad autonomy in how they go about this (who they ally with/assassinate/subvert/destabilise), and this is leading to a lot of 'What are we supposed to do next?' situations.

I think your main problem here could be the players not having a very good sense during scenes of what kind of thematic significance is attached to various NPC actions, and locations, and whatnot. When this stuff only makes sense in retrospect, player decisionmaking can be muddled. You might try telegraphing the thematic significance of what's going on more, by using voice-over narration perhaps, or symbolism. Perhaps use very clinical, anatomical terms when you describe the appearance of a villain. If you get consistent with your symbolism, you can convey a lot of information unconsciously.

Paul

[simon_hibbs]

It seems as though an audience will accept the fact that in a TV show the protagonists can be in dilemas and have to make judgements based on limited information, and will enjoy considering this as an intelectual excercise, but when put in the same situation themselves get a bit lost.

Characters in a TV never have limited information in the sense that the players in your game do.  They are being written by someone who has all the information and has 'given' the characters enough information to make interesting and dramatic choices (hopefully, otherwise the show will suck).

Yet the audience of a TV show may have no more information than the characters in it, yet we still debate about what we'd do in the same situation. That's one of the major motivations for getting into roleplaying in the first place. In B5 the audience has no more meaningful information about what's going on wiht the Vorlons, or the VP's plot to take over the government than the characters do. Nor do they have any more information on which to base a preference/dislike for any of the various alien species.

It seems to me that game that purport to offer genuine moral choices, often fail to do so. In D&D you're explicitly told who is good and who is evil - there is no ambiguity. In RQ/HW being anti-chaos is generaly considered to be a no-brainer. In Killing Puppies for Satan it's accepted that we're all damned anyway, so why not just revel in the mire - it's not realy an in-character choice because it's what the game is about. People seem to like their moral decisions to be pre-packaged for them, even in supposedly sophisticated game settings.

Plenty of RQ players I have met will happily slaughter Lunar civilians with no chaotic connections or leanings whatsoever because 'Lunars = Chaos, right?'. They don't want to have that notion challenged because they don't want to be in a situation where their moral choices can be questioned, or where they might be held accountable.

I like setting moral challenges in my games, yet over and over again when I do, I come up against this problem. Either a choice must be obvious, or assumed in the game contract, or it is somehow unfair.

Comments?


Simon Hibbs

[simon_hibbs]

One thing you might try is not cutting from a story arcs at the point that the sense of confusion/enigma has been heightened by some cryptic revelation about what's really going on. Try cutting at the most tense moment of conflict possible. "The boy prince has fallen from the ledge!" Cut! "Reinforcements have arrived!" Cut!

I don't see how that can work if the same characetrs are involved in more than one story arc. They can't be following up story arc 2, while simultaneously watching the prince falling from the ledge and wondering if he'll survive or not.


Simon Hibbs

[Michael S. Miller]

It seems to me that game that purport to offer genuine moral choices, often fail to do so. In D&D you're explicitly told who is good and who is evil - there is no ambiguity.

I never thought D&D purported to offer genuine moral choices, but that's just me. You were supposed to pick an alignment and stay there.

I like setting moral challenges in my games, yet over and over again when I do, I come up against this problem. Either a choice must be obvious, or assumed in the game contract, or it is somehow unfair.

Not necessarily obvious, but urgent. Judging from your first post, it seems like you might be giving your players too much time to make these moral choices. If they can afford to waffle, then there should be consequences for that, as well. IIRC, in the section on Bangs in Sorcerer (a game that does offer real moral choices), Ron says that a Bang should be an important moral choice that must be met with an immediate decision.

Besides, the angst that comes from living with the consequences of a wrong decision is always more powerful than hand-wringing about what to do next.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Simon,

If I'm not mistaken, you are describing the extremely intensive Champions games I ran, and one I played in, from 1985 through 1992. I'm saying this to let you know that I have a lot of experience, across a variety of players and groups, with the goals that you're describing.

Here's my question: whose story is it?

If your answer is, "Well, I set the parameters of the story, but they act it out and make the decisions," then I have to ask you this:

How invested are you in given outcomes? Or how invested are you that they make certain decisions, along the way, that lead to the crisis/climax that you hope to see? Be honest with yourself - consider the geographic locales, the emotional circumstances, and the character-abilities featured in the climax of a given story arc, and think about how much of that you have "locked in" many sessions before you get there.

Here's what I am seeing: your long-term concepts of the Point and the Payoff are not corresponding to within-session decisions that the players have to make. In Forge terms, there's no Premise for them to grab onto and care about during play itself.

So they travel through situation to situation, scene to scene, clue to clue. Effectively, it's corridors and rooms all over again, even if we're talking about NPC to NPC, or alley to skyscraper, or ship journey to overland journey. Oh, it's all a "story." It all makes sense to you.

But here's the problem with that - it means, when all is said and done, that the climax points for you are not the climax points for them. They haven't experienced the buildup and the coming-together events the same way you have. They have been through them, but did not "get" them as such; they were opening doors and looking up and down corridors, because - during play - that's all there was to do.

Anyway, that's my reading of the situation. If I am completely off-base, now's the time to tell me, and I'll stop. If I'm on target, to some extent, though, then let me know ... I have tons of points and options for you to consider, from my experience.

Last point: tell me, are you experiencing "crisis-escalation"? As in, during the first story arc, the bad guys robbed a bank; in the second, they threatened the city with a bomb; in the third, they precipitated an international war; in the fourth, they invaded from outer space; in the fifth, they unravelled the very fabric of time and space ...

(Note: I know the examples are specific to superhero/thrillers. The content isn't the point; it's the escalation that I'm asking you about.)

Best,
Ron

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Simon,

I had just started typing a reply, when Ron got on line and his reply appeared.  Since I agree with where he's going, I'll let him handle the question of "Who's story is it?"

I'll add this, however:

There's a terrific line in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Indy, after he escapes from a sealed Egyptian tomb, tells his companions to meet him in a nearby city, where he'll arrive after stealing the ark back from a Nazi convoy.

One of his companions ask how he's going to steal the ark back.

Indy replie, "I'm making this up as I go along."

For the kind of play you seem to be reaching for, so should your players.  And so should you.

The players should have a goal that matters, or some issue they are trying to resolve that matters.  (Indy is obsessed with long burried things and wants the ark.)  He tries one means of success, and then... Always... Meets failure... And then tries a means of success...  And then meets failure....  and so on, until the final beat of the movie, when ultimate success or failure is met.  (Indy actually fails.  He does not get the ark.  But he loses the ark completely. End of movie.  But he gets the girl, and that's something, too.)

The questions at stake are: Are you willing to let the players' making it up as they go along lead the story?  Are you willing to respond to their choices instead of hoping they'll guess and respond to your choices?

In Raiders, Indy finds the Ark.  The GM (which in a movie is the collective work of the writer, the director, the actor, the set director, all of them, conspiring to keep the movie interesting), think, "Well, the movie's over if we don't keep it from him," so they have the Nazi's show up and seal him in a tomb.  Now Indy has to escape, cause the Ark is outside the tomb and Indy is inside.  

So he comes up with a clever desperate means of escape.  And he sees them loading the plane with fuel to fly the Ark out to Cairo.  So he goes to steal the plane.  Well, he fails at this.  (It was his choice to do this, and now there are fresh consequences.)  The plane blows up, and the Nazis shift their plan to move the ark by truck.  

Indy has the conversation quoted above with his friends, then steals a horse and races after the truck.

And so on.

Indy is driving the story with his ambitions and actions.  The "world" of the movie provides fresh problems in response to his choices.  Are you willing to do this for your players.  (You might be already, but it sounds like you're not.)

*****

A note about movies, RPGS and improvisation:

Some will whine at the above discourse: "So, the actors are making up their lines?!" they'll ask with mock surprise.

Well, sometimes, but that's not the point.  A movie or a novel is polished, of course, and the choices at lined up to make the tale cohesive. But the truth is, and this is a vital truth, all of it, each piece is made up along the way.  The screenwriter, for example, certainly didn't know the whole thing the moment he got his check to write it.  He sat down, say, and outlined it.  Well, guess what, team?  Outlining is making it up as you go along.  In that moment of creation, what did not exist before now exists.

In this way, the writer has Indy find the tomb with the ark and thinks, "Jesus, I'm only half way through this script.  He can't have it yet.  Hmmm.  Okay.  Let's say the Nazi's find him.  Okay, what do they do....?"

And then he comes up with the next problem.  He may not be scripting yet, but he's certainly writing.  Because he's letting his character move forward, succeed, fail, succeed, fail.

That is the moment of improvisation.  Not, perhaps, when the actor speaks, but somwhere along the line a moment of improvisation did happen.  (And note, sometimes it does happen when the actors speak.  When Indy shoots the swordsman rather than fighting him, that came up on the spot.  Ford was sick with some stomach thing, and they decided to cut a choreographed fight and let Indy off the hook with a simple gun shot.  A great moment, made up on the spot.

Yes, we recieve the information complete and whole, already polished as audience members or readers of books.  But the act of creation is always, when good, fresh and made up at differenent stages of creation.

We should remember that our aspiration for certain kinds of play is actually rooted in those moments of "making it up as you go along," not in delivering the finished, polished product.

For a variety of reasons, many GMs who want "story" in their game are trying to create a polished product to deliever to their players.  This leads into an Impossible Thing Before Breakfast discussion, but that's not my concern right now. My concern is finally owning up to what kind of activity the GM and players want.  If the GM wants to deliver a polished story but wants the players to participate in the creation of it, or the players want to be handed a polished story, but get frustrated when they're not actually participating in it, there's going to a problem.  (Illusionism and other isms, handle this, if that's what the gang wants, I'm not talking about that.)

If the crew really wants people to participate in making story, everyone at the table is responsible for taking the risk of making it up as they go along.

This is not how RPG players have usually qualified play.  And, fine for that. But maybe we need different expectations of what "play" are.  Because if people's appetites are not being met, maybe its because a different  diet is called for.  Remember that the definition of game is not only competition, but "entertainment" and "pastime."  And in this respect, sitting around making up a story is still a game.

I'm not saying this approach is better. Nor for everyone.  I am saying that if people want more active engagement on the part of the players with "story," "catharsis" and so on, the issue might be not a matter of patching the current style of play, but looking at the root assumptions of play.  To give up the desire to "deliver" a polished tale, but creating the circumstances of making one up, rough as it is, on the spot.

This would require more sharing of narrative responsibility at the table, more give and take between the PC players and the GM, and a delight in discovering what has happened after the moment of creation rather than anticipating the delight of delivering the story.

In short: there is the delight of being a reader or audience member receiving the tale, or the delight of being the writer.  Both are fun, in different ways for different reasons.  But each is a completely different activity and requires different expectations and rules of action to do well.

So, to answer the question asked in this thread's title, "Yes, story-arc and open ended, scenarioless play are possible," but it requires a different kind of play, a different set of actions, and a different set of assumptions about what actions are fun.

Take care,
Christopher

[Ian Charvill]

Yet the audience of a TV show may have no more information than the characters in it, yet we still debate about what we'd do in the same situation. That's one of the major motivations for getting into roleplaying in the first place. In B5 the audience has no more meaningful information about what's going on wiht the Vorlons, or the VP's plot to take over the government than the characters do. Nor do they have any more information on which to base a preference/dislike for any of the various alien species.

Which is an important point: are your players and audience or co-authors?  Your posts seem to indicate the former, but I don't think you've made it explicit yet.

Gonna leave this at that, Ron and Christopher have pretty meaty posts which give you more than enough to respond to.

[GB Steve]

I'm playing in this game. I'll try to be honest, but I'll also be frank.

The game is actually going as well as it ever has at the moment, or at least it did during the last session.

There are a couple of problems with the game at the moment, some related to the story arc, some not.

You might have noticed, but we are pretty much completely ignoring the story arc. At the moment we are dealing with a fuck-up from one of the characters, Vanaxis, that came about due to my PC getting him to do a bum deal. Much of the game so far has been some kind of competition between the players/characters to see what idiotic thing we can get Vanaxis to do next.

There are a couple of reasons I can see why we do this:
1) It's easy to do, Vanaxis' player can't help jumping for the bait and consequently it is funny. Vanaxis' player is really, when it boils down to it, a powergamer. Unless he gets toys and cool powers, and mainly his own way, he sulks. This way he stays in the limelight, actually sulks less and we can all have a joke at his expense. It's not big, it's not clever, but it is fun.

2) We don't have enough to go on for the main story arc, everyone seems so much more powerful than us, that we are staying out of their way. Sure we are finding out titbits here and there, making a few contacts and so on, but we just don't feel strong enough to make any kind of power play. As such, the plot arc seems dominated by NPCs and we best keeping to the sidelines. We can try and pick up the pieces after they've had a go at each other. This seems to be the most sensible thing for us to do. It might appear otherwise to you, but this is how it appears to us.

Finally there is a serious rules problem, well two actually. I've had a few breaks and everytime I've played the system has changed. It takes at least two sessions for me to understand how it works. This always leads to arguments and misuderstandings. Vanaxis' player in particular gets very upset over this kind of thing. So, WRITE THE RULES DOWN! It's easy to do and would save a lot of bother.

Second, the vague nature of the skills is really getting to people (it's HW in case you don't know). Everytime an NPC tries something their skill seems to fit the job perfectly. Many times when we try a new skill/power we get a big minus because you don't have the same understanding of the power as we do. Now I'm not saying that this means you are stiffing us, I don't believe that at all. What I'm saying is WRITE THE RULES DOWN! Then at least we'll know where we stand.

If this sounds like a tragic waste of time, it isn't. You've done a lot of work on this game and, more importantly, I'm enjoying playing it, even if my character is periferal to the action.

Cheers,

GB Steve

[iago]

I use the story arc model, lots.  I divided my Amber game into four arcs as a particular example.

Firstly when we switch from one story arc to another, there's often dissatisfaction that the other story arc has not been fully resolved.

... possibly because, as implied later in your post, you cram a lot of events into the end of the arc.  You need to give time for response, for one -- and I believe someone else has already suggested you string events out throughout the game.

As well, you should make some peace with allowing the response to the end of the prior arc carry over into the next one.

I had some pretty clean arcs, but they aggregated.  You use B5 as an example.  The shadows showed up in every arc.  They were something that built up bit by bit.  But I'll stop this paragraph here, as I don't want to insult you by assuming that you're not carrying events over...

GM, what are we suposed to do?'. Is saying 'Well, that's realy up to you!' a fair answer for me to give?

Well, if you're going for an arc structure, that suggests you have a strong notion of story.  And frankly, when doing that, I think you have an obligation to keep events and intents external to the players in constant motion.  You tell them it's up to them, sure, but you also have to have something that's moving and happening behind the scenes that if they dither for, say, longer than 10-15 minutes of play-time, intrudes and limits their range of options.  This tends to send the message, "Make decisions or they'll get made at you," which with my playgroup at least (who were pretty strongly self-starting, I'll admit) worked out really well.

Thirdly the players have been given some general goals. They're pathfinding in a city, in preparation for it's annexation. Thy've been given very broad autonomy in how they go about this (who they ally with/assassinate/subvert/destabilise), and this is leading to a lot of 'What are we supposed to do next?' situations.

Again, some external force is necessary if they're stalling.  Whoever sent them ahead should be establishing some sort of regular "screen presence", even if it's in the form of letters received at drop boxes with the next mission in it.  They're working for someone; great -- have that someone give them work.

I had a motto as a GM.  "If the game starts and you do not shortly have more to do than you can manage, I am not doing my job."  I applied the rule mercilessly to my Amber game, and the players have told me it created a story that constantly rewarded their investment of time, so I think it's got legs.

Has anyone else had experience of running a campaign in this way, or come up against similar kinds of problems?

I think I anticipated these kinds of problems in advance.  I also anticipated the problem of players feeling railroaded, so I tried to strike a middle balance.

The crux of the issue with a "strong GM plot" game, in my mind, is hitting the middle point between giving the players too many options (causing befuddled stagnation) and giving the players no options (causing frustrated berailroadment).

If I had to break down my method, overall, it'd go like this:

- Work out your 'inevitabilities', key points in every session's plot that more or less will happen along a given path.

- Put your inevitabilities on the clock.  Make it a flexible clock, but never skip something unless the players have taken proactive measures to cut it off completely.  This creates an external force that motivates the characters and limits choice.

- Be utterly flexible about the "details" that fill in the spaces between inevitabilities.  

- Put problems in front of players and pair those problems with at least a couple suggested solutions.  Don't form expectations about how the problems are to be solved, though; players are sufficiently inventive to address this themselves.

- Be merciless about consequences both good and bad directly carrying forward from choices characters have made in the game, and whereever possible, tie those consequences back into your Real Story. (* This may be particularly key, as I see from one of your players that the story that has the focus of the players right now isn't tied to the arc at all, it's tied to the fallout of a PC's choices.  If you're not making efforts to tie these elements back into your Real Story, you're cheating yourself of an opportunity to buy some player investment in your story)

I'm certain there's more, but it's severely late for me given the time I got to bed last night.  Pardon any rambledrifting in the above.

[simon_hibbs]

Regarding player co-authorship.

All I can say is the game has gone in several different directions to those I envisioned at the start of the campaign. I had a pretty good idea of how things would have worked out had the player not been present, and many of those series of events has been knocked off track.

As Steve says, the party are currently dealign with the consequences of a completely unforeseen choice by one of the players. However the people the players are interacting with and the reasons those poeple are doign what they are doign have always been there in the game background. They're a bunch of people the players would eventualy have come into contact with, but probably in a very different way.

My feelign is that the game is going in exciting and interesting directions, primarily becaue I honestly don't know how everything will work out. It's not so much that there are events coming up that will be interesting, there are decision points. Some of those decision points have already been met, but others are still to come.

For example the players are pathfinding for an invasion of the city.  In the official timeline the city falls to the Lunar invaders, but in this campaign it is entirely possible that the invasion will not be successful, or that the city will poeacefuly capitulate, or that the city will negotiate neutral 'open city' status, or that another force might take over the city before the Lunars can invade, or that the city will collapse into anarchy, etc, etc. I have no idea which of those outcomes will occur, because I don't know what the players will do next. I can't wait to find out though.

Regarding the Indy analogy, I think it's apt. Two thirds of the way way through the film Indy realy get's cheesed off that every time he almost gets the Ark, some unexpected obstacle keeps jumping up in front of him. That's where the game is now.


Simon Hibbs

[Mike Holmes]

Simon,

What it seems to me that people are saying, and I'm agreeing tentatively, is to play in such a way as to support Narrativism. Do you understand the difference between that and what you are doing? The question is not whether you know the outcome of the situation, but whether the players feel that they are creating that outcome. There's a subtle difference. Just because they are making decisions that take the game in unexpected directions doesn't mean that these decisions are the ones they're interested in.

To some extent the decisions themselves do not make any difference. It's being given the opportunity to choose what decisions to make that's of paramount importance. Thus, if Bob wants his character to make a decision about whether or not to kill Baron Blort, but the decision he's given instead is whether or not to storm the city, then Bob isn't going to care that he gets to make the decision.

Now, this is not to say that the GM shouldn't have control over the situation to an extent. In fact it's fairly neccessary in Hero Wars. But the point is that all the decisions that you force to come to a head should be things that are concerns of the character that the player is interested in. Note the subtelties. It's not just OK for it to seem that the character is interested in the decisions presented, the player has to be interested.

Thus, yes, all characters are interested in surviving an attack. But to the player, this may be the weakest of conflicts. To the player, perhaps the decision to give away a small token of esteem to a new aquaintance is of critical importance. The way you can tell is to follow the player's cues. They'll inform you of what's important to them. And this is how they remain empowered. The GM follows their lead, rather than the opposite.

Abandon the "story arc" idea entirely. Story will still happen, and everyone will be happier. Even the powergamer. He'll also feel that he's been put back on an open playing field, which is what bugs him. He knows when he's being told what must and must not be important to him. Which is what the story arc does.

Just some thoughts.

Mike

[clehrich]

Setting aside my soap opera article on the RPG Theory forum (plug plug), I both agree and disagree with Mike's remarks.  But I think we're on the same page.

Mike says, "Abandon the 'story arc' idea entirely" in order to play in a Narrativist manner.  I'd put this differently: make story arc the players' responsibility, and remove it from your own goals.  That is, if you want such arcs to happen, discuss that with the players and encourage them to make it happen through their play.  But don't enforce it upon them.  Story arc is their job -- don't steal it.

That's only one way to play, of course, but it might help resolve some of your problems, because the transitions among threads and arcs get driven by player interest and focus, rather than your planning and preparation.

Use the force, Luke.  Let go.  :)

[Mike Holmes]

We agree, Chris. You just said it better.

I'm still laughing about the SW reference. :-)

Steve, does that make sense to you? Are you a Narrativist in Cuthuloid clothing?

Mike