[D&D] I quit DMing.

[Calithena]

Quick note to Will -

If you go #3, which it sounds like you are, don't think it's just going to be all 'make it up at the table'. It's less prep in some ways, but you still need to know e.g. who NPCs are, what's between them, what they want. For some games you need to know more than that too.

I recommend DitV as a good transitional game because it tells you more or less exactly what prep you need to do.

- C/S

[michael lingner]

hi, to me, it sounds like you have done quite well at DM-ing D&D for your friends. and  the forge-folks have done a great job of providing you with some great food for thought as well as resource matrerial. 

i realise that you may want to take a breather from DM-ing. that is fine. we all have to take care of ourselves. still.., it seems to me that you are quite a thoughtful & thourough GM & your friends will no doubt miss your GM-ing.

i know that i may have missed quite a bit of this tread because i have problems reading extened works on screen [dyslexia?.., who knows & as usual who isn't telling]. still, i want you to considder  a few points.

1] table-top RPGaming is, to me, primarilly an improvisational endevour which can be acted out in various styles of play. to me it seems that D&D's mechanic is essentially simulationist in its structure -but- game-ist players can do quite well playing in this system. narativist players  have more problems achieving their play-goals w/in the D&D system as it actually exists & as it is intended to be played.

2] what style of play do you & your troop of gamers preffer? is there a mechanic which facilitates the style(s) of play that everyone is seeking?  if so, move to that kind of mechanic, while keeping the color/setting of D&D..., if everyone like that setting. also the pre-play as wella as the in-play handling-time of D&D is significant. you may wish to opt for a system which provides you with a more aerodynamic flow.., both inside & outside of your rpg session's actual play time.

3] social contract, transperancy &  the GMs burden. all too often it is seen as the duty of the GM to entertain the players of the game. all too ofthen this is an unstated duty. i feel that this is an unfair burden. in improv acting everyone on stage [regardless of their role] is equally accountable for the success of the skit at hand. no one person holds the fate of the skit in their hands. it is a joint effort. so too it is with rpg play. we are all responcable for the level of success/fun in our rpg-session.

i suggest that you try giving everyone playing the opportunity to guide the sessions play by honestly discussing where things should go next [ = what conflicts & scenes to address]. you may even experiment & dispence with the contrivance of forced mystery, by say, abandoning the idea of character secrets [ = there can well be secrets between characters but none between players].  there is a distinction between players' & characters' & their relative realities here.

if we open up this knowledge to all the players gathered arround the rpg-table we all can intentionally play upon the dynamics of the internal conflicts of the characters in our story. doing so we can play up the irony, pathos &/or comedy at hand & that can be very fun.

i hope that these snippets have been of help to you. this reply is opinion. so take what is useful & disgard the rest.  ~cloud

[contracycle]

contracycle,

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.

As it happens, making up names has become something of a learned skill, so its not that big a deal in practice.

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.

Well unfortunately I find both these things aesthetically displeasing. From my perspective if the players don't remember an NPC's name then that NPC doesn't really matter to them.  Thats fine for bystanders and whatnot but if they interact with them with any frequency, and the players are paying attention, it seems to me they should want a name as a hook on which to hang all the stuff they know about that person.

Retconning is also something I dislike, and which presents problems.  I have heard of people taping their own games so they can double-check the statements they made; or immediately doing a brain-dump onto paper.  I have found myself scribbling hasty notes to myself about some on-the-fly ruling which I am aware is not properly rationalised and is going to need further work.  And how can there be any challenge when the neither the past nor the future have a strong relationship with the present?

[Sydney Freedberg]

What I'm wondering is how people are coming up with so many details that (a) they can't remember them all and (b) they are all going to come up again. In my group, 90% of the dialogue around the table is about what a relatively small number of major characters (PCs and NPCs both) are doing and saying; yes, it's important to remember who's mad at whom, for example, but I'm never going to have cause to paraphrase the dialogue again, let alone quote it verbatim. (In fact, it can be fun to roleplay how my NPC's recollection of what was said is totally different from the players' recollection, in of course a self-serving and denial-laden way: "Oh, yes, you totally promised to support my bid for the throne..."). Likewise, there is a relatively small number of major locations where most of the action takes place, and I tend to describe them in atmospheric terms -- "the temple is dark, the walls lined with desecrated statues of the gods, with dark streaks of something foul-smelling on the floor" -- rather than in detailed terms of what goes where (and if I do, I sketch a map and keep it).

I suppose if I had a large number of minor characters that didn't make a particular impression on me, or lots of detailed locations I didn't have a chance to sketch out, this would be a lot harder. But I don't see the need for so many details.

In this context, let me recommend structured improvisation of setting elements using algorithms.

[Sydney Freedberg]

In that same thread, there's also some great advice from Larry Lade on how to unclutter your game of unneeded detail and get to the action:

For years I've suffered through so much of this style of play. "Okay, you're in town. What do you want to do?" This simple phrase unfailingly leads to three hours of suck. (Oddly, it's almost always exactly that quantity of time before someone gets fed up and demands a railroad.) Go to the bar. Have pointless interactions with NPCs. Go SHOPPING. It's pretty funny how your example shows how this transcends the fantasy genre.

What's weird is that a lot of gamers have come to expect that this is the right way to run a roleplaying game, because anything else is railroading and disempowering the players. A lot of us got into this hobby in our younger days, when our time wasn't as precious and squeezing an hour or two of genuine enjoyment out of a fourteen-hour marathon session seemed reasonable. Fun being something that "had to" emerge from an unstructured situation.

And, hey, maybe this style of play can still work with a tightly focused Sim agenda. But if this happens under an attempt to focus on Narrative (as was the industry trend in the late-80s early-90s) you get dysfunction.

In particular, the tools that you must understand to get Narr to work are bangs and aggressive scene framing. Remember, Story Now. Cut out all the "You walk to the bar. The city is blah blah blah, and there's some blah blah alleys. On the way, you see a blind man asking for change, do you want to talk to him?" stuff. That's bullshit. They want to go to the bar, you're at the bar now. Get the players in on the scene framing. "Okay, you want to go to the bar? What kind of bar is it? Who's there?" And then you whip out the Bang, and now they're involved in something. They've gotta come up with some creative contribution.

If you can generate these sorts of provocative situations, then you're already addressing a Premise.

[Filip Luszczyk]

contracycle,

Well unfortunately I find both these things aesthetically displeasing.

Cool. Obviously our personal fun priorities are exactly opposite.

Sorry for being aesthetically displeasing

[Rob Alexander]

Will,

After the discussions in this thread, do you have any plans to try GMing again? As you suggested yourself earlier on, it might be worth trying some games that directly support (or, indeed, require) a more improvisational play style. Even if you don't end up playing any of these regularly, they may be valuable as an occasional practice tools for you. I, for example, am expecting to go back to a more traditional rule system in the longer term, but I'm using TSOY for the moment to help my development in this style.

An alternative would be to try a mini-campaign with an agreed length and scope. For example, I'm currently toying with the idea of a short campaign, similar to yours in that it's based around a war. This would involve some stipulations about scope agreed ahead of time (for example "You will remain within the valley", "You will concern yourselves primarily with influencing the course of the war", and "You will, at any time, be fighting for one of the major factions (although you can change sides)"), and (perhaps more significantly) a general agreement that events will conclude within six to ten sessions.

I'd also very much like to hear how your players feel about the game you ran and about some of the suggestions raised in this thread. If you're willing to share this, could you break it down by player (who said what)? For example, you mentioned that Nik seems to have some attitudes that conflict with this style of play - I'd be very interested to hear his view on the matter.


rob

[Rob Alexander]

Gareth,

Well unfortunately I find both these things aesthetically displeasing.

Ok, this presents a problem. I suspect that this kind of strong concern for continuity and memory of detail is a real stumbling block for the style of open-ended play we're discussing in this thread. Personally, I'm quite willing to play fast and lose with this kind of concern if it lets me run flexible, open-ended games.

Can anyone chime in with a success story of integrating these kind of concerns with open-ended play?

(Retconning, running sessions that contradict each other, doing flashbacks or "past adventures" with inadequate regard for continuity are actually quite attractive to me. I haven't had a chance to do any of this yet, but after worrying a lot in my youth about this kind of thing there's a feeling of exhilaration at being free of these constraints.)

Retconning is also something I dislike, and which presents problems.  I have heard of people taping their own games so they can double-check the statements they made; or immediately doing a brain-dump onto paper.

If this is the level for attention to detail that you need, then I'm not surprised that your rolegames are frustrating and unsuccessful. You're really pushing towards the limits of what's practical in the form. Rolegames happen in (pseudo-) real time and they don't naturally provide a permanent record of events. Compared to many related forms (such as simming, or single-author prose writing), this is one of their weakest points.

And how can there be any challenge when the neither the past nor the future have a strong relationship with the present?

We're not talking about retconning everything and anything, we're just talking about using enough retconning to make this (desirable) style of play fluid and possible.


rob

[Rob Alexander]

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.

Ok, I can relate to that. What does "never go anywhere" involve in practice, though? For example, how did the Celtic game come to an end? Did you pull the plug or did your players demand it?

Am I right in thinking that you've got an established player group (who are the ones that are tired of this)?

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.

Ok... what sort of time scale are we talking about for "doing nothing"? An hour? A whole session? Multiple sessions?

Were there NPCs in the setting who might have caused trouble for the PCs? Or at least provide trouble that the PCs might have become involved in? For example, in the wake of the bandit attacks one of the older NPC warriors might have challenged the chieftan (or whatever) for leadership of the tribe, forcing the PCs to take sides. This the kind of thing I'm trying to do in my games, have NPCs do things that put the PCs in difficult situations (if not always successfully - I'll try to find time to post an AP of my last TSOY session).

And what was the length of the campaign run? Was it indefinite?

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

Agreed. Although of course the odd session that is a little dull and frustrating, or that has to stop early, is
something that can be dealt with. I can remember, in the past, discarding whole campaigns because the first session
or two seemed to go badly... when what I perhaps needed to do was to experiment with small-to-medium changes until things started to work ok.


rob

[Sydney Freedberg]

I'd really love to hear from Gareth (contracycle) in some detail on how he games and the problems he encounters with ensuring consistent worlds; if you want to take that to another thread, Gareth, please just post a link here so we all know where to follow you.

[Thenomain]

Gareth,

Well unfortunately I find both these things aesthetically displeasing.

Ok, this presents a problem. I suspect that this kind of strong concern for continuity and memory of detail is a real stumbling block for the style of open-ended play we're discussing in this thread. Personally, I'm quite willing to play fast and lose with this kind of concern if it lets me run flexible, open-ended games.

Can anyone chime in with a success story of integrating these kind of concerns with open-ended play?

In short, yes.  In long, I hope to keep on-topic.  If not, I don't intend to, so bear with me.

Our gaming group still plays AD&D 2e.  We love it, even going into town.  Even shopping can be an adventure.  Our DM uses modules and reference books extensively (we keep to Forgotten Realms) and has a fine knack of turning what could be a boring excursion into a plot hook or a complication.  "I should look for a +2 dagger" becomes "A man in a hurry comes to your inn room and says, 'Here, here, only five hundred gold.  Take it!'"  A poorly described fair maiden, originally a module plot-hook reward (you know, "Rescue me and my family will give you each a hundred gold!"), becomes the entry to political intrigue among mercantile families, and a marriage at the end of the chronicle.  Everybody had names, and somebody always wrote them down.

Using pre-established material helps, no doubt, but he wings a lot of it, too.  There's no reason to give a couple of low-level guards from the Giant series of modules a personality, but we kept them well through to establishing our own keep.  The players serve as group memory (sometimes to the annoyance of the DM) and as much of random idea generators as the DM himself.  If there's a plot hole, we help justify it (though we've never resorted to flashbacks more complex than, "Hey, does this explain it?").  If there's a history glitch, we catch it early.  I think it's mainly because the players were all in detail-oriented jobs.

I'm not sure if this suits as "open-ended play", but it was open-ended from our perspective.  It was certainly open-ended enough to keep the game loose, but not so much that anything felt made-up or chaotic.

The most boring thing we did was rebuild that castle, by the way.  Eventually we just hired an NPC and told him to see that reasonable things were done.  The DM was just as bored as we were, so reasonable things were done.  That it was expensive meant a shift in the game, which was just as fun as, well, shopping.

[Grex]

Regarding Sean's comments, another game I often see pushed as a lower-prep, faster-play alternative to 3E is Savage Worlds. I've got the SW book, and it looks good, but I've not played it yet. It's structurally similar to 3E (including, for example, the strong encouragement to use minis for combat) but there are far fewer rules (the combat rules in the 3.5E PHB are, what, 60 pages of small type?).

At the risk of going off-topic, I can certainly attest that SW is a great alternative to D&D 3.x. While completely different from d20 rules-wise, the feel is very D&D-ish. Plus, it is very easy to prep for, which is a big sell for me. Over at dragonsfoot.org, there's even a free sup for SW called Advanced Dungeons and Savages, which is... well, you can guess what it is. It ain't half bad either.

[Sydney Freedberg]

SW = Savage Worlds?

[Rob Alexander]

SW = Savage Worlds?

Yes.

[Will Grzanich]

Hi all,

Wow...okay, there's a lot to reply to.  I went out of town for a few days and haven't had time to deal with this, but I promise I'll get back to y'all soon, hopefully later today or tomorrow.  Thanks! 

-Will