A new (and surprising) update about my continuing adventures with 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons. For those of you not familiar with my game's history, you should check the following links. The basic run-down is thus: I'm running Narrativist 3E game, possibly vanilla; we play on-line via mIRC chat for a couple hours once a week. We also use a variant of TROS' Spiritual Attribute system in order to derive experience points for characters, and supposedly to help drive the game.

Previous threads in this series can be found here, in descending order (newest first): Frustrations with 3E, Thank God for NPCs: More Frickin' 3E, Pseudo-TROS SA's in D&D, Braving the Wrath of Dav, Narrative 3E: Real Time & Effects on Play, "No Myth" with D&D, More Player-Driven 3E, Raven's 3E Game, and Non-silly D&D.

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The last session of the game we held ended in a frustration that seemed insurmountably huge at the time; since then, reflection has made me realize there were other factors at work, and the situation itself was little more than a molehill -- a typical blip on the radar that my own reaction to increased in apparent magnitude.

The situation in game was as follows: the elven outcast and the royal-blooded priestess had found themselves in the underworld after a plainly railroaded set-up getting them there. Me, bad. They found themselves in battle with skeletal warriors loyal to the Lord of the Dead, and then the situation became worse. The priestess became trapped inside their ranks, the elf (who had just recently pulled free of their clutches) turned around and dove back into the fray, hoping to help her out. He was cut down by a series of critical hits done by the three enemies he faced. The priestess, meanwhile, spent six rounds protected by her Sanctuary spell, until it expired along with her in the ensuing attack.

(Note, I do not mention the fate of the warrior woman here as her player was out of the game for a few weeks due to illness.)

Now, I could have (perhaps even should have, given that they expected me to do so) pulled their bacon from the fire with various plausible dues ex machina, but I said, "So, should I just let your characters bite it? Or do you want to keep playing them?"

That vaguely innocent statement led to what transpired thereafter. Maybe the curtain fell down when I said those words, maybe pressure had been building from the start of the TROS XP experiment, maybe they were not comfortable with the game occuring in the underworld (having essentially been forced there by me), but everyone (and that includes me) left the game very frustrated with the whole situation.

This led to an e-mail from me about the situation to the player of the elf, who is also the only other player who has GMed. In that, besides detailing various thoughts I had about what we could do about his character's specific situation and how it ultimately should be his choice, I brought up a number of frustrations I had been dealing with as a gamer, as a player in his previous game (and elsewhere), and a few points about where I thought was failing as GM.

One of the things I had said in the e-mail was:

Basically, I see my job as GM to expose the characters to possible crisis points and let you shape the story through how you choose to react to those events; heck, even further, you should be setting up the events you want to see happen, that you want to enter crisis or be resolved in play /right now/ (as opposed to some unspecificed time later). In fact, this is supposed to be the function of the XP Award system we switched to: you'll note every one of each person's Awards is a possible crisis or conflict, meaning that those are supposed to be the adventures (rather than any ideas I have).

I'm sorry to hear that things have been so frustrating for you. I'm very pleased to see you running Narrativist D&D. One of my observations about player-driven play is that, in a traditional game (one GM, multiple players) it doesn't 'really exist' as an absolute.

Because the GM is running the world there will always be competing forces of plausibility and the GM's own desires (which have every right to get met as much as the players, even in an ostinsibly 'player driven game') to contend with.

Having highly-motivated, self-directed players still puts a strong responsibility on the GM and I think your post nailed it. People have dismissed concerns about SA's that lead party memebers in different directions--but clearly it can be a real problem even with competent, willing, players who are not simply hide-bound to the concept of a party (I don't know if that's what happened here exactly, but I expect the character simply leaving the group to 'go get some Xp' would've tasted a bit sour).

That isn't to say that I don't like the idea--just that I don't think it's commonly recognized how hard it can be to make it work with a group of any size.

I'd be interested in seeing the corespondence.

-Marco

what is "Group-prep" Sounds interesting. I'd like to know more.

I'm not entirely sure what Greyorm had in mind, but from context it sounds like meta-gamey discussion about what people want this game to be about: themes, situations, characters, that kind of thing, probably in the early stages of getting the game together. If everybody is upfront about what they want, it becomes easier to focus.

For example: in my experience playing D&D, everybody comes up with some weirdo character, and then the GM has to move heaven and earth to explain why they stick together, and so forth. But if the players agree at the outset to play a band of cutthroat pirates, in theory you'll get more compatible character concepts and a tighter narrative. This may or may not suit your tastes.

Some games incorporate this phase into the rules. Ars Magica has the players team up to build their headquarters, which is a major setting. Nobilis leads the players to design a pocket dimension and a meta-god, both of which are major aspects to the game.

There's probably a lot of ideas about this; I'd love to hear more. Or maybe I got it completely wrong!

Hi Raven,

I don't know if you remember my experiment with "Ties" as a SA inspired D&D xp mechanic, but that worked out really well for me. I haven't had a chance to try it for more than a one-shot, but I think it could still stay solid for long term play, the only issue being (perhaps) differences in xp/leveling by the various players based on how proactive they can get with it.

Chris

I wrote an XP system called Character Bonds for a bit of Narrative drift for D&D. It might be useful to you.

I've only run three games with it so far and I'm still watching how it's going to work out. So far, players have used their bond points to establish useful coincidences and to influence die rolls widely for more narrative control.

Because I give only a base 400XP per game session (not including Bond rewards), they're starting to figure out how to pull in their bonds for larger rewards.

I am sorry to everyone that I have not yet replied to any of you regarding your comments on this session. We left on our holiday "vacation" (though, for me, visiting relatives is no "vacation") shortly after I'd posted, and I started my latest semester of school shortly after we returned. I want to thank everyone for their replies, however!

Quick responses:
Marco, soon as I get permission and have the time, I'll put the transcripts somewhere for perusal, or if not, I'll just send them direct to you, if that's alright?

James, Jasper has it right, so "what he said." If you want more in-depth detail of the process, let me know, and I'll try to help you out!

Chris, I definitely recall your experiment with the Ties, and did bring it up with my players as a possibility. There was only expressed interest from one player, but I may bring those into this game in place of the pre-defined Character Awards we had tried to use -- just to add flexibility and player-definition to each session. Might help me become more reactive to the players as GM.

Adam, very cool. I'll hand the link out to my players and ask for feedback, see what way they would like to go with the handling of awards for this campaign.