Hi all! I've been reading these boards like crazy since discovering them a couple of weeks ago and want to say a huge THANKS to all posters for taking the time to share their experiences and insights. It's totally changed my perspective on RPGs and has gotten me really excited to try a fresh approach with my group. I do have a few questions for everyone, but first, some background...

1. The group consists of myself (Steve), my best friend (Ted) and two other guys (Tim and Dave) that we've been gaming with for close to a year and who have become friends as well. Lately my girlfriend (Shari) has joined us along with an old (male) friend of hers (Kelly). We are all 30-something and all have a lot of gaming experience except for Shari who is new to the whole thing, but excited about it.

2. We are playing an original system of mine (working title: Quest!) that has been a work-in-progress for the past year or so (and has elements of various other original systems I've noodled around with over the years). My goal in forming the group originally was to playtest the system and various mechanics that I wanted to introduce. So for the past year each session has included a decent amount of "tech talk" over pizza about various aspects of the system, what's working and what's not, etc. There have also been plenty of times that we'd go off on a design discussion tangent after a combat or other in-game event.

3. The core group (Ted, Tim, Dave and myself) know each other very well and we all have a very similar, very witty sense of humor, so we tend to make a lot of jokes and play off each other whenever we get together. It's hilarious and everyone (including Shari and Kelly) enjoy themselves, but it definitely gets in the way of trying to tell a story.

4. The recent introduction of Shari and Kelly has definitely changed the group dynamic, both for better and for worse. Shari is a total newbie and as such, is just about my favorite player since she isn't jaded by everything. She is still scared of goblins and orcs, while the rest of group automatically switches into a "cannon-fodder" mentality. One little creepy description of a room can make her agonize over whether to enter or not, whereas the rest of the guys fall into their "warrior guards the door, thief checks for traps, wizard readies a fireball" mode. I would LOVE to find a way to get the guys closer to where Shari is. Kelly, on the other hand, has become a bit of a problem. He tends to make snide, superior or sarcastic comments both about the adventure/GMing style, and about the actions of the other characters. He is a really nice guy and I don't think it's intentional, so hopefully I can make him aware of his behavior and he'll take steps to correct it.

5. Ted and Dave have HUGE gamist tendencies. Each professes to want more story, but they tend to interrupt/ignore descriptions, dialog, background, etc. get to the "good stuff" (which for them is generally combat and treasure). Tim is an engineer by profession and by natural tendencies. He is definitely a puzzle-solver in every sense, and while he gets into character more than the other two, he is very much into min-maxing his abilities and doing what is most advantageous rather than what is most interesting (from a storytelling standpoint).

Okay, enough background. Here are my questions...

First, how can I help the group to shift their style from gamist to narrativist? Each one has told me that they really want more story and more character interaction. I think that individually I could work them away from their gamist comfort zone, but when they get together they feed off each other and revert back to cracking jokes and crawling dungeons. (Even if there is no dungeon in the adventure, they all have that same mentality of "kill the monster, check for traps, scoop up treasure".)

Second, how can I, as a GM, become a better storyteller? I don't do voices or dialects (although I'd LOVE to learn--anyone know of any resources for that?) and I'm not much of an actor in general. I am a great writer, though, and come up with some great descriptions and written props, but I get very self-conscious when I have to do spoken dialog with the players. I think a big part of that, though, is that I feel I am the only one doing it. Also, how can I best prep for a session that is deliberately non-linear? I improvise fairly well, but I don't enjoy it. What can I do to feel prepared for the inevitable left-turns that will be coming up more and more in a story that the players are building?

Third, how can I make the non-combat parts of the story more fun? After the last session, one of my players said, "Combat's really the only fun thing about RPGs. We need more combat." To which I replied, "Well, what I really think we need is a way to make the non-combat parts of the session more fun. Combat is dangerous and deadly and should scare the wits out of any right-thinking person." What can I do to make environment exploration and NPC interaction more fun?

Thanks in advance and I hope to keep you all posted on our sessions! :)

I'm very excited about the concept of Spiritual Attributes as a vehicle for character-driven stories. I've introduced a similar mechanism so we'll see how that flies.

One of the blessings of working with Gamist players is that they are goal-oriented. This makes the transition you want to make a bit easier, since you can focus on goals to get there.

Regarding your first question, I think a good place to focus is the transition from Gamist goals to Narrativist goals. I would expect your experiment with SAs to provide you a good boost in that direction. In general, I think the idea is to move the players toward creating and pursuing their own goals, as opposed to being handed goals from the outside (i.e. as rewards from the game system). In addition, moving toward a more meta-game set of goals (player goals as opposed to character goals) may also help make your game more player-driven.

Second, I would suggest that improvisation is a skill that improves with use, but that frequently you will need more time to improvise well than what is available at the spur of the moment. As a result, I like to prepare an encounter each session which will come to the PCs, grabbing their attention for a bit to give you time to work out what happens next. This can be a message delivery, a chance meeting, an attack, or whatever else fits your story that can be triggered by something external to the PCs. You can use this same event if the pace gets bogged down or the PCs are stumped for what to do next.

Apart from that encounter, I tend to make it a point not to prepare too far. Doing so, I find, essentially forces non-linearity. I understand the desires and goals of the players and NPCs, and think about the reactions to the PC actions I think are most likely, but I don't ever prepare more than the stuff I think I'll need in one session of play.

The third question I can't answer as well without knowing what you're doing now, but one possibility is that you are treating dialog and exploration as a goal in themselves (because "more RP is good" tends to be a blanket statement people accept without question). Instead, you might emphasize them as tools to acheiving the goals the PCs want.

. . . . . . . -- Eric

PS -- I don't want to imply by holding forth on the topic that I'm a guru of Narrativism or have this GMing thing all figured out, either. I learn something with every new campaign and every new group. I just try not to be too worried about it when I don't get things perfect. Remember: free advice is worth what you pay for it. ;)

I think I may be soon coming into a very similar situation, and this is my immediate feeling:

Don't dive into theory terms right away. Say something like "ya'll seem to want to make a good story in the game, but it doesn't seem to materialize during play." If they agree that there are different, general goals when it comes to rping and it's alot funner to play with the goal everyone's trying to, than start springing some theory terms.

Second, your prompting is important. Explain that if they played in order to express a theme, than a good story is very likely to come along naturally. I think a common misconception is:

Storytelling > Gaming
Gaming = Combat, dungeon crawling
Storytelling = Talking to NPCs, using english accents
Gaming = Exciting
Storytelling = Boring
Exciting > Boring
Storytelling ? Gaming

Do your best to clear up this(Except maybe the Exciting > Boring arguement.)

Soo... here's my initial idea. In their regular game, give them a really narrativistly packed situation that doesn't have an immediate gamist soloution. What I would do, is find out something that they made their characters care about, like an NPC, that doesn't give them any sort of tactical advantage, they just choose to care about that NPC as a part of messing around with their character.

Choose something else that they care about for non-tactical reasons. Make a scenario in game where they have to choose between those two things somehow, like if the two elements were played off from each other. Make it so neither answer benefits their character at all. This is a completely unintereasting Gamist-wise situation, but a powerfull narrativist situation. If they respond well to this they're well on their way. If they don't, try it again, emphasize it more as a chance to make the characters real "protagonists", or speak about it with them alright and see if they think this narrativist thing is for them.

If your players like to crack jokes, I'd say aim for a swashbuckling-style game, try to push for a story involving lots of Irony, which can be funny and story-driving at the same time.

I would say you might want to examine your feelings about Shari as a player abit.

1) If you give her alot of in-game favoritism, that can suck for the rest of the group/her, people who get alot of such favortism are typically called "GM's girlfriends". Funny enough, I've known GMs who were horribly favoring certain players in their group, and yet snubbing somewhat they're real life girlfriends, so the term isn't all that accurate.
(An intereasting amendum to this is, if you make Shari the clear main character/group favorite, what can happen is, she makes all the important decisions in terms of narrativism, and they are pushed into secondary roles of helping Shari along through tactical thinking. If you find that no one else is intereasted in what Narrativism really is or is just incapable at the moment, this could possibly be a good way to work a hybrid. First you should drop the word "Secondary roles" to them and see if they sneer.)


2) Do you love her playstyle for itself or because she's your girlfriend? She sounds really awesome to me, pretty much my dream-player, but that might be because of your favorable description. I know a person that would canidate for a very Shari-style player, and I'd have to admit that I'm attracted to her which colors my vision, but I'm pretty sure I would think that she's my favorite kind of player either way.

3) I'd have to admit I'm at times a very Kelly-ish person in games where I'm dissatisfied. It's even gone as horrible as improvisitational comedy routines. If you find a way to engage him in game, than I'd say that he would proabbly stop acting out.

Anywho... Another big problem seems to be, you saying that the interupt during your backgrounds, descriptions, etc... It might possibly be that you're confusing Narrativist games with games where the GM provides the players with a story, instead of letting them make the story(Or that your players arn't paticularly patient). Try to focus on Story Now. Scenarios involving action, and situations that demand meaningfull interaction from to their character RIGHT NOW. Let them interupt your description of the situation and fly headfirst into solving the answer their way. That can be perfectly good narrativist behavior.

In the game I've just started (using d20 modern) I found that giving characters clear bonuses for cinematic description of their actions helped bring the more Gamist players into the mindset I was shooting for. I haven't delved into theory, either; I was happy enough at first to get the players focused on adding entertainment value to the story we were telling.


I second the idea of Spiritual Attributes. When you provide Gamist players a clear benefit for acting a certain way, they go out of their way to start doing that.

I'm never very good with constructing mechanics for things, so I leave that to other posters. My inclination is to set up a situation in which something complex and difficult arises that goes against the "kill, get stuff, repeat" mentality. Setting aside terminology from GNS, it seems to me that some of these players switch into a comfortable mode, and that you might want to strive to shock them out of it.

Here's what I mean. (Translate the example as appropriate to what you've been doing.) If you think about the old AD&D alignment system, it essentially says that Lawful Good characters who massacre Chaotic Evil orcs are doing good things. But what if you went to some trouble to set up the situation, but also give reason to think that the orcs are actually decent people, with decent lives of their own? I mean, sure, their culture isn't ours (whoever we are), and sure, there may be things we don't like about that culture. But do they all deserve to be butchered for simply being orcs? Can you challenge that?

Shari does the fear thing well; can she empathize equally well? That might make a great place to start. If you want, try cold-cocking them: have them merrily butcher the orcs, then discover a cowering orc-woman with baby; the woman is desperately trying to quiet the baby, and hoping she won't be noticed. She's terrified, and won't listen even if the PC's start behaving more rationally. I'd really want to go all-out on the woman's terror, her tears, her desperate cowering and running-away, the screaming, frightened baby, the woman's running away -- then briefly running back to embrace a butchered male body -- then running desperately again, and so on. Make it hurt. In short, the PC's have just done something of which they should be deeply ashamed, and there's no making it better. In a perfect world, one player should be genuinely stunned and upset by this, if not to extremes perhaps, so that everyone else has a kind of moral guide and compass for seeing their own crimes.

Now what are they going to about it?

Since the gang are in some ways relatively traditional, they may want to go and stomp around changing the situation generally. Okay, so give them obnoxious but officially "good" people who think all orcs should be exterminated. Let the PC's fight them, politically or physically or whatever, and try to stop the brutality. Now you're focused on moral issues, but using whatever comes to hand in PC skills and whatnot to accomplish these goals.

The point is that if you can get the players to see that sometimes a game in which moral issues are central, but in which there aren't obvious right answers, can be more personally and emotionally challenging and stimulating than one in which everything is straightforward hack-n-slash, then you are a loooong way toward developing a more Nar-style group of players.

Good luck!

Chris Lehrich

While I don't know anything about your homegrown system, my first thought was "System Does Matter". Certainly if you're the GM and you're giving them dungeon-crawls, then they're gonna crawl. If you're giving them other challenges, but they still opt for combat as a solution, then it might be the system.

My own experiences with 3e d&d were similar. When my group started out, they were really into roleplaying their way out of conflicts, spending a lot of game time on forming relationships, conspiracies, etc. However, once they got to a certain level of power, because of the way that 3e works, only the superbad and the supernatural became anything remotely a threat to them. From that point, because the system encouraged hacking problems to death with sharp objects, we had a harder and harder time playing the other style of game.

So, it might be a matter of taking a look at your system and putting in some elements that encourage the other style. The SAs might be one way. Another way might be to make combat more dangerous or uncertain. The tricky thing is that putting these kind of major changes into play means that their carefully planned strategies and/or character strenghts and weaknesses might become moot... and Gamists hate that!

If I'm off base, ignore the above. It's mostly me projecting my own problems with my own group on to the world.

clehrich wrote: Shari does the fear thing well; can she empathize equally well? That might make a great place to start. [...] Make it hurt. In short, the PC's have just done something of which they should be deeply ashamed, and there's no making it better. In a perfect world, one player should be genuinely stunned and upset by this, if not to extremes perhaps, so that everyone else has a kind of moral guide and compass for seeing their own crimes.

Pyske wrote: It also sounds very much imposed from the outside. Many players don't want moral ambiguity in their games. Why should the GM impose it? Certainly, I don't have any problem with offering the opportunity to introduce ambiguity, but how do you respond if the PCs reject that ambiguity?

Hi there,

I'd like to address the last two posts by Chris (clehrich) and Eric (Psyke). I think both of you are dead-on, in theoretical terms. What matters, though, is the actual play - which means, of course, the actual people.

I tend toward the outlook that shifts in modes of play, especially gross ones like "Gamist to Narrativist" or similar, are not really amenable to directing. The closest I've seen to that would be a person who perceives certain Creative Agenda tendencies going on, works to cooperate with them, and happily discovers that the whole group (or most of it) was already primed to go that way and just needed a little confirmation among themselves to do so.

The opposite result is clearly fully possible: the CA tendency turns out to be either a misperception in the first place, or so unwanted by other members of the group that the efforts toward it are themselves disruptive to play.

In both cases, all the theory-talk is highly secondary. Nearly all of it, when isolated from focusing very directly on sessions of play as the topic, tends to devolve into the dialogue which Sirogit so accurately described above, which leads nowhere. It always comes back to that "effort" I'm referring to; if the effort is working, then dialogue can help, but if it isn't, then dialogue isn't going to change that.

So let's look at that "effort." I contend that it has nothing to do with making another person want something. It's not about changing what they want. It's about working toward what you want in a way that turns them on, and discovering whether that way does indeed do so.

That's a pretty big deal to me. Skar, what do you think of that notion?

Best,
Ron

From some one who has tried this before, be careful.

I really didnt get anywhere with my group until I talked to people about what they liked. I had to shed all of my assumptions in the process.

It turns out that what I think is fun is not shared by everyone in my group! Fancy that.

Now that I know what people are looking for, things are easier. For example, one person really just wanted a PC to "build on" over a long period of time ( as opposed to creating dozens of new PCs for new games), saw gaming as a means to an in-game goal, and that coming up with those goals was "work for the GM." In other words, games where the players come up with them were not fun.

This is almost the opposite of what I like as a player, and if I had not spoken to him, I might have forced him into a form of play he would rather have not played.

Just my $0.02.

Gaming is about fun for everyone involved and the DM usually has a big responsability towards that end. Talking always helps.

By talking I found out that my players liked the eventual no-combat game session with lots of character role-playing but that they really also liked the eventual combat (we play D&D mostly). So, even though I wasn't missing the combat as much, I took a note and made sure there was always at least a combat scene in most game sessions.

So first of all, talk to your players. Find out what they want, explain what you want and try to reach common ground.

If they really want to try narrativism, I agree with what Cris posted before: design a situation where the characters must change their mode of play. Where combat is not an option.

It doesn't need to be an ambiguity situation, though. An oponent that can't be beaten by force usually works well too.

Some ideas that worked for me in the past:

1) The PCs were hired by a merchant to kidnap a rival merchant's daughters. His goal was to gain leverage in a particular profitable deal. They go out and ambush a caravan in which the merchant's daughters are supposed to be traveling. After a fierce fight they manage to kill most of the body guards who were surprisingly high in numbers and extremely well trained. Once they have the kids secured in a hideout, they realize through several clues in the scene that they've been framed. The kids are, in reality, the Grand Caliph's daughters. A few witnesses have escaped from the ambush scene. Their lives now are worth less than camel shit. What to do?

2) Somehow the PCs became prisioners and now are slaves of some sort. They are now in a slave market in a foreign land, about to be sold for the highest bid. To prevent escape, the slave merchant uses a magical device: every slave has a necklace. Each necklace has a twin on some other non-specified slave. If the twin necklaces part more than 30 ft or if somebody tries to remove them, their heads explode. During the bid, one of the slaves (NPC) tries to make a run for it. His head explodes and somebody's head in the middle of the slave pack also explodes. Blood everywhere, some slaves panic and runaway, more heads explode as the PCs also run with the largest crowd, fearing their heads will explode too. In the end, the PCs and a bunch of NPC slaves manage to escape together. Somebody knows a magician that can get rid of the necklaces. It's just a few weeks away. They must travel together. Make sure there's enough NPC slaves with the PCs to be cumbersome and to explode in hilarious situations. Have fun.

Andreas

Wow, thanks for all the fast and well-considered responses! Here are my thoughts on your thoughts. :)

Pyske:

Regarding your first question, I think a good place to focus is the transition from Gamist goals to Narrativist goals. I would expect your experiment with SAs to provide you a good boost in that direction. In general, I think the idea is to move the players toward creating and pursuing their own goals, as opposed to being handed goals from the outside (i.e. as rewards from the game system). In addition, moving toward a more meta-game set of goals (player goals as opposed to character goals) may also help make your game more player-driven.

In their regular game, give them a really narrativistly packed situation that doesn't have an immediate gamist soloution....Make a scenario in game where they have to choose between those two things somehow, like if the two elements were played off from each other. Make it so neither answer benefits their character at all. This is a completely unintereasting Gamist-wise situation, but a powerfull narrativist situation. If they respond well to this they're well on their way.

Another big problem seems to be, you saying that the interupt during your backgrounds, descriptions, etc... It might possibly be that you're confusing Narrativist games with games where the GM provides the players with a story, instead of letting them make the story. (Or that your players arn't paticularly patient).

I found that giving characters clear bonuses for cinematic description of their actions helped bring the more Gamist players into the mindset I was shooting for.

I second the idea of Spiritual Attributes. When you provide Gamist players a clear benefit for acting a certain way, they go out of their way to start doing that.

If you want, try cold-cocking them: have them merrily butcher the orcs, then discover a cowering orc-woman with baby....

While I don't know anything about your homegrown system, my first thought was "System Does Matter". Certainly if you're the GM and you're giving them dungeon-crawls, then they're gonna crawl. If you're giving them other challenges, but they still opt for combat as a solution, then it might be the system.

I contend that it has nothing to do with making another person want something. It's not about changing what they want. It's about working toward what you want in a way that turns them on, and discovering whether that way does indeed do so.

I concur strongly with your reservations on intentionial heavy moral GM direction. While presenting a situation where

1)PCs go along normal buisness

2)They discover what they are doing is ATROCIOUS

Does create moral pathos, if 2 is forced by the GM than it robs the players of protagonization: Deciding what is atrocious to their character. If the players decide for themselves what is atrocious, than they are making a statement about their character. Their following actions are deriviative of that statement, and will support future, more profound character statements.

If the GM forces the players to think that the situation is Atrocious by continually pressing the issue until they respond with the desired reaction, that's railroading, and it sets up players to act in the style of railroading: Try to find out what the GM is telling you to do and do that, trying to have some fun along the way. Railroading and narrativisism create alot of of dysfunction if they both are struggling to exist at the same time.

sirogit wrote: if 2 is forced by the GM than it robs the players of protagonization: Deciding what is atrocious to their character. If the players decide for themselves what is atrocious, than they are making a statement about their character. ... If the GM forces the players to think that the situation is Atrocious by continually pressing the issue until they respond with the desired reaction, that's railroading....