PDA

View Full Version : Thought Dump: How Cooperative Should Cooperative Storytelling Really Be?



Nerdynick
2015-03-11, 07:33 PM
As a GM, I'm usually hoping that players will bring a nuanced character with lots of plot hooks built into their backstory that I can build on in order to make a mind-blowing story. I'm personally a fan of plot twists; I eat up movies like Fight Club and I want to give that experience to my players. However, it can be hard to engineer a perfect twist when the player continually strays from your plan for their character.

Then it occurred to me: why not let the players write their own stories? Sure, there's your story as a GM, but every character has there own story too. If roleplaying games are supposed to be cooperative storytelling games, would the value of the story not increase if the level of cooperation also increased? Maybe its not such a bad thing if the player knows the twist ending of their character's story, because the other players sure as hell won't see it coming.

I guess that's my vision here: a game where the GM and a player work together to craft a story, where both of them know what will happen, in order to really slam it home to the other players. A game where the player that wants to usurp the throne of his father knows his character will succeed in his quest and knows that he'll discover his true father is a monster of some ilk, and can plan or even rehearse his reaction to the damning discovery. Maybe its just a local problem for me, but I don't see games centered on original stories anymore. All I see are people who want to powergame their way through 20 levels of bland story in order to kill the boss and slap a gold star on their character sheet.

Benthesquid
2015-03-11, 08:06 PM
As with most things, it depends on your players and your system. But here's my take-

Player and GM cooperating on things that neither player's character nor other players are aware of ahead of time? Definitely cool.

Deciding the outcome of the story ahead of time? A lot riskier. What happens when the character fails a vital save? Do you fudge the dice and let him survive because you have plans for him? At that point, I'd say put the dice away and engage in some form of cooperative storytelling that doesn't have built in randomness. What if the other players aren't interested in pursuing the storyline in such a fashion that it allows for your twist? It hasn't become an issue in any of my games, but my gut is most players wouldn't appreciate being railroaded into someone else's storyline.

So I'd say, cooperate with your players to plant 'hidden' plot hooks, sure. Decide ahead of time how those are going to play out? Less of a good idea.

ithildur
2015-03-11, 08:17 PM
I guess that's my vision here: a game where the GM and a player work together to craft a story, where both of them know what will happen, in order to really slam it home to the other players. A game where the player that wants to usurp the throne of his father knows his character will succeed in his quest and knows that he'll discover his true father is a monster of some ilk, and can plan or even rehearse his reaction to the damning discovery.

Sorry but that sounds like a very strange idea of what cooperative storytelling is in a RPG. It also sounds as boring as can be for the player(s) that are 'in the know', worse than reading a mediocre book for the 40th time knowing exactly what the outcome is. You can do that with some books because they're so well written; chances are that's not the case with whatever plot that you and the player in the know railroad everyone else into.

Really, that sounds like exactly what you're describing, the worst kind of railroading/Coercive storytelling except that it's not just the DM that's doing it but the DM plus the 'special' player, who's really a 2nd DM that's playing one NPC/DMPC. That hardly sounds like cooperative storytelling and more like storytelling in the traditional sense where someone (or an ensemble) tell a predetermined story while the audience listens and 'goes along' for the ride.

Setup for disaster in a RPG unless the players specifically want that kind of a thing. Cooperative storytelling in an RPG means you do NOT know ahead of time whether the 'plot PC' will autosucceed because, hey, the plot PC might've ticked off an NPC or PC enough somewhere along the way that they try and murder him in his sleep. That's an extreme example, not advocating intra party murders as good fun most of the time, but making the point that railroading is, well, railroading.

aspekt
2015-03-11, 08:21 PM
Cooperative enough to know when not to be cooperative.

Nerdynick
2015-03-11, 08:23 PM
The idea is not that it's one player getting the "special" treatment, but every player working with the GM in this manner, so each player might know their character's own fate (barring luck of the dice), but they get to watch the stories of the other characters unfold.

ithildur
2015-03-11, 08:38 PM
Not much different imo; so people take turns getting to be in the 'special seat' at various times and get their turn to railroad things, still not very cooperative and more coercive. Besides, how often are you going to fudge dice rolls to ensure the guy absolutely succeeding in accomplish xyz?


A game where the player that wants to usurp the throne of his father knows his character will succeed in his quest

It's just a bad idea in most RPGs, to guarantee success at some major plot arc accomplishment, etc and call that 'advancing the story'. If you want to do that you're better off writing a novel together and leaving the dice at home, or have an NPC do it (though it'd still be more 'collaborative' if you give PCs a chance to foil that NPC if they're interested in doing so).

Terraoblivion
2015-03-11, 09:06 PM
There are plenty of RPGs not built around challenge, but rather about how and why people choose to do things. I'm really quite fond of Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine which is all about this. Going into the formally published campaign for it, Glass-Maker's Dragon, you know that Natalia's frozen heart will thaw, the Chuubo will get drunk on power and screw up amusingly and that Jasper will snap from the stress of being the new sun. These are just how it goes. The question is the hows and the whys of it, as well as all the things outside their main plot arcs and how the various different arcs for different plots interact with each other. This is just one example of how it can be done.

SowZ
2015-03-11, 11:00 PM
As a GM, I'm usually hoping that players will bring a nuanced character with lots of plot hooks built into their backstory that I can build on in order to make a mind-blowing story. I'm personally a fan of plot twists; I eat up movies like Fight Club and I want to give that experience to my players. However, it can be hard to engineer a perfect twist when the player continually strays from your plan for their character.

Then it occurred to me: why not let the players write their own stories? Sure, there's your story as a GM, but every character has there own story too. If roleplaying games are supposed to be cooperative storytelling games, would the value of the story not increase if the level of cooperation also increased? Maybe its not such a bad thing if the player knows the twist ending of their character's story, because the other players sure as hell won't see it coming.

I guess that's my vision here: a game where the GM and a player work together to craft a story, where both of them know what will happen, in order to really slam it home to the other players. A game where the player that wants to usurp the throne of his father knows his character will succeed in his quest and knows that he'll discover his true father is a monster of some ilk, and can plan or even rehearse his reaction to the damning discovery. Maybe its just a local problem for me, but I don't see games centered on original stories anymore. All I see are people who want to powergame their way through 20 levels of bland story in order to kill the boss and slap a gold star on their character sheet.

This works really well in my experience. I try and talk to my players about their long term goals or plot twists and we can work together to accomplish some pretty cool stuff.

TheCountAlucard
2015-03-12, 07:30 AM
I went out of my way to talk to the players about cool stuff for their characters beforehand.

• Hogane was a pirate captain whose fleet was sunk by the vile demon-blooded pirates of the southeast. As he went down with his ship, a demon gave him a second lease on life; he made his way to the Demon City, made pacts with certain demon princes, and returned to the world with an agreement to summon one for future favors. He's become increasingly embittered with the Empire for whom he's been privateering, so presently he's summoned the demon and made the decision to overthrow the Empire.
• The Seamstress of Dissolution was orphaned in the Skullstone Archipelago, where the spirits of the restless dead govern their living descendants. She doesn't know who her birth parents were, but she was adopted by the state (and thus, by the undead ruler known as "The Silver Prince"), and has reasons to believe that her father was a ghost. She's presently on a quest for the Silver Prince, retrieving an artifact of dangerous necromantic power.
• Barbus is the demigod son of a tribe of nomadic raiders; by accident of premature birth, his cousin came to be next in line for the position of chieftain of the tribe. Barbus' father, the chief, has had to step down due to infirmity (no one in the tribe understands it to be lead poisoning). Barbus gained much glory for his tribe when he wrestled a seemingly-invincible lion to death, and is presently on a quest to kill a venomous, frog-headed dragon at the behest of his cousin.

(Yes, yes, his story is largely referential, but half the fun is seeing how he deviates from it. :smallbiggrin:)

AxeAlex
2015-03-12, 08:01 AM
Hello there,

Ithildur, I think there is no "bad" way to play roleplaying games when everybody has fun.

Now Nerdynick, if you want to stay in traditional "dice rolling" role playing, what you could do is like SowZ said: Let your players have a backstory which naturally leads up to something, let them share with you their vision, their goals, and build the story around that. That way the plot and the outcome of every challenges will NOT be set in stone, player decisions will still have consequences, but you will be able to eventually, when the PCs choices lead to it, have your plot twist! If you try to "Force" the story, players choices becomes meaningless and most people frown on that.

However, if your players enjoy the idea, if they have fun with a destiny set in stone, then there is no reason not to do it! :smallbiggrin:

Tim Proctor
2015-03-12, 08:43 AM
I have done it a number of different ways, and generally had really good turn out from it.

At the least interactive level, after most uncommon events I will have the players explain what the characters are feeling, thinking, and a short correlation to some memory. So like a character would be angry and hurt, and thinks they are stupid for trusting the NPC that just betrayed them, and it reminds them of the time their father's business partner stole all the gold and goods and left their family homeless. This generally gets enough input to build out and add stuff for each player. I try to get two of those in a session.

At the highest level I would take turns GMing, where each person would have GMship for 3 levels and then hand it off. Sometimes they would continue the same path, sometimes finish old ones, etc.

The one with the best results I have had use the 5x5 model. So we lay it out on a white board and start filling in adventures by inspiration. Sometimes movies, books, concepts, usually Heavy Metal songs. Once each adventure has 10 inspirations I go and build them based on that information. The players don't know exactly what they are getting but they have a concept, and I use a lot of liberal interpretations.

I know people that I would never collaborate with for building and story telling, at least not beyond the minimal level.

Thrudd
2015-03-12, 09:57 AM
As a GM, I'm usually hoping that players will bring a nuanced character with lots of plot hooks built into their backstory that I can build on in order to make a mind-blowing story. I'm personally a fan of plot twists; I eat up movies like Fight Club and I want to give that experience to my players. However, it can be hard to engineer a perfect twist when the player continually strays from your plan for their character.

Then it occurred to me: why not let the players write their own stories? Sure, there's your story as a GM, but every character has there own story too. If roleplaying games are supposed to be cooperative storytelling games, would the value of the story not increase if the level of cooperation also increased? Maybe its not such a bad thing if the player knows the twist ending of their character's story, because the other players sure as hell won't see it coming.

I guess that's my vision here: a game where the GM and a player work together to craft a story, where both of them know what will happen, in order to really slam it home to the other players. A game where the player that wants to usurp the throne of his father knows his character will succeed in his quest and knows that he'll discover his true father is a monster of some ilk, and can plan or even rehearse his reaction to the damning discovery. Maybe its just a local problem for me, but I don't see games centered on original stories anymore. All I see are people who want to powergame their way through 20 levels of bland story in order to kill the boss and slap a gold star on their character sheet.

What you're describing here sounds more like acting out a play that was written collaboratively with the actors.
That would certainly qualify as a form of collaborative storytelling, and might be a good acting exercise, but would not be appropriate for most ttrpg systems.

Game systems which promote collaborative story telling are those which gives players meta-game tokens with which they can make declaratives about not only their character but the game world and the outcome of some events as well. The game master presents a scenario with some sort of conflict for the characters. The players can use their game tokens to adjust the scenario,

For instance:
GM: "so you want to break into the bank, how are you going to do it?"

Player: -looks at character sheet, has an ability that says "always knows a guy"- "I know a guy who knows the night guard at the bank. He left the front door unlocked and went to the back of the building when he sees us pull up in the van, and turned off the alarms for us. We promised him a cut."

The GM and the players go back and forth improvising the scenario and sometimes adding new elements, playing off eachother, but nobody really knows how things will turn out. Some type of dice or other method is used to represent when/how complications happen, so that everything doesn't go perfectly according to what anyone wants or expects. Like: -GM rolls dice- "the front door is unlocked just like you expected. But the alarm was not disabled, red lights are flashing and you hear sirens coming down the street!"

The end result will be a story that has a plot conceived of by the GM, but a world and a story that was improvised collaboratively with the players and had some unforeseen twists and turns because of the dice.

Another way to for collaboration to happen is for the players to be involved in world creation prior to starting the game, and help lay out the scenario that will unfold. Each player comes up with not only the character, but also designs a country or race, city or organization or family or whatever is appropriate for the scale of the planned game. The players and GM together decide what events are happening in the world at large, and place their characters in that context.

Example: player A invents the city of elves, and describes what the politics and the people there are like. Player B invents the city of orcs, and details it likewise. The GM invents the empire of humans. Together they decide that the elves and orcs are bitter enemies and always at war, but now the human empire wants to absorb both of them. There is still fighting between the two cities, but secretly agents from both are trying to convince their people to pull together to resist the humans. Then the players create characters, one from each city, that have a mission requiring them to work together even though they are rivals. The GM then plans out some events, and the game proceeds with nobody knowing how things will turn out, rolling dice as normal.

The players helped form the world and the plot, but still get to react to surprises and make decisions and risk it all. This sort of game can work with a lot of rpg systems, even D&D with some modifications.
Some systems might even give the players a chance to play as the political powers of their cities, as well, at intervals trading off with playing the individual characters, giving yet more control over how the plot turns. There was a game called "Aria", published in the mid 90's, that presented this concept.

Beta Centauri
2015-03-12, 10:44 AM
As a GM, I'm usually hoping that players will bring a nuanced character with lots of plot hooks built into their backstory that I can build on in order to make a mind-blowing story. I'm personally a fan of plot twists; I eat up movies like Fight Club and I want to give that experience to my players. However, it can be hard to engineer a perfect twist when the player continually strays from your plan for their character. Yes. Stories like that work (when they do) because there's one author, or several working together well, and because the audience is bought in. The audience also wants a twist. They only benefit from a twist.

Players in a game don't necessarily "benefit" from a twist. It might be cool or original, but if the twist changes for the worse what they believed about their characters (such as finding out that they've been working for the bad guy when they thought they were doing good) they are not necessarily going to be happy. So, it's in the interest of the players to root out or avoid every possible pitfall, rather than allowing pitfalls to occur simply because they might take the story in a possibly interesting direction.


Then it occurred to me: why not let the players write their own stories? Sure, there's your story as a GM, but every character has there own story too. If roleplaying games are supposed to be cooperative storytelling games, would the value of the story not increase if the level of cooperation also increased? Maybe its not such a bad thing if the player knows the twist ending of their character's story, because the other players sure as hell won't see it coming. I very much agree with this, though I take it a bit further.

There's are some good examples in the D&D podcasts with Wil Wheaton, Scott Kurtz, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. In one of them, the group is being asked to go up against a clan of dwarves, and Scott Kurtz announces, in character, that his dwarf's family had been betrayed by this clan. The other players were stunned and found this pretty cool. I talked to Scott at a convention and learned that the GM, Chris Perkins, had contacted him and suggested creating that connection.

In the same podcast, the party encounters a ghost of a thief who would be willing to help the PCs against the dwarves, by entering the body of one of the characters to convey information and skills. Scott's dwarf is chosen to be the subject of this, and in private conversation with the ghost the dwarf asks the ghost to forget about any treasure and just tell him where to find the people who betrayed his family. The other characters weren't aware of this, but the other players were and, instead of trying to derail the dwarf's plan, had their characters go along with it. This proved disasterous, and set the stage for mistrust and reconciliation between the characters (and also the players, to a degree).

This was a special situation in which the players had ever incentive to go along with the GM - they were going to go on the mission even without that connection to a PC - but it makes it clear that collaboration doesn't prevent cool twists from occurring and having impact. Collaboration doesn't necessarily mean that challenges get bypassed or short-circuited.


I guess that's my vision here: a game where the GM and a player work together to craft a story, where both of them know what will happen, in order to really slam it home to the other players. A game where the player that wants to usurp the throne of his father knows his character will succeed in his quest and knows that he'll discover his true father is a monster of some ilk, and can plan or even rehearse his reaction to the damning discovery. Maybe its just a local problem for me, but I don't see games centered on original stories anymore. All I see are people who want to powergame their way through 20 levels of bland story in order to kill the boss and slap a gold star on their character sheet. Powergaming, apart from being an easy and widely applicable approach to the game, gives players control. An unbeatable character and strategy means that the player is never forcibly put into a situation they don't enjoy. They might not even actually enjoy the powergaming that much, but they sense that it's better than the alternatve, because at least they're in control.

And control is what it's about. Players who have control or shared control over the narrative can be willing to relax about trying to control things via their character. I see this most of all with failure conditions: if players are allowed to set the failure conditions for a situation, and agree to them, they're more willing to engage with the situation.

For instance, it's not unusual for players to complain about being surprised by the enemy. There are lots of ways to argue that they shouldn't have been surprised (and Perception-type skills are commonly maxed out for this reason), and they do this because they've suddenly lost control. They didn't get to choose the fight, or the conditions under which it occurred.

But I've found that if, after I tell the them I want to surprise the characters, I let the players decide on or agree to what "failure" and "success" mean in the encounter, they're much more willing to be surprised. The players retain that control and know what they're getting into. They don't have to avoid every possible risk to keep from losing control.

I take collaboration a bit further in that I don't do much preparation for it. We might collaborate on a fact about a character, an encounter, a locale, or anything, including things the character might not know about, but it's not planned to the last detail. Collaboration and improvisation continue to happen during play. I've seen players more surprised about the thing that just came out of their mouth than about any pre-prepared surprise a GM has tried to lay on them.

There's such a thing as too much, so I don't force things, but I try to do enough so that the player is engaged. When people helped create something, they want to see it work. Also, when people helped create something, they remember it better. The guy who helped determine that, unbeknownst to the character, the king is the man who killed his character's brother, you can bet that the player will remember that king's name.

One important thing to remember is that if it's been decided that the character is going to avenge his brother's death, then that means the character can't die before that happens. This removes a common failure mode from the game (though resurrection already does this). This means that player has to be faced with other failure modes if the game is still going to be a game, and not a collaborative story. Find out what else is at stake, what isn't a foregone conclusion: will the player have to sacrifice his true love for his revenge? Will the character risk throwing the kingdom into chaos?

Collaboration isn't necessary, especially if the game doesn't have a real narrative or if the "narrative" is just taken as "whatever happens." Lots of people play that way, and enjoy it. If there are stories people want to tell and things they want to see happen, collaboration can help those things happen, and if there are still details that could go either way those foregone conclusions can still be surprising.

Good luck. I've had some success with the collaborative approach, even in traditionally non-collaborative games, and I'm always happy to talk about this sort of thing.

Lost in Hyrule
2015-03-12, 11:50 AM
For instance, it's not unusual for players to complain about being surprised by the enemy. There are lots of ways to argue that they shouldn't have been surprised (and Perception-type skills are commonly maxed out for this reason), and they do this because they've suddenly lost control. They didn't get to choose the fight, or the conditions under which it occurred.

But I've found that if, after I tell the them I want to surprise the characters, I let the players decide on or agree to what "failure" and "success" mean in the encounter, they're much more willing to be surprised. The players retain that control and know what they're getting into. They don't have to avoid every possible risk to keep from losing control.

This is a really interesting thought, and I see where you're coming from about making sure players are still given control in a situation. However, I'm having trouble imagining what sorts of choices they would make in your example of 'I want to surprise you. What are the stakes?' Could you give an example of how this played out in a game?

Beta Centauri
2015-03-12, 12:59 PM
This is a really interesting thought, and I see where you're coming from about making sure players are still given control in a situation. However, I'm having trouble imagining what sorts of choices they would make in your example of 'I want to surprise you. What are the stakes?' Could you give an example of how this played out in a game? The main example I can think of is from a game of mine. The players had obtained a room in a myconid-run inn on the edge of a chasm the marked one edge of a drow enclave (a locale they had helped establish). We talked a bit about what they were doing and it was decided that two of them would be in the room, while the third was absent trying to make contact with drow in the city.

I forget how it was arrived at that the characters would be ambushed. It might even have been a player suggestion in response to me asking what kinds of encounters they thought they might have. In any case, I offered that it would be interesting to have the enemies (which the players also helped decide on: half-drow, which I based on shadar-kai) break into their room and attack the fighter and the cleric. It was decided that the wizard wouldn't initially be present, and wouldn't arrive until the third round.

At some point, we set the stakes. The party had been spreading rumors that the eladrin wizard was a bounty hunter had, with his goliath henchmen, captured an eladrin cleric who was key to interpreting an ancient elf-kin artifact. In fact the cleric was the wizard's wife. The point is that this was intended to get the PCs into the city so they could steal the artifact. The wizard was out spreading those rumors. It was decided that the goal of the attack would be to kidnap the cleric and that, failing that, the secondary goal would be to report back to the drow, which might reveal the deception.

With all that set, I told them that the wall of the inn room (which was made of a firm fungal material) burst inward and the three half-drow jumped in and attacked. The characters held their own for a few rounds and the half-drow retreated when the wizard showed up. It was decided that the enemy didn't learn enough to ruin the deception and the game continued.

What would have happened if the GM had just said: "While the wizard is out, you're ambushed!" In my experience, the players would immediately go on the defensive, arguing that they couldn't be ambushed:

We'd be on guard when the wizard is out!
We're on the second floor of an inn, how did they get through the wall?
How did we not hear them coming?

Et cetera. The players would tend to be opponents of the situation, rather than willing participants. Instead, they focused on ways to make the situation more interesting, rather than on ways to defuse it.

Now, the players were successful here, so if the ambush had been able to capture the cleric somehow, or get the party to reveal their deception, I can't know if the players would have continued to buy in. We had pretty good trust at the table and I tended to say "Yes, and..." to anything they wanted to try, so probably they would have squeaked out victory. That said, one of the players, on attempting something risky, stated that he felt there should be at least a 10% chance of it resulting in death. He rolled and the character survived, but he was the one who set those stakes and those chances, and I believe that if he'd killed the character he would have been fine with that.

BWR
2015-03-13, 01:23 AM
The only truly objective answer here is "it should be cooperative enough so that maximum possible enjoyment is had by all".
The exact degree and details vary from group to group, game to game. I've been on both extremes, where players have no say in anything except character choices (and the rails were rather restrictive) and I've played in games where there isn't much distinction between GM and player. Both of these have been enjoyable.

Kami2awa
2015-03-17, 03:25 AM
Too much secret backstory can cause problems with players feeling rather left out - when that backstory takes centre stage, the other players are left with little to do ("Who is this guy? Why is he important? I have no idea what to say to him. Oh, we're just going along with what he says? Why? Was this in the session I missed?") I'd much rather have this stuff develop in game.

Amphetryon
2015-03-17, 05:38 AM
There is, perhaps, a distinction to be made between 'cooperative storytelling' and 'emergent storytelling,' though certainly the two are not mutually exclusive. The cooperative storytelling the OP is describing seems predicated on the people at the gaming table agreeing on the plot and its twists ahead of time, while emergent storytelling relies on the plot and its twists developing as a result of the storytelling of the various people involved, whether the GM, the Players, or the shared storytelling of all involved. My personal preference is for that last option, with the GM's role (in games with a GM) being to help tie the various emergent story threads together in a satisfying and coherent fashion that challenges both the Characters' abilities and the Players' imaginations.

Thrudd
2015-03-17, 09:20 AM
There is, perhaps, a distinction to be made between 'cooperative storytelling' and 'emergent storytelling,' though certainly the two are not mutually exclusive. The cooperative storytelling the OP is describing seems predicated on the people at the gaming table agreeing on the plot and its twists ahead of time, while emergent storytelling relies on the plot and its twists developing as a result of the storytelling of the various people involved, whether the GM, the Players, or the shared storytelling of all involved. My personal preference is for that last option, with the GM's role (in games with a GM) being to help tie the various emergent story threads together in a satisfying and coherent fashion that challenges both the Characters' abilities and the Players' imaginations.

Yes, emergent story is far preferable to pre-written story. Character backgrounds may be improvised into the ongoing story, but in no sense should the players or GM have premeditated a specific course of events.

goto124
2015-03-17, 09:32 AM
I guess that's pretty much the entire point of tabletops. Emergent stories.

Though sometimes the idea of just letting something 'emerge' scares me, if only because I'm afraid of bad surprises.

Thrudd
2015-03-17, 09:36 AM
I guess that's pretty much the entire point of tabletops. Emergent stories.

That's what I think. If you're writing a story and then having people act it out, that's kind of a different thing. Maybe still fun, especially for folks who like theater and acting and improv.

goto124
2015-03-17, 09:38 AM
And there's the sliding scale thing. DM and player can agree on major points, and leave the details to each other. Usually how it turns out I think?

Thrudd
2015-03-17, 10:19 AM
And there's the sliding scale thing. DM and player can agree on major points, and leave the details to each other. Usually how it turns out I think?

In D&D, anyway: DM creates the world/setting and sets it in motion. Players create the characters, gives them motives and connection to the world. Everything else happens through play, emergent and improvised. What is communicated beforehand are the general facts of the setting and how the characters can fit into it (this is the world we're playing in, make characters that will work with this general theme).

There is a gradient of styles between emergent stories and written stories that happens, as some people prefer a linear path with limited choices and others an open environment with more freedom.

I feel like the more cooperative option for by-the-book D&D is actually the open world with entirely emergent stories.

Frozen_Feet
2015-03-17, 11:59 AM
If roleplaying games are supposed to be cooperative storytelling games, would the value of the story not increase if the level of cooperation also increased?

In a word, no.

There are a lot of freeform roleplays that have more in common with co-authoring a novel than any sort of traditional RPGs. Or just telling a ghost story in a circle. They do not lead to significantly better results, don't have better group longevity, don't have less stupid arguments etc.. I'd say there's actually less roleplaying and more out-of-character natter, because achieving consensus requires much more discussion and often involves much more interpersonal drama than just rolling some dice would.

NWA
2015-03-17, 12:21 PM
In the campaign I am playing, the DM explicitly asked us to write down a couple of character traits and goals. Which kinda makes sense, if you are an adventurer, you gotta have some goal, some vision to survive. (Of course, your goal can be "just grab as much money as you can", but that's no fun).

DM managed to advance some of our goals during the campaign, shoehorning them into the "main" plot line. Of course, not every characters goal was advanced, because we as a party more or less agreed to try to follow the main line.

The idea is not to have a player write out a detailed story, but rather set a goal that he will be working towards. This gives DM the opportunity to build a story around it. The player shouldn't know what exactly is going to happen, but she should have at least some clue about what to do.

Thrudd
2015-03-17, 01:04 PM
DM managed to advance some of our goals during the campaign, shoehorning them into the "main" plot line. Of course, not every characters goal was advanced, because we as a party more or less agreed to try to follow the main line.

The idea is not to have a player write out a detailed story, but rather set a goal that he will be working towards. This gives DM the opportunity to build a story around it. The player shouldn't know what exactly is going to happen, but she should have at least some clue about what to do.

Yes, the character's motives and goals should be what drive the players' decisions. They should not be thinking about what the DM might have planned in terms of a plot or try to "help the story along" in spite of their characters.

The DM should not need to "shoehorn in" a characters' goals into a plot. The characters pursuing their goals should BE the main plot. This is how you create emergent, collaborative stories in D&D. The characters interact with the world and eachother, they react to events in the world, the world reacts to them and their actions, and stories organically emerge based on their decisions and the outcomes of the dice.

Beta Centauri
2015-03-17, 01:20 PM
In a word, no.

There are a lot of freeform roleplays that have more in common with co-authoring a novel than any sort of traditional RPGs. Or just telling a ghost story in a circle. They do not lead to significantly better results, don't have better group longevity, don't have less stupid arguments etc.. I'd say there's actually less roleplaying and more out-of-character natter, because achieving consensus requires much more discussion and often involves much more interpersonal drama than just rolling some dice would. That all depends entirely how it's handled. If people are actually trying to collaborate, achieving consensus is by no means difficult or involved or dramatic. If it involves less roleplaying, there's a very good chance the roleplaying that does occur will be of a higher quality (in terms of player engagement and table enjoyment) because collaboration draws players in and makes them feel safer as players (if not as their characters).


Yes, the character's motives and goals should be what drive the players' decisions. They should not be thinking about what the DM might have planned in terms of a plot or try to "help the story along" in spite of their characters. What if they want to be doing those things and in doing those things they improve everyone's enjoyment of the game?


The DM should not need to "shoehorn in" a characters' goals into a plot. The characters pursuing their goals should BE the main plot. This is how you create emergent, collaborative stories in D&D. The characters interact with the world and eachother, they react to events in the world, the world reacts to them and their actions, and stories organically emerge based on their decisions and the outcomes of the dice. That's one way to create "emergent, collaborative stories" in D&D, but by no means the only one. If players are handed some narrative control, they can help bring about specific stories they're interested in, rather than whatever happens to emerge. "Organic" doesn't necessarily mean "interesting to those at the table." It doesn't even really mean "organic," since at some level someone is making arbitrary out-of-game decisions about what could or should happen. There's no reason it can't be the players themselves and lots of reasons why it can and should.

(Or, if one insists, the GM can retain all the power and simply choose to create things based on player offers.)

None of this is theory, by the way: this can and does work. I'm happy to answer honest questions about how it does, but I'll probably ignore assumptions about why it can't or doesn't.

Amphetryon
2015-03-17, 01:42 PM
If players are handed some narrative control, they can help bring about specific stories they're interested in, rather than whatever happens to emergeYour response appears to indicate you believe this quoted sentiment is different in some way besides synonyms used from:

The characters pursuing their goals should BE the main plot as it appears to be positioned as a counter-argument to Thrudd's position. Could you clarify what you think those differences are, which make the two positions so incompatible as to stand in contrast to each other?

NWA
2015-03-17, 02:03 PM
Yes, the character's motives and goals should be what drive the players' decisions. They should not be thinking about what the DM might have planned in terms of a plot or try to "help the story along" in spite of their characters.

The DM should not need to "shoehorn in" a characters' goals into a plot. The characters pursuing their goals should BE the main plot. This is how you create emergent, collaborative stories in D&D. The characters interact with the world and eachother, they react to events in the world, the world reacts to them and their actions, and stories organically emerge based on their decisions and the outcomes of the dice.

I think that's just unrealistic to expect that from a campaign. For example, one of our characters goals was to find his vanished teacher. If the DM would not have shoehorned in the teacher in the plot or put him on a different continent, then... well, the character would just go somewhere else. If you want to play as a party, you need to connect your goals somehow.

Beta Centauri
2015-03-17, 02:12 PM
as it appears to be positioned as a counter-argument to Thrudd's position. Could you clarify what you think those differences are, which make the two positions so incompatible as to stand in contrast to each other? Characters don't have "narrative control," which I'm using here to mean the kind of control a GM has to establish facts or decide outcomes and reactions.

Players usually don't have narrative control either, but in a collaborative game they are either given some control, or the GM uses their own control to bring establish or decide certain things in a way the players would if they had control.

The terms "story" and "control" and "collaboration" get muddied in discussions like this. I'm used to people side-stepping the issue by defining story as "whatever happens," "control" as "players control their characters, the GM controls everything else," and "collaboration" as "getting along and playing the game." Those are fine definitions, but they're different from "story" meaning "a narrative that is partially preplanned (and can include both improvisation, and branch points)"; "control" meaning "GM-type control," and "collaboration" meaning "input from everyone about what could, should and does happen in the game."

I know that the idea of preplanning is anathema to many, but there's planning down to every last detail (no, thank you), and then there's planning a basic outline and then improvising around that, based on choices or dice rolls (yes, please). The former tends to result in players feeling like they have no control and just have to find a way to enjoy what the GM is feeding them. The latter tends to involve the players in a creative way, better ensuring that the game delivers the kinds of situations and outcomes (and not just happy outcomes) that the players enjoy.

It depends very much on the group, of course. Some people are fine with just following a GM's story, and some people don't like having any input. I've also heard people say that they don't like knowing surprises but that assumes two things: that they'll like not knowing the surprises, and that they can't create things that will surprise themselves, even in the moment. Neither is necessarily true.

Amphetryon
2015-03-17, 02:23 PM
Characters don't have "narrative control," which I'm using here to mean the kind of control a GM has to establish facts or decide outcomes and reactions.

Players usually don't have narrative control either, but in a collaborative game they are either given some control, or the GM uses their own control to bring establish or decide certain things in a way the players would if they had control.

The terms "story" and "control" and "collaboration" get muddied in discussions like this. I'm used to people side-stepping the issue by defining story as "whatever happens," "control" as "players control their characters, the GM controls everything else," and "collaboration" as "getting along and playing the game." Those are fine definitions, but they're different from "story" meaning "a narrative that is partially preplanned (and can include both improvisation, and branch points)"; "control" meaning "GM-type control," and "collaboration" meaning "input from everyone about what could, should and does happen in the game."

I know that the idea of preplanning is anathema to many, but there's planning down to every last detail (no, thank you), and then there's planning a basic outline and then improvising around that, based on choices or dice rolls (yes, please). The former tends to result in players feeling like they have no control and just have to find a way to enjoy what the GM is feeding them. The latter tends to involve the players in a creative way, better ensuring that the game delivers the kinds of situations and outcomes (and not just happy outcomes) that the players enjoy.

It depends very much on the group, of course. Some people are fine with just following a GM's story, and some people don't like having any input. I've also heard people say that they don't like knowing surprises but that assumes two things: that they'll like not knowing the surprises, and that they can't create things that will surprise themselves, even in the moment. Neither is necessarily true.
How are you determining narrative control as something that Players don't have, other than uniquely defining it as exclusive to the GM; why is the GM the default for establishing reactions (given that Characters react), for example? Why does "story" need to have "preplanned" as part of its definition? From here, it appears you're setting up a false dichotomy based on choosing specific definitions, which are not universal through the hobby, and responding as if those definitions are the only valid ones.

Beta Centauri
2015-03-17, 03:00 PM
How are you determining narrative control as something that Players don't have, other than uniquely defining it as exclusive to the GM; why is the GM the default for establishing reactions (given that Characters react), for example? Those are very common interpretations of the roles of the players and the GM: the GM gets to say what's true about the world, and players get to say what's true about their character (within the confines of what the GM has already said is true). A player doesn't get to say that there's a fairy kingdom hidden in the mountains, but a GM could. That's fairly standard, and that's what I'm talking about.

As opposed to a player stating that there's a fairy kingdom hidden in the mountains and it either being true then and there, or being something that the GM then


Why does "story" need to have "preplanned" as part of its definition? It doesn't. That's just the definition I'm using. "Preplanned" can mean a lot of things too. It might be entirely subconscious on everyone's part, lying deep in some bias or preconceived notion and only becoming and issue when something occurs that contradicts expectations.

My point stands: definitions are important in a discussion like this, because it impinges directly on playstyle. Use whichever definitions you want, just don't assume they're the same as everyone else's and don't assume two uses of the same word by different people mean the same thing.

Thrudd
2015-03-17, 06:05 PM
I think that's just unrealistic to expect that from a campaign. For example, one of our characters goals was to find his vanished teacher. If the DM would not have shoehorned in the teacher in the plot or put him on a different continent, then... well, the character would just go somewhere else. If you want to play as a party, you need to connect your goals somehow.

It isn't unrealistic at all. You said exactly what I did (or usually do), the players need to coordinate their characters at the start of the game to make sure they have a party that can work together and are aporopriate for the theme of the game. The DM should not allow characters with motives that will not fit into the premise of the game. If the game is about robbing banks, one of the players can't have a character that is driven to become the best street fighter in the world. It won't work out.

In your specific example, there are two issues.
1: the player should consult the DM regarding introducing such elements as an NPC that needs rescuing. That's how collaboration works, in this case. If the DM agrees, then the vanished teacher is out there in the world somewhere, and what will stop the character from looking for him? That is now a potential story, or part of a story.
2: this is a very specific goal. The character must have or develop other motives for adventuring, or once the search for teacher is over, what then? Retire the character? This comes back to creating appropriate goals for the theme of the game. If it is a dungeon crawling exploration game, having such a specific goal might not be appropriate, because there is only one place that character is interested in going: wherever there is info about the teacher. Unless all the characters share the same goal, all looking for the same person, then the DM would build adventures around that, and they would go off looking for clues and searching the world together.

The problems come when there is no collaboration or communication. The DM plans out a plot, irrespective of whatever characters will be involved (mistake number one). With said plot in hand, the DM fails to inform the players that this game will have very specific parameters requiring characters with specific motives and goals. The players create their own back stories and connections to the game world without understanding the theme, assuming a level of narrative control the DM had no intention of giving them. The DM sees their chsracters, and has choices: rework his plot to shoehorn the characters in there, veto various background elements that don't fit or ask players to rework them, or ignore the players backgrounds and just railroad the plot.

Collaborating and communicating beforehand creates the best game, avoids all those things. A plot should never be developed without a clear theme for the game and understanding the type of characters that will be involved. Characters should not be made without understanding the setting, theme, and other potential characters.

My issue with allowing in-game setting adjustment/creation on the part of the players in D&D is: where do you draw the line? Can a player, at any time suggest something and it is now a fact of the game world? There must be a rule for this sort of thing, or it becomes chaos. You must limit it, once per session they can do this, or once per character level, or whatever. Or a token gets passed around, and once it is used it is passed to the next player. These are mechanics you might find in other game systems that could be added to D&D if you were up for that level of improvising as a DM.
Of course, this is a major change to how D&D is normally played, and there are probably other systems that could do it better.

neonchameleon
2015-03-17, 06:23 PM
As a GM, I'm usually hoping that players will bring a nuanced character with lots of plot hooks built into their backstory that I can build on in order to make a mind-blowing story. I'm personally a fan of plot twists; I eat up movies like Fight Club and I want to give that experience to my players. However, it can be hard to engineer a perfect twist when the player continually strays from your plan for their character.

Then it occurred to me: why not let the players write their own stories? Sure, there's your story as a GM, but every character has there own story too. If roleplaying games are supposed to be cooperative storytelling games, would the value of the story not increase if the level of cooperation also increased? Maybe its not such a bad thing if the player knows the twist ending of their character's story, because the other players sure as hell won't see it coming.

I guess that's my vision here: a game where the GM and a player work together to craft a story, where both of them know what will happen, in order to really slam it home to the other players. A game where the player that wants to usurp the throne of his father knows his character will succeed in his quest and knows that he'll discover his true father is a monster of some ilk, and can plan or even rehearse his reaction to the damning discovery. Maybe its just a local problem for me, but I don't see games centered on original stories anymore. All I see are people who want to powergame their way through 20 levels of bland story in order to kill the boss and slap a gold star on their character sheet.

If you're interested in stories, I'd suggest you take a step back. The best stories are all emergent, following inexorably from the logic of the characters but not actually fully laid out in advance. You can plot inciting incidents and plot twists, but what makes for a good story is the growth and change within the characters. And D&D isn't good at this at all. No one cares that a level 20 fighter is four times faster and five times tougher than a level 5 fighter. They are still big meat shields who are very good with swords. That's growth possibly, but it;s not change.

The first RPG IMO that was actually good at stories was Paul Czege's My Life With Master. The story was always to the same story structure - the players would play the Master's minions and the Master would treat them terribly. Then one of them would eventually snap and try to kill the Master. They'd win or they'd lose. And there'd be an aftermath. The minions would end up minions no longer. Transformation and growth (or death), and the whole thing played out in a few hours. And the stories are much more intense because no one decides in advance what will make the minion snap (or even which is going to). The Master just does what feels natural, the minions act as honesty demands, and the setup leads to the inevitable conflict. Each game of MLWM is like picking up a new gothic horror movie - you know approximately the themes, and can expect a couple of incidents but you've never seen this film before in your life even if you've seen a couple of others by the same director. You can guess at the plot but not even the GM knows the story. Yet unless all your players are complete doormats a story, an arc, and a growth are inevitable due to the rules. (On the downside once you've played it four or five times you're used to that director and he's not one of the greats, so most people don't play it much more than that).

I'd really recommend you read Play Unsafe (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Play-Unsafe-Improvisation-Change-Roleplay/dp/1434824594) for guidance from improv drama on better stories, and to play Fiasco (http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/) for emergent stories - a Cohen Brothers movie written by you all in the time it takes to watch one. (The tabletop playthrough (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXJxQ0NbFtk) is pretty good).

I'm now going to copy and paste a recommendation for an RPG I made earlier this week for how to have everyone contributing to stories without needing to pre-write them - Apocalypse World (http://apocalypse-world.com/). (If you've got a group for it then Monsterhearts (http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/monsterhearts/) can be even better, but I doubt you have the right group). Apocalypse World is the non-D&D parent game of Dungeon World , and it flows quite a lot better. It also has two real things that DW (and for that matter D&D) doesn't. First is PC investment in the setting during character creation; D&D (and DW) has you create PCs as near islands; AW character creation and character classes represent your place in the world from the local boss (the Hardholder), the local gang leader (the Chopper) to someone trying to get by (the Operator) or even a lethal drifter (the Gunlugger). Second is the narrative dynamite. PCs don't just get more skilled as they gain experience, they also change even to the point of changing Playbooks/Class. This can be obvious career development (e.g. Chopper->Hardholder as the gang leader takes over), a reversal (e.g. Gunlugger -> Angel (Medic)), or just something that kinda happened in play and looks like a really interesting direction for the character (e.g. Operator -> Hocus as one of the Operator's schemes involves them founding a cult and their cult becomes their defining drive). All those have the makings of great stories - and they are much much better because they emerge organically from who the character is rather than having been chosen in advance, but the rules of Apocalypse World encourage some sort of transformation/growth, and transformation and growth are at the root of most good stories. (Of course you can only change playbooks occasionally, and any playbook can change to any other, so it's always a big decision).

Beta Centauri
2015-03-17, 06:49 PM
No one cares that a level 20 fighter is four times faster and five times tougher than a level 5 fighter. They are still big meat shields who are very good with swords. That's growth possibly, but it;s not change. And that's a strawman. No one here has said that that's the kind of story outcome they're talking about.

You even quoted this:
"A game where the player that wants to usurp the throne of his father knows his character will succeed in his quest and knows that he'll discover his true father is a monster of some ilk."

That has nothing to do with levels or hit points. Why can't people talk about cool new games without bashing on other games?


(On the downside once you've played it four or five times you're used to that director and he's not one of the greats, so most people don't play it much more than that). And I'm not likely to play it at all, because no matter how much transformation and growth it builds in, the trappings of the game don't appeal to me.

I can recommend Fiasco, but Apocalypse World has the same issues: cool mechanics, cringe-inducing setting. Fortunately, there's Dungeon World, though I wish they'd brought the Relationships over instead of using Bonds. Ooh, but that's just meat shields again, right?

Investment in the world is great, and I agree that it's something a lot of games lack. But I'm not going to invest in a world that disgusts me, so I'm going to need lot of narrative control if someone asks me to play Apocalypse World.

I sat down to a game of Gamma World (another setting I can just barely stand) and rolled a humanoid robot. I named him HARDAC II, on the run from HARDAC III, the ungrateful brat. HARDAC II took a lot of damage in a fight. The GM was open to letting me have him picked up as the others ran, but I declined and stated that his nuclear battery exploded, closing the cave behind the others, who were going deeper in.

Then I brought in HARDAC III, who would have been hunting for that fool, HARDAC II, except that he was in fear of HARDAC IV, the little devil. I was prepared to keep doing this, but eventually we came upon an old computer at the heart of the abandoned factory we had been exploring. "HARDAC I!" I exclaimed.

The GM had planned this game in advance, and didn't know I was going to play successive generations of paranoid robots. The computer in the basement wasn't HARDAC I - until I said it was. He allowed me to have that control and to reunite two generations of HARDAC. I believe I proceeded to shoot it.

I had a story for my character: he's a robot who is hunting his creator and is hunted (or believes he is) by his creation. Is it a tragic, unstoppable misunderstanding, or just the life cycle of this machine? Will any HARDAC ever catch up with any other?

So, this "story" was part "organic" (yak) and "emergent" (double yak) and part pre-planned. I don't know if I could have done that without exposure to Spirit of the Century, Fiasco, *World and the like, and if I didn't have a solid grounding in improvisation, but I didn't need to be playing any of those games to do what I did. Maybe one of them could have done it even better, but I found that pretty darn satisfying.

neonchameleon
2015-03-17, 08:14 PM
And that's a strawman. No one here has said that that's the kind of story outcome they're talking about.

You even quoted this:
"A game where the player that wants to usurp the throne of his father knows his character will succeed in his quest and knows that he'll discover his true father is a monster of some ilk."

That has nothing to do with levels or hit points. Why can't people talk about cool new games without bashing on other games?

You are right that that has nothing to do with levels or hit points. Which means that every sentence spent describing levels or hit points is a distraction from the story being described. (This, incidentally, is a major appeal to rules light games - fewer distractions). D&D is good at what it does (especially oD&D). Why is it considered bashing on a rules-heavy step on up simulationist game to point out that all these things get in the way when what is wanted is a medium to enable storytelling? Why whenever we point out that an apple isn't an orange and that when you want a citrus an orange does better is that considered bashing?


And I'm not likely to play it at all, because no matter how much transformation and growth it builds in, the trappings of the game don't appeal to me.

I can recommend Fiasco, but Apocalypse World has the same issues: cool mechanics, cringe-inducing setting.

MLWM I'm going to agree with you about. Apocalypse World isn't so much a cringe inducing setting as Vincent Baker's writing style being ... questionable. It's a much more generic game than it's presented as and for breadth is right up there with GURPS or Fate even before you start hacking it. You can run a startlingly good Apocalypse Game in settings as diverse as Serenity or Veronica Mars. You just need a generally dark tone and a social structure that's on the verge of breakdown - or in short anything noir-ish with a non-trivial chance of violence. (OK, not all playbooks fit all such settings, but the Space Marine Mammal doesn't fit all settings either). From what I've heard (although I haven't seen either show) it would be a pretty good system for both Gotham and Arrow.


Fortunately, there's Dungeon World, though I wish they'd brought the Relationships over instead of using Bonds. Ooh, but that's just meat shields again, right?

I have issues with Dungeon World - largely that it misses a lot of what makes D&D good as well as missing a lot of what makes Apocalypse World good.


So, this "story" was part "organic" (yak) and "emergent" (double yak) and part pre-planned. I don't know if I could have done that without exposure to Spirit of the Century, Fiasco, *World and the like, and if I didn't have a solid grounding in improvisation, but I didn't need to be playing any of those games to do what I did. Maybe one of them could have done it even better, but I found that pretty darn satisfying.

Sounds like a fun game to play :) (And with Gamma World I always prefer to embrace the ridiculous). But the OP I suspect (unlike either of us) doesn't have much grounding in either improv or any of those games. There's no game good enough to make up for bad players and very few bad enough to prevent good players doing well. But different games can really point you in different directions and both enable and encourage different things.

Beta Centauri
2015-03-18, 10:08 AM
Why is it considered bashing on a rules-heavy step on up simulationist game to point out that all these things get in the way when what is wanted is a medium to enable storytelling? Because it generally overstates how much those things "get in the way." They don't always get in the way. Often they, at worst, are along side the storytelling, and at best they offer inspiration on how to describe what's going on in the story.


But different games can really point you in different directions and both enable and encourage different things. That's part of what I was saying, the other part being that you can then take those different directions to other games, including popular, rules-heavy games that one may be more comfortable with for other reasons.