Kol Korran
2015-04-03, 10:04 AM
Hey folks! Happy Passover to any who celebrate it!
I'd like to discuss the extent, methods and styles of how you collaborate with players into the story, and how much you leave to be played at the table.
So, in my group two of the player are quite heavily into character characterization, story development and similar roleplay concepts. At times, they approach me with specific requests for themes, scenes, and such things to happen in the game. For example, while the party was trapped in a castle with their army dying out of a great curse outside, a player asked for a scene where he can witness the dying army, appeal to their god, and make a deal with another force, to help the suffering of the soldiers. Or Another player wishing to recruit people for an organization of his, he talked to me extensively before hand about what he was planning, and what sort of scenes he would like to prepare for the people he was about to recruit.
The requests and discussions that follow generate scenes with different amounts of room to improvise and surprises in the scenes. While we like to have SOME idea of what will happen I insist that we roleplay the actual interactions at the table. This has upsides and downsides though:
- On one hand, roleplaying things at the table give the most organic feel to the play, the least scripted, and allow room for small surprises, changes, inspirations and cool moments, which are amongst the things we come to the game for.
- On the other hand, none of us are that good actors, and less so improvisational actors. Many times it feels a bit like stumbling along, and ends up feeling a bit awkward and the scene loses a bit of it's punch, of it's flavor.
So how do you do it? What sort of a balance do you strike with the character who wish to add their own stuff to the game? Our group's approach is to set sort of "scene's goals", as guidelines to the scene, but to leave the roleplay to the table. Works ok I guess, but might work better.
The above is about specific scenes, but sometime the players wish to call for a longer running theme- Like character development, or a character's endeavor, or relationships (Not necessarily romantic ones, but possibly those as well) I find this is very specific to the player and character of course, but find these great fun. I'm curious what approaches/ method other GMs take towards these.
Discuss! :smallsmile:
I'd like to discuss the extent, methods and styles of how you collaborate with players into the story, and how much you leave to be played at the table.
So, in my group two of the player are quite heavily into character characterization, story development and similar roleplay concepts. At times, they approach me with specific requests for themes, scenes, and such things to happen in the game. For example, while the party was trapped in a castle with their army dying out of a great curse outside, a player asked for a scene where he can witness the dying army, appeal to their god, and make a deal with another force, to help the suffering of the soldiers. Or Another player wishing to recruit people for an organization of his, he talked to me extensively before hand about what he was planning, and what sort of scenes he would like to prepare for the people he was about to recruit.
The requests and discussions that follow generate scenes with different amounts of room to improvise and surprises in the scenes. While we like to have SOME idea of what will happen I insist that we roleplay the actual interactions at the table. This has upsides and downsides though:
- On one hand, roleplaying things at the table give the most organic feel to the play, the least scripted, and allow room for small surprises, changes, inspirations and cool moments, which are amongst the things we come to the game for.
- On the other hand, none of us are that good actors, and less so improvisational actors. Many times it feels a bit like stumbling along, and ends up feeling a bit awkward and the scene loses a bit of it's punch, of it's flavor.
So how do you do it? What sort of a balance do you strike with the character who wish to add their own stuff to the game? Our group's approach is to set sort of "scene's goals", as guidelines to the scene, but to leave the roleplay to the table. Works ok I guess, but might work better.
The above is about specific scenes, but sometime the players wish to call for a longer running theme- Like character development, or a character's endeavor, or relationships (Not necessarily romantic ones, but possibly those as well) I find this is very specific to the player and character of course, but find these great fun. I'm curious what approaches/ method other GMs take towards these.
Discuss! :smallsmile: