All l I will add is, I think it is important to resist the temptation, as a GM, the notion that you are a "storyteller." Being evocative and getting good at setting a scene with description is paramount, but plotting is the pathway to railroading and railroading kills player agency and cheats players out of true accomplishment.

Ever since the Dragonlance stuff hit the market twenty+ years ago, there has been a noticeable shift toward story based gaming, culminating in things like "adventure paths" and gaming heavily influenced by CRPGs like Baldurs Gate (et al.) and it's understandable, but I truly believe something is lost when we go down this route.

If story, plot and outcomes are really important to a GM, then my advice for that person would be to write short fiction or a novel inspired by your gameworld and gaming sessions to get your fix.

Stories formed from a well run game are a lot like like biographies - order and patterns applied retrospectively to a lot of seemingly unconnected events.

/soapbox

I really like Jeff's 'The Lamia's Heart' adventure as an urban intro to a campaign.

Yora wrote:

But almost all Old School modules I've seen simply hand you a dungeon full with almost entirely hostile inhabitants and usually no real good reason what you're trying to accomplish there.

Looting the site is a typical default objective in the early modules.  (Note that this is distinct from killing anything or everything that you find there.  Loot is where the real XP comes from!)

There was also often (but not always) an assumption that you should be able to plug (non-tournament) modules into your own campaign and define your own objectives as part of how they connect to the rest of your world.  In that context, defined objectives and backstory are counterproductive, because they're likely to conflict with existing details of your world.

Yora wrote:

If there is only one way to go and that way is blocked by a monster, then the monster has to be fought and defeated, or there will be no game. And players will instantly know that the monster is defeatable, and the GM will probably help a lot to make sure it will be defeated, or there would be no game.

Those players would get to watch their characters die in my game.  You've forgotten that there is another option, even if an unbeatable monster is blocking the path to the objective:

Leave.

Maybe you can gain a few levels and come back when you're strong enough to handle it.  Maybe you can hire enough retainers to take it down by sheer numbers.  Maybe there's a sage who can tell you the monster's weakness.  And maybe there will be other problems caused by the delay in completing your original objective.

But if you just charge in on the assumption that, if it's there, it must be defeatable and that I'll help to make that happen... well, it's your funeral.

Yora wrote:

By always offering more than one way, players need to judge risk and possible gain, and decide if they dare a danger or try to avoid it. Choice is only meaningful if you can chose between two or more options that are clearly different. Go left or right is not a meaningful choice. Go through the spider nest or go through the magically dark tunnel is a choice.

I completely agree with all of this.  And saying "Screw this, it's too dangerous!" (or even "We're not being paid enugh to deal with this.") and going to find something else to do is also a valid and meaningful choice.

Yora wrote:

I think if you just follow these two rules, you can still have a game that provides 90% of the freedom of a totally freeform game. And as a trade to play a meaningful role in larger scale events,

The two are not mutually exclusive.

My current campaign has the PCs founding a colony on an unexplored island.  They're free to explore, attack, find trade partners among the natives, etc. as they see fit.  I'm doing nothing to direct them, unless you count an occasional random rumor about NPCs having spotted wildlife/monsters nearby.  (I don't count those rumors because their intended purpose is to inform the players about what creatures are in the area, not to tell them what to do next; my players understand this and have basically ignored the rumors so far.)

But they also play a meaningful role in larger events.  Not only are they directing the colony's development and managing its resources, they're also the ones responsible for securing territory for the colony to expand into, leading its defense against any incoming attacks, and working out how to deal with whatever other problems arise.

Just because the players are completely free to choose for themselves what to pursue doesn't mean that those choices won't have larger consequences.

I had my L1 players do character-enriching solo adventures.
 
The Warlock character found himself greatly in debt, tasked by the servants of his shadowy debt-holder to produce the payment or die. In desperation, he became... a grave-robber.
 
The Legerdemainist character was plagued by nightmares caused by the spirit of a childhood friend... whose grave had been robbed! The boy's bones had to be found and returned to the earth...
 
It was in the necropolis that a Shaman lie, badly beaten... left for dead. It wasn't long before these three had common cause (and some experience under their belts...)

I allowed the non-focal players to take on the roles of NPCs and monsters during this early phase.

 

I'd like to second nDervish. It is really important that the GM presents interesting situations to the players; for the first time, a single event is enough, but by time there would probably be multiple ongoing things.

Now, it is trivial that if the players back away from every challenge and decide not to pursue goals the game supports (like giving up the adventurer life in virtually any D&D-esque fantasy game), it is like not playing the game at all. It is also trivial if the GM doesn't prepare anything for the game, it would be very simple at best, but ocassionally boring. To prevent that, GMs usually prepare interesting situations.

Situations are different to plotlines but are also related to them. If you think about any plot in any book or movie, they all have a basic conflict (like an evil arch-mage is about to return from the dead; a powerful vampire lord is terrorising the locals; an insane criminal creates havoc in your city night after night, etc.). Obviously, these are "big picture" conflicts; they may be presented on a smaller scale as well.

So, plotlines revolve around some basic conflict. However, plotlines also have the necessary resolution to those conflicts, whereas sitations in themselves do not. For instance, if the players may hear about the return of arch-mage, they may decide to fight against him, or ally themselves with their followers. The point is, situations can be presented by the GM without expectations about the outcome.

Nevertheless, it is easier to react to the players' reactions if the GM prepared the situation well. For instance, for my first Vikings & Valkyries game I prepared a small community with at least 8 characters with different personality and motivations. I simply had to find a way to present as much information as possible without overwhelming the players ("the Feast"). Whichever person they would've allied themselves with, I could've GMed the emerging occurences, because I was prepared: I knew who wanted what and how would they approach it.

It was kind of long, so I finish with this: make situations, not plotlines. I hope my efforts to explain what this means in detail weren't futile and it actually helped.

I think it mostly comes down to being a dial what ratio of freedom and predictability you want to have. The more accurately you can predict where the next two or three sessions will be going, the more you are able to provide detail, complexity, and options for the players. If I had no clue at all what would happen in the next session, I wouldn't be able to prepare anything at all.

I can't imagine how you'd prepare for a game without knowing where the players will be going and what they want to deal with. How would you actually do that in practice?

Last edited by Yora (5/23/2014 10:41 am)

I typically start any game with a briefing. I will tell the players what they can expect of me the GM, and what i expect of them. I will usually give them some basic knowledge of the game world, the game mechanics and what focus i expect the game to take. I also typically tell them how likely their character is to die. Many of my players are new school, and therefore need to have the concept of player death explained to them.

Usually i pick a broad tone and style for the game. What will the game initially focus on. Will it be an exploration hex crawl kind of game, will it be solving mysteries and lots of npc dialogue, will it be a deadly dungeon crawl etc. This might change and is open to discussion . I am not a mind reader i cannot tell what each player wants to do with out them giving me some feedback. 

There are a number of things an rpg campaign must do to work. It must involve the players working as a party in some form. I'm not going to run 5 simultanous solo adventures. Therefore either the players need to come up with a rational as to why they are going to form a party and work together, or they will accept mine. I don't mind well established characters generating PVP conflicts due to things that have happened in the game world, but a level 1 character has low life expectancy and therefore value. So their wishes don't mean squat as an individual. 


You do have a direct choice as a GM between detail and player freedom. You cannot achieve both. Or at leat not if you want to hold down a full time job. I will typically start off with detail and limit player choice. Why? Because the players don't know the game world well enough to make informed interesting decisions, they don't know their characters wiell enough to really decide what they character ought to do. So often i will start with a short dungeoncrawl or investigation or something that gives a reason for the characters to be bound together, introduces the core game mechanics and the setting. After this I will open the game up. There are a few ways of doing this. I am quite good at improvising most things in fantasy worlds so i can just run with it and create fairly interesting stuff. However it is usually quite easy to deal with lower level characters and predict them if you do a few things;

Make sure they are poor. If they have no money they are limited in how far they can travel and what they can do.

Inflict reality/consequences on them; If they kill somone on the street or steal they face the letter of the law. If they try to march across a desert they may die of thirst etc. Quickly they have to think sensibly this narrows their options down a lot.

worked with the last too, keep the world small.

Give some juicy plot hooks that match their character types. These are short term goals that appeal to the players situation that could evolve into something bigger. Ways to earn cash or prestige usually work well. A mystery of some sort can work well too. If you are really worried about this but a big world event on the clock. For example they are in a city, an army is marching on that city and will arrive in 3 days. Quickly there are predictable ways to get involved or get out of town.

Have a stock of semi random NPCs (with name generator) you can use to creating people of interest on the fly

Have tables for random encounters, lots of them, and make them detailed, they are worth the time investment and can really flesh out the world.

Give the illusion of more choices than the players have. This requires some nueance. You do want to give the players interesting real choices but you want them to feel like they could do anything, when in fact they are rather limited.

Ask at the end of a session what players want to do at the start of the next. I don't think its unreasonable to ask sensible questions of your players. Don't try to read their minds as to waht they want to do. 

Use combat or puzzles to slow the game down. Improvising interesting NPC dialogue is probably the hardest thing in a game, doing it none stop for 3 hours+ is nigh  impossible. So try to find ways to keep the players occupied to give you time to think this stuff through.

The best big meta plots take time to get rolling. If you want you can plant a seed for it in the first session but don't be surprised if the players completely miss it or are not interested. Just drop in one rumour, or one clue, doesn't have to be much. I usually sprinkle 2 or 3 vague clues in to a campaign for a wider plot and see what they take interest in. I then come up with mundane explanations for the stuff they ignore if it ever comes up and develop what they follow up. You don't need to know everthing up front if you apply the above well.

Expect some of your hardest work to go completely unused. I usually create multiple solutions to puzzles or mysteries or routes through a dungeon. Some of the more interesting ones never get looked at. I can always recycle them for later though.

Fantasy is the easiest genre to do all this in, because you can create anything.

If you want to look at some good material, check out anything written by Gabor Lux in either Fight On! or to a lesser extent Knockspell magazine. Its all set in a universe with Amazons and celts and no elves etc. Its some of the best rpg material ever written. If you invent most of your own monsters like i do, you can easily change the stats to make a challenge easier or harder.

thats all i got for now.

Last edited by The_Great_Lestrade (5/23/2014 6:57 pm)

Welcome to the forum, Great Lestrade! What a perfectly excellent way to jump into things. Please tell us a bit about yourself at the introduction thread when you have a chance.

Indeed, Gábor's stuff is awesome; I wish more Hungarian gamers appreciated his work (but that's wildly off topic here).

As for investigations, Justin Alexander's "[url=​http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule]Three Clue Rule[/url]" article is spot on.

Just finished my game of today, and I'm not really happy with how it went.

The fighter with his bastard sword gets three attacks against most things they encountered and easily dealt out more than double the amount of damage than the other four characters combined. Six giant spiders and eight dire rats didn't even have a chance to do any noticable amount of damage, but the giant python almost crushed the cleric like nothing.
The rest of the game was pretty much entirely my poor dungeon design, but 1st level combat really is extremely unpredictable. And that includes full hit points at 1st level and death at -10. The mage and the priest generally stayed behind doing nothing but watching, and I already switched to a magic system that gives them significantly more spells.

Next time I'll try to run Against the Cult of the Reptile God as stright as it gets, and see how it will turn out.