I was having lunch with a DM friend of mine. He was telling me how he was trying to steer his group in is Homebrewed campaign so that they would “spontaneously” decide to go see an Oracle and thus start the Forgotten Realms’ Sceptertower of Spellguard” Adventure.
He told me how one of his players kept refusing to follow the group toward the planned objective and how his other players seemed confused about what needed to be done. He concluded his story by telling me that he had to stage an investigation-like scene so that all clues would be tied up together to push the group to decide to go see said oracle.
He told me that most of his players weren’t paying attention to that scene and that he ended up doing NPC on NPC dialogues to conclude the scene before everyone fell asleep.
Ugh, NPC on NPC action…That’s worse than bad porn.
And to top it all, my DM friend was feeling bad because he believed that he had railroaded his players in finally deciding to go see the oracle.
While discussing with him, I asked him this question:
Chatty DM: “Are you the type of DM that throws rocks in the puddles at your PCs’ feet, hoping they’ll investigate the ‘plops’?”
Friend (Sheepishly) “Actually I throw little strands of reed, in puddles way ahead of the PCs, and hope they’ll notice.”
I understand where he comes from. My friend wants to create a storyline where players will end up making key choices to move the adventure forward. However, since he wants at least a minimum of control on where the game will go, he multiplies subtle hints and works his various plotlines to some pre-planned solutions that he hopes the players will eventually notice.
Yet, he doesn’t want to force his players toward campaign goals and hopes that they’ll organically converge toward them.
I’m more of the school of having things happen to PCs in an adventure. When stuff happens to characters, players will react and follow leads to understand why they were targeted or involved in a situation.
I’ve seen many adventures start with the PCs walking in a City and a poor NPC gets mugged by mooks. In such cases, the adventure’s author assumes that the players will intervene and follow the story from there.
I find this to be a potential weakness in adventure design. What if one or many characters don’t care about what’s happening? The GM will be stuck and may have to resort to trickery, or downright pleading for players to grab that essential plot hook to move the story forward.
That’s actually an argument that Pro-sandbox GMs use to sell their games. By not making plot hooks, players are forced to explore to find adventure. But many players aren’t actually all that comfortable seeking adventure by themselves and expect the GM to make something happen.
Chatty DM “Instead of throwing rocks in the water, why don’t you drop a meteor on the party? Make the trouble hit them directly!”
Friend: “It does seem evident when you say it like that”.
For instance, have the mook mistake the PCs for someone else and have them try to mug the party. Then, when the party frisk the bodies, they’ll find a piece of paper that hints at some sort of conspiracy and leading to some obscure meeting place…
I’m very, very much of the ‘Drop a meteor’ type of DM. In my games, I try to focus the action on the PCs. Maybe NPCs have great adventures off screen, but when trouble hits, the PCs are very near it and are usually the only ones who can deal with it.
In tomorrow’s game, where I’m staging an election in a hotly contested burg of my campaign’s “City Within the Dungeon”, I’m giving all PCs free houses/abodes in that burg and I’m hiring all of them to be in charge of Security for the election. Now things are going to happen that put the security of the candidates and the voters at risk, and the PCs are going to be on the front line, trying to do the job they were hired to do.
Of course. I have a backup plan. If they refuse, they get to be selected as obligatory voters. Yes, I’m railroading the adventure’s setup, but that’s because our game is not a sandbox and we’re cool with that.
So if you recognize yourself as a rock throwing DM and find that your players are having a hard time moving the the adventure forward, why not consider throwing a little meteor on the party instead:
- Have a piece of a strange artifact fall in their hands and have all of your world’s baddies go after it
- Have the PCs fall in a sinkhole that leads them to that lost dungeon everyone is looking for
- Make that one PC the rightful heir of the Lost Kingdom, the only one who can contain that sphere of Annihilation that’s eating her sweetheart’s city
What about you? Do you throw rocks in your PC’s puddles?
It depends a lot on my players and their attention to details. I’ve had diverse group in the past with some, boulder in the puddle was enough with others I had to go with the whole mountain. 😉
But usually it varies during the game. I tend to give obvious hint at the start to get the PC going in a direction. Then as long as thing are moving I’ll go with frequent smaller peeks at something bigger (read out right info dump made by NPC or disguised in a knowledge check). If I sense that the lead starts thinning I’ll go with another big in your face kind of hint.
My goal is to make the PC participate in the story. If the story is in my head there is no way the players will be able to interact with it. As DM, we must not forget that they can only imagine what they understood of our narratives. If you don’t give enough info, the player are completely blind. You end up telling a story to your players instead of building one with them.
Martin Ralya had a great analogy over at his old Treasure Table blog where he said that players saw the GM’s world with a Flashlight, only seeing little parts of it, while the GM had a 100 watt bulb, often blinding him to things his Players missed.
Tout ca pour dire…I agree with your assessment, the GM must share the story in whatever ways will push it the most.
I throw a rock in a puddle. My players say, “OMFG, someone just dropped the giant boulder that killed my parents into a monster-infested lake that is part of my destiny!” I spend two sessions dealing with the fallout, then try to have a relatively low-plot session to cool off. To steer them in that direction, or because I got distracted, I drop a rock I’m carrying into a puddle. Repeat ad infinitum.
Sometimes I wonder who’s really running this game. Never happened quite like this in any campaign I’ve run before the current one. It’s fun, but a lot of work to keep track of.
I go back and fourth on the topic of sandbox gaming vs rail-roading. Obviously there’s a middle ground.
I typically find good opportunities in the game for the group to have obvious choices without leaning my head one way or the other. Two friends are in trouble – which will you help? Two opposing groups seek your allegiance. Which one will you join? A nasty enemy wants to join with you in order to defeat something even more powerful – will you join them or kill them?
Choices need to have real meaning and not have pre-determined outcomes but they don’t need to happen all the time.
Last night I started my game by saying “I’m not even going to pretend I’m not railroading you – you show up at the city seeking your lost friend.” It skips a lot of hand-waving and conversations with the constant undertone of “just tell us what we’re supposed to know and point us where we’re supposed to go”.
I very much like the Robin Laws style of adventure forks. Write out the outline for your adventure and stick in forks in the road wherever you can. They can all head one way or another, but the forks need to have meaning.
I remember seeing this in action in the game Wing Commander 2 for the PC. Depending on how your missions went, you either took the fight to the Kilrathi or you had to defend earth. It really showed me how a dynamic storyline can go but still have structure.
Good conversations!
Mike Sheas last blog post..Tips For Running One-Shot Games
“Having a meteor fall on the PCs” this is what I like most about Savage Worlds. The system assumes that the GM will be lobbing meteors all the time. I’m with Swordgleam on this one. Not only do my players do it to me, but I do it quite frequently to my GM.
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I tend to drop more rocks than meteors myself. I personally prefer more of a sand-box approach to the game, so I can see why. I have found that the biggest problem with dropping rocks instead of meteors is that players tend to see rocks where their aren’t any and go haring off in completely the wrong direction … and they do this entirely due to conditioning. If players are expected to hunt for adventures by picking up on subtle clues, you can expect them to to start seeing clues everywhere. Maybe I should start dropping more meteors?
1. Add a bunch of shiny objects around the player characters.
2. Throw rocks or meteors or whatever at the PCs until they jump somewhere, anywhere and start investigating the shiny objects.
3. Add more shiny objects.
4. If things slow down, start throwing stuff until the PCs jump again.
5. GOTO 3
There will be problems only if one wants the PCs to jump to specific direction. If that is the case better just say that they do so.
Tommis last blog post..Roleplaying in society
Jut throw the PCs in the darned puddle. They don’t like it if you get them wet.
To a large extent it depends on your players’ make-up (no, not that kind of make-up, silly). If you’ve a bunch of players who enjoy investigations then rocks-into-puddles should work most of the time. They’ll want to see what’s making all that splashing noise. That’s especially good if you’re playing Call of Cthulhu (or similar) where splashing noises are particularly ominous. Investigation is a core trope of the horror genre, after all.
Most of the time though, it pays to target the characters directly. Make it personal. If the plot begins with a murder, have it be someone closely connected to one of the characters, and preferably set it up by having the NPC make a few appearances beforehand. Just as the character is getting to know the long lost sister he never knew – BAM! death by gnome cart. Cruel, but effective.
Good post!
@Swordgleam: Ah, you have overly active paranoid players, I see. Then I completely understand your method. You know you can just make crap on the go and let your players draw the lines.
Its like you got a conspiracy theory gaming group! You need to play some Illuminati RPG!
@Mike: I could not agree more. In my way of writing adventures for my friends, I try to insert forks between or shortly after a meteor strikes. What player chose to do and whom they help shapes future adventures to come.
@Vulcan Stev: So this might be a more prevalent trait in gaming groups than I have observed so far. Interesting.
@Corvys: There’s definitively a thread here. I think its fair to think that the inherent selfishness of players will make for PCs who assume that everything is about them in the gaming world. While some GMs/groups prefer to have events happen to setting elements to make it feel more alive/realistic, I too am starting to think that overly paranoid players need a few meteors on the head to move an adventure faster once in a while.
@Tommi: Your technique implies a sandboxy approach, which requires a different kind of preparation. I for one do not like sandbox as I prefer set-piece adventures with well defined scenes/room and I have limited time to prep them. Hence my adventures tend to be more scripted and I grab the players attention by having things happen to them.
@Greywulf: Good point about investigation games. Gnome Carts FTW!
One of my favorite campaigns that I GMed was a Shadowrun campaign. Since my players were all new to Shadowrun, I knew I needed to hook them, and quickly. So I resorted to one of the best evil GM tricks: I made them the bad guys.
A large part of Shadowrun is getting jobs to do from shady characters, so their first job was to deliver some, hmm, “stuff” from one guy to another. Oh, and after they delivered it they learned that they had delivered mind-destroying drugs. To an evil magician. Who was going to burn out the brains of thousands of people to summon an ancient evil spirit.
Well, after that, they just had to try and stop him, didn’t they?
@katre: First, welcome to the blog! Thanks for commenting. And second, great hook technique you used there! That’s a nice way to drop the bad guy’s plot directly on the head of the party! Great job!
Railroading/sand-box.
Meteor/rock in the puddle.
I’m a meteor guy with a few rocks in the puddle.
Sand-box just can’t be the main ingredient of good game. You can have a good game of sand-box if you have players with a lot of “drive”… you can also win the lottery and never have to work again! The reason I like being a DM is because it gives me the “steering wheel” of the story and I don’t like giving up my seat.
In the end, it simply depends of who is the most creative at the moment… you or your players. If a PC is on fire and drive the group to do something he wants to do and it’s interresting, I let him go for a while. An hour, a session, a few sessions maybe. When he’s done, or if I had enough, or if they are boring me big time… Meteor!
One thing is for sure, I never throw a rock in the puddle if something is important to the campaign… too risky they miss it.
Part of this comes down to a gamers’ social contract. Did the DM work out with the players what sort of game they wanted to play?
Or, hell… did he just outright tell them how the set-up was to work? It’s sometimes better to just go to pre-game table-chatter if there’s a fear the hook won’t take. At least it’s established that the opening is a lead, and everyone (the players – not the characters, though) have bought into it. Courteous players will see a “let’s get rolling” hook a mile away and, even if they don’t feel their characters would follow it, they’ll do so anyway because, as stated, they’re courteous and understand the situation, trusting the DM to lead them into something they’ll enjoy.
For D&D, personally, I’d say: “This is the sort of adventure that I’m looking to run. Think of that as you create a group of characters: The characters you guys create must have a reason for being interested in X, Y and Z because those types of situations will arise.”
I have to say, though, that this whole issue (and many others) is a reason I don’t play D&D anymore. I prefer systems whereby the players themselves determine the tone, setting and theme for the world and campaign plot, reach agreement with the GM, and create characters based on what was agreed upon. You really can’t go wrong with such a set-up.
Rafes last blog post..Survival of the Scrawniest
Nothing wrong with a little railroading even in a sandbox game now and then. In our current game, a sandbox btw, we ended up having a handfull of rocks thrown in the pubble. It was a bit too overwhelming at that point so we ended up practically begging for a bit of railroading, and essentially asking NPC’s more knowlegable which of the rocks was slightly bigger then the others.
@D_Luck: I disagree that a sandbox can’t be a good game, that,s flying in the face of all those West Marsh games going on right now. Many gaming group prefer that model. It just jars with my natural style and being prone to overprepare, I’d likely lose my mind trying to populate the whole box…
@Rafe: Yeah, I know that many games out there encourage sharing world building and campaign plots. I’ve yet to try it and my players more or less show up to be a player and are more than happy to leave all the fiddly bits to me. I’ve got my friend Yan helping me out though and I greatly appreciate it.
@Conlaen: Welcome to the blog! Yup, railroading, when used sparingly and with the group’s consent is quite all right. Its just another tool in the GM’s arsenal to try to make the game the most enjoyable to his own group.
How well known are the PCs in town? It seems to me that if the PCs are reluctant to act as security then one of the PCs should nominated by the local townsfolk as a write in candidate. Perhaps they heard of their recent adventures and one of the local got the idea that one of the PCs should be elected. The PC would probably fight this but the idea could really grab hold in a segment of the town and the PCs probably couldn’t stop it.
As a candidate, the PC would then become a natural target for whatever evilness the DM has planned.
@BradG: It probably won’t be an issue as a group we’re pretty much easy to predict.
Lets still talk about it for the sake of discussion. For this kind of approach you need to at least have one PC that is politically driven, to accept being a candidate. You can hardly force someone in a management office if he does not want to, unless you have peer pressure and reason not to just run away.
None of our PC are politically inclined and have real attachment to city yet. (Well except me but being a co creator of the setting makes my attachment obvious). One of the sub purpose of these city sessions is to build PC to city involvement. To avoid the “why should I care?” situation.
As Yan says, my players are rather docile in accepting whatever plot hook I offer. As long as I don’t break suspension of disbelief, I can pretty much do whatever I please in terms of story.
It helps that I usually design adventures with my player’s tastes and motivation in mind.
I usually sit down with my players prior to the start of the campaign to devise a background and some campaign goals. I then try to envision various ways for the characters to achieve that goal in game via adventures. Adventures are the engine that moves the campaign plot forward but they are seldom the primary force in and of themselves. They can be flavorful and they can be over an arc but I seldom have a campaign thats all one series of adventures.
I like to develop villians and allies that my characters can get to know and love/hate. Often these are recurring but not too recurring. Most of the time defeating a villian becomes part of at least one characters life goal.
My group though is aware that I put a lot of work into my dungeons. I don’t want to waste my time and have a the group go off in some random direction. So they are very good to cooperate once I’m creating the kind of adventure they want. They drive the strategic level thinking on adventures and I drive the individual tactical view.
An example. I have a rogue character whose life goal is to rule the cities underworld. His background was his joining a gang in his teen years after living as a child in an orphanage. So over the course of the campaign he is clashing with npcs intent on stopping him from achieving his goals. Sometimes the group will crush a local group bad guys who the rogue secretly wanted eliminated in his quest for power. The other characters though think they were just ridding the city of the local criminal element.
So each character has his own goals. Adventures often touch on multiple goals of multiple characters. Sometimes its focused on a single character. When its not your characters “turn” its just a routine adventure. When it is you kind of shine as the story lead in….
love your blog chatty…
Hey John, welcome to the blog (I might have missed a previous comment). Thanks for sharing your story. Your approach to building a cooperative campaing is great! I don’t think I’ll ever go that direction as D&D has become less of a storytelling game for us and more of a casual, beer and friends type of hobby.
Still, I try hard to entertain and since I have storytellers (I’m one of them, to a certainn extent) in my group, we weave some story elements to please that streak.
We do most of our roleplaying by taking actions and interacting with NPCs but we do that in a mechanical sort of way. Our group rarely talks in character, etc.. They enjoy the wargame/puzzle aspects of the dungeon and they enjoy the campaign stuff as kind of an adjunct game outside the dungeon.
@ChattyDM:
Hey! I wanted to write a post about a similar discussion I had with a DM friend of mine! (I most likely will)
When you made your rock vs meteorite metaphor, I had my elephant in the room moment when you said something akin to:
I still like the “throwing rocks” method – my players actually have very active imaginations and the subtle ripples can end up being huge waves…
But right now, they’re PCs are not personnaly engaged in the storyline, so the imagination engine didn’t kick up.
You made a few suggestions that I’ll most likely use that should make them involved all right!
@Rafe:
You’re absolutely right – no social contract.
We did make clear that we’re planning to run the Spellgard Tower scenario, that they’ll be going to the Oracle. The objective of the first sessions was to get them to level 2 and find motivations top go to the Oracle.
Beyond that (don’t know if that even worked yet), I don’t know what most of my players are looking for and I’m trying to please them all.
Which, it would seem, is a great recipe to please no one.
I’ll most likely have that chat with my friends soon to see what compromise we can strike… and make sure everyone is aware.
I remember a wise man saying “If not all parties are aware of a compromise, it’s most likely called something else.”
Eric Maziades last blog post..Meet Eldak "Grissom" Serpenthelm
I throw a lot of rocks… eventually, they have to pick up one of the ripples…
the way I structure my games is very simple, I just tell the players that stuff happens… and they have to deal with it 🙂
Philippe;
Actually I don’t typically run sandbox games because they require too much preparation. I much prefer improvising the shiny things and the rocks/meteors on the fly. If the players jump somewhere where there are no shiny toys, I come up with a new one.
The main point is that players can decide where they jump and that the decision genuinely matters.
Tommis last blog post..Roleplaying in society
Okay, in that case your GMing style is almost identical to Yan’s, at least in regards to prepping the game.
@Chattydm: I did not said “sand-box” was bad, just that it can’t be the main ingredient of a good game. What I should have said is “a good game for all the participant”.
More often then not, the same players end up taking the decisions for the group. After playing a few of these “sand-box” games, I would always become the mediator between “the strong personnality player” vs the others. And I must say, I always get BORED big time by this type of game. I really love working on a story and see it unfold with the radical influence of the players.
While I write this, I have the strange feeling that “yet again” we are all saying pretty much the same thing. It’s the definition of what “sandbox” games mean for each of us.
Sandbox to me is this: I sit at the DM chair with nothing prepared and I ask to a bunch of players: “What do you do?”
You?
As you say D, we don’t define Sandbox the same way. In ‘good’ sandbox ga,es the DM has a ton of material prepared, but no overarching plot. The PCs find the story by exploring what they want, when they want. The plot becomes exploration and following on hints and bits found in the setting itself.
@D_luck
What you define (under-preparation) is an improv game, where things happen mainly based on the PCs’ choices.
Sandbox, as Chatty said, is over-preparation instead. In it, things happen regardless of the PCs’ involvement, and are constantly happening around the PCs. The PCs’ choices can then influence these already-in-motion events (including stopping events or starting new ones, which then take on a life of their own separate from the PCs as well).
To clarify what I think you were trying to say, either of these types of games can be great, but you need to have just the right mix of players. A plot-based game (minor railroading, usually), by contrast, can appease more player types in general.
Would that be right? If so, I agree 100%.
Grahams last blog post..32 hours of D&D gaming party!
@Chattydm & Graham: OMG. You’re so right! My definition is an improv game, not sandbox!?!?!?!
This means, if I take what you both explained, that I’m a total sandbox type of DM?!?!?!
I think I’m pretty good in english in general, but this time…
Language skill test: D20 result 1, reroll 1 = fumble!
Dan: Damn!
God: Well, you rolled a fumble!
Dan: Now what happen.
God: The univers is taken by an extreme desire to laught at you for ever and ever. The sound wave produced by the millions of readers of Chattydm.net hit you and your brain explode. You crumble to the floor in a pool of blood and shame.
🙂
For your defence D_luck you are bound to make more improvisation in a sandbox game then a scripted one… 😉
Could be, D_luck. Let’s see.
Do you:
1) Weave a coherent world with events that happen regardless of the PCs, place the PCs in it, and let them do what they want to, affecting the game and game world as they choose to (or choose not to)? In this game, if the PCs spend a few hours haggling with the local bartender for cheaper drinks, they might easily miss the evil summoning ceremony.
or
2) Guide the PCs primarily along a main plot line, occasionally altering plans to fit the plot and/or the speed of the PCs. In this sort of game, the evil summoning ceremony is coming to a close just as the PCs arrive, regardless of if they took an hour to get there or two (within reason, of course).
Both games can be very similar, but in the second one plot and story get to take precedence over verisimilitude in some cases.
Grahams last blog post..32 hours of D&D gaming party!
I think I’m a mix of both. I’m in part a number 2, but including number 1.
To take what you wrote and mix it up to represent more what I do, it would be something like this. (I’ve cut what doesnt fit with me and writen in CAPITAL LETTERS what I added to it.)
1) Weave a coherent world with events that happen regardless of the PCs, place the PCs in it, and let them do what they want to, affecting the game and game world as they choose to (or choose not to)? In this game, if the PCs spend a few hours haggling with the local bartender for cheaper drinks, they WOULD NOT miss the evil summoning ceremony BUT THE TIME FRAME AVAILABLE FOR THEM TO STOP IT WOULD BE SIGNIFICANTLY SHORTER.
2) Guide the PCs primarily along a main plot line, occasionally altering plans to fit the plot and/or the speed of the PCs. DECISIONS MADE BY THEM AFFECT THE STORY.
Bearing in mind that the situations above are pretty much the extremes of either side, I think it’s pretty clear you fall more towards the “story” side than the “verisimilitude” (sandbox, or backdrop story) side.
Few people are at either extreme, but most will lean to one side or the other a majority of the time.
Just which side is good can differ from moment to moment, and is generally a matter of personal taste.
Grahams last blog post..32 hours of D&D gaming party!