A few months ago, I was musing on other ways to use D&D 4e’s action points.
Since, I’ve been pondering the unfamiliar elements of Narrative Control (i.e. who decides where the story goes). Being a somewhat rigid DM when it comes to storylines and how scenes are played out, the concept of sharing control with the players is uncomfortable.
Yet, the best games we have played are the ones where players were encouraged and allowed to steer where things went.
I know there are plenty of games built around this core concept, but the ones I played so far have not.
So for my game tomorrow (yay! I’m finally playing!), I’m thinking of giving each of my players a ‘But that’s not how it went!‘ token.
What’s that you say?
Once a game I would allow each player to yank narrative control from me and establish how things would go for one single event/item/action. I’m perfectly aware how horribly this can be abused before even discussing the mechanics. Bear with me in this thought experiment (and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments).
So in my mind, I pictured players using this to salvage a missed Daily power roll (That’s not how it went, my attack hit!) to change any type of failure into a success (The Baron accepts our proposal), or it would be used to change a item of loot for something of the players choice (That Magic Orb no one wants is actually a Bastard Sword!).
As I work through the crunch of it all, I’d say that a token can be used to make any dice roll a non-critical success, maximize damage, or change a magical item for something else. It can also be used to influence a NPC to become helpful, make a death saving throw into a success, or spend an extra healing surge.
That’s pretty darn clinical … but it will have to do for the time being.
Now there’s really potential for abuse with such a rule, like all players saving their dailies for a final encounter and all spending their token at the same time to generate a ton of damage.
That’s not good, not good at all.
Now what if I made this into a Party resource? Only one token for the whole party but that eeds to be spent for the benefit of one player by a acclamation. Any player can propose to use a token, the majority needs to approve the use.
Thus, token can have a bigger effect: Critical Hit. Recover from Dying stage, ret-con a situation that went against the PCs or just plain rewrite a scene in a way that’s entertaining for the whole group, DM included.
For the token to work, I’d ask for the players to entertain me. They take narrative control, they need to make it into a narrative worth the bonus they get. So a fixed die roll = a small description… but a NPC that was hostile and turnsaround must have hide some sort of secret that I want to know about!
The idea is really rough at this point, but I’d like to try it.
Feel free to chime in with examples from other games or ideas on how to adjudicate this (complimentary to the Rule of Cool, of course… he he he).
It’s probably worth an experiment but I’m not sure it’s the right direction to head in general. For myself, I’m just trying to prepare a balance between structured adventure and improvised elements. Preping to improvise involves preping more elements than you’ll actually use but making them smaller and less detailed. You need lots of small hooks that your players are free to ignore.
For example a few games ago when my players entered an alchemists shop. A cloaked stranger was there buying all the anti-venom and requesting more be made from poison glands they had brought. I had expected the PCs to talk to the stranger and was ready to launch a whole side quest but they merely took note and when on with their business and I was surprised but completely happy with that. I’ll probably have the stranger appear again later on in some new context and that event now serves as foreshadowing.
A counter example would be that as the PCs were on the way out of the city a group of a nation they are opposed to was making their way through the market. Up to this point the PCs have been covert in their operations and I expected them to not cause any trouble in such a public area and move on with their business. Instead they decided it was time to make a stand and confronted the soldiers. It took me by surprise but I was prepared to improvise and it was a great roleplaying encounter followed by battle.
I can see using it as a great group resource but not as an individual resource. That said, I wouldn’t allow the uses for magic item swapping. There is already a ritual in place for that (from the Adventurer’s Vault) and it’s quite a good one to have. However, I do like the idea of it being used for an extra Healing/Inspiring Word or to refresh a single Daily power for someone.
I’m not a fan of the idea of these tokens changing the course of the story. If you’re concerned about that, I would suggest dispensing with rolls for things that can be roleplayed. Or give large circumstance bonuses to minimize the chances of a roleplaying encounter going south when the players have put a lot of effort into it.
I don’t mean to come off negative – I like the idea. However, some of its applications might be too powerful in the hands of players and I’m just really leery of giving too much to the players. You never know when one might pull a fast one. 😉
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Why not divorce this entirely of mechanics? Make it usable only during roleplay rather than during combat. This ensures that it won’t be used for boring but important purposes like a missed attack.
I would make a “Rule of Cool” token instead. If the player can change the scenario to something balls-out awesome, then their change is justified.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool
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I think that as long as you don’t have a bunch of immature, confrontational, destructive gamers as friends, this works great. I love giving players narrative control. I like it when I get surprised. It makes my time as a DM interesting. I like collaborative worldbuilding as well. Players become invested, and my job is much easier as well.
One thing that you might do is give yourself veto power as a DM. I have done that before, and then never used it. What it did was make my players think twice about being stupid with their narrative control. It eliminates all of the abuse. It is very strange and very fun.
Another technique is to allow players to use knowledge checks to define some element in the world. So they can use knowledge as a narrative tool that can be used to alter the story slightly. Since I set the DC, I can effectively have control if I need it for plot purposes. Haven’t ever needed to make the DC impossible either. Players do a good job of towing the line if they know that they can nudge things, but they cannot force things. It becomes sort of a negotiation about the world. I love it.
Wow, Chatty! That’s a pretty cool idea!
And I do have to agree with most previous comments.
My first take on your idea (before I actually read you post) was not about dice rolling at all. It was about narration – about the story.
I feel this would work awesome with players that like to be involved in the story – I think you have some of those…
I’m reminded of the anecdote you told us when your players summoned flying ships to help them fight some pirate queen. I don’t remember the details, but I remember one of your players being kind of disapointed about how easy it all was. This is where I’d use one of these tokens as a player.
You got a better idea for the story? All players agree? Then the group uses its “that’s not how it went” token and rewrites this bit of the story.
Sounds three parts awesome and one part nightmarish 😛
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Wow! I was expecting to read the comments and see a lot of people talking about how many systems have similar mechanics, and how great they’ve gone in people’s games. I was a litttle surprised that most of the comments so far think you’re giving the players way too much power. I guess I’ll have to fill that gap.
I’ve been using a variation on drama points in my 4e campaign, and it’s gone great. Players all earn them differently – the cleric and pally get them from their gods, the dragonborn fighter who plans to become a god gets them from being extra dragonborn-y, etc. There’s nothing quite like most of the party almost out of HP while the fighter is failing death saving throws, only to have him spend one to make a throw, immediately get to his feet, and (due to a fortuitous roll) take down one of the baddies in one swing.
I can’t see the harm in giving players narrative control. Let me rephrase that – I can’t see the harm in giving players who are invested in a narrative, narrative control. Players who are going to min/max every aspect of a game for everything it’s worth will turn this into an “I win” card, but you already know if your players are like that. If they aren’t, this will just lead to more good story stuff. Ask yourself: Is my group going to spend this token on a critical because the math works best.. or because at that particular moment, it would be really cool to have that character make that critical? If the answer is the latter, go wild.
There was a 007 (bond) role playing game back in the day – they had a whole ruleset around this kind of thing as I recall. Maybe something that someone could dig up… Some general descriptions are easily found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_007_(role-playing_game)
(from above)
Hero Points
Hero Points allow characters to perform the unlikely or cinematic stunts from the genre. Characters earn a Hero Point every time they get a Quality 1 result on a skill other than combat, also when the GM chooses to award one for a clever or dramatic action. A Hero Point may be spent to change the Quality Rating of any result by one level, whether for or against the character, also to change the environment, such as having something just show up by coincidence – the more fantastic, the more expensive in terms of Hero Points.
Bleh. As soon as you start conceiving of the game in terms of narrative, you lose me as a player. I’m not saying there aren’t groups that could have fun with this, but I resent everything that forces me to think of the gameworld as being something that the players can manipulate directly. It kills my suspension of disbelief as dead as any other form of breaking the fourth wall.
Sounds interesting. The best test, of course, is to organize a playtest. Make it a card or other object they can chip in to use.
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There are people like Joshua, so it is recommended to make the mechanic optional. Those who want to ignore it, can.
Phil, what you described in the first post seems to be more of a failure cancellation device than a device for story influence. If that is what you are going for, yeah, they seem functional, if a bit boring, unless you seriously and consistently enforce the need to narrate whatever happens.
If you want to give some actual story influence to people, retain a right to veto their suggestions, as precocious apprentice said. Use the veto power to save your story, if you don’t feel like tossing it out. Or keep a few elements out of reach of the players, perhaps explicitly.
Hiya Chatty,
I use rules much like this a lot. The first thing you ought to do is trust your fellow players. Much of your concern about these rules seems based on the concept, that players abuse the game unless they are kept in check by the GM. These people are (hopefully) your friends, they don’t abuse the rules – and if anything such as that occurs it is actually not some thing, that you should control by GM-administrated rules, it is something you should talk with your fellow players about.
Now that is said, I’d also say, that giving your fellow players influence on the narrative elements has for my game only been a positive thing. The players have become better to express their interests in the game, and they have become a lot more invested, as they too have become creators of the fiction.
If you’d like it, I’ll gladly write post about my use of “plot points” (as we call ‘em) in my D&D-game.
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A lot of systems have mechanics allowing players either to reroll a failed roll (e.g., Savage Wolds’ bennies), gain some small degree of narrative control, or out-right shift the results of a conflict. Often it’s not the issue that the players’ use of the points are too powerful but rather the lack of a working economy for the points so that players have to pay some sort of price to gain those points. FATE/SotC’s fate points are a great example of something that has a mechanical and/or narrative affect on the game but which also requires a certain degree of sacrifice on the player’s part in order to earn them. PDQ’s hero/style points function in a similar way.
As far as using them in 4E, I’m not sure I’d worry about players saving up that single point for the big bad guy at the end: They already can do that with their APs and those are far more of a major perk. Of course coupling the idea of max damage with APs probably is a recipe for anti-climactic battles. One solution would be to allow players to use APs for various effects: Perhaps it costs 1 to gain a reroll, and 2 to gain a 2nd action. You then give out more APs a bit more liberally in the game: Perhaps follow the standard rules but then throw one out to players on occasion for a really cool description or bit of roleplaying. If you’re really worried about players hoarding the points put a cap on the # of points that can be carried over between sessions or wipe the slate clean each time they take an extended rest. If you don’t want them to slaughter the bad guys, keep the rule that they can only use them once (so one reroll or one action) per encounter.
In the 4E game I run for a group of teens I use hero points as a separate system that grant rerolls and other perks (various prices): I reward players for good roleplaying with a hero point which is a good way for offering a reinforcement for desired behavior at the table.
Building from the sentiments of one of the people above, perhaps the system could only be used to make something different, but not change the degrees of success or failure.
For example, you couldn’t turn a botched or regular attack into a critical hit, but you could convince an enraged duke to throw the party into a den of angry lions rather than feed them to his pet dragon.
Alternately, you could have a percentage chance that every time a player uses this ability, there’s a risk that something bad will happen instead, with the bigger requests entailing a greater chance of bad repercussions (or entailing worse repercussions).
A wish for a critical hit could result in a slightly-worse-than-usual critical failure, and the aforementioned appeal to the duke could result in being thrown to the lions and then the dragon. And then another dragon.
Wow! Such a large number of responses for an idea. Thanks!
I’m still unsure if its worth trying but i will offer it to my players.
I find sympathy in the arguments to leave affecting dice rolls out and leave the token only to affect how an aspect of the story goes. However the idea of the token is to allow things to turn around for the best for a key player in the evening.
Then again, as others pointed out, its a matter of trust and maybe I should just allow changes in story course without an extraneous mechanic. I could pick on player.
I think I may try to put too many things in just one idea:
1) I want something that would prevent story tellers to be disappointed by my clumsy skills (no Phil, the Fearie Queen is the one that sent the Trent Airship and its not an insane soul sucker!)
2) I want something to mitigate player frustrations with bad Dice rolls.
3) I want to allow players to get to choose loot they want instead of me making the effort of adjusting treasures in advance.
So yeah… that might be a tad too much for one little mechanic.
I’ll put it to the test tonight and report on it later.
Thanks for the feedback all!
I think for goal 3, the simplest solution is probably, “Oh look, you’ve stumbled upon an ancient artifact that changes weapon types! Hm, it appears it only works once a day, so you can’t set yourselves up as magical blacksmiths and leave the adventuring life behind.”
It works. I’ve been doing something similar for around six months now. I’ve had no trouble to speak of.
My house rules are a little tighter than your proposal, though. Basically, they have to work with the scene in plausible ways, and they can’t directly harm/kill an NPC.
I’d stick to making them an individual thing, I think. My concern is that the “only one to a group” would lead to arguments over how to use it, and derail the story you’re trying to enhance. That’s not a problem if everyone has their own personal “do something awesome” chit.
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What about tying it into the story and making it a blessing from a god?
I’ve played with a variety of systems that let players spend points for something extra, either in terms of narrative control (see Serenity RPG’s “plot points” or the effects of spending Inspiration for dramatic elements in Adventure) or negating randomness (such as the white wolf spend a willpower for an extra success/bonus dice). Your proposed tokens are a little of both, which isn’t uncommon in my experience. I find that actual narrative control is more rare to hand over, while more games and GMs are prone to allow players to negate unpleasant randomness.
I find the narrative control aspect to be more intriguing, though. When I run games, I’m always looking for ways to let the players help me with the work of describing the world and the results of actions without giving up all of my referee’s control over the final result. Points or tokens that allow players to say “but what really happened was…” seem like a great idea for this to me. Instead of associating them with the random aspect of system mechanics, I would probably choose to associate them with the “GM’s discretion” areas. Your example of “the orb nobody wants is really a bastard sword” is one good example of this. Another would be a critical success or failure on some check. Let’s go with a critical failure. I say the player swings, misses, and lodges his magic greatsword in the wall so it will be difficult to retrieve. The player spends his token and says, “actually, I tripped and fell prone, but I retained my grip on my weapon.” He still has to suffer the fumble, but he got to choose his own penalty instead of me choosing it.
It becomes even more interesting in other situations. I say the room is empty, but player says, “but that’s not how it went!”
“How did it go,” I ask?
“Well,” says he, “there is a fair maiden awaiting our arrival. She is friendly, and bears news from our patron!”
This hands me an interesting situation. A little tough to roll with? Yes, definitely. However, it definitely adds more imagination than my own to the task of shaping the growth of the adventure, and that can only have awesome results.
Now that I’ve read Joshua’s comment, I am reminded that I sympathize with his sentiments. I don’t feel as strongly about them, but it’s for similar reasons that I prefer to retain randomness and the chance of failure whenever possible. Players directly affecting the game world doesn’t kill my suspension of disbelief any more than the GM doing so does. PCs becoming some kind of unstoppable force of perfection because they never fail at any important tasks, though, really does kill it for me. This is not accusing any players out there of a desire to abuse the rules (though I HAVE played with such people in the past, and no longer play with them as a result of such behavior). This is an observation that yes, players don’t like to fail. Thus, given the power to not-fail, they will use it.
When failure isn’t a real threat, the game loses all interest for me. Might as well put the dice away and have everybody describe how their characters do awesome things. It becomes a game of “I once caught a fish this big.”
One of my favorite DMs used a home brew rule called “Divine Intervention”. It can only be invoked once a game session, and it takes a unanimous vote from all the players, and we’ve never had a problem with any arguments. This rule has come in very handy in avoiding total party kill, and helps undo decisions made by one player that threatened to effect the entire party in a very bad way.
Example: In one game, the DM introduced an ominous looking vial (plot point for the storyline) and a player made the decision to break open the mysterious and very very very dangerous and ominous looking vial before first getting it checked out by someone knowledgeable in such items. (this was after the DM kept asking “Are you really sure you want to do that?” aka “Listen to the DM’s warning and don’t do it!”) Inside the vial contained a very virulent plague that upon breaking would kill every living thing within a 5 mile radius…if they were lucky. Once the DM announced that the players basically killed themselves and the kingdom they were traipsing through, Divine Intervention was invoked, time reversed back a few seconds, and a powerful being showed up at the last second to prevent the character from breaking open the vial of death, thus saving the party, the kingdom, and the plot line.
Divine intervention is a very useful tool, and only having it available once per session and only with the total agreement of the entire party keeps the players from abusing it.
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Awesome feedback! I’ve seen multiple comments being bookmarked and shared on Google Reader so this discussion has been, so far, very productive.
It turns out that my friends really wanted to spend the evening killing monsters and managed to have good rolls most of the night. No token were used…
My friend PM, in an offline discussion hit the issue on the head for me:
Many players don’t like to be asked ‘So what happens now?” They don’t expect to be part of shaping the story, that’s the DM’s job.
If I really want to share narrative controlled, I need to introduce this in my DMing style and not crunchify into some mechanic.
Like PM says, if players flub a skill challenge and end up being surrounded by hostile guards… I should ask a question like “So does anyone of you know one of the guards here?” if I want to give players a way out.
If one answers positively, then with more questions, you draw the players into setting up the next scene where the sympathetic guard does something to help the PCs get out of this predicament.
So the whole token thing is not so much what I was looking for, but a way to draw out players into the story more.
I think it needs to come from my willingness to share and the player’s trust that I won’t screw them over if they go out on a limb to shape the story.
As for frustration management and magic item swapping, I’ll keep exploring. Many of the suggestions brought up in the comments are giving me plenty of food for thought.
Thanks!
Maybe it would be a good idea to take a short break from playing D&D to try out a game that does this as part of the core rules system. That way, you get to see how it works in a supportive environment without the everyday issues of D&D in the way. Afterward, you can bring that experience with you back to D&D.
I would suggest a short series of Primetime Adventures, or even a Dirty Secrets novella or three (disclaimer: I edited the Dirty Secrets, and also, it’s structure is closer to one Player and many GMs than straight ahead player authourship). Both of these games do a good job of allowing all players to have input into the story’s direction but offering a structure for that input.
As has been mentioned, player authourship isn’t for everyone, but I do think it’s worth giving it an honest shot before dismissing it. It may not fit with your current fun, but it may open your eyes to another, different type of fun.
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Primetime Adventure is on the top of my ‘non-D&D’ RPG reading list. I just didn’t purchase it yet. Being a huge fan of TV series and tropes in general… this game is self evident for me. I’m just not so sure my current players would be all that interested… but I still want to read from it.