Start As You Mean To Go On — Starting A Story Game

Story games start differently than gamer-porn RPGs.  Say good-bye to that comforting invocation “you’re sitting in the tavern when a dark stranger approaches you with a map and a mission.”  More to the point, say good-bye to that first session in which each player brings a character, painstakingly built and optimized in isolation, and the DM tears the plastic wrap off the new adventure module.

The start of the game reflects the desire to maximize every player’s involvement in shaping the story from the very beginning.  In one game I was recently part of (credit: Peter), the GM lead the group through a series of questions about the setting, the group and our characters.  By the end of it, we had a detailed and juicy fictional world to play in, and some lively characters that we couldn’t wait to portray.

Here are some good questions to toss around while shaping a story.  These should all be posed and answered as a group.  Don’t try to write your own Silmarillion; you just need an agreed framework upon which to start playing.  The Setting and Group questions should stimulate a great conversation that lasts 1-2 hrs (take notes), and developing the character concepts for everyone should take another 1-2 hrs depending on the group.

Setting:

• When in history? (fantastic, realistic, anachronistic?)
• What defines the world?  Technology, magic, zoology, culture, politics, economics, etc.  In other words, what fictional genre(s)?
• What are the major tensions or problems in the world today?  War?  Corruption?  Dictatorship?  Megacorporations?  Occupation?  Oppression?  Cold War?  Declining empire? Religious tensions?  Plague?  Natural disaster?  Pick a couple and detail them out.
• Who are the relevant big players?  Countries, corporations, churches, public figures, etc.  Detail out a few – just the ones that affect the major tensions.  Some NPCs will be defined here.
• What sort of adventure(s) do you want to play out?

Group:

• Why are the PCs a group?  (Take it as a given that the PCs are a group, and skip the whole contrived scene where some dangerous-looking strangers meet by chance and decide to put their lives in each others hands.)
• How does the group fit in relation to the major tensions of the world?
• What is the group’s aim?  Justice?  Profit?  Piracy?  Agents provocateurs?  Subterfuge and sabotage?  World domination?
• How does the group persist at the start of all this?  Secret identities?  Mysterious benefactor?  Police/military black budget?  Proceeds of crime?
• Some more NPCs will suggest themselves during this discussion.  Write down some basics about each of them: name, role (world), relationship to the group, 1 or 2 defining characteristics.  Family members, benefactors, nemeses, important contacts, love interests, etc.

Each Character:

• Functional concept? (Fighter/Wizard/Thief, or Speedster/Telepath/Gadget Whiz, or…)
• What is important to you?
• What gets you off?
• How did you get your start?
• Personality?
• What’s your “issue”?
• Relationships with each other PC?  Good? Bad? Indifferent? Antagonistic? Protective?
• more NPCs may take form here.

Once that’s all sketched out, the GM goes home and dreams up a situation that should kick the group into action in the direction that will generally fit the players’ desires in terms of plot.  He comes up with some antagonists that will really push the characters’ buttons, and some challenges that will strike at some PCs’ weaknesses while playing to the strengths of others.  Example: my character was a strong telepath with mind-control ability.  In our first encounter, I faced a giant killer robot!  My character’s greatest strength was nullified.  I was very impressed.

Notice how much the players get to define at the start.  There’s no worry about “spoiling the surprise,” here.  The players might be as detailed as “we want to be super-cops trailing a band of international bank robbers that nobody else can catch.  We want to trail them to their hide-out in the Italian Alps, and we want to have a James Bond-style shoot-out while racing down the mountain on skiis!”  Even a well-defined plot arc like that still leaves the GM with lots of room to fit in mystery, surprises and plot twists.  At least he’ll know that he’s starting with a group of players who WILL, guaranteed, be fully engaged.

Topic for a future post: brainstorming the story by building a relationship map (credit: Ryan).

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Conversions

The Indiana Jones movies I hold up as excellent adventure stories.  In my games, I strive to capture the excitement and exotic thrills of those movies.  But on the other hand, Raiders of the Lost Ark (the first movie, as if I have to tell you) sounds like an example of the ultimate cliché gamer-porn plot: “retrieve the magic item.”  You know, find the all-powerful ring, the wizard’s staff, the lost spellbook, the orb that will save the kingdom, etc.  It’s been done a million times.  Why does it work so spectacularly in Indiana Jones?

The important difference, i think, is as follows:

Gamer porn: The heroes learn of the magic item,its fearsome guardian, and the castle or dungeon in which it is held.  The item serves to launch the heroes towards a predetermined series of challenges (rooms, monsters, traps, puzzles, guards).  If the heroes can best all the challenges, they retrieve the magic item.

Great story: The heroes set out to retrieve the item.  They may know that two or three steps will be required (get the amulet that deciphers the cryptic directions, find the map-room, then dig up the Ark), but they are surprised to encounter several additional challenges, set-backs and complications (the Nazis are looking for the Ark too; Marion is kidnapped; the Nazis find the Ark first; Indy and Marion are burried alive with a million snakes; the Ark is transported to some tropical island; the Nazis plan to open the Ark; etc.).  At every step, the heroes think they are one step away from achieving their goal; but then they fail or are thwarted, and learn valuable new information about the situation and the antagonists.  A new plan is formed, and they move forward.  At no point do the heroes say “only 17 more rooms full of monsters til we get to the Ark!”

I want to create RPG adventures that engage and thrill in the same way that the best adventure stories do.  Here I think are the important elements that have to be included:

• the players plan for some logical steps to achieve their goal, but have little information about the big picture, their foe and the extent of his power and schemes;
• the players meet with several unexpected set-backs and complications*; after each one, they must integrate new information into their understanding of the big picture, then form a new plan as to how to move forward; new decisions are required.

* A word about “progress.” Players must always feel like they have made progress in a session, else frustration quickly follows.  A set-back can still give a feeling of progress if “it could have been worse” but for the players’ quick thinking, and if this minor defeat furnished important new information, and/or if the players were able to eliminate an important resource or lieutenant of the evil mastermind, or similar minor victory.  Despite set-back after set-back, the players must feel that they are getting ever closer to the evil foe’s coat tails.  Credit to David for first voicing this key concept for me.

Oh, adventure design was so easy up ’til now.  String together a series of rooms with monsters and other level-appropriate challenges, and sprinkle liberally with treasure.  But Great-Story-Adventure design seems harder; or at least, I don’t have the big picture yet.  I predict some set-backs and hard lessons.  How can I PLAN a series of cool action scenes, but still give the players a chance to decide after each scene what to do next?

Shall we coin a new acronym?  GSA, for “Great Story Adventure”?  I want to develop a method for GSA design and execution.

Next time: can a published D&D adventure be successfully converted into a GSA?  How??   More to come.

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The Deep End

I currently have one gaming group, the members of which I’m sure would describe themselves as “indy gamers,” or story gamers.   They’ve introduced me to some great role-playing games including In A Wicked Age, and Ghost/Echo; games whose goal is to spin a great tale.  The roles of players and game master (GM) are shared, or at least the terminus is quite blurred.

And my turn to bring a game and GM it is coming up fast.  What will I do?  I’ve really taken to story gaming as a player, but all my GMing chops I learned running TSR’s and WotC’s finest.  I know “traditional” RPG refereeing: the GM brings the plot, the players roll dice, the GM interprets (repeat ad infinitum).  Time to crystalize and codify what I’ve learned so far from the indy gamers, and to formulate a new method of GMing.

Game systems are portable.

• The fundamental mechanics of a game system can be adapted to any genre, any setting.
• The rules set strongly influences the style of play.
• Corollary: a medieval fantasy game played using narrativist (instead of strategist) rules becomes a story game.

Whcxcvxvddcvat is it about D&D that story gamers don’t like?

– necessity of tracking dozens of bonuses and penalties.  Need to min/max everything.  Need to constantly loot more and better equipment from bad guys.

– importance of tracking resources: hit points, heal potions, gold, arrows, spells per day, etc.

– character advancement: necessity to accumulate XPs, gold, magic items.

– plots and player motivations like: piracy/looting, seeking out big monsters to kill,

– toe-to-toe combat.  In other words, conflict resolution by plain dice-rolling.  No creative input.  Only two possible outcomes: “they” die, or we die.

What is it about some D&D games that story gamers don’t like?

• Complexity: necessity of tracking dozens of bonuses and penalties.  Need to optimize or “min/max” scores of options when outfitting your character.  Importance of tracking resources: hit points, heal potions, gold, arrows, spells per day, etc.
• Character advancement: necessity of accumulating experience points, gold, better equipment.  Need to constantly loot more and better equipment from bad guys.  Powering up becomes the players’ primary motivation.  Adventure plots are simplistic, serving only to present opportunities to “kill monsters and take their stuff.”
• Toe-to-toe combat: conflict resolution by plain dice-rolling.  No creativity required.  Might as well play a computer game with one “fight” button.  Only two possible outcomes: “they” die, or we die.

What remains of D&D that I think story gamers can enjoy?

• rich tactical challenges, e.g.
  • combat on a rooftop: different elevations, weak spots in roof, chimneys for cover, changing conditions, etc.
  • or a fight in the king’s court: all weapons have been confiscated, so must make creative use of chairs, cloaks, chandeliers, bystanders, etc.
  • navigating a hallway with pits, traps, rafters, a rough wall with footholds, etc.   Cooperation and ingenuity required to get through.
• mysteries to solve
• antagonists to thwart
• conflicts, most of which have other-than life-or-death consequences.
  • SUCCESS means: discover more about what’s going on; win important ally, credit or credibility; gain key or vital resource (e.g. map); escape from custody; prevent antagonist from advancing evil scheme or gaining in power;
  • FAILURE means: Failure to achieve interim goal (but there may be other ways to proceed), capture, loss of key or important resource, set-backs like legal troubles… but often results in gaining valuable information that reveals a new way forward.

Player motivation vs Character motivation:

Players are engaged by D&D because of the lure of new powers and loot.   The plot isn’t that important.  GM preparation involves drawing a cool map and selecting the monsters to fight.

Players are engaged by a story game because they’re telling the story that they want to tell.  But I’m used to the “GM brings the story” model.  How to ensure that I prepare material that the players will want to engage with?  By letting the players define as much of the story as possible – from the beginning.

1. Players and GM brainstorm and come to consensus on the setting: the genre or era, the premises, the conceits.
   • e.g. 18th c., the Caribbean, ghosts and pirates, some black magic on the fringe;
   • or fin-du-ciecle, steampunk and faeries, alchemists, gentlemen officers.
2. Players and GM brainstorm and come to consensus on chr concepts, chr motivations, and the general paradigm of the narrative.
   • e.g. save the world from evil genius, struggle against corrupt government, re-discover lost knowledge to prevent natural disaster, intrigue and spycraft vs. evil empire, etc. (dungeon crawl…)
3. Players and GM brainstorm to create plot elements in detail: NPCs, organizations, key locations, relationships (tensions, conflicts), etc.
4. GM goes off to create further plot elements to be revealed in-game: prima causa events, secret alliances, diabolical plans, etc.   Plan the information strategy: what will the chrs know at the start of the game, what do you want them to discover, and when, and how (and think about what if they don’t).
5. Game day… GM will kick off story in the direction that the players have agreed that they want to go. Player motivation will be high because the players selected the general parameters of the story. Present some info, some opportunities to proceed, then sit back and let the players take the lead. Give the players key information as they explore and make discoveries.   Have the world’s macro conflicts react to player actions. How do the important NPCs react to the players’ actions?

The key is to plan how things would unfold if the players were not there.  Then, in game, to have the  NPCs and organizations react to player actions.  This is old but excellent advice for preparing game elements and planning encounters while preserving the free will of the players.

Sounds simple (!!).  More thoughts coming soon…

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Thinking Outside The Red Box Set

Those of you gentle readers who played Dungeons & Dragons back in the early days will remember the D&D Basic Set, now affectionately known as the “red box set.”   It was a box full of dreams, of stories of daring acts and spectacular action.  The rules were simple and the posibilities were limitless.  Since those days, the game has evolved and grown rapidly, and the complexity of the rules has increased a hundredfold.  D&D has become very good at a certain type of game play, but it has also spawned a diverse new industry that encompasses much more than what D&D itself does well.

As D&D grew, my gamer friends and I came right along with it.  Every new character class, fantasy setting, monster and magic item added to our universe, our playground for heroic adventures.  But we reached a point where adding further details just felt like subdividing the same pie, where more rules and options just added to the burden of things that we had to memorize in order to play.  And we had certainly noticed that our games were increasingly made up of one activity more than any other: combat.

D&D is a great simulator of combat, not only by medieval arms and armour but by a wide variety of weapons, tactics, magic and extraordinary abilities.  A well crafted fantasy combat encounter is a deliciously complex tactical challenge.  I do not mean to diminish the fun of playing out a high-stakes fight scene with an abominable monster or ruthless villain.  But after a decade or so of vanquishing evil and taking the spoils, some of us started to feel that something was missing.  Our “character sheets” had ballooned to four pages – plus equipment and spell lists.  As we had followed the bleeding edge of this game, what had we lost?

One of us labeled what we were looking for as “role-playing,” another “realism.”  We modified our play to add more character development, more dramatics at the table, more twisted plots.  Our game play continued to get slower and more laborious, and those character interaction scenes seemed to do nothing to mitigate the monumental armed conflicts.  Nothing changed the fact that the object of the game was to kill bad guys and take their stuff.

Then I discovered story gaming.  I know, I’m arriving late to the party, but at least I’m arriving.  Story games dispense with the byzantine rules sets that simulate every detail of physical (and magical) conflict, and allow the narrative to come forward into the spotlight.  The question of whether a character can defeat an opponent is less important than the story of which that conflict is a part.  Where tactical games proceed on dice rolls and health points, story games proceed on discussions and consensus.  Where the tactical gamer is rewarded with better in-game equipment and new powers, the story gamer is rewarded by the pleased reactions of his peers as he contributes to a story well told.

Story games are fun, but I still want that tactical challenge, too.  I LIKE rolling dice.  Now I’m working on taking what I’ve learned from story games and making my D&D better.  This blog will be a living document, a repository of my realizations and new plans for gaming.  I have to organize my thoughts somewhere, I might as well do it here.  Your comments and suggestions are more than welcome!

Those of you gentle readers who played Dungeons & Dragons back in the early days will remember the D&D Basic Set, now affectionately known as the “red box set.”   It was a box full of dreams, of stories of daring acts and spectacular action.  The rules were simple and the posibilities were limitless.  Since those days, the game has evolved and grown rapidly, and the complexity of the rules has increased a hundredfold.  D&D has become very good at a certain type of game play, but it has also spawned a diverse new industry that encompasses much more than what D&D itself does well.

As D&D grew, my gamer friends and I came right along with it.  Every new character class, fantasy setting, monster and magic item added to our universe, our playground for heroic adventures.  But we reached a point where adding further details just felt like subdividing the same pie, where more rules and options just added to the burden of things that we had to memorize in order to play.  And we had certainly noticed that our games were increasingly made up of one activity more than any other: combat.

D&D is a great simulator of combat, not only by medieval arms and armour but by a wide variety of weapons, tactics, magic and extraordinary abilities.  A well crafted fantasy combat encounter is a deliciously complex tactical challenge.  I do not mean to diminish the fun of playing out a high-stakes fight scene with an abominable monster or ruthless villain.  But after a decade or so of vanquishing evil and taking the spoils, some of us started to feel that something was missing.  Our “character sheets” had ballooned to four pages – plus equipment and spell lists.  As we had followed the bleeding edge of this game, what had we lost?

One of us labeled what we were looking for as “role-playing,” another “realism.”  We modified our play to add more character development, more dramatics at the table, more twisted plots.  Our game play continued to get slower and more laborious, and those character interaction scenes seemed to do nothing to mitigate the monumental armed conflicts.  Nothing changed the fact that the object of the game was to kill bad guys and take their stuff.

Then I discovered story gaming.  I know, I’m arriving late to the party, but at least I’m arriving.  Story games dispense with the byzantine rules sets that simulate every detail of physical (and magical) conflict, and allow the narrative to come forward into the spotlight.  The question of whether a character can defeat an opponent is less important than the story of which that conflict is a part.  Where tactical games proceed on dice rolls and health points, story games proceed on discussions and consensus.  Where the tactical gamer is rewarded with better in-game equipment and new powers, the story gamer is rewarded by the pleased reactions of his peers as he contributes to a story well told.

Story games are fun, but I still want that tactical challenge, too.  I LIKE rolling dice.  Now I’m working on taking what I’ve learned from story games and making my D&D better.  This blog will be a living document, a repository of my realizations and new plans for gaming.  I have to organize my thoughts somewhere, I might as well do it in public.  Your comments, suggestions and tales of gaming are more than welcome!

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