Rpg thoughts: non-schrodinger prep

[jack]

 There's a joke about a GM preparing an ogre lair, and asking the party which way they want to go, but whatever they go, the GM decides the ogre lair is that way.

I think that's an expected part of planning to a greater or lesser extent. It's only a problem when the GM treats everything like that

But what I wondered was, is there an advantage is preparing something approximating a single reality at all? Or should the GM default to winging it, to adjusting reality and difficulty on the fly to create the desired impression?

Well, there should be a lot of adjusting on the fly. Or, indeed, just improvising when you deliberately didn't prep the specifics, you wrote "pit trap", and decided to improv how difficult it was when it came up.

But I also think, there should be things you DO plan in advance and DO stick to more often than not.

The most obvious example is, a combat where the GM repeatedly fudges the dice rolls. Obviously, it's possible that the monsters happen to roll badly just when it saves the party from being totally wiped out. But if it happens even once, with several rolls involved, the players get the idea it's likely that the GM fudged the results. And then, they assume that they're never really in danger, because the GM will fudge things so it turns out ok. That's good for some styles of game, but bad for others. In fact, GMs commonly aim to avoid it because it's too obvious, whether or not they think it's ok in principle, and find some other adjustment instead. 

But I think the same thing plays out in a larger setting. If the players are exploring a house, should the GM switch the rooms so they first find an appropriate level challenge? Or find the most dramatically appropriate encounter? Well, in most games, probably sometimes. But I think it's important that they do it only sometimes, and that some games do it never. Because the players will never know exactly what changed. But they will notice the entertaining results when unexpected combinations of pre-planned parts intersect. And they'll notice the *absence* of moments when they find something not quite expected, something too boring, or too lacking in context, or too hard an encounter they have to retreat from. They'll subconsciously learn whether it pays off more to explore with an aim that makes sense, or to move ahead with whatever seems most narratively appropriate and trust the GM to sort it out.

Communal Narrative vs GM Planned Scenarios

With the proliferation of systems that take roleplayng in different directions, often increasingly far from its wargamey roots, I realised I'd associated two things I probably shouldn't.

One is system complexity: lots of the new systems are deliberately simpler than DnD, Pathfinder, GURPS, etc.

The other is how "narrative" the game is. I don't have a good word for this. How much the results depend on "what is appropriate to the narrative" as opposed to "what would happen given the scenario defined in advance". Some games are 100% this, where the players just decide how the story progresses and ends. E.g. Microscope is pure "decide what else goes into the history of this world". Some story games too depend on just deciding the ending, to make a satisfying story. And many newer systems tend more this way than DnD.

 But I was wrong to think of those as the same thing. DnD can be more narrative: in a more episodic mild-railroad module the players follow a pre-scripted plot, even though they need to achieve the path through, a bit like a computer game. And new systems often support a mostly-gm-planned setting equally well.

Indeed, I think I had some problems with Powered-by-the-Apocalypse-system-derived games because of quite a narrative style, of dice complications being too often "wait, we need to make something up here" and not "what would naturally arise in this world". But I think that was those particular games, not a necessity of the system.

And, I'm definitely interested in more narrative mechanics in many games, even in dnd, the possibility of adding more "your character gets x bonus/complication because it's in character" abilities rather than because they are/aren't skilled in a particular thing.

 

Has anyone made a reasonable catalogue of different rpg styles?

Comments

[edrith.co.uk]

I definitely agree on situational/narrative bonuses. And think the mixture of keeping some things fixed and adjusting others is usually right. In general some constraints are good for the creative process and that holds true for the GM, too.

I've never played the purely narrative systems you mention, but have used a variety of more mechanical systems (though some much less complex than D&D). I tend to think of sessions I run as falling in one of the following broad categories:

1. Dungeon. A single location to explore with monsters, traps and treasure. There may be different ways of overcoming the challenges, or different routes, but the location and goal are very fixed.

2. Clear goal or quest. E.g. Steal the MacGuffin from the Duke or protect the caravan. Players have quite a lot of choice in how they do it, and quite a lot prescripted, though how it happens may depend on the players and there's a possibility they might so something I just hadn't thought of, so will have to wing it.

3. Broad mandate, e.g. investigate the letter you've found hinting at an evil cult. Although I'll have prepared elements and some obvious NPCs (E.g. the captain of the guard), a lot will be made up on the fly and the players could and often have decide to approach it in a completely different way to what I'd anticipated. I might have some narrative elements in the back pocket if the players seem to be struggling on what to do (E.g. a shocking murder takes place) but how and when (and if) these happen will depend very strongly on player actions.

4. Pure exploration. Players are in a new place and exploring; a lot of freedom, though some things prepared. I once ran an entire short campaign (the players were level 1 and had zero magic) where the players were setting up a new settlement in a newly discovered continent, so other than mapping the area if they chose to explore, 90% was determined by what they chose to do and when and there was a lot of basic survival, naming animals and plants and so on.

[edrith.co.uk]

Meant to add, I tend to most enjoy running and playing games in the 2 and 3 space, though 1 and 4 are good now and again.