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You’re going to passionately pursue your character’s interests, despite obstacles & into danger. I’ll provide the obstacles & danger. Deal?
You know what I’ve stopped doing? Plotting. I’ve been at this place for many years now, but I’ve recently found words to express my thoughts.
When I say plotting, I mean I’ve stopped thinking of the games I DM as somehow being my story. I move away from creating a story that my players interact with.
I do it because it causes problems. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. DM creates a huge, epic gllobetrotting epic. Players look in the other direction, chasing some other detail that the DM thought was throwaway but the PCs are absorbed by. DM pulls out hair.
I do it because, even though 4e feels on the surface like a game that depends on massive amounts of prep-work, in the end that’s not true. 4e robustly supports a game with stronger blends of improv and set-piece encounters.
I do it because I hate secrets. Things that I hide from the players are potential wasted; If I have good ideas, I will use them, and create surprises and interesting situations that spark interesting play.
Lastly, because story really can’t be pre-made in a roleplaying game. Story is what happens after we play. Narrative is generated by our table decisions and by the roll of the dice. Our games are our stories. The players bring characters with goals and interests and histories, and the DM presents the PCs with situations, obstacles and danger. The DM weaves together these elements so that we can generate stories through this deft interplay in this wonderful hobby of ours.
Yes, even in 4e (there’s no roleplaying!). Here are some thoughts specific to D&D.
Death by a Million Branches
Let’s look at DM plotting at a basic level: I am making a story but as it starts it is a railroad. Event follows event follows event. No choices. Your players are going to hate you and quit your game. To prevent this, you incorporate space for the players to make choices in. But that space you carve out of your story? That actually adds more areas for you to potentially fill. What to do if the players go left instead of right? Or they choose the dark side instead of the light? Under a “must have plot” model, you are making almost endless contingencies.
Where do you stop? How deep do you go? There’s always a point where you make the cut, but my personal experience has been that you always make that cut-off a little later than maybe you should.
Even if all you do is generate a high level story arc, you still have all this material that may or may not be used. You’ve created a bunch of material that may not be touched or even thought of.
All these forks and branches, and for what? The players are only going on one path — the one they choose. You should react to that, and build along the path they provide.
Here’s the Situation
What you end up designing then are situations. How is a situation different from a story? The fundamental difference is that a situation imposes no outcomes and presumes no choices whereas a story must, by definition, presume actions.
Here’s a story:
The adventurers hear rumors of a dragon roaming the countryside, terrorizing the populace. The players are asked by the mayor of the nearest village to stop the dragon. They take up the task and then after much searching, they find the dragon’s lair, defeat the dragons, and steal his treasure.
Here’s the situation:
There is a dragon terrorizing the populace. The mayor the nearest village has put out fliers with a large rewards for those that seek out the dragon.
In the former, there is a nice, strong flow. This to this to that. The problem here is that the game hasn’t been played yet. The characters can bust loose from the story in so many ways, going “off the rails” at any point.
The situation on the other hand, eliminates that possibility. It requires the players to take actions to pursue it, and then relies on the players taking actions to complete it. The players say “hey, I need that money!” and the adventure begins.
The cool thing about the situation is that you can generate a few for each session, based on things that have happened before and/or tossing in new situations.
But I Need My Set-pieces
“But Gamefiend,” you cry, “I love me some set-pieces. I NEED set-pieces. I’ve got this awesome dungeon full of traps that I need to build and spring upon players.”
Me too.
But think: what is a dungeon (or any site for that matter) but a bunch of situations? I can’t talk about dungeon design at this moment, but I think the design of a site that the players choose to go to is a pretty safe bit to work on.
I need to reinforce that I’m not saying “don’t ever prepare a game in advance”. What I’m saying is “prepare less”. Shrink that time of building endless scenarios and plot into building the framework for you next session.
What I’m about to say next is for players, so PCs? Line up.
Plotless? Oh, I meant “Player Driven”
You may think that if you play a more traditional plotted game, I am telling you “you are an awful DM” implicitly. Not even remotely true. I am advocating a style that I’ve been using. If you like what you’re doing, please continue, whatever it is. If you decide to move towards more “plotless” Gming however, make sure you know that it means your game is becoming more player-driven.
Sort of obvious, right? It is, but your players need to know what is expected of them. I’ve had games that died because I forgot to explain to players that they are the ones making things happen and I, as a GM, am simply “master of surprises”. The players pursue goals, they pursue the things that interest them and their characters, and I do my best to make it not easy. But if players are looking at more traditional ways of playing D&D, they are expecting me to delivering the hook, the interest, the progression, and the obstacles (note to DMs…are you doing all of that? Are you feeling burned out? This might be why).
You’ve got to be clear that the game is about the characters do, not about what the world builds around them. You can’t have more than one or two PCs “along for the ride”. People have to make decisions, players have to agree to not just sit in a tavern and wait for adventure to fall in their laps. The characters need desires, they need goals. The characters need the motivation to go after these goals and see if they can overcome the challenges you put in their way.
Sounds Like Fun/Crap.
At this point I’ve either totally lost you or you are total agreement. It could be that this style is just not a fit for your play-group, or maybe you already do this (in which case you wonder what took me so long to write this). Anyone who I haven’t alienated, let’s talk:
How are your games already like this?
How could you have less plot, and more story?
What tools can you use in 4e to assist you in a more free-form game?
Like always, if there is interest in the comments I will discuss this more.
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A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
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I think you should expand on the situation concept and give some ideas and tips for creating them.
Great article….I want to do this, but I find since sometimes I don’t have time to think much about the game I end up using published adventures and this format falls to it’s knees in the face of railroads.
Also, I have one player who just follows the rest around with no goals of their own. I suppose it doesn’t matter, because he seems happy.
What I thought I was going to get with this article and would love to see you tackle more indepth is…how to quickly come up with more story. What tools can I use to seemingly randomly generate the game? This is a good overview, but how do I actually do it?
Would you describe this style of DMing “sandbox” or something else?
Improvisational DMing is definitely a skill that you acquire through practice, but you can get yourself prepped if you understand a little of what the players want from the game. It’s easier to improv if you understand the desired tone and cadence of the scenes you are going to be participating in. If the players want a serious game, you want to prep by thinking about serious issues and avoiding the comic slapstick that many improvisational sessions turn into. Having a list of hooks at the beginning of the game that you can weave into the interactions the players will naturally have can help them feel like they are discovering set pieces for themselves. They want to talk to the old man in the tavern, sitting by himself. What is he going to say? Well, he’s going to have as much history as you want him to have, but he’s also going to drop mention of one of the hooks. Having 4 or 5 hooks that you’ve got pre-prepped allows you to sprinkle them liberally throughout the adventure, so it doesn’t seem like everyone in town is talking about the blasted kobold den that your players don’t care about.
Since 4e has a lot of crunch and mechanics, you do want to prep as much of that as possible before the session, but you shouldn’t feel like you are limiting yourself. You can use Sly Flourish’s DM Cheat Sheet to create reasonable opponents on the fly (http://slyflourish.com/master_dm_sheet.PDF), or you can simply design the same mechanical encounters you might use in a regular game and rip the skins off, so that you can change that kobold den into a street fight with the local thieves guild. That makes your prep useful no matter what happens, and if you plan the encounters to allow for monster synergy, no matter what your players pursue, you can have interesting fights.
Some things might be harder to improvise. Terrain powers, in particular, seem to be tied to the prepped set pieces, but like anything else in 4e, they can be re-skinned as well. Make a list of a few damage expressions and effects, and have your antagonists use them against the players. There was a pretty good article on DDI the other day about terrain powers, and to draw an example from that: the burning bar. In the terrain description, you can set the bar alight if you use a power with the fire keyword near it, causing fire damage to adjacent creatures. You could drop that power down in pretty much any situation you wanted, so long as you re-skinned it. In the wilds, it’s a patch of fey grass, that your rangers, druids and wardens can easily detect. In a city street, it’s the oil from a spilled lantern. It could be an aberrant fissure in the crackling Shadowfell. It can literally be anything, and if you go with it, your players will believe that you are using a completely pre-prepped encounter, perfectly suited to them and their decisions, and they will be thrilled.
One caveat about improving: everyone has a repertoire and everyone has limitations. Make sure you track the things you improv somehow, so that you don’t fall into a rut. That sounds like a lot to do on top of coming up with an engaging game out of whole cloth, but a lot of DMs will start to sound the same notes if they don’t track their interactions with the players, who will be less than thrilled at the sight of yet another Russian fighter who happens to be drunk giving them a secret to the next encounter. Having a player, perhaps that one guy who is along for the ride and doesn’t get much out of roleplaying, track the story for you, creating notes that you can use. If you notice that you seem to be falling into a rut, grab inspiration from somewhere. Imitate someone at work (when you’re alone, not at the sales meeting) or someone from a movie. Switch things up. Instead of using a European accent, use a Texas drawl. Talk like Yogi the Bear. Make a list of the things you want to be inspired by, so that you remember to do so. It can be as helpful to you as that list of NCP names that you carry around, if not more so, because it breathes life into your characters.
The main issue I’ve witnessed when trying to run such games in 4e is encounter design. It’s often relatively simple to throw together an ok encounter on the fly (though it requires preparing potential opponents beforehand – adjusting their levels, powers and such, which can be a lot of work in its own right). But if you want to add fantastic terrain, terrain powers, combat skill challenges, etc., you basically need to prepare the whole encounter before the game. So the time you save on not fussing over the story you’ll spend on preparing encounters, only a few of which will actually happen. If you have ideas on modular encounter design, I’d love to read them.
I myself tend towards very plot-heavy games. I do my best to avoid railroading by trying to predict what players will do, and preparing for that. In your example, it’s unlikely that a typical band of adventurers will choose to side with the dragon all on their own, unless there is some plot twist they discover, so it’s safe to prepare for a trek through the wilderness and a dragon fight. The other method I’ve been using that is really helpful is structuring the game so that a decision point (the dragon is actually good and the mayor is evil, whom do you help?) happens close to the end of the game. This lets players discuss their plans and come to a decision, for which I can properly prepare.
This is so true, especially so in 4e D&D. My own style has always included moderate amounts of improv, but with 4e being brand new as a system, it took a few years for many of us to prep the 4e way, know the 4e way, and now, finally… improv the 4e way! I 100% agree the game runs excellently with something like a basic framework or sandbox and moderate to heavy amounts of improv. I’ve been living this transition myself.
In particular, I know focus on set pieces with a basic Dungeon Delve sourcebook presentation for the story and adventure elements. I was absolutely overpreparing before, and it’s just not worth all that time and energy – especially when the PCs take the story in a surprising but engaging direction. The game’s story is more collaborative than it’s ever been.
Great article Gamefiend. Excellent discussion to bring up that is edifying and inspiring. Great reminders.
I used to drive big mostly mandatory plots and it did burn me out a bit, and I never felt I was delivering enough hooks, enough interest, enough of satisfying progression and conclusions.
For the last year or so, as my players have gotten more comfortable or demanding about where the characters want to go in the world and story, I’ve relaxed and embraced not know ing what’s coming next any more than the players. I guess it helps that I’m much more comfortable with improv than I was when i just started DMing.
To aid in improv, I swear by Sly Flourishes Master DM Sheet , a campaign-specific race/gender divided name list which expands from one Chris Perkins provided from his Io’mandra blog, and quick monster modification techniques like Perkins advocates , along with a name a healthy image library.
That’s what I have used for a while. A couple big plot arcs are somewhat driving the PC actions, but I’m excited to see what they’ll do when those are concluded and the world opens up. Will they be unmotivated and get bored? We’ll see.
I recently wrote a post about on the fly DMing, how to plan for it, how to implement it. It all boils down to reaction. Player driven games are games where the DM is constantly reacting to the players actions. Take it a step further and your NPC’S, monsters, and cities react as well.
I’m at about a 60/40 ratio of on the fly vs. prep.
I think I do this already. What would you say to having your ending planned out, though, just not how the party gets there?
My current game has a timeline where events will take place in a certain way if the players do not intervene. So, there is a large hobgoblin force marshaling to the northeast. It’s not an immediate threat, but it could become one. The players decide whether or not to pursue that threat. I have some vague details of how things will work out, and I fill details in as needed. I keep notes about what is said to the players so that if I do contradict myself, then it will be for good reason (i.e. unreliable or forgetful NPC, or an NPC simply lying to the players, etc.).
I use Masterplan to generate various encounters. As they explore the world they are in, I use “drag and drop” adventure sites that they will come across. If they choose to explore them, great! If not, then I can reuse the content of the site after dressing it back up or reskinning it.
A couple of weeks before my game (we play about once a month for about 6 hours per session) I ask the players what they might want to do, and I drop a few suggestions based off of what I know they might enjoy, and based off of the story arc that is ongoing. It seems like my players have a sense of priority when it comes to making decisions…so the Hobgoblins are not an immediate threat, but they might be in a month or two, and they might be at the gates of their hometown by the mid-summer. This is something they want to avoid dealing with then, so they are striking forth to deal with it now. If they didn’t care about their hometown, they could just as easily leave. I don’t have enough invested into the plot that I will force them into it in order to achieve a certain story, and I can make some things up if they decide to go southeast in order to pillage the countryside.
4E lends itself really well to this style, and I’ve found masterplan to be an amazing tool to help keep track of everything. I’d have a very difficult time having interesting encounters with this style of DMing using 3.x.
Great article! I’m currently running my first 4e campaign for a group of friends. It’s been a lot of blood, sweat and tears but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. However, my group definitely falls into the more traditional mindset where they are looking to me to explicitly spell out their next mission. They act as a singular unit out of combat, interested only in the next combat encounter and xp and shows no interest in individual character development or actions. I don’t want to railroad my players, but that seems to be what they want. Any advice on bringing them out?
My games are pretty much always like that, with one difference – there is an overarching plot. However, this plot will carry on whether or not the players interfere.
I no longer have branches and contingencies. I know exactly what will happen if the players don’t get involved. If they pursue something else, what was going to happen, happens. It probably makes trouble for them later, which is why it was worth planning. If the players do get involved, they could do it in so many ways that it’s not worth planning for any of them – but the fact that I know what would happen if the situation were left alone, and what the NPCs are like, means that I can react to whatever the players do.
So really the overarching storyline is just a bigger string of situations, ones that are likely to spawn increasingly dangerous situations if left alone.
This approach can work even with slightly more reactive players, because eventually that dragon they ignored is going to come rampaging into the tavern they’re hanging out in, or that enemy army they didn’t stop from being formed is going to try and conscript them.
I am less of a fan of “sandbox” the more I experiment with it. I find players want a story and want to experience something you have planned in terms of how events unravel and places are explored. I like giving players freedom around choices (go here first and it has an impact, go to this other place first and it has a different impact) and I like tuning the campaign to the aspects in which they are interested. But true sandbox has felt formless and left the players dissatisfied.
I am curious where you draw the line and I agree that more examples would help. I recall fondly a time with my old AD&D Dark Sun campaign where I had nothing planned that evening and my players asked me to run anyway. I started with a concept based on some fiction in a sourcebook, then ran from there based on their actions. It was one of my better sessions. But, I was a less experienced DM and part of what worked is that I was being too forced and internally cerebral with adventure design. It isn’t a huge advantage now like it was then.
Hi all, thanks for your comments!
@Jacob — I can do that.
@Raddu — All players don’t need to make big deccisions (though it is definitely more fun that way!). The real problem is whne you have half the party “carrying” the rest. 4e adventures can actually be solid sources of prep for a game night, I feel. You can steal the encounters and decouple them from a narrative. Just fill in the space with material and you’re all set to go!
@Brian I hate to call it sandbox just because the term comes so (over)loaded with baggage and connotations. It also takes away emphasis from the fact that I feel every game should be player-driven. The DM might supply direction, but everything else is left for the players to move the story forward. I don’t think “sandbox” owns that, really.
@Mike good improv tips!
@magician –many times you can just re-skin an encounter you had prepped. Generally though, I like to just keep some poster maps (I collect them) for the environment and keep some encounter lists for the general area along with a few nifty terrain effects. Pick appropriate map, pick appropriate encounter list, pick some effects, et voila! instant battle.
@kilsek, @atminn, @jonny_5 — you guys definitely have grasped it. I think the fundamental piece is your toolkit. What are the tools you can lean on to generate interesting material for your players?
@jeremy I don’t even plan out the ending. We see where the players go, and I set up an endgame when it seems right.
@malphaeus masterplan is another great tool. I like your set up as well. Let the PCs determine what next session will look like! Simple and powerful. Also, villains have motivations and goals too. They’ll be going after their goals while the PCs do the same.
@tsbiggles Some players definitely expect the DM to bring everything. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you want to expand the level of involvement, try getting them involved in the co-creation of some small parts of the world. What you’re looking for is investment, and once player feel they are less players and more collaborators, they can get more involved in the creation of stories.
@swordgleam I understand and support that! Good stuff.
@alphastream sandbox still makes me feel icky inside as a term
My experience has been mixed. Some players want me as the DM to do all the stuff, but I find I have spend a lot of time trying to get them invested with very little return. Other players like to be co-creators. I set up the framework and create obstacles, and these players determine what they want to do.
This latter group is generally who I try to game with. The game I am running now has everyone very involved. I have no idea where the story will end, but everyone is having a lot of fun and the story is great.
Where I draw the line varies from session to session. I basically do enough to give me a general sense of what things the players will run into. Sometimes that takes a bit of work, sometimes almost none.
Great post, and I have developed pretty much the same style. I refer to them as conflicts, not situations, because to me that captures what makes a good game component. A conflict is basically someone wants something very badly and has trouble getting it. This is the heart of all RPG scenes. I mean take even a hack and slash game. There are some orcs, and they want the PCs to die. The PCs want to not die. Thus, we have conflict and a good ol time killing orcs.
But you can make more interesting, engaging conflicts. Or potentially engaging. I try do avoid deciding what is important. The PCs are what is important. They are the main characters in the story. If they think something is important, then it is. If they think something is uninteresting, then it isn’t important.
Take the example of the dragon terrorizing the countryside. If the PCs decide to go after him, then we can make a fun game out of that. If instead, they want to go explore some old ruins, or find out what has gotten the goblins in the hills all riled up, or whatever else, then that is what is important. Heck, most of the time I don’t even know who the Big Bad Evil Guy of the game will be until halfway through. I just look at ones that a) survived and b) really ticked off the players. That will turn out to be the Villain Who Was Behind All This All Along, everyone will high five because they knew there was something about that guy, and fun times are had by all.
Another thing I want to comment on is the importance of system. For me, I need a fairly simple system so that I can quickly create scenes. I improv a lot of the time, and generally only have set pieces when I know the characters are going to go do something. For example, if they say “We’re going after Duke Evil next week!” then of course I’ll set up a cool encounter scene. 4e works for me with DDI, and that cheat sheet looks really nice as well. I’ve started adapting Minions and Solos into other games. In my World of Darkness game, I needed an Abyssal time demon. Rather than statting it up by deriving stats, I just eyeballed the relevent number so the thing was easy to hit but had a huge number of health levels. I lowered its attack but gave it powers that could affect multiple PCs at a time. And I set up a special condition – when X health levels were gone, it transforms and uses this other attack! Everyone loved it.
One thing I find lacking in 4e (and many other games) is personality definition. Alignment isn’t very useful to me, I want to know what makes a character tick. What are his buttons? What kinds of conflicts are going to really get him going? For this I typically use a questionnaire, as from Dread. Once the character is made, I’ll ask some probing questions, sometimes leading but they can really help flesh out a character. They’re different for each character. So a hard drinking dwarven fighter might get simple questions like “Why did you decide to leave your dwarven homeland?”, but might also get “Why aren’t you speaking to your father?” They do a great job of getting at what makes a character tick.
And finally I believe a key is making your players prove what they say is true about their characters. If the paladin says that he is always noble and true no matter the cost, introduce a conflict where standing up to a bad guy will result in imprisonment, or dishonor of a friend. If the Rogue says he’d sell his own mother for enough coin, have someone offer him a small fortune to betray his friends.
This is a great article!
Great post.
Roleplaying is to me situational improv with predetermined rules.
As a game master, I make or borrow a few interesting ideas in preparation for my sessions. If you provide players with a setting, prop, or scenario that intrigues them, activity will commence.
The Angry DM wrote a solid piece about exploration and conservation of detail that adds a lot to this style of play. Even if that dragon or set piece isn’t useful just yet, you can still use it when the time is right.
Good stuff, and this is absolutely how I GM. I still fall into the trap of over-prepping from time to time, especially when I was running my 3.5 game. I need to keep reminding myself to let the story lead and that will tell me what I need to pull out for the next encounter.
Yes, this seat-of-the-pants GMing style is not for everyone, but it can work really well if you let it.
Here’s the big trick: You need to have small enough set pieces with serial numbers shallow enough to sand off at a moment’s notice. Need an encounter with cultists of the Nameless God? Take that Orc raiding party from last month, retool their powers to use evil instead of fire, add a bonfire and some potential sacrifice victims laying around for terrain interest, and boom: 90 second encounter prep.
I’ve been percolating some ideas in this space myself based on Angry DM’s article (mentioned above by @4649matt). Not sure if they mesh with what you’re thinking, but if you want to bounce ideas around and flesh out some tips for GMs, give me a shout.
Write on!