Reader Mail: Player Driven Stories, How Do They Work?

In response to me tweeting that game masters should not plan campaign arcs, regular commenter and friend, Jimmy, asked:

“Then I have a slight request/idea. What about an article about how to best to get that player-driven story?”

I immediately agreed because it feeds my ego when people ask me these types of questions. But as I’ve thought about it, I’ve discovered that my answer is remarkably simple. So simple that it may even appear to be facetious. The best way to get your players to drive the story is to let them create characters, then put environments, challenges, and rewards around those characters. As your players tentatively explore the small world which exists around their characters, alter the world in response to their actions. Improvise and build on what your players do to expand the world around them and give them new goals to explore.

To sum up the above: just do what a game master does, without the story part. The story-crafting part of being a GM is unnecessary, and wastes a lot of energy. Players usually have a good idea of what they’d like to do next, and if they don’t, I’ve found that a very tiny nudge is usually enough to set them running. And as they run, the story unfolds from their actions.

The trick of a player driven story is the kind of story you get. If you approach tabletop RPGs expecting traditional narrative structure, this method will disappoint you. Stuff like “plot arcs,” which “build” to a “climax” rarely occur. Emotional payoff is rare, and anticlimax is common. If you were to read the story of one of my games in a book, it would seem directionless and random. It would have a shifting cast who have shifting goals. For a few months they’re trying to master a difficult spell, but they lose interest before completing that, and decide to spend a few months exploring an ancient castle instead.

I don’t chronicle my player’s adventures as an ongoing narrative. Rather, I gauge the success of my game’s story by the stories I hear my players relating after the fact. The anecdotes which light up their eyes with the retelling. Like that time they conquered an entire tower full of bandits even after being imprisoned and forced to improvise their weapons. Or the time they met that crazy guy who lived in a dungeon and took him back to town so he could watch their house while they were away on adventures!

But just because the GM isn’t the driving force behind the story, doesn’t mean the world can’t have cool stuff going on in it fore the players to discover. In fact, I happen to know that the princess of one of my game worlds is plotting to overthrow her father with the assistance of one of his generals. The general thinks he’s manipulating a spoiled 15 year old, but only her father knows that she’s a powerful enchantress. He took the precaution of obtaining protective wards for himself, but failed to similarly outfit his advisers. This has allowed the princess to cloud the general’s perceptions, and guide his actions towards her own ends. To boot, she has a powerful red dragon under her complete control, which she’ll use if things turn against her. My players might encounter this story any number of ways. The most notable are that the dragon’s Aunt–an ancient red–is infuriated by her nephew’s subjugation and has been raiding human settlements (unknowingly aiding the princesses’ schemes). Additionally, the general has been financing a number of bandit groups to destabilize the kingdom and foster discontent with the crown.

Some might call that a story, but I would not. It’s a situation which exists in the game world, for the players to do with as they will. Perhaps they’ll find it, solve the mystery of the princess’s treachery, and confront her in a climactic battle. Maybe they’ll just poison her food, or tell the king to watch his back. Maybe they’ll help her claim the throne in exchange for land ant titles. Or maybe they’ll never find out about this plot and instead spend their time looting ancient crypts of their gold. They certainly seem happy with that for the moment.

I recognize that this style of gameplay is not for everyone. For many, tabletop role playing games are a means of sharing a narrative. It’s serious-minded improvisational theater. I myself once viewed RPGs that way. But over the years I came to realize that tabletop RPGs were not satisfying to me as a storytelling medium. Between players who didn’t want to get into character, and the tremendous effort involved in guiding a narrative without outright railroading, I ultimately just found tabletop games to be stressful. Now I just respond to what my players want their characters to do, and I find I’m much happier for it.

Reader Mail: Demon Swords, and Tricking Your Players

The M:tG card which inspired this question.

When I first started writing this blog, I foolishly wrote from a position of authority. Not because I thought I was some tabletop guru with a wisdom of 18, but because I was writing instructions for myself. Writing is a mechanism for working through my own ideas, so I can better understand them. Unfortunately, my readers didn’t know that, and I came off as pompous. It was a weakness of my writing style at the time.

To my surprise, though, some people have actually started believing I’m an authority on tabletop games. I’m occasionally approached with questions on how to run or design a good game. While I think there are probably better people to ask, I certainly don’t mind weighing in with my opinion. (That goes for pretty much any subject. Ever.) Plus it strokes my ego, which is always a pleasure. Sometimes my answers get pretty lengthy, and it only just occurred to me today that I could be posting this shit! So I’m going to start answering reader mail on Papers & Pencils. If you’d like to ask me a question, there’s a “contact” link right up at the top of the site.

Today’s question is from someone predisposed to believe I’m an authority on things, my younger sister. She asks:

“Is it ever a good idea to tempt players with power, and the screw them with it? In particular, I’m looking at a really hard-to-get sword, that doesn’t really do much. The first time it does damage to something though, it turns into a massive demon. The demon will fight with the PCs until all the enemies are dead, at which point it will turn on the party”

(Quote paraphrased for formatting & clarity).

Absolutely! The GM’s entire job is to challenge the players. Doing that in a creative manner is laudable. However, setting out to deceive your players can be challenging. It’s an important skill to learn, but if mishandled, your players may decide you’re just being an asshole. The goal is to challenge them, not fuck them over. To achieve this, I would say you need to keep two things in mind.

First, know what you’re doing and be cognizant of the consequences. You mentioned you want the sword to be “really hard-to-get.” Does that mean it’ll take them 4-6 hours of gameplay to reach it, or will this quest span half a dozen game sessions? The more investment your players put into finding this trick sword, the more frustrated they’ll be when it doesn’t live up to their expectations. Their frustration can also be compounded / exacerbated with ancillary rewards. If the dungeon where the sword is located also includes plenty of other treasure, the players will be less frustrated that their primary goal didn’t work out.

Of course, the GM shouldn’t feel obligated to add elements to reduce player frustration. Frustrating defeats make the game’s victories much sweeter. But the GM should at least know when they’re apt to cause frustration, and decide just how frustrating they want to be.

Second, and far more importantly, never trick your players by lying. Trick your players by glossing over important information, or omitting information which they could find, but probably won’t bother to. For example, when they first hear of this sword, perhaps it’s by discovering an ancient scroll deep in a dungeon. On the scroll is written something to the effect of “The great invincible demon terrorized the townsfolk until Sir Goodly Cleric showed up. The two battled for many days, but only with the Sword of GarbleBlag was the demon’s threat ended. The sword was sealed in the dungeon beneath the town of GlibbidyGob to prevent the demon from becoming a threat once again.”

Knowing the location of a treasure which defeated an invincible demon is a tempting adventure. The players may or may not notice that the sword did not “wound” or “kill” the demon, it merely “ended the demon’s threat.” Even if that were the only hint you included, it would be enough. I’ve gone a step further and added the additional hint that the sword needed to be sealed away to prevent the demon from becoming a threat again. Players will almost certainly notice this, but in my experience the chance they’ll decide the sword isn’t worth pursuing based on that hint is pretty small. More likely they think they’ll need to defeat the demon in order to get the sword, or that the sword will be empowered by the sealed demon. Players tend to think anything which exists, exists to empower them. The game is more fun when this isn’t true.

Providing players with hints means they won’t fall into every trap you’ve laid for them. And that can be disappointing. As GMs, we work hard on our content, and we want our players to see as much of it as possible. But in that desire lies the root of agency-robbing behavior. And anyway, when players fall into traps despite having hints to warn them away from it, their cries of suffering are much more rewarding! >:D

Placing Treasure

In the comments to yesterday’s post, regular commentor Jimmy asked:

“I’m bad at placing treasure. Any advice on that?”

You’re not alone, Jimmy. I’m bad at placing treasure too! I even wrote about it just a few months back:

“I also have a bad habit of being a great deal more generous with treasure than I ought to be, because I’m worried about keeping my players engaged in the adventure if they don’t feel suitably rewarded.”

It hasn’t been long since I wrote that, but if I do say so myself, I think I’ve improved a great deal. I’m sure many GMs would scoff at how wealthy I’ve allowed my players to become. But I no longer feel as though treasure “gets away from me.” A lot of different elements come together to support this, so I’ll go over them and hopefully some of what has helped me will help you.

Traditional Dungeon Crawling.

Like many young GMs, the dungeon crawl for which the game was named didn’t interest me when I began crafting adventures. Its only within the last year that I’ve reflected on my own gaming history, and realized that I’d avoided many of the fundamental experiences of D&D which are commonly considered “played out.”

My first real dungeon crawling experience was a mere 6 months ago when I began playing in Vaults of Pahvelorn. Since that experience, I’ve worked similar dungeons into my own games. Dungeons with fifty or a hundred rooms, each of which must be navigated slowly to avoid traps, and carefully examined for hints.

The traditional dungeon crawl is limiting in a good way. It reduced the game to its core elements: the players want treasure, and the environment wants to kill them. The rooms are puzzles where failure means death and success means gold. The obfuscation of heroism is torn away and the game’s foundations are laid bare.

There are many different kinds of adventures, and most of them can be fun. But having thoroughly experienced the game in its fundamental state, I now have a much better grasp for what players must do to earn their treasure.

Greater Rewards Require Greater Trials

It’s easy to get into the first room of the dungeon. Any treasure found there will be minor, if there’s any treasure to find at all. After all: it’s easy. Many adventurers have come this far before you, and would have carried off anything of value long ago. If you want to find some of the good treasure, you’ll need to make your way past deadly traps and merciless monsters which have scared off or killed the adventurers who came before you.

The really good treasure will be behind secret doors, and guarded by deadly monsters or traps.

Gold, Hidden in Non-Gold Form

When we think of hidden treasure, we think of secret alcoves, and gems buried in a pile of fireplace ash. But this is only the most obvious way of hiding treasure. A much better way is to hide treasure in plain sight, as books, fine clothing, land deeds, exotic animals, bags of spices, or any other number of possibilities.

Recognizing treasure is part of the game’s challenge. You can tell your players flat-out that they find 3 silk gowns when they open the dusty armoire. They may or may not realize they’re looking at 300 gold pieces worth of tailoring.

Encumbrance!

While I confess I still struggle with encumbrance in my games, it cannot be undervalued. The character’s income is limited by their carrying capacity. In a society where learning has largely been lost, the discovery of an ancient library deep underground could be worth more than a dragon’s hoard! But books are heavy. How many can each PC actually carry themselves?

Make the players think about whether they’d like to take multiple trips, or hire a crew to get it all out in one go. Make them wonder if the treasure will still be there if they turn their back on it for a few hours. These are interesting choices for the players to face, and go a long way towards maintaining a reasonable level of wealth for them.

Missed Treasure is Forever Lost

Let your players miss treasure, and never hint that they missed it. It may be difficult as fuck, and I’m not perfect about it, but I’ve found it to be an essential skill to practice. I take immense delight in hiding treasure as well as I can without making it downright impossible to find. (with a fair scattering of less difficult to find treasure to keep my players from getting discouraged).

Often, this means my players miss out on a really cool magical sword or badass piece of artwork that I was looking forward to them finding. But that’s okay, because you can always use that treasure again later. And when they do find some of the better hidden treasure, it’s exciting. Both for them, and you.

1d6 For Wasting Time

In keeping with oldschool rules, roll 1d6 once every 10 minutes of in-game time. If a 1 is rolled, then the players encounter a monster appropriate to the area they’re in. If that’s too much fighting for your game, bump the die up to 1d8 or 1d10. The important thing is that there is a penalty for wasting time. The players can search every 10′ square segment of wall in the entire dungeon for secret doors a dozen times over if they please. But they’re going to encounter a shit-ton of monsters while doing it.

Making time a resource which the players have to be careful about wasting, makes them more focused on their goals, and less likely to search for treasure by process of elimination. This means that more of your hidden treasure will stay hidden as noted by the point above. And while I’m never happy to see my players miss out on something cool, I would rather reward smart play than time wasting.

1d6 For Cleverness

Sometimes, while exploring a room looking for treasure, players will look in a place that the GM never even considered. And sometimes that hiding spot is so damned clever that the GM decides they’re going to remember it so they can use it in the future. When that happens, I roll 1d6. On a 6, I tell the player they find a small amount of treasure, despite the fact that I never placed any there.

The treasure they find is usually pretty minimal. A sack of 20 gold pieces or a small gemstone worth about that much.

Budget by Section

This is an idea I just thought of today, so I’ve not tried it, but it seems as though it would be helpful.

Divide your dungeon (or other adventuring area) into whatever sections seem natural. For most dungeons, a single level of the dungeon would probably be most appropriate. Determine what level you think your players ought to reach for completing that section of the dungeon. Look up how much gold the players should have at that point on the wealth-by-level table, then increase that value by 50% to account for the treasure the players probably won’t find.

The resulting gold-piece value should be the sum-total of all the treasure in that section.

Does anybody else have tips? I could still use some improvement myself!

EDIT: Generally speaking I prefer not to edit posts once they’ve gone up, but I’ve just remembered an entire section I had intended to add to this post, and completely forgot about. Apparently I didn’t add it to my notes!

Hoards are for Dragons

Sometimes its appropriate to make a big pile of treasure, or “Treasure Hoard.” A hoard will typically represent multiple types of treasure, and require a great feat of skill to obtain. Hoards should not be the default method of placing treasure. Most treasure should be found piece-by-piece. A coinpurse in this room, a valuable painting in the next. These smaller items are still exciting to find, and they provide context for the day that the players finally do discover a true hoard of treasure.

If every chest contains an assortment of gold, gems, and magic items; then such treasure is the player’s expectation, when it should be a coveted and exciting accomplishment.