Every DM or GM has a gaming philosophy. It's what drives you to create experiences for your players, and it's what determines what you view as fun. Everyone's is different, unique even. The things you strive for are directly influenced by what you enjoy in tabletop games. So I want to share why I play because it will help to explain why I run games the way I do (and how to run games the way I do).
I semi-recently had the pleasure of getting to deliver a lecture on and lead discussion about D&D and other TRPGs for a college class on video games. My lecture included a bit about the potential of TRPGs for collaborative storytelling. I addressed the many ways that TRPGs can be oriented--from hardscrabble combat simulation to a way to hang out with friends to running modules as they were designed to collaborative storytelling. Every GM has the ability to run a game in any of these modes, or in a combination of them. What matters is why you do it. Have friends who want a deeply strategic simulation of survival? Run a detail-oriented combat game. Want a goofy way to hang out with friends? Come up with ridiculous situations to drop them into. I've run all of these kinds of games, but my favorite is collaborative storytelling. Here's why.
Of all the ways that TRPGs function, many are replications of something other systems do well. Combat simulators as D&D work well for some folks, but many players just as easily could play a dungeon-crawling video game. Less dice rolls, less stats to keep in mind, and the same satisfaction of killing loads of monsters. Social games can be replicated by playing party games (try the Jackbox games, for instance, and you'll get your social fix easily). Modules are fun, well-designed engines for narrative exploration, but if the party wants to do something not on the module's list of actions, you're off in the woods by yourself.
But collaborative storytelling is something that only TRPGs do as well as they do. So what do I mean by collaborative storytelling? I'm talking about the GM providing a framework for the players to act in, and the story is driven by the players. The GM, in this model, exists mostly to keep the action flowing and to provide the world around the players. It's not about the grand designs of the GM, but about the designs of the players, who are making the world their own. And to do all of this, the GM needs to be skilled in the art of improvisation.
Improv is scary to a lot of folks, but it needn't be. In fact, TRPGs are the easiest way to practice improv. Here's the main rule of improv, and it's truest when applied to TRPGs: "yes, and..." That's really it! That's all you need to respond to your players and let them determine the story. Here's how it works. Your players give you a direction. You respond with a "yes, and..." And your players act again. Examples will clarify this. Your players want to break into a dark library and steal some books to get a leg up on an ancient foe. You as GM have not prepared any materials on what the library is like. But you "yes, and..." them. They go to the library and you describe it as befitting the campaign. "It's a dim building with tall towers that reach high above the mossy ground." They arrive at the front door, ready to break in. The library wasn't on your agenda for this session, but they players have made their choice. You've agreed that the library is the next step and added something: characterization of the library. Now they have new information about the library and will have to add something new. You've given them the "yes" and the "and," and now the onus is back on the players to make a decision.
But it doesn't always have to be "yes, and..." Your role as GM is to challenge the players, and you can do so without breaking the spirit of improv. You might give them a challenge: "The library door is locked." This isn't exactly a "yes, and..." because you're putting something in the way of the players rather than adding to their chosen direction. But you're now using one of the tools of improv which most suits the GM: "No, but..." You are challenging their ability to move forward as they have chosen, but you have offered something else in its place. It's tempting in situations like these to just offer a "no." But the key to improv is always adding something to the equation. Your "but" allows your players to keep working at something until they manage to get what they want. A good "no, but..." lets the players develop narrative tension and keep at their goal.
Improv is much more complex than this--ask any improviser--but these are the keys. Always be adding to the scene. If you follow these steps, your story will keep growing and changing and moving along, and you'll never get bogged down in being lost or directionless. And you can use your "no, but..." skills to direct the players back to something you think could be helpful or enjoyable. Let's use the library example again. You have plans for the library for later and want to delay the party from discovering it just yet. So you can "no, but..." by placing a note on the door of the library. The note says that the librarian is away from the library, seeking the help of an aristocrat in town--an aristocrat you want the players to interact with. It's possible that the party will stick with the library (now they can sack it without worrying about the librarian), but it's just as possible that the party will choose to investigate the aristocrat instead.
I can hear a few readers being frustrated with this idea. "But if the players choose to investigate the library anyway, it doesn't matter that I left the note. I can't make them choose what I want them to choose." This can be seen as an issue. But place yourself in the role of the player of a game, tabletop or electronic. You, as the player, want to achieve a certain goal. Let's say that goal is befriending a certain NPC. And as you spend time trying to befriend that NPC, you start to realize that the game won't let you. Dialogue options are limited, perhaps, or that NPC turns out to be opposed to you. You quickly realize you can't accomplish what you want. How does that feel? It's not fun. It's frustrating. You're stuck where the developer wants you to be, existing only to do as directed. No one wants that experience. You give your players much more than agency when you allow them to do as they please--you open up avenues of storytelling. It's up to you, the GM, to decide how the story is enriched by someone befriending an NPC. There are loads of possibilities: that NPC has a quest, or is attacked and needs help, or is secretly plotting the PCs' downfalls, or is a great friend who is soon held hostage. Don't look at the players getting what they want as a bad thing--it's often them having fun in a way that only TRPGs can offer.
This, understandably, changes the nature of preparing for games. If you're leaving things open to the players, it's impossible to know what will happen. So improv skills become even more useful. Let's say you know that your players intend to stage an ambush on a clan of bandits in the woods. You could spend hours preparing combat stats for each bandit, work out strategies and skills for the combat, determine what happens if the players are overwhelmed, create story beats for what would happen if the players are captured, and determine the effect on the countryside should the bandits be beaten. These are all good things to brainstorm. But don't set anything in stone. Your players can tell when you've railroaded them into an ending you've designed, and it just isn't as much fun as allowing them to pick their own fates. Instead of selecting each of these details ahead of time, use context to set a direction. If the players were to beat the bandits handily, stories of their prowess might spread throughout the land. Nearby bandits might come to their beaten allies' aid. A local wealthy person might have been supplying the bandits with weapons in exchange for control over the area. Any of these options takes the encounter and amplifies the storytelling effects of the moment the players have created. These farther-reaching effects are essentially big "yes, and..." moments.
So how do you actually prepare so that you can improvise details during the game? Write some fragments. Just as each of the options listed above for what might happen after the bandit encounter are only ideas, come up with similar ideas for multiple options. You'll never be able to accurately predict what your players will do, so keep all of these ideas in mind solely as options. When you see an opening for a moment you've devised come up in response to a player choice, feel free to drop it in. But remember that it must be in the spirit of "yes, and..." or at least "no, but..." or else you'll be directing your players instead of letting them direct the game.
I'm sure that some GMs don't feel confident enough to try this. It is daunting. But I promise you that if you try it, you will see it pay off. Keep in mind that your players probably aren't in the game for some master-planned storyline--players like that tend to read novels and watch movies to scratch that particular itch. No one expects you to write the next great story of our generation. What they do expect is to be able to change the world through their character. So give them openings to do so.
Finally, I thought I would share a story of the first real campaign I ran, now many years past, because it illustrates what is possible through improvisation like this. I had set up a campaign in which each member of the party was approached by a masked, hooded figure; the figure wanted the players to enlist in the royal guard of the city and use their positions there to assassinate a long list of important people, including the entire royal family. The players, under the impression that this was the point of the campaign, managed to kill off the first person on the list. But by the second target (out of twenty total targets), the party was suspicious of the hooded figure and only kidnapped the designated royal. Before even considering a third target, the party attacked the hooded figure. As a DM, I could feel the whole campaign slipping away from me. I had designed unique challenges for every target, and they had only attempted a tenth of the list! I wasn't sure what to do. Thinking quickly, I fast-forwarded in my written plans to the moment that the hooded figure was revealed to be the princess of the royal family, so committed to an anarchist state that she intended to see every noble and royal, including herself, killed so that a new city could begin. This resulted in a party split: half the players sided with the royal guard, pledging to protect the city from assassins, and half the players joined the ranks of the assassins and attempted to overthrow the government. The result was a city-wide civil war which ultimately claimed the lives of hundreds of people. Finally, the defenders of the kingdom prevailed, but the king had been assassinated, and a new, democratic city was born from the old one's ashes.
Had I stuck to my script, I would have been lost. How on earth do you convince players to keep killing people they know to be innocent when they have no desire to? What good was my detailed list of 20 targets if the party didn't want to execute them all? How would we deal with a party split and whatever followed the split? These were all questions that planning could not answer for me. I could have had an out-of-game aside and told all the players that the campaign was based around the list of targets--I could have simply insisted they play along. Or I could have come up with some other way for the list to retain importance--perhaps the princess began to execute them herself. But I opted to honor what the players had chosen. I "yes, and..."ed and gave them a complex civil war to navigate. It was nothing like what I had planned; it was better. It reflected the wills of each player and each character in a way that an on-the-rails list of targets never could have. And I had to make this decision on the fly: we were in the middle of a session when they unmasked the princess, so I had to respond in real time. This is where improv skills can save a campaign.
This campaign formed me more as a DM than anything I've ever run. I went in expecting to be celebrated for an intricate story I'd spent months preparing for, and I quickly had to scrap it all and start over. If TRPGs allow us to create stories together, then we should celebrate that. The story of that campaign became the story of a handful of player characters doing what they thought was best in a complicated situation. And it was better than a series of assassinations would have been. Most importantly, my players left the table feeling like they had led the story, which they had. I still talk to most of the players, and all of them have shared the wild stories from that campaign again and again. It was the moment when I learned that improvisation does more to help a story than planning will. So now I enter my sessions with fragments of information and ideas and bounce them off the players until they make the story their own. Hell, I have DMed sessions without even a word or thought of preparation and seen incredible results.
The bottom line is: don't railroad your players. They want to be able to make choices, so give them the power to. Change your story so that they can change your story. Don't be afraid to make it up as you go. And above all, remember that there's only one GM, but a collection of players; the players should have just as much say in what happens as the GM, if not more. If TRPGs are the home of collaborative stories, create them. Your players will appreciate the difference.
Next time, I present session two of the mystery campaign and talk about choices I had to make on the fly to keep things going. As the players make more and more decisions, the campaign becomes more of their own creation; they pursue the mystery along with their own goals.
Coming soon: how to deal with critical rolls, how to create in-game documents, and how to design a dungeon. Until next time, happy gaming!
Back to the homepage (where you can find everything!)
No comments:
Post a Comment