Only some. It doesn't help with the controversy between the Forge folks and sandboxers, world-based, or whatever you care to call the other group(s).

Not to mention that people will take an overly narrow perspective on "script" to insist they aren't scripting when they are. For example I read some really awful GMing advice the other day in the Gear Krieg RPG--stuff like steering the players back onto a storyline by dropping clues, applying pressure from important NPCs, moving scenery around, etc. Yes, the GM is improvising so technically the "script" isn't being followed, but it's all aimed at producing a specific story, to the point that very few if any of the dicerolls, or decisions made by the players, really matter to the outcome.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;324089Not to mention that people will take an overly narrow perspective on "script" to insist they aren't scripting when they are. For example I read some really awful GMing advice the other day in the Gear Krieg RPG--stuff like steering the players back onto a storyline by dropping clues, applying pressure from important NPCs, moving scenery around, etc. Yes, the GM is improvising so technically the "script" isn't being followed, but it's all aimed at producing a specific story, to the point that very few if any of the dicerolls, or decisions made by the players, really matter to the outcome.

I think a big problem is that published campaigns rely upon that kind of thing to work, making them very bad tools to teach GMing.

Quote from: Warthur;323980Agreed, although I think world-based GMs still have plenty of leeway to find alternate means of resolving world events if the PCs aren't interested in getting involved - almost as much as the Story Now guys, in fact. There are plenty of in-world reasons why the cult needn't destroy the world if the PCs don't get involved.

The problem with all your solutions, which may have been touched on by other posters, is that you've determined that the cult is not going to destroy the world provided the players don't get involved. If the players do get involved, then the cult will destroy the world if they fail. Perhaps that's okay. But what if the players get involved and then wander off, or they decide they've succeeded when they haven't really gotten to the bottom of things? Where you're headed in my opinion, is that the players get to choose their own terms of success--effectively they get to decide "we won!" or "we solved the mystery!" at any point they wish. This removes the sense of the world being independent of the players.

QuoteIf the PCs inhabit a world where only PCs can actually achieve anything, where NPCs never take action to resolve a crisis, that's just as illogical and verisimilitude-breaking as a world where issues magically disappear if the PCs ignore them. Sure, maybe you didn't explicitly describe the particular NPCs in question beforehand, but if such NPCs could potentially exist in the setting then why not bring them in? After all, if it's not a breach of setting to invent a bartender NPC, why is it a breach of setting to invent an adventurer NPC or a disgruntled cultist NPC?

Alternately, you could just avoid introducing setting elements which include a "if nobody deals with these guys, they'll destroy the world" clause. It's a fucking idiotic motivation for villains anyway.

This is getting more at what I like to see, although I'd work backwards from how you've presented it. You start by building the setting and any potential elements in such a way that the setting will survive--in the sense of remaining interesting--even if the PCs don't rise to every challenge, or even they fail for that matter. Then you bear in mind that for many "plots", there isn't just an "opposition" that the PCs have to overcome, but multiple factions that are going to bring their own interests to bear.

Quote from: GrimGent;323985It's a time-honoured tradition in Call of Cthulhu, Mage: The Ascension, Nobilis, Whispering Vault, and any number of other RPGs, however.

But not D&D as originally conceived. More on that in a moment. Furthermore CoC at least strikes me as a game where the existential struggle lies in the background to contextualize the scenarios without really requiring overall resolution. It's a bit of a conceit similar to any number of 1960's-era WWII TV shows. Desert Rats and Hogan's Heroes come to mind. Also, many spy TV shows of that era: Get Smart, The Man from UNCLE, etc.)

QuoteSure, you can always bring in NPCs to solve any situation, fiat everything away. "One Ring, Mount Doom, Sauron, eh, who cares. That's someone else's problem, buddy. Bad guys never win anyway." But that raises the question what happens to all those lifesavers and spontaneously disintegrating doomsday devices when the PCs do take an interest in what's going on, and makes it a little harder to take seriously villains who then after all never do win without the GM's exact say-so. Besides, as a default attitude to hair-raising adventures, "Things would've probably worked out alright even if we didn't do anything" is a tad less impressive than "The EARTH is DOOMED unless we DO something!"

All this is why I decided at an early date that campaign-threatening "dark lords" weren't the way to go in D&D, that in spite of some of the trappings, the game had more in common with the Wild West than with Tolkien, and that the overall sensibility was better conceived as "Swords & Sorcery" than "High Fantasy".

Quote from: jadrax;324095I think a big problem is that published campaigns rely upon that kind of thing to work, making them very bad tools to teach GMing.

Yes and no. I agree that many published scenarii/campaigns have railroading as a background picture. And at some point a novice GM will want to grow out of it and should keep under control the wannabe book writer inside him. But when a GM starts his career there are so many daunting aspects to this "job" that I guess it's ok not to tackle the railroad disorder yet. I mean he still has to be the referee, know rules, impersonate several characters, address players expectations... I know I am ready to tolerate a lot from a beginning GM (even a few rail tracks) while gently hinting at different ways to do his part.

Quote from: jadrax;324095I think a big problem is that published campaigns rely upon that kind of thing to work, making them very bad tools to teach GMing.

They must be. Personally I haven't ever gotten into those sorts of things, and I only recently realized that they extended across whole "campaigns" (meta-plot), not just individual scenarios. Out of the games I own, it shows up in Jovian Chronicles a bit, and also in a couple of later Talislanta supplements, but I gather that the trend hit other systems pretty hard--perhaps starting with Dragonlance for AD&D.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;324101They must be. Personally I haven't ever gotten into those sorts of things, and I only recently realized that they extended across whole "campaigns" (meta-plot), not just individual scenarios. Out of the games I own, it shows up in Jovian Chronicles a bit, and also in a couple of later Talislanta supplements, but I gather that the trend hit other systems pretty hard--perhaps starting with Dragonlance for AD&D.

Well it really depends on what published campaigns you're talking about. I think some published campaigns are very good GM tools in the sense it shows GM how to set up certain types of games. I could be wrong. It's all a question of preference anyway. Honestly I get a little peeved when I hear gamers taking about gaming advice and assuming that what they think is good advice is applicable to all.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Omnifray;323989The thing is though that a certain portion of the "People" element is to do with People's different desires for Snacks, Setting and System.  If you put People first, you are trying to satisfy other People's wishes for Snacks, Setting and System, perhaps at the expense of your own.

The main part of "people" is simply sitting around with people you get along with. You might take that as given, doesn't need to be said - but really it does. Lots of people try gaming with people they don't get along with. The first example that comes to mind, not to pick on that guy, there are many examples around.

I know a guy who ran a gamestore for a few years, he offered a space for groups to game in, and he said he could always spot the groups who were going to break up. It wasn't arguments about rules or settings or GM rulings, it was just personality conflicts. Anna is annoyed by Bob, so she looks for things to argue with him about. Charlie likes Dave, so he looks for ways to support him. We decide whether we like or dislike someone, and we look for reasons to justify it, and little opportunities to get closer to or further from them.

Yes, absolutely there are compromises on rules and setting. But again here people come first. I think of all the gamers I know, and some of them I've changed the whole campaign setting to get that player into it - others I wouldn't change a single dice roll for.

The "perhaps at the expense of your own" tastes thing I think overstates it. That's because we have what Adam Smith called "sympathy" but nowadays we'd call "empathy." Someone else's joy gives me joy. That's why I tell a joke or a story - I know the joke, I know the story, it's not entertaining me to hear me tell it again. I tell it because it'll entertain them, and their joy brings me joy.

So I may think some campaign aspect, some rule, some moment in the game session is lame and stupid. But if it makes another gamer at my table, I'll like it just for that. That's the group experience.

We have a social creative hobby, and shared joys and discontents are part of the social experience. So when you say that if I'm compromising on setting, system and snacks it's at my "expense", well that's not quite right. I'm not necessarily losing something.

Quote from: OmnifrayAs for snacks, you'd be looking at a pretty extreme case before that would make a significant difference to my willingness to play!!

I once had a game group who insisted on healthy snacks. The group imploded not long into the campaign.

I went to a board games afternoon at a gamer friend's place, I was the only one who brought snacks - didn't stop everyone else hooking into mine, of course. I haven't been back.

Snacks are important because they're part of the social experience. We share food with people to bond with them. Visitors to our home are offered a cup of tea or coffee. Bedouin tribesmen offer bread and salt. Italians, Lebanese give you a huge meal. When we ask people on dates, dinner or coffee is part of it. When we have celebrations there's always a feast. People are reluctant to go to restaurants to eat alone.

Sharing food brings people closer together. The sort of food they have sets the mood. If you want a serious mood, have serious food requiring knives and forks. If you want a light-hearted mood, have cheetos and chocolate. I cannot be thespy with cheetos-stained fingers. I cannot be hacky with tea and scones. Snacks are important.

Quote from: David R;324144Well it really depends on what published campaigns you're talking about. I think some published campaigns are very good GM tools in the sense it shows GM how to set up certain types of games. I could be wrong. It's all a question of preference anyway. Honestly I get a little peeved when I hear gamers taking about gaming advice and assuming that what they think is good advice is applicable to all.

Hey, look, it's an indisputable fact that there are people who enjoy heavily-plotted campaigns. Or at least if they say they do, I don't really care. It's one of the great mysteries of criticism colliding with detached observation. If it's between consenting adults, it's okay, right? However we can surely get beyond that; we must, somehow, if we're actually going to talk about stuff we like.

In any case--this is my experience--the story folks of both strains are much more likely to believe that their "good advice" is universally applicable, to the point of actually being unable to comprehend a non-story approach--neither pre-plotted, nor with an infinitely malleable setting that revolves around the characters. Just look at the comment by "nadir" at http://rpgpundit.xanga.com/710120882/item/ (The page was linked in Chad U.'s thread.)

Also I should add that I'm not saying all published campaigns are thinly-disguised second-rate novels. How could I, I don't know them. Just that the idea of actually doing something on that scale never even occurred to me, but it's apparently how a number of games have done things.

Edit: Yes I should. Deep cleansing breaths.

Regards,
David R

Take a deep breath, David.

Quote from: GrimGent;324083So much confusion could probably be avoided if everyone just kept in mind the difference between "story" and "script."

I absolutely agree. Most games that get called "story games" are designed toward giving the player the power to decide what happens, what kind of fictional events get logged into the "story". Debate about whether putting scenes together necessarily makes a story aside (I don't really know, personaly), the "story" is an imaginary post-game transcript, what people remember afterwards. It's very rarely a prewritten script.

Sorry, that's a lot of words to just restate what you said, that's me spelling it out explicitly for my own comprehension.

When you're doing GM prep for those kinds of games you're often trying to come up with situations that are going to "break" one way or the other, and put them in the character's face. The character doesn't have a set choice to make, but they have to do something in response. There's consequences and play goes on from there. You're not prepping for what's going to happen next, you're prepping to be ready to respond to what the players do.