I am between those extremes as well when I GM. I usually have a beginning written and I know how things will go if the PCs do nothing then the story evolves as I factor in how PC actions interact with the other things going on and then alters what the NPCs are doing.
For example the last long term campaign I ran the story plan evolved a major war starting up between the PCs kingdom and the neighboring kingdom. There is almost nothing that the PCs could have done to stop the war. The background of that was put in place by NPCs years before the opening scene. However the PCs were able to make major changes to how it came about, and the relative strengths for it, which definitely changed the story. Including the PCs taking out the enemy war leader in the second session because of an completely unrelated thing and an incredible die roll.
Though I really do fit the first example because if I roll the dice I abide by them, though if I don't want a PC to die in a bar fight I will just narrate the bar fight rather then dropping dice.
Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers
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I am between those extremes as well when I GM. I usually have a beginning written and I know how things will go if the PCs do nothing then the story evolves as I factor in how PC actions interact with the other things going on and then alters what the NPCs are doing.
For example the last long term campaign I ran the story plan evolved a major war starting up between the PCs kingdom and the neighboring kingdom. There is almost nothing that the PCs could have done to stop the war. The background of that was put in place by NPCs years before the opening scene. However the PCs were able to make major changes to how it came about, and the relative strengths for it, which definitely changed the story. Including the PCs taking out the enemy war leader in the second session because of an completely unrelated thing and an incredible die roll.
Though I really do fit the first example because if I roll the dice I abide by them, though if I don't want a PC to die in a bar fight I will just narrate the bar fight rather then dropping dice. -
What's Game B?
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@Gilette Battlestar Orion.
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I often wonder what it is that appeals about rolling for things that would be far easier to just have them succeed (or fail). If it's to be impartial, or allow the rules to dictate events, or to allow player success and failure based on their luck and characters, fudging seems to run counter to that.
It's not an easy question to answer.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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It is, actually. People like rolling dice. It's fun.
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Rolling the dice is fun?
Rolling with a chance of failure yet succeeding is fun?
Rolling with a chance of failure where success and failure are fun?
Rolling with a chance of failure that is enhanced by hidden altering of the chances of success is fun?I have a friend who literally likes to roll the dice. Just likes the physicality of it.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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Yes.
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I'll stop asking then.
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Auto success is good, but rolling dice. its more than the chance for failure, its failing to accomplish a task and finding some other way to try and progress in the intended direction despite failure.
In a fight, it sucks, missing, getting hit, etc. Its the rolls beyond this that make the RP more dynamic. Failing to open the lock, but knowing something is beyond the door. Failing to get the librarian to let you check out the super special book and finding a way to get it (sneak in, convince someone with authority, find a new way). The people who like dice like the dice to fall where they will with no one altering them what so ever. A win is a win, conducive to progress, a fail is the chance for more development to turn things around towards the goal by some other means that usually involves some creative solution.
I'll say it, some of my best RP sessions on-line (and TT for the matter) came about from rolling a failure. If I get the win, its not memorable so much as fun to go forward. The failure and trying to find a new solution means more time spend on the problem or task.
On 5W, I ran science stuff with my char for a couple other chars. Our last thing involved accidental fire, leaping from trees during the fire and failing, getting hurt, an arm was broken by someone. It created more story dealing with failure than going to the encounter, succeeding, and going home.
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@Misadventure said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:
I have a friend who literally likes to roll the dice. Just likes the physicality of it.
For me part of it is the physicality of it, but also the hey where will this take the game aspect.
I am not wedded to the idea of dice in games but I am definitely in favor of a randomizer of some sort. To me that is what makes the game a lot of fun is that no one not even the GM controls the thing completely. The game itself has an impact through the mechanics.
I know that view is not universal, plenty of GMs will fudge dice etc to keep things headed the way they want bit honestly those are the games I drop out of both on line and in table top. Stories are awesome, but stories that take a live of their own through random chance even more awesome. And yes I have seen stories take on their own live through the randomness of roll both on line and in table top.
One of my favorite examples was in a D+D table top I ran. The rouge of the party went off on his own and ended up killing an innocent and feeding the body to a mimic, then his dice completely turned against him. Like three sessions worth of crap rolls. The player decided since that character does not know his fate is controlled by tumbling polyhedrals that the character would seek redemption to lift the curse he was obviously afflicted with. Character then begins on that story path and sure enough regression to the mean kicks in and he starts getting a more normal spread of rolls. the character ended up becoming religious and taking cleric levels. this whole character growth arc would not have happened without a randomizer since the players stated goal was to eventually take over the local thieves guild and I had written out a subplot to build to that but game has other ideas and that is why I love to RP because no matter how much all the folks want something to go one way there is no guarantee that it will. -
Am I to understand you are saying you feel the best stories are ones that while they do not routinely deviate from what is roughly expected, they do at times present unlooked for possibilities or opportunities which feel more genuine in some fashion?
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@Misadventure
Not use i would put it exactly in that way but yes.
And for me it is also keeps things from getting predictable. Lets say I am in a plot run by GM A and having been in GM A's plots a bunch I know their patterns, all storytellers have them weather they run games, write novels or make TV shows, with out some randomizer these patterns become what you get while every work has some deviation they also become predictable.
I know the storytellers I enjoy the most in whatever medium are the one that are able to consistently surprise me in ways that make sense. (Note the ways that make sense caveat, random for the sake of random tends to annoy me) Dice and other forms of randomization help to accomplish that in my view. -
So unexpected result (say a great success, an unexpected severe failure) prompts a creative effort to move the action outside of where folks had thought it was going?
Would what you are talking about not work if for every scene (or big scene, or whatever qualifier) you pulled a card, and on some cards some unexpected direction was given as a prompt.
By way of example, MasterBook, once known as TORG had a deck of cards and a possible pull was an unexpected Connection shows up, or a love interest develops. Would that sort of out of your control prompt feel the same as what you do now? Would it help if it had 1000 possible specific prompts, or on the other end of the spectrum a far more vague suggestion (unexpected arrival, or Random Disaster)?
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@Misadventure
I am not that concerned with the form the randomizer takes.
I did play Torg back in the day as well as Pre-Savage Worlds Deadlands and Castle Falkenstein both of which used cards for all or part of the system.
Along those same lines for solo stuff is the Mythic GM emulator that in part will use random words to prompt things. -
So we're drawn to these games because it's 'Choose Your Own Adventure' where your choices are determined by random die rolls?
Seems legit.
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@Misadventure said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:
Would what you are talking about not work if for every scene (or big scene, or whatever qualifier) you pulled a card, and on some cards some unexpected direction was given as a prompt.
Not only would that work, it actually did work. You're pretty much describing Everway, a game Jonathan Tweet wrote before working on D&D 3rd edition; rather than dice, it used cards with tarot-esque imagery.
If the GM wasn't sure whether an action would succeed, or what might happen to the players next, or whatever -- she or he comes up with something on the basis of the card drawn. This does, however, require that the players really trust the GM, because, as anyone who's ever tried to read tarot cards can tell you, it's extremely easy to divine whatever result you want from an esoteric and allusive image.
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I'm familiar with Everway as well.
@derp No one said that at all. Limiting the discussion completely down to the attraction of "unexpected results", do you have a comment, insight, idea, or question?