Quote from: Riquez on December 13, 2024, 06:13:50 AMBut I do think its important for DMs to always be mindful they are the arbiter of the situation, not the story-teller.

I agree. I think it's the fundamental difference between playing a role playing game and simply telling a story.

Quote from: GnosticGoblin on December 10, 2024, 10:31:38 AM"How are the Players going to do that? Thats not my job. Thats their job. A lot of GamesMasters think of themselves as Story-Tellers but I prefer to consider myself a Conflict Designer. I create conflicts but I don't need to know how the Players figure their way out of the conflicts. That is where the story emerges and that is their department. My job as I see it is to provide an objective, location, antagonists and time-limit. Players drive the action with their decisions. I never know what my players are going to do. Maybe they'll kill the villain, maybe he escapes. Maybe they'll live, maybe they'll die. That's up to them and the dice. So why plan further than the next session? If I did I might be tempted to steer the game toward my preferred conclusion. But I don't want to do that. I want to be just as surprised as the Players."

Professor DungeonMaster,  Dungeon Craft, YouTube, The Reviled Society, Part 1 (Ep.291)

Oversimplified but generally good advice.

A GM builds the playground, what to climb on and how to play is up to the players.

Quote from: GnosticGoblin on December 10, 2024, 10:31:38 AM"How are the Players going to do that? Thats not my job. Thats their job. A lot of GamesMasters think of themselves as Story-Tellers but I prefer to consider myself a Conflict Designer. I create conflicts but I don't need to know how the Players figure their way out of the conflicts. That is where the story emerges and that is their department. My job as I see it is to provide an objective, location, antagonists and time-limit. Players drive the action with their decisions. I never know what my players are going to do. Maybe they'll kill the villain, maybe he escapes. Maybe they'll live, maybe they'll die. That's up to them and the dice. So why plan further than the next session? If I did I might be tempted to steer the game toward my preferred conclusion. But I don't want to do that. I want to be just as surprised as the Players."

Professor DungeonMaster,  Dungeon Craft, YouTube, The Reviled Society, Part 1 (Ep.291)

That sounds very similar to my point of view. As a GM, I like to see myself as a facilitator, in the first place: setting pieces, establishing mechanics, and roll with it.

Isnt most of the fun of being a DM finding out how players react to crazy situations? I really dont want to tell a story as much as I want to be involved in the telling of a story I havent heard before.

GM stuff: ............................................................

GM question:
What do you do?

GM instruction:
Roll for initiative!!!

GM explanation:
The ....... gore's you with it's tail spike.  You take 12 damage.  Make a saving throw vs death.  Ok, you're stable and you have 1 hit point left.

It really can be that simple.

Quote from: Riquez on December 13, 2024, 06:13:50 AMIts fine for the DM to imagine how the players might deal with it, but never push or lead them towards the 'story' you imagined.

This was being a point of disruption in almost every session of play my online group had in 2020. The GM was being upset when we would being finding our own methods for solving puzzles or finding solutions.  In one of the climaxes, we were being decided that we should make peace with a character of whom the GM had set us up to fight, and he was pushing us to go against our own ideas so as to fight the NPCs.  It was placing a sour taste in my mouth and I am feeling taught me a valuable lesson about the running of games in the future.

When you're writing an adventure there should always be a story.  Designing with plot, pacing, setbacks, climaxes etc etc etc in mind makes for an exciting adventure.  It's also the only way to know where to spend your limited prep time.  You spend it on the activities you expect the players to actually do.  Once the game starts the players are in the driver's seat.  You'll get to use a lot of what you prepared and plotted out, but you also have to roll with the decisions they actually do make and improvise in the spots where you guessed wrong.  In my entire DMing career there was exactly one time the adventure played out they way I had planned it ahead of time.

Quote from: Mishihari on December 14, 2024, 01:48:58 AMWhen you're writing an adventure there should always be a story.  Designing with plot, pacing, setbacks, climaxes etc etc etc in mind makes for an exciting adventure.  It's also the only way to know where to spend your limited prep time.  You spend it on the activities you expect the players to actually do.  Once the game starts the players are in the driver's seat.  You'll get to use a lot of what you prepared and plotted out, but you also have to roll with the decisions they actually do make and improvise in the spots where you guessed wrong.  In my entire DMing career there was exactly one time the adventure played out they way I had planned it ahead of time.

https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots

Quote from: Mishihari on December 14, 2024, 01:48:58 AMWhen you're writing an adventure there should always be a story.  Designing with plot, pacing, setbacks, climaxes etc etc etc in mind makes for an exciting adventure.  It's also the only way to know where to spend your limited prep time.  You spend it on the activities you expect the players to actually do.  Once the game starts the players are in the driver's seat.  You'll get to use a lot of what you prepared and plotted out, but you also have to roll with the decisions they actually do make and improvise in the spots where you guessed wrong.  In my entire DMing career there was exactly one time the adventure played out they way I had planned it ahead of time.

I like to begin with a certain status quo. I have a sketch of a timeline for what non players will be doing when. Anyone the players do not interact with or interfere with will do pretty much what I had sketched out in the timeline. Anyone the players interact with will react as appropriate to the situation. Thus the world keeps moving and unfolds based on the players activity or lack thereof.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 14, 2024, 06:13:59 AM

Quote from: Mishihari on December 14, 2024, 01:48:58 AMWhen you're writing an adventure there should always be a story.  Designing with plot, pacing, setbacks, climaxes etc etc etc in mind makes for an exciting adventure.  It's also the only way to know where to spend your limited prep time.  You spend it on the activities you expect the players to actually do.  Once the game starts the players are in the driver's seat.  You'll get to use a lot of what you prepared and plotted out, but you also have to roll with the decisions they actually do make and improvise in the spots where you guessed wrong.  In my entire DMing career there was exactly one time the adventure played out they way I had planned it ahead of time.

https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots

His articles frequently have good insight and advice but this time he's wrong.  (And let's not get into his bad behavior - that's another discussion entirely)  From my personal experience adventures run better when planned around a series of events rather than a sandbox.  You can't do pacing and the dramatic structure from just a situation, and those are two things that definitely make for a fun adventure.  In my experience planning a situation only works well in a limited environment, like a dungeon, due to prep time constraints.  There's definitely a correlation between how much preparation I've put into an encounter and how fun it is.  When needed I can wing it with the best of them, but the result are less consistent.  He talks about wasting time on alternate plot lines.  It's a much bigger waste of time prepping all of the situations that the characters might find themselves in.  So yeah, I've found the way to go is prepare several of the most likely lines of events then turn the players loose to do what they want.  I rarely guess badly enough in my planning that I have to do total improv.

After a while a DM sort of knows the players most likely actions and can prepare for them, that doesn't mean those are the only actions possible. The DM should prep for the most likely, and be ready to adapt to the unlikely (Quantum ogre be damned).

Quote from: Mishihari on December 14, 2024, 03:48:44 PMFrom my personal experience adventures run better when planned around a series of events rather than a sandbox.  You can't do pacing and the dramatic structure from just a situation, and those are two things that definitely make for a fun adventure.

From my personal experience, this is false.  Players (especially experienced ones, but many newbies also fit under this umbrella) have a lot more fun when they feel like their choices matter, and "pacing and the dramatic structure" are the inverse of choice (not completely... but close enough in this case).  My players enjoy best when they get to decide (by their actions) what the climax of the adventure might be (and when it occurs).

So, you have your experience, and I have mine.  What next?

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 14, 2024, 05:22:02 PMSo, you have your experience, and I have mine.  What next?

You admit you're wrong?  :-)  Okay, prolly not

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 14, 2024, 05:22:02 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on December 14, 2024, 03:48:44 PMFrom my personal experience adventures run better when planned around a series of events rather than a sandbox.  You can't do pacing and the dramatic structure from just a situation, and those are two things that definitely make for a fun adventure.

From my personal experience, this is false.  Players (especially experienced ones, but many newbies also fit under this umbrella) have a lot more fun when they feel like their choices matter, and "pacing and the dramatic structure" are the inverse of choice (not completely... but close enough in this case).  My players enjoy best when they get to decide (by their actions) what the climax of the adventure might be (and when it occurs).

You're making an assumption there, that being that if a plot is used for planning purposes, it must also be used in actual play.  Forcing a plot during play is just bad DMing.  I'm saying use a story to design the environment then ignore it.  As an example, you generally want the climax at the end of the adventure, otherwise the rest is a anticlimactic.  So put the big bad at the spot in the dungeon furthest from the entrance so they'll likely encounter it last.  If they find a shortcut or a back door, so be it.  They still have choice and control.  But most likely the big bad will be the exciting conclusion to the experience.  An open environment, city, or wilderness can be done the same way, it's just a bit more complicated

Quote from: Mishihari on December 14, 2024, 06:03:34 PMYou're making an assumption there, that being that if a plot is used for planning purposes, it must also be used in actual play.  Forcing a plot during play is just bad DMing.  I'm saying use a story to design the environment then ignore it.  As an example, you generally want the climax at the end of the adventure, otherwise the rest is a anticlimactic.  So put the big bad at the spot in the dungeon furthest from the entrance so they'll likely encounter it last.  If they find a shortcut or a back door, so be it.  They still have choice and control.  But most likely the big bad will be the exciting conclusion to the experience.  An open environment, city, or wilderness can be done the same way, it's just a bit more complicated

Ok. I was going to make a big reply, but I can at least understand this approach. I have used it myself. I still think that as a table top game, RPGs benefit more from being constructed as a situation and not a plot or story, but there are bits and pieces from conventional storytelling that can apply. They just have to be bent and twisted to fit during actual play.

Quote from: Mishihari on December 14, 2024, 06:03:34 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 14, 2024, 05:22:02 PMSo, you have your experience, and I have mine.  What next?

You admit you're wrong?  :-)  Okay, prolly not

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 14, 2024, 05:22:02 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on December 14, 2024, 03:48:44 PMFrom my personal experience adventures run better when planned around a series of events rather than a sandbox.  You can't do pacing and the dramatic structure from just a situation, and those are two things that definitely make for a fun adventure.

From my personal experience, this is false.  Players (especially experienced ones, but many newbies also fit under this umbrella) have a lot more fun when they feel like their choices matter, and "pacing and the dramatic structure" are the inverse of choice (not completely... but close enough in this case).  My players enjoy best when they get to decide (by their actions) what the climax of the adventure might be (and when it occurs).

You're making an assumption there, that being that if a plot is used for planning purposes, it must also be used in actual play.  Forcing a plot during play is just bad DMing.  I'm saying use a story to design the environment then ignore it.  As an example, you generally want the climax at the end of the adventure, otherwise the rest is a anticlimactic.  So put the big bad at the spot in the dungeon furthest from the entrance so they'll likely encounter it last.  If they find a shortcut or a back door, so be it.  They still have choice and control.  But most likely the big bad will be the exciting conclusion to the experience.  An open environment, city, or wilderness can be done the same way, it's just a bit more complicated

That's not a "plot."  That's adventure or lair design (and logic... the big bad usually wants to be as far from the danger as possible, if for no other reason than secrecy).  A plot is a sequence of events in a story, usually presented in some coherent (often chronological) order.  The entire point of a plot is that the events of the story happen and are related.  When you talk about the "dramatic structure," by normal meaning this refers to the pattern of rising action, climax, and falling action (denouement) as commonly found in literature.  There is no guarantee that players will make choices that will follow that pattern.  What if they find a way to neuter the big bad guy (BBG) without having to physically defeat him?  What if they avoid the BBG completely?  What if they jump directly to the BBG and don't follow any of the challenges?

You're going to have to explain your definition of these terms, because you are not using the standard definitions of the elements of a story.  Creating an adventure that scales in threat level or features the BBG at the end (because he will almost always be the end... the adventure usually ends when the motivation for it ends) is not replicating the elements of a story.  Replicating a narrative structure involves determining what events will happen and in what order... which is what Prof DM and the rest of us are arguing against...