Quote from: Fheredin on September 13, 2023, 10:18:29 PM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 13, 2023, 07:21:26 AM
What does storytelling have to do with running a game?

Storytelling improves the roleplay experience by adding a direction to the campaign. Your character isn't just gaining power; they're actually learning a moral lesson which connects the main story to their backstory or the character's motivations.

What the hell is a main story? The story of the campaign is whatever the hell the PCs decide to do. Moral lesson? Do evil characters learn this too? Backstory is the first few sessions of play if the character doesn't die. This ain't some novel, its a game.-

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 13, 2023, 06:31:45 PM

Quote from: tenbones on September 13, 2023, 05:57:29 PM

I do notice a lot of people, both in this thread, and in my many discussions off this forum, rate themselves hardest on Improvisation. I expected that. I'll address that first in a later post.

Improvisation relies on so many different techniques that it can be all over the place in the same session.  Depends on what needs to be improvised.  By now, some things I can improvise half asleep.  Other things, no matter how much I work at it, no matter how many tricks I pull, it just doesn't fly.  For example, I simply cannot make up a name off the cuff without a huge risk of it being off. 

GM Preparation for me largely consists of having things handy that are either difficult for me to improvise or that are too distracting to do in a rush all the time.  I can improvise a monster in a system/setting that I know well, but I'd rather not  Give me a name and a hint of a personality, and I can improvise an NPC just fine.  Give me a name and make me come up with the personality off the cuff, I can do it, but there might be a little hesitation.  No name?  Flounder awkwardly for 20-30 seconds that feels to me like an eternity.  Nope, gave up worrying about it long time ago.  Better to just have that list of names handy.

For me it's not even about making NPCs; I typically have a few old-hat techniques to quickly draw up NPCs like a list of names or a baby name book opened to random pages.

Personally, I have problems improvising when the players go off in a direction I haven't prepared early in a session. Usually my worlds do not like being abused with quantum monsters; I typically tailor them specifically for both the location I expect the PCs to be in and the strategies the PCs are using at the time. I generally have to make a metagame handshake with players that going to a new location is an automatic session-break so I can prep for it.

The other thing I tend to have problems with is getting players to snap out of RNG failure streaks. On one notable occasion I was GMing a Lasers and Feelings session for new players just to get an idea what roleplaying games were like. The party got chased by upset space pirates into a blind alleyway where they spent seven rolls trying to open a door.

In retrospect, I probably should have gotten the PCs into an encounter at about roll 3, but these were new players trying to be pacifists, L&F is a really un-crunchy system which doesn't do combat well, and the players were already eyeballs deep in a really bad cold dice streak. Escalating the need for one successful roll to pick or force a door to three successful rolls to incapacitate three space pirates in a cold dice streak struck me as exceptionally unwise. To this day, I'm not sure what I really could have done. Besides using Savage Worlds to actually have crunchy encounters, like I probably should have, anyways. But again, my system choice was to help brand new players.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 13, 2023, 10:34:32 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on September 13, 2023, 10:18:29 PM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 13, 2023, 07:21:26 AM
What does storytelling have to do with running a game?

Storytelling improves the roleplay experience by adding a direction to the campaign. Your character isn't just gaining power; they're actually learning a moral lesson which connects the main story to their backstory or the character's motivations.

What the hell is a main story? The story of the campaign is whatever the hell the PCs decide to do. Moral lesson? Do evil characters learn this too? Backstory is the first few sessions of play if the character doesn't die. This ain't some novel, its a game.-

Main Story: The stuff the GM prepared.

Do evil characters learn this, too? Lessons are often unique to each individual, so not all characters on the same adventure will learn the same lesson; it's how the story acted upon that particular character. Villains can learn lessons, though, and they can either be a heroic lesson or the sign inverse of a heroic lesson, depending on if you want the villain to be threatening or sympathetic. However, in RPGs you probably can't communicate that without a villainous monologue....

I suspect the problem is that you think storytelling infects the purity of your simulated adventure. The fact it's an adventure and not a pastoral fantasy cow-milking and dung-scooping simulator means that the simulated adventure already comes with a storytelling contract. The question is if you're aware of it.

Quote from: Fheredin on September 13, 2023, 10:18:29 PM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 13, 2023, 07:21:26 AM
What does storytelling have to do with running a game?

Storytelling improves the roleplay experience by adding a direction to the campaign. Your character isn't just gaining power; they're actually learning a moral lesson which connects the main story to their backstory or the character's motivations.

That's a very narrow definition of roleplay, and it depends on a specific play style and set of expectations.  Not only is it not a universal quality of GMs, it's not even necessarily a desirable one.  You've mistaken your preferred playstyle for RPGs...

Storytelling is not required to be a good GM - and I agree people that confuse "telling a story" with GMing a TTRPG often get in their own way *if* they're trying to run anything with a complexity over a one-shot.

Agency for the PC's and how to give it to them at a maximal level *while* presenting your setting as broadly as possible with consistency is the the goal.

Quote from: Fheredin on September 13, 2023, 10:18:29 PM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 13, 2023, 07:21:26 AM
What does storytelling have to do with running a game?

Storytelling improves the roleplay experience by adding a direction to the campaign. Your character isn't just gaining power; they're actually learning a moral lesson which connects the main story to their backstory or the character's motivations.

C'mon guys! Tabletop rpgs aren't for leveling up your shifty 1st-Level PC to godhood -- they're for teaching players moral lessons that makes them throw off the evil yoke of Conservatism. The ultimate goal of playing rpgs is embracing Socialism dammit! Wake up fuckers! 😭😭😭

Quote from: tenbones on September 13, 2023, 11:14:24 PM
Storytelling is not required to be a good GM - and I agree people that confuse "telling a story" with GMing a TTRPG often get in their own way *if* they're trying to run anything with a complexity over a one-shot.

It is not required, but that does not mean understanding the structure of storytelling isn't useful knowledge to a good GM. For one thing, it can help him find holes in what is offered for the players to choose what to do. Players may choose only to pursue fighting, but failure to offer things to do other than fighting limits their agency.

An analog might be something odd I heard in high school from a couple of motorheads. They were bored with algebra but excited for trig because trig had application to designing and building hotrods.

So, trig isn't required to build hotrods, but it is a useful skill to hotrod builders. Same with storytelling and GMs.

Ok, so I'm about to say something controversial but please carefully consider this before going after me.

Story telling and story structure are very important skills for a GM.  First, you should be telling stories (even if you're not telling them directly to your players.)  They should be the stories of the NPCs that make up the background of your world.  Long dead heroes, the tragic decline of noble families, arrogant geniuses that ultimately destroyed themselves with their innovations,  the rise of great nations, the fall of powerful sects, and so much more should be the stories you have at your fingertips to explain why your world is the way it is.  You should not dump this on your players as exposition but it should be something your players tease out in exploration, discussions with NPCs, and treasures that they find.

My fantasy world has multiple hero arcs, fallen empires, lost orders, and forgotten pacts that I have written up.  (about 300 pages across multiple files.)  These are mostly in the form of stories.  I use this a lot in preparing a campaign.  None of this is for the players to read but for me to build on for making my sandbox for the players.

Second, the standard three act story telling method is basic adventure design.  Sometimes you should directly inflict the first act on your players to motivate them and to see what they will do.  Sometimes, you should introduce them to a story in the middle of or right at the end of the second act for them to intervene in.  After that, it's the player through the PCs that take these situations and conclude them.

Half of my prep for a campaign is setting up these stories that I don't know the ending to.  (I do know how they will end if the players ignore them though.    )  I also put a lot of these things on a timer.  Some will kick off when the PCs encounter them, others start as soon as the campaign starts.

Quote from: BadApple on September 14, 2023, 02:40:25 PM

Story telling and story structure are very important skills for a GM.  First, you should be telling stories (even if you're not telling them directly to your players.)  They should be the stories of the NPCs that make up the background of your world.  Long dead heroes, the tragic decline of noble families, arrogant geniuses that ultimately destroyed themselves with their innovations,  the rise of great nations, the fall of powerful sects, and so much more should be the stories you have at your fingertips to explain why your world is the way it is.  You should not dump this on your players as exposition but it should be something your players tease out in exploration, discussions with NPCs, and treasures that they find.

I don't entirely disagree even the way I think you mean it, because knowing how things might go in interesting directions is a useful, if tertiary skill.  However, I do disagree that what you describe above is story telling or story structure.  Some of the later stuff I omitted from the quote is.

The above is about having interesting situations.  It happens to be relevant in both an RPG and a narrative, but those things are really about the setting.   

Quote from: BadApple on September 14, 2023, 02:40:25 PM
Ok, so I'm about to say something controversial but please carefully consider this before going after me.

Story telling and story structure are very important skills for a GM.  First, you should be telling stories (even if you're not telling them directly to your players.)  They should be the stories of the NPCs that make up the background of your world.  Long dead heroes, the tragic decline of noble families, arrogant geniuses that ultimately destroyed themselves with their innovations,  the rise of great nations, the fall of powerful sects, and so much more should be the stories you have at your fingertips to explain why your world is the way it is.  You should not dump this on your players as exposition but it should be something your players tease out in exploration, discussions with NPCs, and treasures that they find.

My fantasy world has multiple hero arcs, fallen empires, lost orders, and forgotten pacts that I have written up.  (about 300 pages across multiple files.)  These are mostly in the form of stories.  I use this a lot in preparing a campaign.  None of this is for the players to read but for me to build on for making my sandbox for the players.

This is just going the extra mile in world building. Stories of fallen empires, and ancient heroes are great additions to the setting.

Quote from: BadApple on September 14, 2023, 02:40:25 PM
Second, the standard three act story telling method is basic adventure design.  Sometimes you should directly inflict the first act on your players to motivate them and to see what they will do.  Sometimes, you should introduce them to a story in the middle of or right at the end of the second act for them to intervene in.  After that, it's the player through the PCs that take these situations and conclude them.

Half of my prep for a campaign is setting up these stories that I don't know the ending to.  (I do know how they will end if the players ignore them though.    )  I also put a lot of these things on a timer.  Some will kick off when the PCs encounter them, others start as soon as the campaign starts.

This is where things go haywire. Any adventure prep that involves player action is not a story. Situations that are taking place in the game world without PC activity are fine. These are not stories. These are potential scenarios that the plays may choose to engage with. What happens without player involvement isn't really a story either. It is simply the world in motion. Now, when players engage with a scenario and take action and play the game, what comes out of it may make for one hell of a story told in the inn by the fireside.

Quote from: BadApple on September 14, 2023, 02:40:25 PM
Ok, so I'm about to say something controversial but please carefully consider this before going after me.

Story telling and story structure are very important skills for a GM.  First, you should be telling stories (even if you're not telling them directly to your players.)  They should be the stories of the NPCs that make up the background of your world.  Long dead heroes, the tragic decline of noble families, arrogant geniuses that ultimately destroyed themselves with their innovations,  the rise of great nations, the fall of powerful sects, and so much more should be the stories you have at your fingertips to explain why your world is the way it is.  You should not dump this on your players as exposition but it should be something your players tease out in exploration, discussions with NPCs, and treasures that they find.

This is correct. Your world has a story. Your NPC's have stories. But the adventure, so to speak, from Sandbox perspective* is what the players actually do. The "Story" of the campaign is what happens after those interactions. And never should these stories of your world and its NPC's be safe from your PC's machinations - but the PC's likewise aren't safe from these narratives either.

*Sandbox is an overarching form of game that can contain linear-ish contents i.e. you might use an adventure module to fit into a Sandbox - they are different in scale and require different skillsets to run properly. What you've described is precisely what I think of as "classic Sandbox setup" - and it's big-league TTRPG gaming. Running a one-shots>APs>Plot Point Campaigns>Sandbox are nested versions of lesser to maximal agency for the PC's. Sandboxing is its own set of principles that scales down, what it takes to run One-Shots doesn't scale up. My goal is to identify those tools and skills required to scale up GM's and their games (if they choose) to experience that level of gaming and deliver to their players.

Quote from: BadApple on September 14, 2023, 02:40:25 PMMy fantasy world has multiple hero arcs, fallen empires, lost orders, and forgotten pacts that I have written up.  (about 300 pages across multiple files.)  These are mostly in the form of stories.  I use this a lot in preparing a campaign.  None of this is for the players to read but for me to build on for making my sandbox for the players.

Second, the standard three act story telling method is basic adventure design.  Sometimes you should directly inflict the first act on your players to motivate them and to see what they will do.  Sometimes, you should introduce them to a story in the middle of or right at the end of the second act for them to intervene in.  After that, it's the player through the PCs that take these situations and conclude them.

I don't do any story acts. I work with and am married to a professional novel editor, I sit in with her editor's circle and we have this discussion all the time about the differences between fiction and TTRPG's (many of them have been editors for various big RPG companies - and a few video-game companies), in pure Sandox (which we're going to need to discuss possibly in another thread as I don't want to confuse people) there are no "acts to follow" as the PC's are dictating the course of story de-facto as they are the protagonists. As a GM - at best you're using your NPC's as antagonists to do their own shenanigans, but it *shouldn't* follow a fictional narrative structure because the PC's should be setting that pace. You can nudge, but you shouldn't overtly push. The goal should be to respond with the world and its contents consistently and naturally. This *could* be perceived by players and outsiders as "narrative" - but it's not if you've got your chops (and a good Facility rating) when all you're doing is playing your NPC's intelligently and presenting your setting correctly.

Other forms of game - One-Shots, AP's etc. limit agency of players, which run RAW, tend to feel exactly artificial - because it is. I contend Sandbox GM's rarely run such fare without good reason, simply because by habit of running big sandboxes, you tend to want to break linear content down as much as possible. There are *always* reasons not to - laziness, time constraints, etc.

Quote from: BadApple on September 14, 2023, 02:40:25 PMHalf of my prep for a campaign is setting up these stories that I don't know the ending to.  (I do know how they will end if the players ignore them though.    )  I also put a lot of these things on a timer.  Some will kick off when the PCs encounter them, others start as soon as the campaign starts.

Yeah this is much like me. I create a whole big sandbox full of stuff, backstory, NPC's with motivations and machinations, organizations etc. etc. I wind it all up. We do character generation and session zero, and negotiate the backgrounds of everyone's characters, and I fit them into the context of the sandbox so *everyone* knows exactly what they need to know to hit the ground running in the starting location(s). Once the first session starts - the machine runs itself. NPC's and PC's doing their thing until TPK or Glory.

Good categorization!  Like any kind of activity or performance or competition, you're never going to be at the tippy-top of your game every single day. 

When I'm at my best, I believe I'd score a (natural) 20.  But sometimes, I'm as low as a 16 or 17.  So, on average, I'll say a solid 18.  Of course, if I switched gears for some reason, like trying out a new system or experimenting with a totally different approach than my usual, the numbers would be lower.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on September 13, 2023, 11:06:18 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on September 13, 2023, 10:18:29 PM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 13, 2023, 07:21:26 AM
What does storytelling have to do with running a game?

Storytelling improves the roleplay experience by adding a direction to the campaign. Your character isn't just gaining power; they're actually learning a moral lesson which connects the main story to their backstory or the character's motivations.

That's a very narrow definition of roleplay, and it depends on a specific play style and set of expectations.  Not only is it not a universal quality of GMs, it's not even necessarily a desirable one.  You've mistaken your preferred playstyle for RPGs...

Bluff called.

I am not saying you always need to choose the "storytelling" option. It doesn't fit every campaign and the GM's job is to juggle many hats, anyways. What I am saying is that telling a story requires some intentionality and if you don't know a thing or two about storytelling, you can't explore this direction of roleplay.

You also can't really judge other playgroups using it. I don't mean this in the sense of snowflakes not wanting to be judged...I mean that your knowledge of the subject is limited to browsing TV Tropes ten years ago. You literally do not know what you're talking about, so you have absolutely no idea how it does or doesn't combine with other game aspects.

...This is another allergic reaction to Forge-style story games, isn't it? Do I need to start prefacing my posts with trigger warnings? I don't even view those as stories beyond the fevered dreams of lobotomized hamsters; they don't know much more about storytelling than you do.

Quote from: Fheredin on September 14, 2023, 07:41:24 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on September 13, 2023, 11:06:18 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on September 13, 2023, 10:18:29 PM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 13, 2023, 07:21:26 AM
What does storytelling have to do with running a game?

Storytelling improves the roleplay experience by adding a direction to the campaign. Your character isn't just gaining power; they're actually learning a moral lesson which connects the main story to their backstory or the character's motivations.

That's a very narrow definition of roleplay, and it depends on a specific play style and set of expectations.  Not only is it not a universal quality of GMs, it's not even necessarily a desirable one.  You've mistaken your preferred playstyle for RPGs...

Bluff called.

I am not saying you always need to choose the "storytelling" option. It doesn't fit every campaign and the GM's job is to juggle many hats, anyways. What I am saying is that telling a story requires some intentionality and if you don't know a thing or two about storytelling, you can't explore this direction of roleplay.

You also can't really judge other playgroups using it. I don't mean this in the sense of snowflakes not wanting to be judged...I mean that your knowledge of the subject is limited to browsing TV Tropes ten years ago. You literally do not know what you're talking about, so you have absolutely no idea how it does or doesn't combine with other game aspects.

...This is another allergic reaction to Forge-style story games, isn't it? Do I need to start prefacing my posts with trigger warnings? I don't even view those as stories beyond the fevered dreams of lobotomized hamsters; they don't know much more about storytelling than you do.

You fucking buffoon, I have a MA in English Lit.  I've published scholarly papers on Anglo-Saxon and Chaucerian texts.  I've forgotten more about storytelling than you've ever known.  When people don't agree with you, it doesn't make them ignorant; it might just mean you're wrong.  You are the poster boy for the Dunning-Kruger Effect.  You seem to think, because you've learned a little bit about the structure of stories, that you have some supreme knowledge that others around you don't share.

I recognize the elements of story, dumbass.  The difference is that I don't prioritize them over the agency of players in an RPG.  If players push forward consistently, I don't enforce a relaxation of tension, despite the fact that narrative beats tend to make better stories.  Because my players are playing a GAME.  And their fun is not limited to, or even primarily connected to, constructing a cohesive narrative.  So, anyone who says that their DMing is significantly informed by the principles of narrative structure is simply declaring to the world that they are a shitty DM.

The problem with clinging to "narrative-as-necessary" as the default premise, is the fact that *too many* inexperienced GM's lean on this notion as a crutch that takes them down bad pathways that keep them from "letting go".

The inverse of this is that Forge adherents, even if it's just a residue of Forge ideology, tend to overplay the value of narrative for no other reason than its own sake. It ultimately gets in the way of running large Sandbox affairs - which is fine if there is no intent to do so. The issue then becomes one of denial of player agency as a default position in lieu of letting things take their natural course and forcing the narrative for the GM's own egoic needs.

I'm not saying *YOU* do any of this - I'm speaking in general. I personally believe there is a natural progression of GMing skill development. And no, not everyone is destined for doing Sandbox... and that's not bad. But it's the trek there that sharpens ones skills that makes high-narrative campaigns not only undesirable, but unnecessary.

Case in point - I absolutely understand story composition and a variety of story-structures far beyond the traditional 3-act structure, lots of people have made small fortunes inventing new structures based on some minutiae they deem important (true or not) - but I can run a one-shot using my Sandbox skills with absolutely ZERO need for creating a narrative to guide the PC's to wherever with the simple use of a plot premise - the PC's can choose to go for it or not - and if they don't they'll find my abilities to produce "adventure" for them to engage with seamless. It's not because I *need* to create a narrative, that inherently exists by dint of the fact that even if I run a one-shot, I've already created a reasonable facsimile of a working world that only exists for the PC's in this much tinier Sandbox than I'd normally run.

In fact, it's trivial for any decent Sandbox GM. My goal is to get people there if they're willing.