of Dice and Dragons

I was weeding through the comments posted a couple of days ago (I had a big influx of visitors thanks to Twitter) and a post that I had made back in 2006 came up – Improving Your Storytelling – Provide Choices – the comment was from Leet_Master_Ace:

Could you provide an example? I’m guilty of the “steering” game to some extent. I tell the PCs “You can go wherever you like, except I don’t have stuff prepared for every location open to you.”

Any tips?

I won’t rewrite the whole post here but the general idea is that you don’t want to create a situation where your players feel they’re being forced to do something which seems easy enough on the surface but in the thick of the session might not be so easy. To avoid this I suggest taking a flow-chart approach to the design of the encounter – the 5 Room Dungeon Model that Johnn Four wrote about a while ago over at Roleplaying Tips is a prime example of just such an idea.

In a nutshell you create a framework for what you want the party to do, in this case you have five rooms/encounters you want the party to adventure through:

Room One: Entrance and Guardian
Room Two: Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge
Room Three: Trick or Setback
Room Four: Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict
Room Five: Reward, Revelation, Plot Twist

Now on the initial look this sure feels like a railroad situation as I have five items that I want the party to encounter is a specific order – now take a second look and see if you can see where I’m coming from.

Can you see it?

There’s nothing there that says you have to have the five elements lined up one behind the other. There’s nothing there that says you can’t have something take place between these different elements.

What Johnn did was provide a framework, not a road map, in fact you can use the framework for a non-dungeon environment as well.

Here’s a quick example that centers around a role-play situation.

Room One – The party enters a local pub and settles in. Shortly after their meal arrives some of the patrons start to get a bit rowdy and eventually a brawl breaks out (yes it’s a bit cliche but hey, it works).

Room Two – The local law enforcement shows up and brings things under control. The party has to try and talk their way out – no steel, no magic, just their ability to use their wit and tongues. As I mentioned some time ago with rolling for search checks don’t reach for the dice here, make them role-play it out.

Room Three – Following the investigation after the fight the party will be in one of two positions, they’re either in jail awaiting the trial or they talked their way out but they’re not off the hook as they still need to appear in court to testify to what they saw.

The “room” here is one of two – the cell and those inmates the party needs to interact with and the stories they’ll tell about how no one every gets off if Judge Jacob gets your case. The other is the entire town as the party moves about and finds themselves being trailed constantly, the looks of “we know you started it and got off,” and even the possibility of a law enforcement officer harassing them as time passes.

The point is to keep the players off-guard, make them think that whether they are innocent or not, were involved or not, they have a real possibility of being punished for just being in the location of the fight.

Room Four – The courtroom, yes actually role-play out the court scene. Need some help? Just flip on the television and watch an episode or two of Law & Order and you’ll be able to handle it. Remember, the players have to role-play this not roll-play – have some fun, get into character.

What you need to understand is that the results of the case just don’t matter. Remember we’re not looking to force the party’s hands, but we do have a specific goal in mind on the other side. If you want the players to “win” the case then let them, if you want them to lose, find a way to trump their arguments and beat them (however I would recommend the former not the latter).

Room Five – Now here’s the reward, a hook to the next adventure. If the party is found guilty they can complete the adventure instead of serving time (and boring everyone).

If the party is found not-guilty or prove themselves to be fine upstanding citizens by testifying truthfully (or at least appear to) well, “we hope you can help us out here, we need someone of your find standing to . . . .”

I hope that helps – the trick is to set a framework you can hang your story on and not write a script you have to follow.

As always I welcome your thoughts and comments.

May your dice roll well.

So often when you’re setting up a plotline or campaign as a GM we often lose sight of the fact that it is the players that need to get the most out of it, not the GM. I’m as guilty as the next when it comes to planning a plotline down to the last detail and then “steer” the players into it.

Trust me, it leads to players becoming bored, less that interested and may even lead some to find reasons not to play.

So you need to find a way to give the players choices in what they do while at the same time still have enough control to have them accomplish what it is you want/need them to. Believe it or not it’s not as tricky as you may think, provided you plan a bit upfront.

Take for example the classic dungeon crawl. In most setups the creatures are prearranged and if the party moves through the complex in the correct sequence you’re all set but if they deviate you’re up the creek. They may not find something they need for later or may not be able to get out of the level they are on.

So how can we change this to fit our needs as GM and still give the players a choice?

Use a flow-chart instead of a script.

Instead of laying out out your complex and placing each encounter, put your encounters on a flowchart and simply have the players encounter them in the sequence you want – forget where the encounters take place, concentrate on the actual encounter. Now the players are in the driver’s seat as to where they are going but you’re changing the landscape around them to fit the need of the story.

Feel free to post your ideas on giving players more choice, I’m sure everyone would benefit.

May your dice roll well.

Let me ask a question, when you create your NPCs for your role-playing game which do you grab first, the Game Master book. the Player book or a pad of paper?

The correct answer here is the pad of paper. I can hear the outcry now about the need for stats, equipement and spell lists but to be honest they are really secondary to what you need for an NPC – a lifelike character.

To give you an example from the campaign I run, a major supportive NPC is a wizard called Amarth.

Amarth is a powerful individual and has many titles including the lofty one of Defender of Valon, a city on the edge of the kingdom he lives in.

The statement above is how the NPC came into being. I didn’t even determine his stats until after he had been introduced to the party. Why you may ask? Simple, the stats weren’t necessary. When he was introduced I needed to know his station in life, who he knew and would associate with. I fleshed him out with the titles he carried, where he lived, his lifestyle, his servants – not a single one of those items or even his motivation for becoming involved with the party required me to know how smart or strong he is so I didn’t bother with it until later.

I think it helps to realize that we interact with a number of people during everyday of our lives and we don’t think of them as a block of stats. So why should we treat the NPCs or PCs that we create as just a column of numbers? Take a few minutes before you start to fill in the game mechanics and determine the character as it is the character and not the stat block that will drive the story forward.