Making D&D (specifically) games more fun to hear about.

[Stubbazubba]

From a storytelling perspective, combat by itself is empty and meaningless. Conflict needs context in order to engage the audience.

I agree that any story needs some context, but if I'm comparing war stories with another player (e.g. how did your party survive fighting Xanesha?) the details of the combat are I'm interested in.

True. I guess I should ask what Lago's original intent was; do you want D&D stories to be more interesting to the lay populace or to other players of the game?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Both, ideally. If I was forced to choose, given the current state of the game and hobby at-large I would say lay populace. Lay populace as in people who have played World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIII, not grandma.

[nockermensch]

Then I think the answer is more knot-cutting and, sadly enough, more MTP.

Seriously, combat mechanics, no matter how balanced or awesome, will always fall flat before the spectacle provided by videogames. But people will remember the moments a RPG provides the things video-games still can't do, the think outside the box, wacky and plainly bullshit solutions.

In a very sad and true sense, the joke is on us for laughing at the people playing the DND next saying they loved the 90% MTP bullshit. That experience is pretty much the only thing RPGs have that other forms of entertainment can't duplicate.

I still remember the exploits of an old character of mine that was the princess of a small and weak neutral (alignment-wise) country and worked on a "we need allies. ALL allies." mindset. So she went into dungeons mostly as a diplomat/recruiter and tried to talk dragons, mind-fliers and drow to join her side. That wasn't a particularly serious campaign and even if there was plenty of combat, 8 years later we remember and talk more about the times when she tried to interrupt an imminent combat with a shout of "wait! can't we resolve this as civilized people?!" than about the times where this strategy failed and she had to resort to ring of blink + sneak attacking the monsters into paste.

Curiously, when we DO reminisce about combat, it's usually about how overpowered the wizard was. That player was the only one that was really into optimization but usually kept the big guns down. Even then, once in a while he went all out and one shot a combat encounter that seemed difficult or impossible to everybody else (DM included). Those moments were hilarious and awesome, like when he waited for a vampire big boss to make his entire villainous speech before firing a single disintegrate and ending the fight.

TL;DR; Years later, we talk about the funny, cool and/or unexpected things we did in our games.

[Prak]

On the subject of making D&D more interesting to hear about by both the Lay Populace and other D&D players, I think the internet is possibly the best medium, even if only because you can do alt text that illuminates either the high concept, if your main text is D&D Player focused, or the details, if your main text is Lay Populace focused.

On the subject of MTP, having played in a group for close to four years now where the GM has a great love of MTP heavy Runequest, I can say that it works in some ways. Or that some things can seem like MTP. My current character is the son of Apollo, and a cleric of him. He has a relic bow, and has been able to call on Apollo's power several times with no explicit mechanical basis. Functionally, it means that he gets a kind of Continue Screen when he dies, as has happened twice, and basically racks up what I'm starting to call Plot Debt, and was able to True Res the party fighter in the same way. I just learned that his weapon's Flaming quality is actually increasing damage die as he levels, though there's no real mechanic for such.

The bow is also a great example of how MTP can "work" in certain circumstances in another way. The same GM has a standing proceedure of giving experienced groups "bennies" at character creation. The bow was one such bennie, basically I requested a Flaming Burst magic bow that summoned arrows of light and acted as a Tome magic bow (+1/3 char. level enhancement, +str bonus on damage) in a non-tome game. In runequest games, I've requested familiars (which casters don't automatically get in that system), spellbooks, knowledge of certain powerful spells (such as a version of "Reduce [Characteristic], gain same" that was permanent), and set ups that make certain difficult character concepts somewhat more feasible (like a demonologist).

The whole thing is complete MTP, and requires the GM to be good at balancing such bennies with each other, and handing out appropriate plot debt. Deciding you want to be the son of a god and have a relic weapon understandably gives a lot of plot debt, while simply deciding to play a venerable age character does not. It also requires players to trust the DM, but it can work.

[echoVanguard]

Counter-intuitively, in order to have a system where creativity is encouraged or even possible you need to have a buttoned down, tightly associated set of rules. Whle MTP technically allows you to do anything, it doesn't actually feel like you accomplished anything even if the DM goes along with it.

I think this is a useful insight. A lot of the times when I'm remembering a particularly amazing event in a TTPRG, it essentially comes down to one of three criteria:

1. A player made a phenomenal roll when they did not expect to for massive gains (or to prevent tremendous losses). Example: a player rolling a natural 20 to resist an instakill effect that wiped out the rest of the party, or rolling a triple-20 instant kill on an impossibly tough plot enemy that was just supposed to be wailed on for a few rounds.

2. A number of complex mechanics worked together in an unexpected way to produce an unexpected result. Example: A player had a "dragonling familiar" which, unbeknownst to her, was actually a magically shrunken, often invisible, and very evil ancient dragon that was the enemy of several of the other party members. During one combat where another player was using an antimagic cone, she accidentally wandered into its area of effect. A third, unconcerned player pondered out loud, 'Hey, what happens to her dragonling when it goes into the antimagic?' Things rapidly became memorable from there.

3. A player runs a long con on another player (most commonly the DM, or the DM on a player) by assembling various components of a complex plan which look innocuous or self-defeating individually, but at a critical moment assembles the pieces along with a logical argument for why the outcome will work in a specific way, citing facts known to be true that obviate the feasibility of potential counters. Examples for this one would be too convoluted to post here, but I'm sure most folks have seen this one in play.

The point being that in order for a thing to be worthwhile, effort must have been involved in its creation or formulation. Exactly the same reason why we tend to dismiss rulesets that primarily rely on MTP, because they have little to no actual content. The production of content is intrinsically valuable (although the quality of the content may diminish or eliminate that value).

echo

[K]

In a very sad and true sense, the joke is on us for laughing at the people playing the DND next saying they loved the 90% MTP bullshit. That experience is pretty much the only thing RPGs have that other forms of entertainment can't duplicate.

I'd argue that player-generated content is the actual selling point.

No video game is ever going to have the balls to set a fantasy adventure in an obsidian hive that's populated by undead bees. They just won't, but in a TTRPG it's par for the course to have an adventure like that to break up the court-intrigue-based meta-plot you've been doing for a while.

Grinding in cRPGs was created to mask the fact that once the story and combat content was exhausted, there was no reason to keep playing.

[hogarth]

It probably goes without saying, but:

Good stories don't necessarily make good game scenarios (nor should that be a requirement).

Good game scenarios don't necessarily make good stories (nor should that be a requirement).

[virgil]

In a very sad and true sense, the joke is on us for laughing at the people playing the DND next saying they loved the 90% MTP bullshit. That experience is pretty much the only thing RPGs have that other forms of entertainment can't duplicate.

I'd argue that player-generated content is the actual selling point.

Is it even possible to have a robust, rules-based game that focuses on player-generated content without it either becoming laden with MTP or becoming like GURPS?

[Red_Rob]

As long as players have access to powers that have predictable effects they can use them to direct the game in some fashion. It's when there's nothing but MTP and GM cocksucking that the players lose the ability to meaningfully affect the plot, because then anything that happens has to go through the GM-approval process first.

In a recent scenario I decided that a character's wedding would be interrupted by a warparty spearheading an invasion, groups of infiltrators having entered the country under cover of darkness over the previous weeks. I had no idea that the players would use Commune a few days before said wedding and happen to ask tangenital questions that alerted them to danger and led to them foiling the invasion before it even started. When I explained this to the players some sessions later they were all quite shocked - they had assumed the game was supposed to be about them discovering and thwarting the invasion attempt.

If Commune was a MTP-only power, just suggesting that the DM give "some vague cryptic hints" about things to come, that would never have happened. Instead it allowed the players to dictate the direction of the game, and later on the whole campaign. The rules don't have to be non-existent or overly complex, just provide concrete ways for the players to affect the gameworld without the GM's say-so.

[tussock]

Counter-intuitively, in order to have a system where creativity is encouraged or even possible you need to have a buttoned down, tightly associated set of rules.

Not really. People often have an easier time being creative with some tight limits and constraints in place, because it gives them something to focus on and we can easily agree when they've succeeded, but people can also play cops and robbers with no rules besides "I shot you first", Amber Diceless is a real thing, and Calvinball is something that happens all the time in the real world. Wars are totally creative around the inability to know what's going to happen when you act because the other team doesn't want it to work.

Conflict needs context in order to engage the audience. We only care about combats because of what victory or defeat means for the characters that we empathize with.

Art-school bullshit. Go watch some action movies, read some adventure novels (and not the sadistic waste of paper that modern serials all become). The characters are one-liner quip machines. No one knows or cares who the fuck Arnold was playing when he dropped some guy off a cliff and stood unscathed in a hail of bullets, all they care about is "I let him go" and "Let of some steam, Bennet."

Who's Sarah Conner? She's the woman the Terminator is chasing! Who are the crew of the Nastromo? The ones the Alien kills! D&D, baby, not a fucking arthouse where a sad old man spends two hours making us feel bad about him dying of cancer while also feeling good about his previously awesome life and shaky courage in the face of death.

It's when there's nothing but MTP and GM cocksucking that the players lose the ability to meaningfully affect the plot, because then anything that happens has to go through the GM-approval process first.

Rubbish. DMs can railroad you through a tight rule set and let you do anything you want through a freeform one. It's good of you to let your players do stuff that affects the game world, but as you said yourself, they still felt they were on rails (they never knew about the alternatives at the time, it wasn't a real choice).

[K]

Conflict needs context in order to engage the audience. We only care about combats because of what victory or defeat means for the characters that we empathize with.

Art-school bullshit. Go watch some action movies, read some adventure novels (and not the sadistic waste of paper that modern serials all become). The characters are one-liner quip machines. No one knows or cares who the fuck Arnold was playing when he dropped some guy off a cliff and stood unscathed in a hail of bullets, all they care about is "I let him go" and "Let of some steam, Bennet."

Who's Sarah Conner? She's the woman the Terminator is chasing! Who are the crew of the Nastromo? The ones the Alien kills! D&D, baby, not a fucking arthouse where a sad old man spends two hours making us feel bad about him dying of cancer while also feeling good about his previously awesome life and shaky courage in the face of death.

Every good genre story is also a story about people. Jaws is a story about a man having problems with his family and his place in the world. Terminator is a love story. Commando is a story about the things that a man will do to get his family back. Rambo: First Blood is about a war veteran who comes back home and can't adjust.

You could cut out all the action scenes and still have a movie (though Commando would end up being a short film). It's only the forgettable B-movies that lack a human story in them.

[K]

In a very sad and true sense, the joke is on us for laughing at the people playing the DND next saying they loved the 90% MTP bullshit. That experience is pretty much the only thing RPGs have that other forms of entertainment can't duplicate.

I'd argue that player-generated content is the actual selling point.

Is it even possible to have a robust, rules-based game that focuses on player-generated content without it either becoming laden with MTP or becoming like GURPS?

Sure. The problem is that no one has really tried yet.

For example, GURPS is clearly designed to sell more GURPS books and not to allow for player-generated content.

[Koumei]

Conflict needs context in order to engage the audience. We only care about combats because of what victory or defeat means for the characters that we empathize with.

Art-school bullshit. Go watch some action movies, read some adventure novels (and not the sadistic waste of paper that modern serials all become). The characters are one-liner quip machines. No one knows or cares who the fuck Arnold was playing when he dropped some guy off a cliff and stood unscathed in a hail of bullets, all they care about is "I let him go" and "Let of some steam, Bennet."

Who's Sarah Conner? She's the woman the Terminator is chasing! Who are the crew of the Nastromo? The ones the Alien kills! D&D, baby, not a fucking arthouse where a sad old man spends two hours making us feel bad about him dying of cancer while also feeling good about his previously awesome life and shaky courage in the face of death.

I don't watch "art house" productions, but you have described everything wrong with the majority of D&D games while trying to make it a selling point.

[hyzmarca]

Wars are totally creative around the inability to know what's going to happen when you act because the other team doesn't want it to work.

No, War, like the rest of the game known as Real Life, is based on a hard and highly associative ruleset known as the Laws of Physics. The Laws of physics are themselves complete and take into account every possible player action. They're so effective that they've been through exactly 0 revisions since the setting started. The only problem is that there is no players handbook and it's impossible to find a copy of the DM rules, so the player is literally going in blind. He can learn from other players and he can try to deduce the rules through logic and experiment, but it takes a lot of effort either way because they or so detailed.

A perfect RPG ruleset is like physics. It has a few hard rules that can be extrapolated from to cover every possible situation. If you understand quantum physics you can work out macro-scale interactions mathematically.

Unfortunately, using physics to play an tabletop RPG is a math-heavy pain in the ass that requires an extremely large and flexible RNG (preferably one that uses radioactive decay to generate a random number, rather than dice) and takes a very long time to work out on paper.

[OgreBattle]

I love nature documentaries though.

[Red_Rob]

Rubbish. DMs can railroad you through a tight rule set and let you do anything you want through a freeform one.

Point taken, however I still contend that having rules the GM is beholden to by definition puts more power to affect things in the players hands. Sure, pure MTP can be very creative with an accomodating GM. However, when the RNG is effectively the GM deciding "yes" or "no" then it is obvious that only stuff the GM decides will fly can happen.

It's good of you to let your players do stuff that affects the game world, but as you said yourself, they still felt they were on rails (they never knew about the alternatives at the time, it wasn't a real choice).

They never said they felt they were on rails - rather they simply responded to the situations put in front of them with what were, to them, the best use of their powers and abilities and it led them to an exciting adventure. It was more that they assumed that I would have predicted their most likely choices and built the game in that direction - it was only when I recounted to them the sequence of events that they realised I would have had to have been psychic for that to work.

[FatR]

Of course AD&D stories are more fun to hear about. Typical adventures of AD&D (2) era were pretty bad as game supplements - they didn't let pesky things like rules to get in the way of their plots, basically introduced new mechanics on the spot whenever needed and they primarily challenged players, rather than characters, which in practice often turned into pixelbitching and guessing what your GM has in mind. But the same "story goes first" approach makes them more interesting to read and accounts of successful runs through them more interesting to hear. They also tended to have relatively well-crafted NPCs and setting pieces.

3.X adventures are, with rare exceptions, primarily about dungeoncrawl. And dungeoncrawl bound by specific idiosyncrasies of this edition too, that create painfully obvious contrivances, reminiscent of monster-of-the-week shows. No, actually, there can be actual pieces of plot in monster-of-the-week episodes, room-by-room clearing of a static dungeon (which is the typical 3.X adventures-as-written fare, let's not kid themselves) is more comparable to CRPG grind moments. And their plots, of course, usually are geared to faciliate maximum dungeoncrawl, so really most NPCs tend to be very shallow and attempts to solve things by means other than violence usually are discouraged, if authors even consider them at all. Personally, I'm using 3.X/PF adventures to save myself prep time, but I only take statblocks/maps/general plot goals from them, and basically graft my own stories on the top of that.

Noting that, I think that for the best chances of producing interesting session reports, an adventure generally needs to at least have plot that does not boil down to stabbing things in the face or preparing for more stabbing, and it needs to have memorable NPCs too.

[hogarth]

Of course AD&D stories are more fun to hear about. Typical adventures of AD&D (2) era were pretty bad as game supplements - they didn't let pesky things like rules to get in the way of their plots, basically introduced new mechanics on the spot whenever needed and they primarily challenged players, rather than characters, which in practice often turned into pixelbitching and guessing what your GM has in mind. But the same "story goes first" approach makes them more interesting to read and accounts of successful runs through them more interesting to hear. They also tended to have relatively well-crafted NPCs and setting pieces.

3.X adventures are, with rare exceptions, primarily about dungeoncrawl.

Wait, what? AD&D adventures have well-crafted NPCs and aren't just dungeon crawls? Is this a hoax?

The most famous AD&D modules I can think of (Tomb of Horrors, Against the Giants, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, TOEE, Slavers series) are just dungeon crawls with an incredibly thin veneer of plot on top. I suspect your comments are somewhat influenced by the famous principle "The golden age of science fiction is 12" (which applies equally well to RPGs).

[Stubbazubba]

Conflict needs context in order to engage the audience. We only care about combats because of what victory or defeat means for the characters that we empathize with.

Art-school bullshit. Go watch some action movies, read some adventure novels (and not the sadistic waste of paper that modern serials all become). The characters are one-liner quip machines. No one knows or cares who the fuck Arnold was playing when he dropped some guy off a cliff and stood unscathed in a hail of bullets, all they care about is "I let him go" and "Let of some steam, Bennet."

Who's Sarah Conner? She's the woman the Terminator is chasing! Who are the crew of the Nastromo? The ones the Alien kills! D&D, baby, not a fucking arthouse where a sad old man spends two hours making us feel bad about him dying of cancer while also feeling good about his previously awesome life and shaky courage in the face of death.

If you think the Dark Knight was so riveting because of the poorly-shot action and Joker's witty one-liners, you're an idiot. The Dark Knight was compelling because of the larger struggles that each scene, each conflict, played into; the struggle of Gotham City facing the horror of domestic terrorism, the cost that being Batman is to Bruce Wayne's humanity and his relationship with Rachel Dawes, and Harvey Dent's reaction to the Joker undoing his every achievement. Even Heath Ledger's Joker would have been just another low-budget horror flick monster which no one would have remembered without the right context surrounding his evil. This is summer blockbuster, super hero stuff here, not some art house production.

Adventure novels are even more saturated with 'artsy' context. The Mistborn Trilogy's main character's emotional progression and character growth are so perfectly matched up with the novels' conflicts it would be a textbook example of how wrong this idea - that vapid spectacle is what people care about - is.

The reason people cheer when Bruce Banner turns into the Hulk as he goes to smash an alien attack whale in the face, stopping it entirely, is not because of the mediocre one-liner about his secret, it's because it is in that moment that the audience realizes Bruce Banner has turned a life-altering, crippling weakness into a strength. That scene wouldn't have had a fraction of the impact it did if we had never seen Bruce Banner lose control and terrorize everybody on the helicarrier. But because we see him first struggle and then succeed, everything the Hulk does in the last fight is delightful to the audience. And this is in another super hero movie with much less art house trappings than TDK.

Awesome action does in no way let you out of needing a resonant human element. And that's what I would say most D&D stories struggle with; the combats are too long of a slog to keep up the urgency of the situation, and that's assuming there is an urgent situation in the first place. Often, there's not. There's just nothing urgent about a bare-bones dungeon-crawl narrative.

[FatR]

Wait, what? AD&D adventures have well-crafted NPCs and aren't just dungeon crawls? Is this a hoax?

The word "relatively" was important here. But even more importantly...

The most famous AD&D modules I can think of (Tomb of Horrors, Against the Giants, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, TOEE, Slavers series) are just dungeon crawls with an incredibly thin veneer of plot on top.

As far as I know these all are for ODnD, not for ADnD 2. For examples of ADnD 2 modules you might want to check, say, the Grand Conjunction series or various Planescape adventures. Or just download a Dungeon magazine collection and compare contents of adventures from various eras.

[hogarth]

The most famous AD&D modules I can think of (Tomb of Horrors, Against the Giants, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, TOEE, Slavers series) are just dungeon crawls with an incredibly thin veneer of plot on top.

As far as I know these all are for ODnD, not for ADnD 2.

Those are all for 1st edition AD&D. If you mean 2nd edition AD&D (and specifically Planescape), that's a very specific subset of "AD&D".

[tussock]

If you think the Dark Knight was so riveting because

Wow, assumption much? I watched the Dark Knight, and was not riveted at all. It's a crap movie with a massively successful marketing campaign based around the suicide of the main actor. I thought the makeup for the Joker was very well done, but it was only dark in that they kept the lights down on a lot of the scenes so you couldn't see how rubbish it was.

Batman. Biff. Pow. Whap. Zzzzzzzz. You know what the worst bits of Star Wars are? It's where we learn more about Luke and his feelings. Prequels? Let's explain the force and then angst away about what will become of this young Darth Vader kid. Zzzz.

Best bits? The action! Falls, perilous drops, chutes, pew-pew and voom-cssh, asteroids and mynochs and giant space-worms, and they're about to blow up the terrorist's moon base when the terrorists blow them up instead! Pew-pew! Quips. Sequel setup! BOOM!

People talk about how awesome Darth Maul was, not Qui-Gon Jinn, and certainly not fucking Jar-Jar who is all about the action-free character development while rising from obscurity to greatness (he's not terrible when using his comedy-fail to kill droids, but would've been a much stronger character if he'd been good at something action-based from the start, like maybe a duck-and-weave running defence right from his first scene).

Anikin doesn't suck when he's in the pod racer, or the ship, unless he's comedy-failing. But when he emos us how kids from broken homes all turn out to be mass murderers? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Oh, a six year old boy misses his mum. Really? And the Jedi are cool with slavery now? o_0

MOAR PEW-PEW.

The reason people cheer when Bruce Banner turns into the Hulk as he goes to smash an alien attack whale in the face, stopping it entirely, is not because of the mediocre one-liner about his secret, it's because it is in that moment that the audience realizes Bruce Banner has turned a life-altering, crippling weakness into a strength.

"Hulk, smash." Then the Hulk hangs a lampshade on it by smiling to the camera. It's in all the adds, the sheer brilliance of a comma. That's what people are paying money to see. The smashing, with the clever quip. That's what fans will remember for decades to come. Not because sad teenagers want life to have special meaning, but because the ubermench are breaking things and smiling. Yay!


I agree with you that 4e's really fucking boring. There's five orcs and an hour later you're still fighting them. That's not an action movie at all, which is the problem. But an oldschool dungeon crawl is plenty urgent, with all the running and the dying and the instant no-save death traps, and the story of how that was like 3000 XP and went up a level and got Stinking Cloud.

The human element? That's us, the players, the meta game. The audience if you will. It's a highly participatory game, with all too much personal drama and hidden conflicts, and people going to play smash bros because the game got boring for a while.

[Koumei]

The Star Wars prequels being shit is because the non-action was shit - that's the point. If you walked away saying "I liked that, the fights were awesome", then might I recommend Ritalin?

People are not saying "Look at SWEp1-3, they're great and not because of the action!" They're saying "Look at SWEp1-3, they're shit, and if only there was a good story there they could have been good!"

Well I'm not saying that, I'm saying "It's fucking Star Wars, you deserve a shitty movie that will disappoint you".

[K]

People talk about how awesome Darth Maul was, not Qui-Gon Jinn, and certainly not fucking Jar-Jar who is all about the action-free character development while rising from obscurity to greatness (he's not terrible when using his comedy-fail to kill droids, but would've been a much stronger character if he'd been good at something action-based from the start, like maybe a duck-and-weave running defence right from his first scene).

Anikin doesn't suck when he's in the pod racer, or the ship, unless he's comedy-failing. But when he emos us how kids from broken homes all turn out to be mass murderers? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Oh, a six year old boy misses his mum. Really? And the Jedi are cool with slavery now? o_0

No one talks about how cool Darth Maul is. That's because he doesn't have any lines (or none that anyone remembers) and doesn't have a story.

It's the bad story that makes the prequels the 4th, 5th, and 6th best movies in the series. They were always going to be hits because people were always going to see additional movies in a beloved franchise, but I've never had someone say "hey, let's watch the prequels over some beers."

I have heard people quote the shit out of the original movies and that's because they had a compelling story. Neither of those things is true of the sequels.

"Luke, I am your father" is one of the most famous lines in movie history and it is not a quippy one-liner. Hell, it's so iconic that few people realize that it's a misquote of the actual line, "No, I am your father."

Is there even one line in the prequels that gets quoted? Ever?

[Koumei]

Is there even one line in the prequels that gets quoted? Ever?

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"