The Difficulty in RPGs thread

[K]

Weird. Where's the fun as a player in reading the adventure before you play it?

If they aren't reading the adventure beforehand, I'd love to hear how they are making their character to fit a story with plot points and characters that they don't know? (Not sarcastic here. Actually interested.)

The usual "pitch" from the GM is something like:

[*]The adventure begins with the kidnapping of a young girl. In the campaign book, it suggests that your PCs might be relatives, friends, etc. or even the girl's fiance. (Night Below)

[*]The adventure begins with an NPC hiring you to help prepare for a long sea voyage, so you probably want to create characters who have a reason for wanting to work for this NPC and who wouldn't be averse to going on a sea voyage. (Savage Tide)

I mean, if you consider those spoilers (and I don't think they are), then having a PC hunt down his family's killers (and the other PCs being willing to help him in his quest) is the same kind of "spoiler", isn't it?

"Having an excuse to go on the adventure" doesn't count as a character-driven story unless it's just the start of the character details.

Stuff like "my character wants to hunt down the killer of his family" is better because it can be woven into other stories as well. Maybe you do one adventure so that the king will use his spy network on your behalf to find the killer, and then he points you to a hidden temple where the killer is supposed to be living, thus touching off another adventure that never features the killer at all and just hands out more clues to be followed up later.

It's still a cooperative story, so getting the chance to do the "and now we finally hunt down the killer" adventure can come sooner or later and you'll never know what form it will take or how many twists the story will have.

Background details have to have long-running impact if they are going to work at all. Mentioning that you hate snakes should be an invitation for the DM to toss a disproportionate number of snakes at you during the campaign in the same way that blowing a feat on Fire Resistance is a request for the DM to use more fireballs.

It's no more spoiler-ish than knowing that in the Rise of the Runelords adventure path there will be at least one fight with a Runelord. Basically, it's the PC side of the cooperative storytelling.

(As a tangent, the lady in the first part of Savage Tide stops being important within like three adventures, so that would be an example of a failure in character background).

[K]

You can't say that losing a PC is a crippling blow to character-based plots and then flip-flop back and say that the players won't even notice the loss of a PC unless it's a constant meatgrinder. Of course players will notice the loss of a PC, unless that PC is a hollow pile of stats. My players (like most, I imagine) make actual characters and if one of those characters died it would mean something, and that's cool because plot twists are good.

Cutting stories short is just failed storytelling and not a plot twist.

Killing player's characters just makes players feel angry and frustrated.... it doesn't make them introspective about the implications of death and war because the player is immortal and can be playing Smash Brothers while waiting for his next character to come online.

At best, character deaths kill people's desire to RP or otherwise emotionally invest in characters. Players rightfully see character death as the DM rejecting that player's contribution to the cooperative storytelling exercise.

[Chamomile]

K, you can keep saying that killing characters totally murders all story forever for as long as you want, you will never magically turn Saving Private Ryan or Aliens into bad stories.

[K]

K, you can keep saying that killing characters totally murders all story forever for as long as you want, you will never magically turn Saving Private Ryan or Aliens into bad stories.

Those characters died at the end of their story, and that's critical.

If you do a story about getting revenge on your stepfather and you die in a car crash, that's a shit story, but if you die during a confrontation with your stepfather it's the end of the story. The core conflict has to be resolved with success or failure of the conflict and not just fail because of an unrelated conflict.

That being said, there is only one PC in the Aliens franchise.

The A-team franchise is an example of group storytelling, and at no point is Murdock or BA going to die of some bad pork before the movie ends.

[hogarth]

K, you can keep saying that killing characters totally murders all story forever for as long as you want, you will never magically turn Saving Private Ryan or Aliens into bad stories.

They're not bad stories, just bad multi-session RPG campaigns.

As one-shot games where you don't have to deal with players getting sent off to play Super Smash Brothers, they'd probably be fine. At least that's my experience with Call of Cthulhu (fine for one-shot games, terrible for long-form campaigns).

[Schleiermacher]

Players rightfully see character death as the DM rejecting that player's contribution to the cooperative storytelling exercise.

What the absolute fuck?

This has to be the single most wrong and crazy thing someone has ever said on the Den. The whole reason we are playing a role-playing game rather than just having Magical Tea Parties is basically to ensure that isn't how it works.

This is up there with Elennsar and Benoist, K. Pull yourself together, you know better than this.

[echoVanguard]

Players rightfully see character death as the DM rejecting that player's contribution to the cooperative storytelling exercise.

This has to be the single most wrong and crazy thing someone has ever said on the Den.

May I direct you to the first act of this show?

As a DM, you are controlling everything, so if they die it's you specifically choosing to let them die. Pretending that's it's the system that hates them and not you is a lie.

echo

[Chamomile]

Those characters died at the end of their story, and that's critical.

No they didn't. Saving Private Ryan saw two named characters bumped off before the end of the movie, and the actual point of every single death was that they had stuff waiting for them at home, lives interrupted by the war, personal conflicts and problems which would never be resolved if they didn't get home...And then none of them did. Except Ryan, who we just met and don't even care about, and also the one translator guy. In Aliens, the marines didn't have that. Like your average RPG characters, they have distinctive and interesting personalities but don't have very well fleshed out backstories. Nevertheless, the scene with the biggest kill count is easily the very first encounter with the xenomorphs, when fully half of the team is wiped out. Even if we assume (reasonably) that this role is best served by hirelings in an actual RPG, the remaining characters get picked off one by one rather than being all killed at once in a climactic encounter. Nobody dies in either of the two climactic battles with the alien queen, and when people do die, it's because xenomorphs killed them, not because they've just resolved their personal arc.

Permadeath doesn't fit the tone of certain stories. The A-Team is a Saturday morning cartoon in live action, having the main characters die would be bad for the narrative in the same way that having one of the characters become a drug addict would be bad for the narrative. Other stories, though, require a genuine threat of death in order for their tone to work.

[K]

Those characters died at the end of their story, and that's critical.

No they didn't. Saving Private Ryan saw two named characters bumped off before the end of the movie, and the actual point of every single death was that they had stuff waiting for them at home, lives interrupted by the war, personal conflicts and problems which would never be resolved if they didn't get home...And then none of them did. Except Ryan, who we just met and don't even care about, and also the one translator guy. In Aliens, the marines didn't have that. Like your average RPG characters, they have distinctive and interesting personalities but don't have very well fleshed out backstories.

The marines in Aliens are NPCs. You know that because they have lines and names, but they don't get a backstory that makes you care about them at all.

In Saving Private Ryan, there is one PC who dies at the resolution of the story. Everyone else is a NPC with no backstory and you don't care about them.

In both movies, the soldiers aren't even major NPCs. We know this because none of their actions affect the plot.

[hogarth]

In Saving Private Ryan, there is one PC who dies at the resolution of the story. Everyone else is a NPC with no backstory and you don't care about them.

In both movies, the soldiers aren't even major NPCs. We know this because none of their actions affect the plot.

Wait, what? So in your own example of "avenging the Rogue's destroyed village", there's one PC as well? That was not obvious from the way you were phrasing it.

[K]

In Saving Private Ryan, there is one PC who dies at the resolution of the story. Everyone else is a NPC with no backstory and you don't care about them.

In both movies, the soldiers aren't even major NPCs. We know this because none of their actions affect the plot.

Wait, what? So in your own example of "avenging the Rogue's destroyed village", there's one PC as well? That was not obvious from the way you were phrasing it.

In an RPG, all PCs have the ability to affect the plot even when the plot is focused on another character.

A good example of multiple PCs in episodic adventures is something like Stargate or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sometimes you focus on one character, but all of the characters affect how the story plays out.

People have brought up Game of Thrones, but it's just a clusterfuck. So much is happening to so many characters that it's very hard to notice that there is no story. Good thing it has violence porn and regular porn.

[Kaelik]

People have brought up Game of Thrones, but it's just a clusterfuck. So much is happening to so many characters that it's very hard to notice that there is no story. Good thing it has violence porn and regular porn.

People were talking about the book, which does have story.

[hogarth]

In an RPG, all PCs have the ability to affect the plot even when the plot is focused on another character.

A good example of multiple PCs in episodic adventures is something like Stargate or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sometimes you focus on one character, but all of the characters affect how the story plays out.

Again, I can't tell if I agree or disagree with you. As noted above, I think Aliens would make a bad multi-session RPG campaign. But the idea that if you're playing in a one-off Aliens RPG session, then only Ripley is a PC -- that's stupid, and I don't think even you believe that.

[Chamomile]

The marines in Aliens are NPCs. You know that because they have lines and names, but they don't get a backstory that makes you care about them at all.

This also describes Ripley.

In Saving Private Ryan, there is one PC who dies at the resolution of the story. Everyone else is a NPC with no backstory and you don't care about them.

If translator guy had died at the end along with captain guy, I'd be genuinely uncertain which one you're talking about. As it is, captain guy gets exactly as much backstory as everyone else, and the only reason the scene where he reveals his backstory is more significant than anyone else's is because he held onto it longer. He's the guy with a mysterious past, and the twist is that his past is actually totally normal and he just doesn't like talking about it.

In both movies, the soldiers aren't even major NPCs. We know this because none of their actions affect the plot.

Hicks shows Ripley how to shoot a gun. That comes in handy later on. He also directly participates in like 80% of everything Ripley does. When he stops, it's because he's too injured to go on. Bishop made the escape from the planet possible at all by remote flying the ship to the surface. The lieutenant is the reason they're on the planet at all. The corporate guy nearly gets Ripley killed when he backstabs her for the loot. All of these guys take actions that directly affect the plot. Some of them do this in a way that makes them better suited to an NPC role than a PC one (specifically, Bishop is out of most of the action and thus his role is probably best served by an NPC, lieutenant guy is possibly a quest ATM and corporate guy is possibly an NPC traitor), but all of them fit the bizarre requirement of "affects the plot" you've given for PC-hood. Hell, by that definition, the alien queen is a PC, but I'll assume the second requirement of "is on the good guys' side" is obvious enough to go unspoken.

[Red_Rob]

The long and short of it is that an RPG session involving multiple people and the random element inherent in dice and rules is less likely to create a totally cohesive and satisfying narrative arc than single author fiction, and I don't think anyone is trying to claim otherwise. A large part of the joy of RPG's is the experience, the unpredictability and the fact that when a good story does emerge, it wasn't forced or predetermined.

When the underdog team takes a shot in the last few minutes of a film, it's not surprising or amazing when they score and win the series. When it happens in real life it provokes a totally different reaction, because you know it wasn't just someone deciding that's the way things 'should' happen, and it could very possibly have ended differently. I get the same thing from an RPG session. When the character who has a personal grudge against the Big Bad lands the killing blow it means more if it wasn't guaranteed. Now, this means that sometimes the narrative won't turn out quite so smooth, but that's something I'm willing to accept in return for greater player agency.

[K]

The marines in Aliens are NPCs. You know that because they have lines and names, but they don't get a backstory that makes you care about them at all.

This also describes Ripley.

Ripley has an entire movie worth of backstory, the first Alien film, even before it's established that she's the expert on xenos who has to be bribed to go on this mission because of her expertise snd this come up later. We know that she doesn't trust the corporation, and that comes up later. We know that she doesn't trust artificial humans, and that comes up later.

The audience doesn't know anything about the space marines other than they are space marines.

In Saving Private Ryan, there is one PC who dies at the resolution of the story. Everyone else is a NPC with no backstory and you don't care about them.

If translator guy had died at the end along with captain guy, I'd be genuinely uncertain which one you're talking about. As it is, captain guy gets exactly as much backstory as everyone else, and the only reason the scene where he reveals his backstory is more significant than anyone else's is because he held onto it longer. He's the guy with a mysterious past, and the twist is that his past is actually totally normal and he just doesn't like talking about it.

I've watched Saving Private Ryan like five times and I can't tell you what the translator's backstory is other than he is a translator. The other guys have a backstory that consists entirely of a home town and nothing more (except for the Jewish guy who we find out is Jewish, but that's a pretty minor detail in the film that only serves to slightly heighten the emotional impact of an inconsequential subplot).

The Captain is immediately established to have a mysterious past, and that past comes up at several vital plot points. That's how you know that he's a PC.

No other character's backstory matters at all. It's just flavor.

In both movies, the soldiers aren't even major NPCs. We know this because none of their actions affect the plot.

Hicks shows Ripley how to shoot a gun. That comes in handy later on. He also directly participates in like 80% of everything Ripley does. When he stops, it's because he's too injured to go on. Bishop made the escape from the planet possible at all by remote flying the ship to the surface. The lieutenant is the reason they're on the planet at all. The corporate guy nearly gets Ripley killed when he backstabs her for the loot. All of these guys take actions that directly affect the plot. Some of them do this in a way that makes them better suited to an NPC role than a PC one (specifically, Bishop is out of most of the action and thus his role is probably best served by an NPC, lieutenant guy is possibly a quest ATM and corporate guy is possibly an NPC traitor), but all of them fit the bizarre requirement of "affects the plot" you've given for PC-hood. Hell, by that definition, the alien queen is a PC, but I'll assume the second requirement of "is on the good guys' side" is obvious enough to go unspoken.

Being present at a plot point and doing something doesn't mean that you are a PC that affected the plot. I mean, your horse or cohort is present at plot points and fighting and we don't give him a share of loot and XP.

Affecting plot points means making decisions that affect how the story plays out. In the Aliens film, both Hicks and Bishop do whatever Ripley tells them to do when they aren't listening to the corporate villain (also an NPC). They never make any important decisions on which the plot hangs.

[Username17]

Ugh. This has gone in a really stupid direction. None of this "character drive" shit means anything, because no RPG is or can be "character driven" in the way K has chosen to define it. All cooperative storytelling is by definition improvisational storytelling. Because from the standpoint of any of the storytellers, a majority of the story elements and events are introduced without their control.

Even if you are talking about Munchhausen, which has no established world and no random numbers generating events or action resolution, you still have only a minority control over the direction of the story because you are cooperating with other people. When you introduce random events, random action resolution, or established settings you have even less control over the story direction than your democratic share of the table would imply.

RPGs are improvisational storytelling. Getting butthurt because they are not and cannot be single author fiction is beyond retarded.

-Username17

[zugschef]

i also fail to see the connection between the ongoing discussion and the thread-title.

from my experience difficulty in an rpg has a lot of different facettes. one gm might put you up against tough opponents, one might make terrain a major factor in combat, another puts in tricky riddles and yet another may spin an extremely complex story which makes resolving the adventure difficult (make up as many combinations and permutations as you like).

i think it might be a start to define the several different aspects which have the "difficulty"-quality in an rpg, before trying to talk about objectivity and measuring.

[K]

Ugh. This has gone in a really stupid direction. None of this "character drive" shit means anything, because no RPG is or can be "character driven" in the way K has chosen to define it. All cooperative storytelling is by definition improvisational storytelling. Because from the standpoint of any of the storytellers, a majority of the story elements and events are introduced without their control.

Even if you are talking about Munchhausen, which has no established world and no random numbers generating events or action resolution, you still have only a minority control over the direction of the story because you are cooperating with other people. When you introduce random events, random action resolution, or established settings you have even less control over the story direction than your democratic share of the table would imply.

RPGs are improvisational storytelling. Getting butthurt because they are not and cannot be single author fiction is beyond retarded.

-Username17

You are acting like DMs don't write adventures, and that's both a baffling and blatantly incorrect premise.

DMs write encounters. They write up NPCs. They write up plots. When the DM throws up a hook about a chance to get back at your old rival and the ruin he is in and the monsters and the treasures and traps and NPCs you'll meet, that's all his part of the storytelling exercise and it's huge.

If the DM does their job well, the PCs have multiple decision points in the adventure to influence the story. He also can dramatically adjust the plot if the PCs decide to create an unexpected decision point, often creating NPCs, encounters and locations in response to those choices.

Bad DMs don't allow those decision points and won't create more stuff in response to PC decisions. That's the classic "railroading" because all decisions lead to the encounter the DM wants you to have.

That being said, PC choice is not unlimited. In fact, it's entirely dependent on what the DM chooses to put into the game world with better DMs being more capable of being flexible.

Trying to characterize adventure-writing as "single author fiction" is just deceptive and false.

[Fuchs]

PC background is the player's responsibility, and it shouldn't require any more scrutiny than the build check.

NPC background is trivially reusable if the dead PC never met the NPC, and at least partially reusable if they did, as the replacement PC will have similar goals by virtue of being in the same party.

PC background is not just the player's responsibility. As a GM I have to integrate it into the campaign world, make up relations to established and sometimes still hidden groups, construct additional NPCs and so on. Sometimes there's also some Player check involved, to make sure there's no "but according to our backgrounds we are blood enemies" problem. Sometimes background traits remain forgotten or were never written down by the player.

Integrating a new character into a campaign takes time, often significant time. Time that could be spent on other things for the game. In addition to that, not everyone is fond of or even has the free time to integrate a new character in time for the next session. I spend about 2 to 3 hours per session typing up and illustrating the notes from the last session and preparing the next session. That's already a big chunk of time for a weekly campaign.

[MGuy]

Ugh. This has gone in a really stupid direction. None of this "character drive" shit means anything, because no RPG is or can be "character driven" in the way K has chosen to define it. All cooperative storytelling is by definition improvisational storytelling. Because from the standpoint of any of the storytellers, a majority of the story elements and events are introduced without their control.

Even if you are talking about Munchhausen, which has no established world and no random numbers generating events or action resolution, you still have only a minority control over the direction of the story because you are cooperating with other people. When you introduce random events, random action resolution, or established settings you have even less control over the story direction than your democratic share of the table would imply.

RPGs are improvisational storytelling. Getting butthurt because they are not and cannot be single author fiction is beyond retarded.

-Username17

You are acting like DMs don't write adventures, and that's both a baffling and blatantly incorrect premise.

DMs write encounters. They write up NPCs. They write up plots. When the DM throws up a hook about a chance to get back at your old rival and the ruin he is in and the monsters and the treasures and traps and NPCs you'll meet, that's all his part of the storytelling exercise and it's huge.

If the DM does their job well, the PCs have multiple decision points in the adventure to influence the story. He also can dramatically adjust the plot if the PCs decide to create an unexpected decision point, often creating NPCs, encounters and locations in response to those choices.

Bad DMs don't allow those decision points and won't create more stuff in response to PC decisions. That's the classic "railroading" because all decisions lead to the encounter the DM wants you to have.

That being said, PC choice is not unlimited. In fact, it's entirely dependent on what the DM chooses to put into the game world with better DMs being more capable of being flexible.

Trying to characterize adventure-writing as "single author fiction" is just deceptive and false.

Ok I'm a bit confused. Do correct me if I'm wrong here:
A: Character driven stories = PCs having background that involves them in the game and making decisions based off of that background. This can literally be as simple as 'motherfuckers killed mah family' and thus the WHOLE story has to be centered around that background to be good enough. If a character does anything not specifically associated with that background then it doesn't count.
Thus...
B: Creating a sandbox where a character decides to go kill some mofos because they want to clear the space out to put their next castle is not a Character Driven because wanting to do that is not in the character's background and thus keeps them from driving the story and plot. In fact any and all decisions that they make based on events that happen to them after they start the game just isn't going to cut it as far as Character Driving goes.

So as K has established only A is any good/fun/right. B is not good because... it's not good enough, whatever.

Any parts I'm missing?

[K]

A: Character driven stories = PCs having background that involves them in the game and making decisions based off of that background. This can literally be as simple as 'motherfuckers killed mah family' and thus the WHOLE story has to be centered around that background to be good enough. If a character does anything not specifically associated with that background then it doesn't count.
Thus...
B: Creating a sandbox where a character decides to go kill some mofos because they want to clear the space out to put their next castle is not a Character Driven because wanting to do that is not in the character's background and thus keeps them from driving the story and plot. In fact any and all decisions that they make based on events that happen to them after they start the game just isn't going to cut it as far as Character Driving goes.

So as K has established only A is any good/fun/right. B is not good because... it's not good enough, whatever.

Any parts I'm missing?

I'm not as judgmental as you, so the whole "good/fun/right" is your assumption.

Both are valid ways to play the game and ways to create stories, but A is for PCs who are going to keep their characters around and B is for people who want perma-death or who retire their characters often.

B is so much easier to design than A. I can improvise B at the table without any work at all and it's appropriate for characters who are temporary because the rest of the players don't have to suffer through broken stories when a character dies or is retired. I mean, if we just spent two sessions tracking down your father's killer, you suddenly deciding to scrap the character and make a dwarven mage before we find the guy is deeply unsatisfying for everyone else at the table.

I'm not going to design really intricate adventures that take into account your backstory if your character won't be there. I'll just make some dungeons and stuff and let you have fun running into random stuff.

That being said, you missed that B creates more shallow stories. I mean, if your whole motivation for your character is "I want a castle," it's going to create stories and plots as interesting as "that time I wanted a hotdog and then bought one" or "that time I had a fight and won." Those stories can have action and drama, but I don't think anyone is going to actually retell that story to anyone because it's so awesome.

And some people want that. Shallow stories are easy on the player as well as the DM and some people like that.

[Kaelik]

I'm not as judgmental as you, so the whole "good/fun/right" is your assumption.

(B) is deeply unsatisfying for everyone else at the table.

...

That being said, you missed that B creates more shallow stories.

...

I don't think anyone is going to actually retell that story to anyone because it's so awesome.

B is deeply unsatisfying, shallow, and no one will ever retell those stories.

But I'm not being judgmental.

Yes K, you are.

I'm not going to design really intricate adventures that take into account your backstory if your character won't be there. I'll just make some dungeons and stuff and let you have fun running into random stuff.

Once again, just like Fuchs, that is a your failure, not ours.

Your refusal to design adventurers for people who don't want to tell specifically the exact story you want to is not a good thing. It is you being an asshole.

[K]

I'm not as judgmental as you, so the whole "good/fun/right" is your assumption.

is deeply unsatisfying for everyone else at the table.

...

That being said, you missed that B creates more shallow stories.

...

I don't think anyone is going to actually retell that story to anyone because it's so awesome.

B is deeply unsatisfying, shallow, and no one will ever retell those stories.

But I'm not being judgmental.

Yes K, you are.

The first quote is about broken stories that suddenly end with no resolution. Those are deeply unsatisfying.

The next two are about sandboxing, not about the first quote, and part of a context that specifically mentions that it's an OK way to play that way.

Shallow stories are just a preference. A lot of people don't want to write backgrounds for their characters and want to just kill some monsters and then go spend fantasy loot on fantasy whores, and that's fine. Intricate stories with emotional impact and lots of RPing opportunities are not a requirement to enjoying RPGing with friends.

Beer and preztels RPGing is a real thing that people enjoy and you need to get over your inferiority complex about it. Or stop trolling. Whatever the fuck you are doing.

[K]

I'm not going to design really intricate adventures that take into account your backstory if your character won't be there. I'll just make some dungeons and stuff and let you have fun running into random stuff.

Once again, just like Fuchs, that is a your failure, not ours.

Your refusal to design adventurers for people who don't want to tell specifically the exact story you want to is not a good thing. It is you being an asshole.

I'm giving people exactly what they asked for.

If you've asked to have your character randomly taken away from you, then you don't care about that character from a storytelling perspective. You've expressed a clear preference for stories that don't require your character to be alive.

That's exactly what you'll get. You write up a background and it'll be your job to get it into the adventure because the adventure is going to be designed like you could permanently leave at any moment for no reason.

If you want perma-death AND a three-session arc about your character, I'll veto that idea because it's my job as DM to protect other people's enjoyment of the game.

That's not being an asshole. That's being realistic about people's expectations and desires.