Killing Mister Cavern?

[mean_liar]

I mean, as far as I can tell the number of MCs who can create actual sandbox settings on the fly are vanishingly small (I mean, I've only met one... Frank).

That's sad. I've played for years under two and became a third.

...

I would prefer a game without Mr Cavern, if only because my own experience is that I tend to run better games than my fellow players and still like playing. I'll have to re-read Mythic. Its precisely supposed to provide an answer to this, "killing Mr Cavern" question. My only real memory of it is that it failed to do what Frank pointed out: give an action script to monsters. I don't think that's too large a hurdle to overcome, considering the relative ease of implementation for Team Monster in Warhammer Quest.

Meanwhile, while I think it would be cool to have a game without Mr Cavern, I wonder how effective it would be.

To be honest, without using Mythic or some other similar game, I don't know how to proceed in this conversation. I don't have enough grounding in the subject. I do know that while I love Warhammer Quest, I still can't imagine how a game involving an open plot would proceed. When I run a game, I storyboard the entire campaign's highlights. The linkages between highlights are loose, but I know what plot points from the early story should echo through to the late story, what NPCs should reappear in startling times and places, and how manifestations of PC histories can arise in the metaplot. I'm actively concerned for the players, even the ones that don't participate as heavily or deeply as the other players, and I'd be concerned that without a story ombudsman they'd be pulled into whatever stories a stronger-willed or just more enthusiastic player wanted to script up just as much as I'm concerned that leaning on them to contribute would inject unfortunate results.

[Username17]

Maid is some amazing design work. But yes, it is so weirdly creepy that I have never managed to get 3 people willing to play it into a room together. Even so, it does enough things right that it is definitely something to keep in mind when making something that runs without Mister Cavern.

So basically what is desired is to get things moving quickly while still having things move forward spontaneously and still leave room for player interaction. All without a MC spinning a yarn or reading from a prefab adventure. That may sound like a tall order, but it's readily accessible. What is needed is to consider the stages of a Fantasy Adventure, and figure out how to address them without telling MC to make shit up:

• The Adventure Path
  Honestly, the Players are perfectly happy to accept a quest from "on high". Maybe the MC has picked up an adventure path, maybe he's just done some work laying out the campaign. Whatever, the Players know that in signing up for a campaign they pretty much have to go along with whatever "the quest" is or the game won't go anywhere. So people won't really mind if the outline of what you have to do is generated on a chart or drawn from a deck. Whether you are going to defeat the Orc army, rescue the Lizard Princess, or shatter the Obsidian Eye, your basic work can be handed to you randomly by the game. And that's OK. At this point players can play a round of Münchhausen to explain why it is that they feel compelled to rescue Lydia of the Lizards from her Fire Giant captors. The player whose explanation "wins" gets a chance of some mechanical advantage.
  
  The First Act
  Necromunda had a system in which players had a random scenario to fight in that could be influenced by abilities and equipment. The fit isn't perfect, but it definitely indicates to me that people are willing to go to the table unsure of whether the adventure will start with them attacked by ninjas in a tavern or hacking down a temple full of cultists. The format is that the Quest you've generated should intrinsically give some list of possible opening scenarios, and which opening scenario you actually get is randomly determined (but influenced by the players and their abilities, so that ultimately the players probably have a choice of 2 or so). Then there's another round of "that's not how I remember it" statements to fit whatever scenario you end up with into the overall adventure path.
  
  The Battle
  Here is the first place things actually get hairy. The ninjas are attacking in the bar or the temple hallway is full of evil cultists or something. The point is, you're now doing a combat minigame without an opposing general commanding the forces arrayed against you. That is difficult. Not impossible, just hard. It pretty much requires the NPCs to have some sort of "program" they follow where they have some sort of Hate rubric and some sort of Morale limits. Also, it would likely be easier with bigger and vaguer locations.
  
  Downtime
  Players want to craft, shop, and research their enemies. And tables and encounter matrices are just fine for that sort of thing. Players can be encouraged to do more or less legwork by having the Adventure Path generate events for taking extra downtime turns. The expenditure of abstract clues into legwork can create platforms for Münchhausening as well as additional rolls on the "what the fuck is going on" tables. In any case, there are certain mandatory numbers of clues needed to get to the next Act and having additional cues gives you more control over what scenarios show up in the next Act. You can also have random NPCs show up to provide various downtime actions and/or betray the party. This basic process can be repeated (Act/Downtime) until the final act...
  
  The Final Act
  The end of the Adventure Path is even more than the beginning, determined by what the Adventure Path actually is. If you're rescuing the princess, she is totally there to be rescued in the final scenario. If you're going to destroy the Obsidian Eye, then the glass anvil is there in the final battle. And so on. Indeed, the final scenario isn't really random, it's chosen from a collection of appropriate missions based on how many clues you ended up with and how high the Adventure's Doom Track got. So if things are going poorly, you have to take the "Frontal Assault" option to rescue the Princess. If things are going better, you have other options.

The big question is how to go about doing subsequent adventures. People will want to do that of course, but most games will break up before it matters. So while it's important, it's something you could leave for an expansion - even though it would probably be better to have some kind of scaling difficulty of Adventure Paths right front and center so that you could plausibly play another one without either feeling like a douche or restarting characters.

-Username17

[JigokuBosatsu]

I'd like to see something like "Bedlam" be introduced to a larger RPG system.

[hogarth]

Whatever, the Players know that in signing up for a campaign they pretty much have to go along with whatever "the quest" is or the game won't go anywhere. So people won't really mind if the outline of what you have to do is generated on a chart or drawn from a deck.

I basically agree with the shape of what you say, except for these lines, which gloss over the most important issue. While it's true that people won't mind if the outline of what you have to do is generated randomly, a satisfactory story depends on more than just a satisfactory story outline.

So one or more people need to do some work turning the outline into something satisfying. And that person (or people) is called the GM. Otherwise you just have a random hack-'n'-slash dungeon generator, a la Nethack (not that there's anything wrong with that), except with the Amulet of Yendor replaced with some other randomly generated MacGuffin.

[RobbyPants]

Well, I think the idea is the MacGuffin should have some other effect on the game, whether in how you obtain it or how you interact with it.

[souran]

Every single idiot saying that computer game == game with no MC:

You are stupid and you should feel stupid.

Baldur's Gate II does have a MC, several in fact. It's called the content designers. They write up their notes, and tell the computer every possible way you can interact with their story, then leave, and the computer does what the MCs told it to do.

That's exactly like an MC, and it applies to every single computer game. The only difference is that the MC adjudicated every possible situation before it occurred, and so never has to do on the fly considerations.

That's not a game without an MC.

A Game without an MC is a game where everyone gets to make the story, not just from the PC's actions, but from other aspects as well.

In a Computer game, no one gets to do anything but PC actions.

Actually you should feel extremely stupid for thinking that a game without an MC would NOT be like a computer game.

What is being proposed are randomizers, tables and scripts: WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK VIDEO GAME DESIGNERS DO YOU? Hint: They make randomizers, build look up tables, and write scripts.

Weather its cards, or tables, or one word plot hooks all you are doing when you "replace" the MC with these things will make table top rpgs EXACTLY like computer games in that the DEVELOPER becomes the defacto "MC" but all the "MC" work is done in the development stage.

I get that slavish devotion to Frank's everyword on game design is standard operating procedure here but this is basically saying that you would ratther have a random collenction of Frank and K's thoughts be your game master than a living person. Which is stupid cultish behavoir.

Frank's Taste for RPGs runs toward sandbox games. Fine, whatever. He can even be frustrated that quite clearly most peoples tastes don't run that way. Otherwise sandbox type games would be more common. He can even be upstet that most sandbox games are ass. Nobody is playing GTA for the story. However, putting all these things togther would seem to indicate that this style is just not as popular to other people as it is to Frank.

[Koumei]

Maid is some amazing design work. But yes, it is so weirdly creepy that I have never managed to get 3 people willing to play it into a room together.

Really? Wow. I've played it a few times in Normal Mode, and once on Elliquiy (as in, "the sex roleplaying forum"). The latter doesn't really count seeing as that's very much linked to the weirdness thing.

And it's basically what I'm using for the convention game next January, because it's rules-lite enough (and has that element of "And now something WTF happens!")

So if things are going poorly, you have to take the "Frontal Assault" option to rescue the Princess. If things are going better, you have other options.

I thought options like "Frontal Assault" and "Sneak in Through the Rear" were options for how to get the reward having rescued the princess?

[Kaelik]

I started by excising all the bullshit "Wah! I hate Frank because he's mean to me." shit that has literally nothing to do with what I am saying.

Actually you should feel extremely stupid for thinking that a game without an MC would NOT be like a computer game.

What is being proposed are randomizers, tables and scripts: WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK VIDEO GAME DESIGNERS DO YOU? Hint: They make randomizers, build look up tables, and write scripts.

Weather its cards, or tables, or one word plot hooks all you are doing when you "replace" the MC with these things will make table top rpgs EXACTLY like computer games in that the DEVELOPER becomes the defacto "MC" but all the "MC" work is done in the development stage.

No you retard. What I am proposing is that you replace the MC with each and every player of the game being able decide what the monsters do, what the monsters are, and why they are doing what they are doing.

That is so fucking the opposite of a computer game that it is literally impossible to be more opposite.

In a Computer game, the players have zero control. In a MC less game, the players (collectively) have total control.

Look at what I am saying. In a computer game, the developers are MCs, and thus, a Computer game cannot possibly be an MC less game.

Did I propose "randomizers, tables and scripts"?

No? Then go suck a barrel of cocks, and come back when you have something worthwhile to say.

Or where you just doing that thing where you assume that everyone who disagrees with you automatically is Frank Trollman, and agrees with whatever you think Frank is saying, despite them having never fucking said that they do?

[Caedrus]

If you are making randomizers, tables, and scripts, there really is no reason you shouldn't be making a damn videogame.

Stop thinking "randomizers, tables, and scripts" and start thinking "pass the story stick." It worked for the native americans.

[Dean]

Has anyone ever played "Tales of the Arabian Nights". It's a storytelling board game and it might more or less exactly be what is being looked for here (with some considerable tweaking to meet these design goals).

It basically has something like the plot starting with a random description, say F34. So you look in the book at F34 and it says "A wizard tells you to go get some pegasus eggs because his village needs them" and then there is a limited number of second stage options limited by starting at F34. So depending on how people react or whatever you can go to G15, T86, or B03. Which are little descriptor scenes of their own with problems to solve there.

It also has a "the player to the right abjugates" rule that might go well here. So if you want to know the DC for lassoing a pegasi you just look to the player to your right and he/she just goes "Ummm 30". This might be useful to not have literally every possible thing covered in the rules and to still have someone who is in the default "judgement call" seat when one needs to be made.

[Orca]

The intended play style of Ars Magica includes that the MC position should be passed between the players, probably between adventures. That idea worked more-or-less for us in a Birthright campaign a few years back.

[souran]

No you retard. What I am proposing is that you replace the MC with each and every player of the game being able decide what the monsters do, what the monsters are, and why they are doing what they are doing.

Kaelik, you have one other post in this thread and it doesn't propose a god damn thing and you know it. The closes you come is

A Game without an MC is a game where everyone gets to make the story, not just from the PC's actions, but from other aspects as well.

Which is still 99% percent OPINION and doesn't say in the tinest fucking shred how to go about accomplishing that.


So because you DIDN'T actually say how you would go about doing communal storytelling where "everyone gets to make the story" I assumed you were speaking about the other things that had been proposed in the thread, which were basically various kinds of randimization techniques designed to eliminate the need for an MC while retaining playability.

As for this crap:

That is so fucking the opposite of a computer game that it is literally impossible to be more opposite.

In a Computer game, the players have zero control. In a MC less game, the players (collectively) have total control.

Look at what I am saying. In a computer game, the developers are MCs, and thus, a Computer game cannot possibly be an MC less game.

Did I propose "randomizers, tables and scripts"?

No? Then go suck a barrel of cocks, and come back when you have something worthwhile to say.

A computer always plays by exactly the programmed rules. If you take away a flexability mechanism, like an MC, then people are going to pretty much play by the letter of the rules.

SO: How are you going to get a communal storytelling experience where players have complete control of the story?

How do you make the story somewhat stable when one of your players will turn it into the worst written episode of DBZ EVER chance he can? What about any of the millions of other ways players may push the story in conflicting ways in your communal storytelling game?

The fact of the matter is you are going to have to write rules and without an MC the rules are going to have to be pretty fucking involate because its the only appelat authority the communal storytellilng group have besides excluding the offending player and retconning.

Which pretty much means that if your communal storytelling game gets played it will be played like a computer: anywhere it interacts with written rules it will enforce them as directly as possible.

[ETortoise]

So one or more people need to do some work turning the outline into something satisfying. And that person (or people) is called the GM.

I would assume that the players would collaboratively polish the outline by adding character motivations through the Münchhausen session that takes place after drawing the path.

[hogarth]

So one or more people need to do some work turning the outline into something satisfying. And that person (or people) is called the GM.

I would assume that the players would collaboratively polish the outline by adding character motivations through the Münchhausen session that takes place after drawing the path.

Right, but that's not getting rid of the GM. That's "GM by committee" which makes one person's job easier and everyone else's job harder. Actually, in practice it's probably more like the one person with the strongest ideas dictates 90% of the plot anyways while the rest of the players take a nap after saying "wake me when we're stabbing some orcs".

K's original post is talking about something else, more like "procedurally generated content".

[PoliteNewb]

Right, but that's not getting rid of the GM. That's "GM by committee" which makes one person's job easier and everyone else's job harder. Actually, in practice it's probably more like the one person with the strongest ideas dictates 90% of the plot anyways while the rest of the players take a nap after saying "wake me when we're stabbing some orcs".

This. Freeform collaborative can work well...but I've pretty much only seen it in play-by-post (and with considerable back-and-forth discussion via email, before writing the actual posts). Sitting at a table, most people just aren't good enough at ad-lib and on-the-fly to make that work, to say nothing of the infighting that can arise when you have several sets of hands on the wheel, all trying to steer the car.

Do you remember that old school exercise of writing six sentences, then passing it to the next person in line to continue the story, and so on? When's the last time the end result of one of those was ever a coherent narrative, much less a good one?

[mean_liar]

Right, but that's not getting rid of the GM. That's "GM by committee" which makes one person's job easier and everyone else's job harder. Actually, in practice it's probably more like the one person with the strongest ideas dictates 90% of the plot anyways while the rest of the players take a nap after saying "wake me when we're stabbing some orcs".

If Mr Cavern gets to play rather than GM, and that's what he wants, then the game is more fun (at least for the once-Mr Cavern).

I imagine that there'd need to be a narrative economy, where a player has only a limited quantity of narrative-affecting dictations available, in order to prevent one strong personality railroading things. I don't imagine there'd be anything inherently wrong with allowing Narrative Tokens to be gifted to stronger storytellers.

In the end I don't think this is a really do-able effort, at least past making a more-detailed version of Warhammer Quest:

Who generates the opposition? How many enemies do you face at once? What kind of enemies are they? Who decides?
- a bidding system here would be cool. Each player 'buys' some opposition, raising difficulty and rewards from the encounter. Decided what the enemies actually are would be tricky

What is the metanarrative? Is there one?


I'll re-read Mythic, or at least skim it. I recognize that a non-Mr Cavern game could be cool, but there are just so many things to work out that I'm not sure its worth the effort when so few ideas we do bat around here make it off the starting block.

[TheWorid]

It's an interesting idea, but I only see three major solutions:

1. Randomizers. Helpful, but indicates that you should probably go play a cRPG at that point, because interpreting all of the rolls would be a lot of work.

2. "Pass the stick" between sessions. Not actually a method of removing the MC, just a schedule for who it is.

3. "Pass the stick" in game, in either a sequential or dynamic method. Runs into issues of neutrality in adjudication, and tends towards creating an incoherent sequence of events because of difference of adjudication, even with neutral intentions.

[hogarth]

If Mr Cavern gets to play rather than GM, and that's what he wants, then the game is more fun (at least for the once-Mr Cavern).

It's still not "getting rid" of the GM any more than periodically switching out GMing duties is.

[TheFlatline]

While the doom track/choose your own adventure path is pretty cool, and I could see working *really* well for published adventure/campaigns, I'm not sure how it'd last as a sustainable campaign.

Though, to be fair, I don't think Frank was originally envisioning an ongoing long-term campaign.

I don't think that an anti-MC solution would be entirely out of order for it to make use of a computer. It's not actually running the game, but it's rolling through, and flipping through charts that would take significant time for the players, letting them focus on the game. That way you could avoid shit like the fire giant taking up in the ice tower. You could write personality and morale charts that could build up relatively complex behavior quickly, and it'd be up to the players to act it out.

The problem I see with the "pass the stick" in game solution is that you're essentially pushing towards a LARP. Not that LARPing is a bad thing per se, but it creates it's own issues.

A good gaming group *can* do collaborative storytelling and make it wildly successful. I've seen it in LARPs where the players check in with the storytellers with entire plots that were created and resolved without the staff even knowing that they existed. But as was mentioned elsewhere, most people aren't that creative. So we can't rely on everyone to take turns coming up with something that pushes the story along, because if we do, we'll be on a rollercoaster of quality at best, and a trip through mediocrity junction at worst.

[Zinegata]

... Why don't people just say "DM" or "GM" instead of "Mister Cavern"? *sigh*

Has anyone ever played "Tales of the Arabian Nights". It's a storytelling board game and it might more or less exactly be what is being looked for here (with some considerable tweaking to meet these design goals).

I have. It's more of a boardgame than an RPG though.

I think that's the real problem though. Having no DM and relying entirely on randomly generated stuff is great for episodic/mission-based systems (boardgames), but it falls a little flat if you want to have a consistent epic arc.

One thing I haven't seen often is relying on multiple card/dice results to create a scenario. For instance, in Phantom Leader (a boardgame flight sim) you have a card draw for the target to be bombed, chit draws for the enemies you will face, a card draw for the in-flight random events, etc. Which greatly ups the replay value.

[Grek]

Mister Cavern is from DrD++ and is much more amusing.

[Maj]

... Why don't people just say "DM" or "GM" instead of "Mister Cavern"? *sigh*

Because Mister Cavern is an amusing translation of DM from Czech?

[Zinegata]

Mister Cavern is from DrD++ and is much more amusing.

Because Mister Cavern is an amusing translation of DM from Czech?

But I'm old school and easily confused! ;_;

[quanta]

... Why don't people just say "DM" or "GM" instead of "Mister Cavern"? *sigh*

Because Mister Cavern is an amusing translation of DM from Czech?

And its acronym is MC?

[K]

An idea of what I think could work would look like this:

The party decides that they've had enough downtime and agree to look for work. They roll the Adventure Table for two results and get: The King Asks for a Favor and Kidnapped!. Then they roll for the location and get Mire Woods.

Then the players set off for Mire Woods. During the trip, they use abilities and play various minigames to find the actual location for the adventure. They also roll for Random Encounters and maybe get some things like fights or encounters with Mire Woods Green Cult or something deep in the table like Friendly Alchemist.

When the rolls to find the location are found, we get start the final encounter.Kidnapped! requires an intelligent monster, so we go to the subtable for intelligent monsters and the roll gets us a Serpentfolk Beastrider and go to the table for locations and get Ruined Fort.

Serpentfolk have Average Intelligence as a tag and thus run on a script that says "Attack whoever tosses the most debuffs, otherwise attack the person doing the most damage." He also uses a random one of his abilities each turn.

Serpentfolk Beastriders come with a Alligator King with an intelligence of Animal. His script is thus "Attack whoever is closest, and if there are multiple targets pick the one that does the most damage." He uses a random ability each combat. Beastriders have an ability to change Animal intelligence scripts for a combat Turn.

Now, the downside is that you don't get a MC acting out the various characters. The upside is that you don't have to deal with an MC.