cRPGs: The best solo play solution?

It's been a long time. I spent the summer finishing up my dissertation, and then I started another degree in the fall. The combination of teaching, taking classes, and trying to do research consumed me. I haven't had any time for gaming in months--and that sucks.

The last project I worked on during the summer was a playing-card-based dungeon-generation system. The idea is to quickly generate rooms, encounters, features, etc. I've been browsing a few other card-based approaches, and even found a Sudoku-based approach.

My idea here is that a gaming/generation system that allows for solo-play would also allow for GM-less group-play. But the trick here is balancing random generation with pre-stacking the deck and interpreting the results. Too much randomness sucks, producing a stale or discordant dungeon experience without a decent story behind it. Too much interpretation requires the player(s) to be rather schizophrenic, switching between omniscient DM and world-ignorant character.

So what's the best blend here for solo play?

Random generation: Dungeon-generation tables have been around for decades, and now numerous online apps will do all the tedious rolls and lookups for you. However, I find the results to be exactly that: random, discordant dungeons that you have to grind through. They usually lack structure--both narratively in terms of the quest/story and logically in terms of architecture and monster assortment. Simply replacing a dungeon generation die-roll table with cards won't improve this random flavor at all. There needs to be some way to tweak or interpret the cards--either beforehand or during the game--to produce a coherent emergent structure.

Solitaire systems: This is includes Choose Your Own Adventure books, gamebooks, solitaire adventure scenarios, etc. These have a pre-authored plot, and so the quality is better than random generation. But your options tend to be rather limited here to a couple options at a time. More than this and you need to start DMing in order to keep the story moving along its designed path. But DMing requires knowledge of the story, which brings us back to the schizophrenic scenario of solo DM/player.

Balance: So, again, how to balance author-provided quality with user choices and the openness of random generation?

For a little more money, there's a lot of board-game-like dungeon games out there which shoot for this. They provide a quest structure and then board-game rules for playing out the encounters along the way. Indeed, these were the original inspiration for my home-brewed zilch/card-generation system.

But there's another genre out there that does this even better: computer games! Aren't these the perfect solo RPG experience? Rich immersive multimedia experience, randomly generated content for maximum replay value, all with an authored storyline laid over it. Why not just play cRPGs then?

I've already started this exploration. I'm looking at NetHack, Diablo, DiabloII, and NWN. I already know that there's something different about a solitaire table-top RPG vs a cRPG experience, but I'd like to try to nail down just what that is.

I'll let you know what I find out...

DRYH: Car Ride Session [backlog]

In July 2010, three of us played a little Don't Rest Your Head on a long car ride. Mechanically, this worked very well, as there's not much overhead. I used a cup to hold and roll the mini-dice I created previously. I GMed from the back seat. I didn't have a preset story and just planned to improvise.

My two players created some very interesting characters.

Brett: John Hannigan
Surface: Homeless war vet: scraggly, scars, limpy, quiet. 15 years since the war. Has a shopping cart. Carries a book from/by sister Laura (about 28 years old) which he also uses as a sort of journal. It has old letters stuck in among the pages.
Beneath: Memory is slipping away. Feels vague guilt over the death of his brother Tom (fled?). Laura's letters stopped coming recently.
Insomnia: Nightmares about Tom's face. Sees bright/flashing lights while awake. Recently saw a "nice lady" too.
Path/Goal: Find Laura and explain (to her?) about Tom.
Just Happened: A bright light while crossing the street, now shopping cart is gone. Only book remains.
Exhaustion talent: Heightened Senses
Madness talent: Draw something in his book and it becomes real
Respones: 1 fight, 2 flight.

Becky: Eli Fox
Surface: Upper-middle class white architect. Attractive in his business suit. Early 40s. Drives into city for the week. Works long hours. Married for 8 years. (Wife?) married young.
Beneath: Distrusts wife. Has been drinking a lot and has a coke habit. Wants to kill wife and lover. Bought a gun recently.
Insomnia: Walked in on wife and another man (a stranger).
Path/Goal: Revenge and closure on infidelity
Just happened: Hit someone with his car, and ran, taking his gun with him.
Exhaustion talent: Persuasive/smooth-talking
Madness talent: Endurance/resistance/strength
Responses: 2 fight, 1 flight

I was impressed by these characters, but I found it hard to bring them together. They started separately, after Eli crashed through John's shopping cart. John followed a wandering PaperBoy into an old gas-lit subway entrance. Eli got picked up one of Tock's clockwork patrolmen.

Improvising as I went, I had a very hard time bringing these two characters back together. Even after a long roadside break and some pondering, the story never really picked up again. I had some ideas that Eli would get involved with the Ladies-in-Hating--probably through one that looked like his wife--and possibly dealing with Mother When. Mother When would also work for John's story of loss--possibly reached through lost Mad City children and the Finishing School. I also had some interesting custom nightmare thoughts for John: a War Monger and a number of Leaf Tenants (play on the word Lieutenants, in light of the British pronunciation, "leaving", and tenements.) that burn in horrible conflagrations. This would somehow tie into John's war experience.

But these ideas never really picked up steam. I eventually got Eli and John together using a previously conceived nightmare/local of my own design: Benjamin "Button" Bridges, who runs a small warehouse of buttons, each imbued with a different memory or dream experience. As I recall [it's been over a year now], Tock's men came knocking on the warehouse door and John and Eli fled. I think things ended there, because I hadn't yet managed to give them a solid hook to tie them together and drive them into a story.

The main reason I'm blogging all of this now is as a reminder to myself of the agony of improvised GMing. I still think I had some rich characters, willing players, and some decent general ideas here. But I just couldn't pull it all together in time on the fly. Any GM-improvising system/tool should help with this sort of problem: not just generating ideas, but pulling them together too.

Another lesson is a variation on that old chestnut: "Never split the party." In this case, I think starting with the party together and firm goal would have helped a lot. Bouncing narration back and forth between two storylines sucks.

Notion: Generating RPG Story Graphs

Please forgive me for the long way 'round. I tend to explore the problem a bit before proposing a solution. And, since I haven't touched my IN research in about 3 months now, I've been using the exploration of the past three posts as a bit of review and rejuvenation. But it's time to finally tackle the problem at hand: how, as human GMs, can we quickly generate a story graph to guide our game?

First, start with the gist. That is, what is the main conflict or central idea of the story? Keep this ever in mind, as it will tie everything else together. If some encounter doesn't further the gist, reconsider including it.

That said, there may be separate story threads that will eventually tie back into the gist. Also, certain character-building scenes might lay groundwork that will later be important to the gist. Often, the story might start with a lead-in thread--something that gets the PCs involved in the gist. Try to get them there quickly and into the main story.

The gist corresponds to an adventure. If you're running a longer campaign, you might start foreshadowing later adventure gists, and so one adventure serves as lead-in to another. But, like an episode in a TV series, each adventure should have its own gist and core structure.

Be aware of PC motivations. Before you even start, know why the PCs would be willing to involve themselves in the gist. You may have a lead-in with clear motivations, but will they then switch their interest over to the gist? This is less of a concern if the gist is forced upon the PCs--ie, the forces of darkness are coming after the PCs themselves for some reason, such that they can't run or hide (for long).

Next, work backwards. The gist should suggest some obvious conclusion that you'd like to strive for. Be aware this could change though, so perhaps think of a couple alternatives. For example, your gist might be an massive alien invasion. As GM, your intended conclusion is a dark one: the PCs manage only to rescue a few key people and flee the planet. But other places you could go is the PCs actually thwarting the invasion somehow, or perhaps even aiding the aliens. In short, you want to a desirable conclusion to shoot for, but also a couple fallback destinations if you want to give PCs enough freedom that you might miss your mark.

Now that you have a conclusion, what needs to happen immediately before that? Does the conclusion generally suggest some journey, needed information, or essential item? Try to work back one step at a time, but be aware that there may be a few threads that you can interweave as is convenient. For instance, in order to flee the planet ahead of the alien invasion, the PCs will need to know about the invasion, need to get the refugees together, and will need to get a ship. That's three threads. Start fleshing those out. How will they get the information? How will they learn that stopping the invasion would be impossible? What will their motivation be to gather refugees?

Essentially, you're working backwards filling in the preconditions (including justification and motivation) for each node. (Perez's MEXICA story gen system works this way.)

Work forwards. But, alternately, you want to work forwards as well. Your players have given you a starting point: their PCs, backstory, and motivations. From your gist and conclusion, you have a goal.

From here, you use the improv technique of tilting. In improv, you try to establish a scene or context and then tilt it by changing or breaking some expectation. This constant introduction of problems, even to some boring task, proves much more engaging than simply trying to do something interesting. For instance, brain surgery on an elephant might be interesting at first... but not if it goes smoothly. Washing dishes would be more exciting if the drain stopper suddenly stops working... now we have something to solve.

In this spirit, keep introducing some problem or obstruction between the PCs and their goal. Let them solve each one, always moving closer to the goal... but only to find another problem.

Work where you are. Whether working forwards or backwards, you still need to flesh out the details of the current encounter. In short, you need material. Much of the time, the story needs of the encounter will suggest things.

But if not, start with reincorporation (another improv trick). That is, how could you work some previous character or item or effect of a past event into the current action? This means you're building on the previous story, weaving things together, so it's all not just a string of unconnected events. (This approach of establishing the narrative necessity of earlier story events is actually the core mechanic of my current IN system, Marlinspike.) Theoretically, if you do this too much, you end up with a string of bizarre coincidences as old characters keep coming back in new roles. But if it worked so well for Charles Dickens and Edgar Rice Burroughs, why not for you?

If reincorporation isn't suggesting anything though, then it's handy to have a list of material on hand--one or two word NPC sketches, scene forms, etc. See if you can't work these in somehow to fill the needs of your current story--either throwing a temporary wrench in the PCs' current plans or else justifying/providing for later action you have planned.


So how does all this produce a quick game? First, establish a gist. (Again, Instant Game can do this for you.) This will give you the general setting and likely (or at least possible) conclusion. Let the PCs start creating characters in accordance with this. Don't be afraid of a little explicit player involvement--explain the gist and even discuss some possible conclusions with the players. This lets them create characters that will be motivated by the gist, and can give you more ideas.

Next, while the PCs are building their characters, generate some material appropriate to the setting--a handful of NPC hooks, and maybe a list of the kinds of scenes you'd like to see. Your story's Tone/genre can suggest a lot here. This material will serve as resource if you get stuck.

Now put the (likely) conclusion on the right side of a sheet of paper. Start working backwards, establishing the threads it'll take to get there. Then, within these threads, work forwards a little, thinking of ways to tilt or obstruct PCs progress. Once you have a rough idea of the major events in the story--the stuff that will generally need to be completed to get to the end--go to the far left side of your paper and work on the first couple encounters that will take the PCs from their starting conditions and tie them into the gist. Since you know where you're going now, you can start foreshadowing things.

Once you have the first couple encounters fleshed out, and a general outline for the rest, you're ready to start playing! You can work forward as you go, trying to reincorporate things the PCs did while tilting to produce problems for the PCs to solve. But don't bog down the action too much--keep things moving along your outline and remember the gist. If you're stuck, glance at your material list for things you haven't already worked in for ideas.


Now that I have a recipe for action, I'll have to try it next time I play and see if all this actually works in practice! It also suggests possibilities for collaborative GMing/GM-less gaming which bears thinking about...

Notion: Material and Form of RPG Story Graphs

So I've examined story graph structure in general. But what exactly contributes to this structure? It seems there's both the form/structure and the material/content.

The material is basically the world--characters and setting--and the game rules (verbs) for interaction. This is what makes up the substance of encounters. A campaign setting--whether adopted or constructed--provides much of the world: geography, history, culture, types of creatures and characters, major NPCs, etc. Even an Instant Game provides the basics for this with its Instant Setting rolls.

PCs also provide a lot of material if the GM is willing to incorporate it. PCs tend to have or suggest various dependent or patron NPCS or other backstory hooks that could be built upon.

If more material is needed, random tables work great for this. Just roll up your next NPC encounter, the next roaming monster, or the features of the next dungeon room. These random tables are usually campaign (or at least genre) specific, though there are a few table that give some general NPC trait or feature handy for quick caricature.

What random tables do not provide is the purpose or role the material will play in your story. Is this random, non-combative NPC meant to be a hindrance, a clue, or foreshadowing? You need to provide this structure.

However, sometimes structure will prompt material directly--if you need to hinder the PCs a bit at this point in the story, a certain apropos monster may spring to mind.


So these are some sources of raw material, but they must all serve the story structure in order to be relevant.

The core of a story is its central idea, also called the conflict, the opposition, or gist. A random table (or Instant Game) might provide this core story idea, but it then needs to be fleshed out.

One way to do this is follow some sort of story form. At its most basic, this is simply the rising-action/climax/falling-action of Freytag's triangle (the modern version, anyway). But there are more specific forms for each genre--such as Propp's Russian folktale morphology, Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, etc. Other forms have forms less codified but still recognizable--the sci-fi horror film, the romantic comedy, etc. Genre rules usually provide material as well, as with film noir's hardboiled detective, femme fatale, and dark gritty streets. Story forms are good for guidance, but can become a straitjacket if the PCs don't want to follow the traditional roles--such as being the moral heroes. (It took me a few months of research to realize this--see "The Limitations of a Propp-based Approach to Interactive Narrative" over at Argax for more.)

It's also possible to generate random scene forms (aka, encounter types) and try to append them to each other. For instance, a rescue, a car chase, or a dungeon battle. But what is the material of these scenes--who is rescuing whom? And what is their role in the story--is the rescue a climax of the story, or is it performed just to get another clue towards the final goal, or is it even the inciting incident for everything that follows?

We now have a good idea of everything that goes into one of these story graphs and were we might get some of it. So how do we put it all together?

Notion: Story Graphs in Theory and Practice

So, after a little contemplation it seems that a GM guides the story with a mental model of possibilities and potential stories. This model forms a directed graph of story nodes (that is, encounters). The game then traverses this graph of possibilities to produce a linear actual story. This linear story should then have certain characteristics of all good stories--coherence, rising and falling action (conflict), interesting characters and events, etc.

Here's a depiction of this: a graph of dark blue nodes with all possible connections (dashed arrows) and the path actually taken by the story (dark arrows). Some nodes have time requirements--they will happen at (or cannot happen until) a certain time. Similarly, some nodes might be dynamic, having contents that vary depending on which nodes were visited previously.


I must immediately note that most real GMs do not work this way! This is more of a brute force IN/computer game approach, where everything must be completely written before play even starts. As GMs, we don't plot out all possibilities in detail. For one, it's incredibly hard to think of all possible player actions that would necessitate a response. Secondly, it's a waste of time to do all this plotting for events that are unlikely to ever make it into the game.

Instead, I believe GMs work more like this:


That is, we have the main story line mostly planned, though there may still be a couple encounters (shown as outlined light blue nodes) we don't know all the details for yet. We may have a contingency plan for some of the obvious player choices that would take them off the main story line, and hopefully have a vague plan for how to work this back into the story. We might also have some world/content ideas with no idea of how these will affect the story (non-outlined light blue nodes). But these will be handy if we suddenly need to generate more of the graph to support a story that veers off of our planned outline.

In contrast, here's an approximation of the mental "graph" I was working from during our last Huffy session:


There's a clear starting point and a relatively good idea of where to end. There's a few ideas of the kind of action we might see--such as a rooftop chase or a rescue--but without any content--such as the characters or setting necessary for this action. These are shown as empty white nodes. And then there's a few other vague ideas that have no obvious story role yet, with a couple notions about how some of them might go together.

So, even if we do not need to generate a complete graph of all possible stories, how to we quickly generate a partial graph containing at least one complete possible storyline?

Notion: Story Management in RPGs and IN

In thinking about how we might make RPG story management more dynamic, it would probably help to review how it's done normally. The following view essentially comes from D&D's DMG, though it's been shaped a lot by my thinking on the problem of interactive narrative (IN).

An adventure is composed of encounters. Encounters are some short segment of interaction, usually phrased in if/then terms. For example, if the PCs enter this room, this monster will attack them. Or, if the PCs agree to lay down their weapons, the king will listen to their request; otherwise his guards will attack.

Encounters are really simply the story/world/GM response to player actions. So what determines possible player actions? The game rules and GM's description of the world provides affordances for PC action. That is, players know what sorts of actions they can perform based on their skills and powers, including the likelihood of success. The game rules and story context so far can provide constraints and guidance too--some actions are not possible in the world, would be out of character, or would be irrelevant/nonsensical to the story.

In terms of my IN poetics, the events internal to an encounter are world-level events. I call this set of possible world-level actions verbs. As already mentioned, the game rules provides the set of possible verbs. An encounter needs a setting (location, props, etc.) and characters (PCS and NPCs). Characters should include motivations to be believable.

So this brings us to what, in IN, I consider to be the story-level interpretation of world-level events. In other words, how do encounters combine to form adventures? That is, if we summarize each encounter as a sentence, how does that sentence further or change the story structure?


As a related parallel, I would say the main challenges of IN include:
1) defining the set of possible verbs widely enough that the player doesn't feel constrained yet so that the world can appropriately handle/respond to all (or at least all logical) combinations of verb and world object,
2) providing NPC motivations that lead to believable responses to both PC and other NPC actions, and
3) modeling the story so that the system can direct the story to some conclusion.

I believe point 1 can be overcome largely through brute force--coding up a complex rule-based interaction system. Similarly with point 2, though 2 is harder since NPCs have more complex internal states than objects and must also present their reactions in an audience-interpretable manner. But I find point 3 to be the most challenging. In particular, how can a computer understand what world-level actions mean at a story level, both when interpreting user actions and then when directing NPC/world responses? And, secondly, what model of story is the IN system trying to follow as it directs the action?

In terms of RPGs, human ability fills in a lot of these gaps for us. As mentioned, the rules tell us how to adjudicate the verbs (1). But where they do not, the GM can devise a substitute or house rule. NPC motivation (2) is provided by the GM as necessitated by the story. Story structure (3) is what I'm interested in here. I believe that, for a human GM given a story structure (providing constraints/direction) and a rule system and game world (providing affordances/material), the encounter details largely take care of themselves.


Okay, so in the interest of both IN and RPGs, how do RPG GMs model a story structure? D&Ds DMG suggest two basic approaches: site-based and event-based.

In a site-based adventure, encounters are laid out as a map. Site-based adventures are easy to run since both constraints and affordances are easy to communicate: certain spells aside, players have to move through the passageways, encountering each room in some sort of basic order. Locked doors and other obstacles can further direct them. It's easy to foreshadow what's coming up around the next bend. Choices are clear--do we go left or right at this branch? What do we do with the troll currently picking his nose in the next room?

The DMG points out that site-based adventures can be static or dynamic. Static dungeons don't change--there's a troll picking his nose in this room regardless of what the PCs did in the previous room. Dynamic dungeons change or respond to earlier PC actions. Perhaps the nose-picking troll is summoned from his room to sounds of battle, or perhaps he's warned by a fleeing guard that the PCs let get away. Or maybe the troll simply has a random chance of being asleep rather than nose-picking.

For event-based adventures, the DMG suggests starting with a goal for the PCS, and then consider their opposition. It's important to consider PC motivation and how to entice them into the adventure. Then the GM flowcharts the adventure--what events happen in what order. Again, encounters have an if/then structure, so remember preconditions and stress the consequences of PC actions.

As with site-based adventures, event-based adventures can be static--these things happen if the PCs do this. But they can also be dynamic (called timelines): this will happen at this time, regardless of what the PCs have done so far. Usually you end up with some combo--as in the advancing horde reaches the city on day 3 of the adventure, but the results of that battle will depend on what the PCs did before it got there.


What we can see here is that RPG story planning essentially means creating a directed graph. Each encounter is node. The story moves from one node/encounter to another based on what the PCs decide to do.

In a site-based adventure, the graph will have essentially the same shape as the dungeon--rooms connected by corridors. In event-based, we might end up with more various shapes, such as a linear graph when the GM has a single storyline that the PCs have no ability to change. (These can still be interesting games, as the players have to determine how to advance the story and overcome the obstacles before them. See these rough draft pages of my dissertation for more on potential story forms.)

Of course, there are a couple more concerns than simply the shape of the story graph. The DMG recommends that an adventure should offer a variety of different kinds of encounters (combat, puzzles, social intrigue, etc.) and should make good use of PC abilities. The encounters should be individually exciting, but, together, form the rising and falling action of a story. There should be at least some encounters that offer the players a chance to significantly affect the direction of the story.


So, in summary, we can say that an RPG GM works from a directed graph (often of the branching tree variety) representing all potential stories. Each node is an encounter, and the mechanics of those encounters are determined by the rules system and story world (setting, NPC motivations, etc.). But the actual story produced is a linear traversal of that graph as determined by player choices at each node. This completed linear story should then have appropriate story structure--coherence, rising and falling tension, etc.

So how can we speed the production of this guiding story graph?

Huffy: Testing notes

Huffy is a hiking version of Fluff(y), and served about as well. We only had a couple rolls for the combat scene.

The supplies needed include: a pen and scrap of paper (which got a little damp in a light shower), 3dF (small) in a transparent (medicine) bottle, 5 blue chips (plot points), 2 white chips (to mark light injury), and 3 red chips (for heavy injury). All this fits in a few pockets without much trouble.

Our hiking path didn't include too many road crossings, which is good. Your Huffy player party should include someone who can walk and chew gum at the same time to keep an eye on everyone, especially at intersections. S. does this well.

I found that combining hiking and gaming means the gaming goes a little slow as there are pauses to enjoy the scenery, and some of scenery is a bit of a blur because I was deep in thought on gaming. But I tend to think of gaming whenever I hike, so it wasn't that much different! By combining the two activities, you can focus more on one whenever the other hits a bit of a boring lull.


I felt that the biggest problem we encountered--which is larger than just some broken Huffy mechanic--is how to steer the story when we're making it up as we go. I'm still used to D&D, where time seems to divide roughly into 50% combat/strategy, 30% adventuring/dungeon crawling/narration, and 20% town/roleplay/interaction. (Well, that's recently in my Omri campaign. In Dragon Wars, it's probably closer to 65/20/15. In another campaign I play in, it's closer to 80/15/5.) In this context, the main challenge is to come up with dramatic battles and tricky dungeons puzzles (though, yes, it should all still be in the pursuit of some interesting goal).

But lately I'm trying to shift this time division to about 10% combat, 50% narration, and 40% interaction. But this means there needs to be a lot more story ready to go! Yet at the same time, I'm trying to play short, lite-weight campaigns that don't require more than 20 minutes advanced planning.

So what are some possible mechanisms to use here? I still think Instant Game does a great job of quickly giving you a campaign setting--the world and the basic conflict of the story. What I was missing yesterday was more of the story details that then flesh out that conflict.

I did include S. in more explicit story planning at the outset. This means we spent as much time planning as actually playing though. But S. seemed to enjoy being able to shape the world and the story as well as just her character. But once we were into the playing, I felt that the pressure is really on the GM to come up with the next encounter.

Another idea I had was to make a list of story elements before we started that we could then try to work in. Again, S. contributed to the list, which included things such as: feral hordes, a high speed chase, a fight on a narrow archway, a knife fight, spitting in someone's face in defiance, slippin' someone a micky, a foretelling. This did help a bit. I'm already foreshadowing the feral hordes. The knife fight didn't quite come through, but it did suggest the fight between the 3 men. We did a bit of foretelling too (though it's hard to prophesy when you have no clear plan beyond the next encounter!)

All of three of these--Instant Game's setting and opposition, player contribution to the world, and a list of potential story elements--helped. But all three of them require pre-game prep. Is there any generative thing we could do to foster play-time plot generation? And I'm not talking just rolling up another combat encounter here--though the idea of a random table could be used (which the story element list already hints at). In the spirit of Zludge, it'd be nice to stay away from reference tables during play-time.

Hmm... something to ponder more. It's also nice to see my RPG interests coming back around to my IN work!

Notion: Explicit Player Meta-plotting

Our recent DHYH session and some experiments with AnimalBall.com's Instant Game have prompted me to think a bit about direct player involvement in story planning.

DRYH explicitly involves the player by letting them lay out the first scene that starts the action, as well as specify a story goal for their character to achieve by the end of the story. During our session, I would occasionally ask S. directly for more info about her character's backstory--such as naming three anthropomorphic toys her character had as a child. Some DRYH GMs have gone so far as to allow players that win their contest to assume narrative control for the following scene.

I've also lately been exploring the mechanic of plot points, where the player can introduce some coincidence, minor story control, or introduce some world detail.

I guess perhaps its my IN research that prompts me to shy away from all this as something that will break player "immersion" or "narrative presence" in the story. Yet, in my own solitaire gaming, I've felt the difference between plotting and playing. Since I'm both player and GM, I know what's going to happen ahead of time in my storylines. The only variation from my plan is going to come from the dice--which can introduce interesting and significant variation at the micro-level, which may in turn prompt new ideas. And yet it's still a rewarding experience to play through and make all those general plot lines concrete. I guess it's like reading a plot summary or reading the original work--the details make a big difference!

So why shouldn't this experience also be rewarding for my players? Yes, there's a breaking of immersion, but at the gain of greater player control and involvement in the story.

So here's a few ideas on how I could try to add more player control:

"Yes, and..." World Building. One thing I noticed with a recent Instant Game exercise was that sometimes the GM and player might want to take the world-building in different directions. One possibility is to play the "Yes, and..." improv game here. The two take turns adding details to the world, but can't retract or change what the other has already added. (No "Yes, but..."s.) I suppose there could be some sort of "plot point" buy-out mechanism if the GM didn't want to go the full way here. Perhaps the GM has 3 chips which let him veto that many player-generated elements. Or perhaps both player and GM each get 3 chips and can veto each other. This would be better, since vetoing in general tends to kill the spirit; at least this way the two are on even footing.


As you can see, I'm hesitant to give equal power to the player. I noticed during the first part of our DRYH session that giving control to the player doesn't mean you're going to get a story out of it. (I was impressed with S.'s contributions and creativity though!) Someone--or at least some mechanism--needs to be in place to guide the story in some direction, or else things just stall. Unless there's something else at work, that guiding "mechanism" is usually the GM. And giving the player story control actually means more work (or at least flexibility) is required of the GM.

Co-GMing. It would be interesting to take turns narrating with the player, so each alternates the GM role. I know other systems (Dogs in the Vineyard, perhaps?) have a stakes-based conflict resolution system. Perhaps something like that could be used here to see who takes control of the story. Of course, some players will be passive and not want story control, while others will always want it. And this still doesn't resolve the problem of "who's driving this thing, anyway?"

Explicit Pre-game Plotting. But again I'm falling into the trap of thinking that all of this plotting needs to be subtle and in character, or emergent from the rules. I started this post with the realization that explicit plotting is not a bad thing! So perhaps following up on DRYH's notion of an explicitly-started story goal is a good one. All of this could be negotiated before the game starts--even including any major plot points that should be hit along the way. If everyone's agreed on the direction and the major waypoints at the outset, then it doesn't matter who's currently driving. Instant Game is close to this, as their instant story tables gives the main opposition and other actions that need to be worked in.

Evil Hat's Spirit of the Century/FATE 3.0's aspects are another possibility here. Aspects can be tied to the campaign/story itself, so anyone can invoke them. This serves to at least direct the story towards certain themes, if not in a particular plot direction.

Hmm... something to continue to ponder.