Thursday, May 7, 2020

Simultaneous Plotlines

The traditional background for characters in literary novels will almost always be something banal and mundane.  This is because the novel's story begins when things get interesting; it is presumed that before things got interesting, they weren't.  Thus Pip in Great Expectations does very little before helping an escaped convict, Edmond Dantes is just a good sailor in The Count of Monte Cristo before being found guilty of a crime he didn't commit, Ishmael has never done anything of note before climbing aboard the Pequod in Moby Dick and so on.

Allowing player characters to make backgrounds out of whole cloth tends to encourage the creation of interesting and complicated stories, which we don't want.  The characters should embark upon their first adventures in D&D as empty vessels, waiting to be filled with memories of their earned exploits and deeds; they should not be old hands at this adventuring notion yet, particularly in a fashion where they can simply invent their purported expertise.  The practice downplays the value added by the game and puts pressure on the DM to provide real game events equal to the delirious fantasies of the players' imagination.  This puts the DM's foot in a bucket, right off, compromising the game.

If the players have no background of note, they must focus not on themselves, but on trying to make sense of the world they have been thrust in.  This heightens their attention towards details they are given; as yet, they have no goals.  They must find them.  The DM is thus free to effect a series of opportunities, which the players may freely grab because they have nothing "going" at the time they start play.

These opportunities need not be part of a single story ~ in fact, I would argue they absolutely should not be.  The world is a complex and vast place, with millions of stories going on at any time; the campaign is not a play or a movie intended to amuse an audience in the space of two hours, but a rolling narrative that is expected to last for 20, 50 or 1000 hours.  We have all the time in the world to insert hooks that lead to multiple storylines, which can then converge, or not, as we design.  While being pursued by an absurd number of bandits, the players stumble across an ancient book that explains the disappearance of a nearby island.  While passing through a village towards the island's location, still eluding bandits, a member of the party stumbles across a thief breaking into a house.  One of the residents of the house, a beautiful girl, falls in love with a member of the party.  The next day, now in the process of getting out of town, avoiding the girl, and the thief's brother, who is angry now that the thief has been arrested, the party stumbles across two of the bandits.  They escape the town, thankfully extricating themselves, and stumble across a travelling troupe of actors.  There they stumble across the author of the book about the missing island.  He's a drunk, and to get information of out him, they must help him get sober.  In the process of doing that, the girl in love shows up.  The player gives in, makes love to her, then tries to send her back home.  She goes, unwillingly; but is then kidnapped by the brother of the thief, to force a confrontation with the party.  And so on.  There is no one "story" ~ but rather, a narrative in which one plot line naturally enfolds into another.

The involvement of the characters is therefore catch-as-catch-can.  To follow any one course, they find themselves dragged into multiple petty difficulties, any one of which may offer an unforseen opportunity or bit of knowledge as the DM is able to provide.  There's never any chance for a lull, because while some one thing might be wrapped up (a deal is made with the bandits) there is always something else that is still ongoing (the thief's brother gets away).

A new plot hook can be introduced at any time.  Events can be significant or not, just so long as they remain interesting.  They don't need to be world-shaking.

But we can talk about those, tomorrow.

8 comments:

  1. Great to see you back here, Alexis! This post makes me think that the DM would benefit greatly from project management tools and methods for handling this kind of game. These multiple threads that attach to the PCs as they move through the world potentially take on lives of their own, progressing on timetables not of the players' choosing.

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  2. Indeed. But only 100 hours? I'm hoping to run at least 120-150 hours per year!

    Regarding elaborate backstories:

    For the most part, I'm full on board with the "empty vessel" approach...I don't require players to come to the table with ANYthing (besides a created character). But without prodding, they're coming up with their own stuff: my son (who has zero experience with 5E and pre-rolled "backgrounds") came up with a story of how his fighter was part of the Imperial navy and only became an adventurer after having a falling out with the crew over a proposed mutiny over some stolen pirate treasure. His magic-user character had been an apprentice who's master was arrested (and executed) for practicing illegal magic, and has only returned to the area after wandering a couple years and growing a beard to disguise his appearance. And multiple players have created PCs that were related (brothers, sons, etc.) to earlier characters who had died...in one case, this actually prompted an adventure thread as the player (not my boy) wanted to recover the remains of his father from the dungeon where he'd perished.

    [the PC was successful in this, by the way, and later took a Quest from the local Patriarch in order to raise his father (since he didn't have sufficient funds)]

    These minor backstories...which I haven't discouraged (though not encouraging them either)...haven't proved to be a huge interference. Then again, they haven't been terribly elaborate as far as "past adventures" go...mostly, they've just been justifications for the characters' adventuring career. Though I suppose that begs the question: does an adventurer really need a justification to adventure (seeing as how that's the thing that defines "adventurer," i.e. going on adventures)?

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  3. JB,

    A character doesn't need a justification, as proved by the examples I've given. I could give so many more.

    Here I want to stress, though I will be ignored in this advice. DISCOURAGE this sort of backstory nonsense. It will only bloom into a bad habit, where the explanations become more and more ornate and bothersome, until they take over campaigns and ruin them. The creation of a backstory creates a tiny, tiny frame. Steadily the player begins to hammer every part of the game so that it fits that frame, shrinking the potentiality of the game's narrative into the self-serving, crippled imagination of the player. When you have four or five players with this disability, acting at once, you split the party psychologically and ensure your game will never get off the ground.

    You'll ignore me, however, because your son is having so much FUN with this. How can anything FUN be wrong?

    This is not fantasy self-serving fun time, this is a GAME; if your son is encouraged not to play the game, but to indulge his ego, he won't learn how to accept a character without a back-history, or how to create one in tandem with other players. It will be The Boy's time, not the Party's time.

    But you'll ignore me.

    I'm going into the post and changing "100" to "1000."

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  4. And yes, that last comment was passive aggressive. I'd be happy to come there and be aggressive-aggressive, bitch slapping you until you develop some sense, but then I'd have to stay two meters away, wouldn't I?

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  5. "Breaks my heart to see a boy that young going bad..."

    Of course, I won't ignore you. Sheesh!

    I am (I suppose) fortunate that TO DATE it hasn't blossomed into a problem. The sailor backstory? Never mentioned after play started. The guy with the executed master? Died himself. His younger brother (the new PC) had no such story other than being a brother and appearing in the town looking for his sibling.

    For the kids, this impetus to story-build MAY be a symptom of our current play style: the kids want to play but the play isn't happening except at designated times, and free time has been spent rolling up characters and daydreaming their stories. It is play outside of play caused by the lack of play while wanting to play.

    Still, while I'm sympathetic to their needs, I do want to stomp out bad habits. Perhaps I should encourage world-building instead?

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  6. I apologize, JB. It's just that it seems no one listens to me when I give this sort of advice, particularly where it comes to their children.

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    Replies
    1. Hey, man...I’m not Reddit.
      ; )

      We all have a tendency to be overprotective of our kids...to a fault. It’s something I constantly struggle with, as both my wife and I are very coddling. But grooming independence is part of parental responsibility and sternness is part of that... it can’t all be fun and games!

      For those of us that take D&D seriously, serious advice is looked for and needed. I appreciate what you have to say.
      : )

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  7. I'll give you a glimpse of the future, Old Man. Moments ago, I was counselling my 31 year old daughter, because she has been forced to put down her cat, Kichi, who is 13 years old and was gotten as a kitten when my daughter moved out of the house. She may be an adult, she may be a powerhouse, but there are things where we are still asked as parents to give support, being so much older and all.

    It is a privilege to be there for your children, in the hardest times especially. And in case we're not there when those times come, we try to give them all the backbone we can. They will need it. Just as we did.

    ReplyDelete

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