The Carrion of Story

The image shown is from p. 9 of 4th Edition's DMG, How to be a DM.

Rating: false

This is not the last time we will talk about story in this series.  Story will come up again on pp. 10, 11, 13, 19, 23, 28, 29 and 31.  So we will have lots of opportunity to talk about it.

The word "story" appears a staggering 164 times in the 4th edition DMG.  For comparison, "story" appears 30 times in 3rd edition DMG; it appears just 5 times in the 5th edition DMG—and only once in the AD&D version.  In this last, the word appears in the forward by editor Mike Carr, as it happens, and not at all in the description of the game.  Carr notes of the game that it is "an opportunity to watch a story unfold ..."  That is, that the story is a byproduct of the game, not a constituent element in how to construct or run it.  One gets the feeling that 4th edition really pushed this concept hard, and that despite the failure of the system overall, this one idea took hold with players who began their relationship with the game between 2007 and 2014.  Though 5th edition initially dropped the concept overall, throwing out a very few phrases about it, the concept has stuck; possibly because it appears in 5th edition splatbooks.  I don't know about that, I did not bother searching each of these to see how often the concept comes up.

Because it is still relevant (a blogger writes that "D&D is about story" roughly the same number of times each day that a game module is thrown out because a game store going out of business can't sell it), we need to look at the "player type."  I say the text is false because it is disingenuous; a "chronicle" is a factually written account of historical events, not a fictional account of a character's background or even of the party's actions over time.  The player does not believe the "narrative" should win over the rules, the player believes that the outcome specific to the player's expectations should: that is, a thing that hasn't happened yet, because until the DM describes the outcome, it is in the future and not the past, and therefore NOT a narrative.  Because of this perspective of this type of player, "compromise" is a euphemism for, "I get my way and you compromise," as most of us have discovered when trying to run this type of player.  Sadly, many DMs do compromise as demanded, ensuring the outcome satisfies the storyteller player.  More's the pity.

Yes, I'm quite aware that "storyteller" is completely erroneous in this context.  "Story-conscious" or "story-aware" would be more accurate.  The player isn't inventing a story by explaining what they want or expect to see; to some degree, the player sometimes "tells" a backstory—but more often this is less of a story and more as a checklist for motivations justifying the player's behaviour in game.  It also tends to be the last story actually told by the player.

Occasionally, a player will relate a story to an NPC, explaining how and why the party got to this place and time, such as, "We were told by Arkady the Wise to travel to the Village of Wind; there we found a scroll that directed us to make our way to your doorstep ..."  That sort of thing.  Technically, this is a story, but not a very good one.

When a player explains what they're going to do during the game, i.e., "I jump on the giant's back and thump him," this is not storytelling.  Fifty things like this being said by multiple party members, and the DM answering, "The giant throws you off" or "The giant dies", do not together make a "story."  We often turn a blind eye to this fact when we pretend that an evening of such events is "collaborative storytelling."  It is not.  Because it is not written down, it is not even a transcript (though that is what it would be, if it were written down).  "Transcript" sounds dull.  The party got together for some collaborative transcript-making.  Hm.  Lacks flair.  Better call it a "story."

I've hardly ever met a story-conscious player who actually "worked hard" to make sure the character fit the backstory.  I've learned that backstories are written with tremendous lack of form, so that they can be used to defend any behaviour ... much like the Holy Bible or the U.S. Constitution.  So, yes, I'll concede that players do make their characters fit the backstory; I only dispute that any of them work hard at it.

I'm a writer, a reader, a DM and I've been at this a long time, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how a DM introduces a little, a lot or a medium amount of "plot" in every adventure.  The word "plot" describes the main events of a play, novel, movie or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence.

It is an abstract term describing everything that happens.  Technically, plot can't be "introduced" into anything, any more than a driver crossing a river can introduce a little "span" into a bridge, or a chessplayer can introduce a little "board" into the game.  The word's presence in the sentence makes no sense whatsoever; but more frustrating, I'm unsure what word of the right definition was meant to be employed here.  I guess it sounded good to the writer, the copyreader, the editor and the publisher ... though I suspect, as with other sentences in this book, only 1 in 4 of these responsible people read these particular words (and probably not the writer).

On the whole, I see little difference between the warning given here and that given to the actor.  But it is good advice.  Yes, make sure the player does not act like a self-centered narcissistic git.  *Applause*

So much for criticism.  Let's address the problem and come to terms with it.  As a DM, you've read the books telling you that D&D is about story.  Your memory of ancient tomes, er, early game modules, suggests to you that Saltmash, the Borderland Creep, Hammlet and the Mountain of the White Plum had what you feel were good, solid stories.  You've played those stories out a bunch of times and they seem to hold up, so you imagine to yourself that maybe, if you work hard, you can dredge up something like that yourself.  Sometimes, the result feels good enough that you lay it out prettily and sell it online as a lark or even as the beginning of a business model.  Mostly, however, you want to wow your players and get them to really like your adventure.

Thing is, none of those modules—including all the new ones—can actually be called "a story."  Each of them incorporated a story, at least as you saw it.  Page 6 of Keep on the Borderlands gives a background for the DM to use, which reads,

"The Realm of mankind is narrow and constricted.  Always the forces of Chaos press upon its borders, seeking to enslave its populace, rape its riches, and steal its treasures.  If it were not for a stout few, many in the Realm would indeed fall prey to the evil that surrounds them.  Yet, there are always certain exceptional and brave members of humanity, as well as similar individuals among its allies—dwarves, elves and halflings—who rise above the common level and join battle to stave off the darkness which woudl otherwise overwhelm the land ..."

 

Okay, those words are stirring, if somewhat purple.  They elicit a threat, make a promise of reward and hit the high points of the world of high adventure.  Fair enough.  What they do not do is tell a "story."  There's no story here.  What we have here is description ... precisely the thing the DM is supposed to give to players, so they can answer back, telling the DM what they do.  A story is the relating of specific events.  In the above, there are no events being described, only generalised ongoing conditions.

Take note, even wikipedia fails to include a heading for the word "story."  Look for story and you'll find yourself on a page describing narrative, which is "an account of a series of related events or experiences."  If you look up "story" in the dictionary, you'll find it defined as "an account of imaginary or real people and events told."  If you look up the etymology, you'll learn that the word is a "connected account or narration of something happening," c. 1200; a "recital of true events" (14th c.); a euphemism for "a lie" (1690s) and a "newspaper article" (1892).  None of these descriptions align in any way whatsoever with how D&D or any other role-playing game is played, except when applied by bad writers who clearly did not understand the definition of the word.

Trouble is, you my readers do know the word's definition, as it was passed along very clearly from your infancy in the form of storybooks and readers that were read aloud to you before you learned to read yourself.  When you find yourself trying to reconcile what you do when you create an adventure with what you inherently understand is storytelling, the disconnect gets all muddled up.  In the end, you wind up calling your design "storytelling," when its definitely a similar description as that given in the module example above.  The confusion is a hurdle; if you understood clearly that it is your intention to write a description, you'll find the problem of having to invent a "good story" just goes away.  It is easier to write a description; it is easier to expand on a description.  And it is much easier to RUN a description.

Occasionally, you as a person will tell a "story" or two.  Here's my story of the time I didn't get drunk on "yards of ale," or how I learned my daughter was going to be born in an hour and I was all the way across town.  I could tell you about how I once met the singer Prince, or how my parents were introduced to each other.  These are all "narratives" I can tell; and as the reader will have noticed, occasionally I will tell these narratives to buttress a point I'm making.  But the narrative is communicative, not directly descriptive and not strictly necessary to the post.  The narrative makes the post a little more interesting—and in designing a description for an adventure, a narrative can serve that purpose.  But the narrative is apart from the point—that being to enable the character to clearly make choices about what to do.

Let me give an example.  The players enter a village in Spain, named Carrión (real place).  They discover, much to their horror, that there is an ongoing plague in the town, and that it has already seized hold of a third of the population.  However, they are there to find the daughter of a player character (this actually happened in my game back in 1990/91, or thereabouts), so they can't just run off.  They enter the town and I describe the various scenes they see; there is no narrative here, only description.

There are only 800 people in the village, so in not very long they find the daughter Carolina; she had run off, looking for adventure, terrifying her mother, and Peter, her father, was ready to force her back against her will.  However, when confronted, Carolina was tending the ill, exposing herself to the disease.  Whereupon she told a story: "Father, you told me that when you were young and in Vienna, you fought a basilisk in a church before dawn on a Sunday, to save the parishioners.  You might have been turned to stone that day, yet you fought.  Since running away, I have had time to regret my decision; I have been hungry, I have been in danger and I have done stupid things.  But here, now, at this moment, would you have me abandon this town because I might catch a disease and it might kill me?  Did you run from danger?"

I'm sure at the time, I was more clumsy than this, and failed to produce a sufficient emotional appeal, though the players responded well and I've restructured my memory so that I think I was much more clever then that I was.  That's not the point.  The brief story, her father's story, makes Carolina's argument, but it isn't the adventure.  And what happened next, when the party decided to stay in order to help, which meant organizing burials and searching for medicines and forcing back outsiders to maintain the quarantine ... that's all just a story I'm telling you.  It wasn't a story to the players, because in reality it was a sequence of descriptions met with a series of replies and actions given.  It was a transcript.  It's only a story now because I'm telling it that way.  This isn't how I ran it.

What's unfortunate is that D&D doesn't actually need any story at all to be interesting.  The company's decision to put "story" on a pedestal, then argue that DMs need one, is a snake oil pitch.  The game works perfectly well by having a bunch of really good descriptions and then waiting for the players to respond in kind.  There's really no need at all to pull together a series of climaxes or resolutions—as the sequence of events materializes, building itself atop whatever the players did before, the moments of crisis occur in relation to how the dice fall, or how the DM introduces a character who turns out to be something unexpected.  Carolina being found in that town under those circumstances, that was unexpected.  The later discovery that the town was originally infected by bandits (a brief story), of whom only one was still alive, having a sackful of money he was willing to hand over if it meant buying his way out of execution, that was also unexpected.  But as these moments took shape, the players made their decisions based on the problems at hand.

Was the plague of Carrion a story?  4th edition and later D&D would certainly see it that way.  But I didn't describe a whole range of events to the party, except that suddenly people started dying.  All the events that mattered came up in the course of the game; and were inserted just as I would any description.  "You see a field with nearly 100 bodies, some of which are in sacks, none of which are buried, with women weeping everywhere.  The bodies are covered with pustules, and around the periphery there are large black vultures picking at what they can reach.  They are kept back by black pitch, burning in holes on the ground.  What do you do?"  Is that a story?  I don't think so.  It is a description.  Is the player's response a story?  Again, no.  The player's response is just a different sort of description.

You can make your adventure design a lot easier for yourself if you will purge this ill-represented necessity for story out of your mind as you sit down to decide what the party will see, what they will be told, where things are placed and what options are available.  Think of it that way, and you'll feel the walls of your prison pushed aside while you design under a bright blue sun.

This series continues with The Last Two Types