Non-linear D&D

Getting the game running like a machine calls for the DM to manage the co-equal problems of time and space within the model imposed by the setting.  Space and time function in two ways in D&D.   First, these define the momentum of game play: time is needed to describe the game's setting to the players, who must use time to choose how they'll move from space to space.  Secondly, the characters lose resources as time passes, so that taking more time to move from space to space reduces the survivability of the characters.

Running the game, compressing time spent increases momentum; the more things a party encounters in the space of a four-hour session, the "faster" the game seems to run, increasing it's potential for being exciting.  However, if we compress time too much, the players can feel rushed, even cheated out of enjoying the excursionary aspect of play, as players like to emotionally and mentally involve themselves into what's happening.

However ... we can also build sequences that cost the players' resources in order to reach their goals, such as lengthening a journey so that it requires more food, the replacement of equipment and more opportunities to soak hit points from the players' reserve.  This demands more resolve from the players.  In fact, by deliberately reducing momentum, to stretch out how long it takes to reach a goal, we can whet the players' appetites ... actually improving the game's excitement by decreasing momentum.

As such, there is no definite formula on how time and space is managed.  Knowing which dynamic to apply, and for how long, to make distances "feel real," is a considerable obstacle to good DMing.  It is so easy to take too long to describe parts of the setting and make the game feel dull.  It is just as easy to hurry the game to the point where the individual events just don't matter, giving the party has little reason to invest themselves.  Like telling a joke, each word must be stressed just so, with just the right degree of pacing.  We must "time" our delivery with pauses, holding the listener's rapt attention as much when we're not speaking as when we say the next line.  This is the underlying substance of DMing that calls for artistry.

Most do not have it ... largely because the need for pacing hasn't been explained.  We are instead consumed with the problems that arise from needing to know what happens next ... because it's perceived, if we don't know what's going to happen next, we won't know what to say when it happens.

The fundamental structure for game play is the railroad, defined as a sequence of events that have been predetermined, providing the DM with foreknowledge of what the players experience as the game plays out.  This "script" strengthens the DM's presentation when the game is running, especially if the DM has run the same script on some previous occasion with another party.  With script in hand, the DM feels a greater confidence in knowing what to say and when to say it; he or she has time to hone their performance, inserting jokes, clever moments of drama, practiced speeches given by NPCs and so on.  He or she need not sweat the problem of what happens next; everything "unexpected" is accounted for.  And because the players haven't experienced the railroad's sequence of events, they feel new and shiny.  Further, if the railroad is written well enough, many players will commit to the railroad even after they've seen where it goes, because they want to try a different strategy from that undertaken on previous trips.

Railroad settings can include multiple tracks, giving a greater illusion of player choices, since the choices and their consequences can also be predetermined.  With sufficient time spent, players can experience twenty or more pleasant excursions, jostling back and forth between stops, switches and roundabouts.  The format reduces the DM's stress and can even be packaged for other DM's to enjoy.  These virtues have established themselves as "how the game is played," being seen as vastly superior to any other approach ... which, in any case, would defy the ability of most DMs to deliver.

The problem with the railroad, then, is not its basic structure, nor in inability to supplying DMs with practical, useful material for play.  Arguably, the adventure module has been wildly successful ... and must continue to be so, given the audience it has.  The problem is in a railroad's limitation as a form of transport.  To work — that is, to provide material that predicts game play — the railroad is highly dependent on game forms like the dungeon, which provides a highly linear game experience.  The population of the railroad has to be minimal; groups that are encountered must be generally of like mind, with perhaps a single deviant that takes the party aside to show them the "secret way" out.  The setting itself is infertile and passive.  To function, the railroad's information must be hidden before it's discovered, and gotten past before the next hidden thing can be learned.  This disallows any possibility of the participants "playing off" their enemies against one another; they don't know who the enemies are.  This leaves only the very narrow tactics of immediate response.  Larger strategy is out of the question, unless the intended strategy has also been predetermined for the players.

As such, for all their fine qualities, railroad games become tiresome for most participants within 60 to 100 hours.  Participation for many hinges on the "sociability" of chatting and joking with other players ... which quickly devolves into mocking events of the game in order to maintain one's interest.  There are only so many ways to open a door, or collectively fight a group of enemies, or take down a "big bad."  Over time, the repetitiveness leads to other player behaviours and game-rebuild formats that don't need to be discussed here.

The problem remains one of time and space.  Desirably, we should wish for an approach in which the DM can expand rationally on what's already happened; can formulate play from moment-to-moment, in the present; and can predict, from the present circumstances, what ought to happen next.  Handling these matters in one's head can produce a fluid, logical pattern of events, with future moments becoming self-evident through examination of the past.  This pattern can then be "monkey-wrenched" with random events that can be generated with dice, or as suggested things likely to arise from the specific character, culture, vegetation or habitation of a given part of the game's setting.  All without predetermining anything.

Effectively, the players create their own fates based on the actions they've taken thus far.  If they venture into a dungeon, then for brief periods the game can become linear; but once the dungeon is left behind, there are greater opportunities for both random events and player interventions, as they decide the scope and temper of the non-linear adventure they want to pursue.

With the last post, I proposed a long-scale structured existence based upon the movements of pieces on a chess board.  Expanding on that metaphor, consider: at some point in the distant past, the game setting was brought into existence out of the void by the dungeon master.  At the moment when the players enter the campaign, an amount of time has passed — presumably, many thousands of years, but not necessarily.  Our metaphorical chess board began with the advance of a single piece, followed by move after move until the arrangement reached the moment where the players entered the campaign.

I ask the reader now to imagine the game's continental setting as a chessboard of enormous proportions, with half a trillion squares and tens of millions of pieces.  Pieces can move anywhere on this board, but they're limited in how many squares they can move per turn.  It's fairly easy to find space to oneself, but to compete with other pieces requires coming into their influence, where they can kill you.  As with the previous metaphor, there are intrinsically "whitish" pieces and "blackish," ranging into grey pieces.  These work independently or in groups ... with allegiances potentially changing from moment to moment.  Unlike chess, most of the moves taken by these pieces are non-threatening (but we need not concern ourselves with this nuance, at present).

The players, then, are pieces themselves, moving from sphere to sphere of controlled areas, separated by dozens or hundreds of squares through which the players travel towards their next intended goal.  The party's colour on the board is entirely up to them; they can move about doing good or evil as they wish, depending on how they judge the threat imposed by other pieces.  As a faction, the party threatens groupings that form villages, but are not so much to those conglomerations that form towns and cities.

Wherever the players go, the pattern of response reflects what the players do or say.  There are already pre-existing factions operating wherever the players go; it's possible for the players to win one of these over, or more than one, or alienate one or all the factions that are present.  The players may potentially expand their faction by picking up stray pieces or stealing pieces from other factions.

An important point is this: chess is a game where little or nothing is hidden.  The board is open; the factions are obvious.  As the players remain in an area, we can pour information into their kettle and in no way ruin the quality of the game ... because the non-linear game is strengthened by information.  Information allows navigation of the various factions; it allows long-term strategy and the acquisition of power.  We may choose to occasionally obscure a motivation, or provide a secret ... be we can clearly see the lord in his town on the hill, his power over his village, those who attest to the lord's power and those who don't, and whom we might approach, or what actions we can take, to either aid or obstruct the lord's dominance.  The game ceases to be the piercing of mystery and becomes the assumption of authority.

Both are puzzles to be solved.  One is a vastly more difficult and uncertain puzzle.

As I delve deeper into this discussion of non-linear D&D, I'll be expanding the use of chess as a metaphor to describe relationships between time and space, and the acquisition of power.  If you are unfamiliar with chess, and wish to be a DM, then you have done yourself a disservice.  Chess is a game that teaches the player how to predict the moves of an opponent, while building a strategy of one's own moves into the future ... a strategy that has to repeatedly be adjusted each time the opponent moves.  While more highly structured than D&D, the habit of constantly playing in the future terrifically strengthens a DM's predictions of what players might do before they do it, especially as one gets to know one's players very well.  As I played chess for decades in my youth, preparing for as-yet-untaken actions, and changing my preparations constantly once actions are taken, has hard-wired flexibility into my performance as a DM.

Learn to play chess or give up DMing.  Or accept that you'll always be limited as a DM.  If you're over 40, and chess still isn't part of your experience, then chances are you'll have difficulty applying anything you learn in chess to D&D.  You're just too old to change.  With a lot of effort, and a thousand hours of play, you might advance as a DM; but it's more likely that, since you've never played chess, you see chess as silly and not worth your time.  Meaning you'll never accumulate those useful thousand hours.

Chess is a linear game, in that the pieces have a limited space in which to move, which consists of two dimensions.  Each side alternates in moving one piece, controlling the measure of time over what becomes a complex space.  That said, the gestalt of chess is multi-dimensional, in that different pieces move according to different rules, producing a non-linear interaction between single pieces or groups.  In the right arrangement, a bishop can attack a rook, without that rook being able to attack that bishop; in a different situation, the dynamic is reversed.  The strategy, then, consists of making it possible to attack one's enemy, while simultaneously reducing the enemy's opportunity to attack.

To explain how this dynamic materialises in D&D, beyond obvious comparatives relating to combat, allow me to use various chess tactics as metaphors for role-playing situations.  The seven I'll be discussing are forks, pins, skewers, batteries, discovered attacks, zwischenzugs and sacrifices.  In each case, try to think outside the limited theatre of combat, and rather in within the context of the players moving through the game's setting, encountering enemies or friends at a distance.  These are strategies that both the DM and the party can use, to gain advantage in either producing interesting situations, or overcoming obstacles to obtain power.  

Forks.

In chess, a fork is a tactic in which one piece threatens multiple pieces simultaneously.  Because only one move is possible in response, the defender can't counter every threat.  When used by a DM in D&D, this is a situation where the party and others are being threatened by a single force ... for example, an army approaching a city or a tsunami flooding inwards from the sea.  A similar situation might be having to deal with a large organisation seizing multiple, lesser groups in its collective tentacles.  The players may be able to flee from the situation, but in doing so they have to sacrifice others.  The DM can then stress the party's selfishness by forcing them to see how their self-preservation led to the suffering of others, preying on the player's humanity and building up the resentment needed to make the players act and not run.  The best strategy against a fork is to force the enemy's flank, to attack something the enemy has spend its energy to protect, so that the forking piece is arrested in place and can't move.  Then, all those threatened by the fork have time to escape the threat.

The players can use a fork by simultaneously threatening two enemy assets at the same time; this encourages the DM to create enemies that are more complex, and HAVE two or more assets (and not just one "big bad").  By learning which asset the enemy protects, the players can learn more about the enemy and succeed in weakening that enemy at the same time.  How the plan is accomplished is the party's problem.

Once either of these strategies are put in motion, it becomes fairly easy for the DM to see how a sequence of events can be built up on the fly: (1) there's a general threat against multiple entities; (2) the players decide if they have to save themselves or try to save others; (3) it's made clear to the players that the enemy has an alternative vulnerability; (4) the players decide if they dare to flank the enemy; (5) the players choices play out with a confrontation, deaths on both sides; (6) the players improve their position or the enemy does; (7) as DM, we introduce a new dynamic, either another fork or one of the other situations described below.  This pattern applies to all the situations named, with additional nuances and opportunities as can be proposed by the DM in game, based on what the players propose themselves.

Pins.

In chess, a pin is a tactic in which the attacked piece cannot be moved without causing the loss of a much more valuable piece.  For example, in D&D the players are caught in a chasm, facing an enemy force ... and yet have the opportunity to escape.  However, if they do escape, the enemy will pour through the chasm and slaughter women and children, or the rescued king laying on his sickbed, or destroy the gateway the party needs to return a lost party member.  The players are pinned, forced to resolve the situation by fighting the enemy ... or potentially, sending one of their number, or a message, to some ally the players have in order to attack the enemy's flank from outside the chasm.

Once again, this encourages the DM to create situations where the players HAVE allies, of some kind, whom they can call upon in times of trouble.  It calls on the DM to build situations where the players are either depended upon in a crunch situation, or are themselves the more valuable piece, while their allies are the ones being pinned.

Players, in turn, can use the pin by trapping an enemy in such a way that it dare not move without surrendering something more important.  For example, the players want to obtain the dragon's egg, but the dragon will die first in defending it.  IF the players can figure a way to "pin" the dragon, so that it cannot move without losing the egg, then the dragon's inability to move makes it more vulnerable to a prepared attack.

Skewers.

In chess, the skewer is similar to a pin, except that it's the valuable piece that's threatened.  When the valuable piece moves to protect itself, a lesser asset is easily seized.  In D&D, the DM threatens the party to a degree that they have to give ground and protect themselves, certain that they're going to die otherwise.  Whatever the party is protecting is secondary; the players won't give up their lives for it, but they're going to lose that thing because they were driven off.  Used by the DM, the tactic is cruel and effective, and sets up a series of adventures as the players struggle to get back whatever they've lost.  Likewise, the players can feel the pang of self-recrimination if their choice to protect themselves ended in the permanent loss of a thing.  Forever, the players will wonder if they could have held their ground, which affects the way they think about similar situations in the future.

The same applies to situations the party presses in its tactics.  If the vampire is sufficiently threatened, it will flee it's lair to protect itself.  The lair isn't as important as the vampire, but by destroying it, the players hurt the vampire's chances of protecting itself in the future while reclaiming a desecrated place.  The situation is thus ongoing, with the party obtaining a small victory.

Battery.

In chess, a battery is a formation that consists of two or more pieces, usually pawns, that stand on the same rank, forming a blockade defending some portion of the board.  In D&D, a battery is any situation where an enemy force is protected behind a fortification, or controls a part of the setting to such a degree that any approach is spotted and threatened.  In chess, batteries are broken apart by sacrificing a piece in attacking the blockade, or drawing the enemy out into other parts of the board so the battery lacks support.  Then, a supported piece can rush in, take a pawn, threaten the king behind the battery and survive, because there are no sufficient threats to the attacking piece.

If the players use this tactic in the game, they can figure out how to take down a castle, or root a villain out of a town quarter where everyone is the villain's ally, by systematically taking apart the defenses piece by piece.  Using distractions and sorties, the players can draw off a part of the enemy, or destroy a part of the enemy's camp, leaving the remainder less protected and less in number long enough for a well-focused attack to rush in and take the defenses apart.  The players dig under a wall, or sneak half a dozen members into the castle to start a fire, or kidnap an important person, or poison a well, or whatever hampering plan can be conceived of in order to weaken the defense for other assaults that come later.  Over time, with numerous "moves," the players can eventually take down any defense.

The DM can, of course, do all this to the party's castle.

Discovered attack.

In chess, a discovered attack occurs when a friendly piece is moved out of the way of an attacking friendly piece.  For example, a knight is moved, revealing a bishop's attack on the enemy queen.  As the enemy moves to protect the queen, the knight can move again, causing much havoc.

This is a great way of creating a threat to the party.  They are introduced to a potential enemy who, after negotiations, agrees to step aside to let the party act freely as they wish.  As the first enemy steps aside, the party suddenly finds there is some other enemy, who won't negotiate and will fight the party directly.  The party sets out from their holdings to take the fight to the second enemy, only to discover upon returning home that their holdings have now been destroyed by the first enemy.

Dealing with both enemies is now the party's problem and the set-up for a lengthy in-town campaign, which enables us to aid the party by providing allies who have also been wronged by both enemies.  So the fight goes, with the players being harassed on both sides, but encouraged to feel that if they can eventually wipe out both enemies, they'll own this town.

The players can use the tactic exactly as above, with one half of the party pretending to be the first enemy, while the other half acts as the second.  Similar situations can be invented by both DM and players through the use of additional groups of monsters and allies who weigh in on one side or the other.

Zwischenzug.

In chess, a zwischenzug is a tactic in which the player, instead of playing the expected move, does something wholly unexpected while imposing an immediate threat the opponent must answer.  For example, instead of attacking the battery and threatening the king with my rook, instead I take this opportunity to exchange my bishop for the enemy's knight ... because my opponent's taking my bishop changes the position of his pieces in a way that works in my favour.  THEN I attack the battery.

There are all sorts of bizarre ways this can be used by a DM and by players.  Most of the time, doing anything unexpected is good.  The effect of altering the circumstances for the players, by introducing some element of the setting into the mix, makes them hyper-aware that they can never be sure of anything.  For example, the players decide to break into a workshop to kidnap the blacksmith, who knows how to get into the town's North Tower.  Just as the players are about to kick in the front door, a fireball engulfs the formerly quiet, dark apothecary's shop across the street.  In seconds, the street is inexplicably filled with some unnatural creature that the party must confront ... until the blacksmith also comes out from the workshop to see what's going on, with varying other peoples too.  Is this a good time to still kidnap the blacksmith?  Only the party would know.

If the party is clever, they can set up distractions like this also, but obviously the DM has many more opportunities to do so.  The key is remembering that the zwischenzug mostly likely has nothing whatsoever to do with the adventure ... except that once it's occurred, it can add flavour by creating a completely different sequence of events with which the party may also have to cope.

Sacrifice.

In chess, a sacrifice is a move in which one side surrenders a piece with the objective of gaining a tactical advantage.  A caught informer kills himself rather than surrendering information; a low-level mage uses burning hands in a shed full of lamp oil, to destroy an enemy protected behind guards and wards next door.  A high-level lieutenant dies in an attempt to overcome the enemy's bastion, which temporarily offers a reprieve from the enemy's siege weapon batteries.  A non-levelled hireling tries to hold back a dragon "for a few rounds."

Players can sacrifice themselves with the expectation that their body can be recovered and themselves be raised; or they can sacrifice their hirelings or followers.  The effect this has on a series of events making up the campaign has much to do with how well the players have thought the sacrifice through, and what steps they've taken to exploit it.  The DM's part is to give the players the benefit of the doubt, to rationalise what the probable response would be and then to play the game out as honestly as possible.

Conclusion

In each of the above cases, an action sets up a counteraction, just as we'd expect on a chessboard.  Opponents move to protect their assets, or regroup to try a different attack, while the players do the same.  Once the moves begin to take place, the next logical move on the DM's part should emerge just as if the DM were a player and the players were the DM.  As the players invent a strategy, the DM puts his or herself into the head of the NPC, decides how the NPC responds, expresses that response by providing players with information about what effect they've had on the campaign (Remember: hide as little as possible!) and the back and forth alternate play of the campaign should develop organically.

This ideal isn't based on some silly theory of always saying "yes" or "no."  It's based on what ought to happen, given what we know about what's previously happened, and given what we know about how the NPCs would respond, given that they're peasants, guards, a particular kind of villain or monster, or whatever else we've assigned to their personality.  That response should be defensible, rational, reasonable and with an eye to contributing to the ongoing process of the campaign.  Choices by the DM should reflect the creation of more possible choices for the players, which they'll limit by making their choice and thus rendering former alternatives now impossible.

Above all that's been said on the subject so far, we have a singular constant that we can turn to as a model on which to render this game proceeding:  human history.

All that I've described is visible in the interactions we've witnessed as a people and as individuals since the beginning of the world.  We can study conflicts to understand how people respond to conflict.  We can study the creation of good things, like supportive networks and civilising projects, to discover what resistance arose in response to those efforts and how that resistance manifested.  Looking around for what the players can do in a game, we have millions of examples of what people HAVE done, locally, in foreign places, last year, a hundred years ago and thousands of years ago.  The pattern of human history has been an exercise in the ongoing patterns of time affecting the available space, with humans choosing how to make use of time to change space.

Understanding the human project, studying psychology, anthropology and other subjects I mentioned with the last post, explains what I mean when I say that something ought to logically follow if the players do "this," just as we can guess what the players will do if we as a DM have the enemy do "that."

This formula transfers our power as DM to willy-nilly do things ad hoc into a dynamic frame in which we do things as we honestly believe would result, whether or not that "fits" into our desires or expectations.  Letting ourselves accept results because they're what we would expect to happen, and not what we want to happen, drives an engine that does run the game world ... and yes, almost as if by magic.

If you've enjoyed this post, and yet you find yourself so overwhelmed that you're unable to produce a rational comment, don't worry.  You have an alternative.