Part 5: Managing Cognitive Load
Part 4: Projecting Engagement
Part 3: Cognitive Load & Information Filtering
Part 2c: Governing the Game
Part 2b: Setting Player Boundaries
Part 2a: The DM's Mental Toolbox
Part 1: Introduction to Session Management
Apart from the characters' memory, apart from their immediate surroundings, we move onto a discussion of "known unknowns." These are places, things and persons the characters have heard of, and know about, but which remain outside the players' experience. This can include the interior of a building the characters pass every day, or the uncle of a character that lives in another city, or the entire continent of — to pick an example — Asia, which is almost certainly there but which, in a theoretical campaign, the players have never actually been. Thus, known unknowns comprise a tremendous part of the setting.
As with our own experiences, these are not "secrets" or "hooks." They are simply places the players haven't yet investigated. A backpack, apparently filled with something, but which has yet to be opened, is a known unknown. These things are a natural consequence of living in a complex, unmapped, effectively infinite reality. The players, like real people, are surrounded by information of which they possess only the narrowest understanding. And if the setting is large enough, players must likewise accept that there will always be known unknowns. There's no way within the space of a game that played every two weeks, for even six hours a session, for the entire setting to be made "known."
The value of this ambiguity is that, unlike an adventure hook, which exists in isolation so as to manipulate the characters to undertake a specific action, the sheer abundancy of known unknowns allows players to assign their own weight to whatever they encounter. In effect, it's not the dungeon master that elevates the importance of a thing, but the players, through their character's perspective or curiosity. As they pass by a particular habitation, or hear of a dungeon, or the name of a person and their rank, the players automatically self-assign how important each is according to how it potentially fits their goals, fears, hunches and emotional investments. This supports a personalised agency, which in turn makes the players responsible for their actions — and the consequences of their actions.
For example, when in an adventure, the party is assisted by a man, Otto, who gives his origin as a place called "Lothven." During the adventure, Otto dies in a manner that he cannot be raised. The party, having grown attached to Otto, take it upon themselves to take the remains of Otto, or his personal effects, to Lothven, though they know nothing about the location except its name. We are not telling the players to do so; we are merely assigned the task to provide the players a route to Lothven, the presence of whatever it happens to be, as a responsibility we have towards the players. Initially, we may never have had any intention of adding Lothven meaningfully to the campaign; we might have introduced it merely as flavour. But now, the players are creating their own adventure. That gives them agency, it enriches the setting from their perspective, and we have nothing invested ourselves in seeing anything happen except to perhaps put a few random obstacles in their way and provide something interesting to find once they reach the end of their quest.
Through providing hundreds of such opportunities, as dungeon masters we're freed from assigning any importance to anything. We can emplace taverns, towns, rivers, mountain ranges, farmlands, market places and scores of realms and lands without concerning ourselves the least for what's there... until such time as the players choose to go. At that time, we create the path, add details to it, arrange the end locations and enrich as much as we have time for — with this very important condition. Lothven, wherever it is, must have characteristics that make it unique. We cannot just cookie-cut other places with the same shape and purpose, else the players have no special need to go there. No, whatever, Lothven is, it must have a nature that fits not only the place Otto came from, but elements of the Otto that the players knew. This is understandably challenging, since it means we must "make up something" when it's needed, even though we were not the perpetrators of that need.
As such, we must not strive to create "generic codes" for towns beyond their basic structure and presence. We must service the players' choices not only by providing adventure on demand, but by giving their choices weight, respecting the players enough to make every place memorable in its own fashion.
Realistically, then, not every place warrants an adventure. Lothven might be four hovels and a gristmill; but all it needs to have, if we want to give cause for the players to feel good about going there, is one small detail that's "worth it." Otto's mother, weeping, upon being given the things brought a hundred miles to her, says, "Woe is me; one son dead, the other lost forever... what shall I do?"
There it is, an actual hook — but not one forced on the party, but rather surreptitiously given as a reward. This line isn't a demand that the party now search out the whereabouts of the other son — it's the subtle curve in the road that the players may or may not decide to follow. Yet because it's Otto's brother, they may want to learn what's happened to Werner. First, however, we must talk about unknown unknowns.
Beyond what the players have heard about the setting, there are many, many things about which the players know nothing. The aforementioned Werner, for example, never spoken of by Otto, which the players cannot guess at until we speak of it. This is the DM's unexplained prerogative: not only the filling in of gaps in what's already understood, but the vast secret mechanisms of the game world that also exist, whose presence remains an utter mystery until we choose the moment of their invocation.
Some things may be guessed at: it is probable that assassins' guilds exist in the world, but where they are located, or if one is in fact just a few hundred yards from where the players are just now, is utterly unknown. Numerous events may seem perfectly random, but in fact we are keeping it a secret from the party that these things are together mechanised by a cabal, whose purpose has nothing to do with the party. No one knows, presently, that the Duke's son intends, in a few months time, to kill both his father and the king — and so, for the present, only we as dungeon master know it, keeping the secret in our minds until such time that it's right to reveal it.
Our purpose to having such unknowns, and not creating them on a whim, is in part so that we can stir the pot for the players for awhile. They can then imagine they're acting without observation, without the influence of others who are, in fact, ensuring their agency to some degree. This plays in our favour, accomplishing several important facets about our setting, when the reveal comes. To begin with, that all is not as it seems, that expresses that what they see is just a small sliver of a much larger reality — which isn't there to make the humble, but to provide structure for the day when they themselves become part of the manipulators when reaching that capability. Additionally, we establish that the world is going on independent of player knowledge. This provides depth and a sense of purpose to the setting, taking yet another step away from the notion that things happen only for the party's benefit.
Finally, when it's revealed, it doesn't feel like an arbitrary addition. It feels like something that has been earned — a momentum from the "outside" to the inside of things. Discovering the usurpation shouldn't make them feel like the world is too big to manage; it should be done so as to make them feel they're becoming involved in things that really matter. Not as pawns, but as protectors of the king... or, if so inclined, that they have the capability of contributing to the removal of power on that scale. Done right, this should feel like empowerment.
What elevates this approach above a twist-for-twist's sake is the emotional and mechanical resonance it fosters. The world feels earned, not given. The setting mirrors real epistemic growth: awareness, context, larger choices to make, consequential results of which the participants are a part. It lifts them from "just another dungeon" to "what kingdom might we topple today." This drives them towards preparation, gathering of resources, a hyper-readiness that dwarfs the necessity of just buying another sword or picking up a new rope. Now we need ropes and swords for hundreds, perhaps thousands of soldiers — which demands an outlay of resources that can't be collected by raiding a few dungeons. Because the setting is bigger, the players must be bigger too. They're not just heroes any more: they're moving towards becoming majestic.
To envision a game setting this large, the dungeon master must begin to think in layers. As stated already, there are those things in the characters' memories; there's what they SEE; there's what they vaguely know about. Now, there's all the world they do not know, even in reference. The measure isn't just geographical, though — it's economic, social, political, cultural, strategic, technological, with each aspect providing unexpected opportunity and detail. Yet of course we simply cannot draw a setting on this scale as we would a dungeon, which conveys the illusion of total control over every possibility the players might pursue. The world is simply too BIG for that. Mindfully, we must inhabit such a world ourselves, seeing the city and realm with such clarity in our minds that we can make it breathe at our whim — without drawings, maps, lists of character sheets or pretty much everything associated with Candyland-structure role-playing. There's no story; no agenda; no hyper-detailed depictions of room-sized spaces.
Instead, we must embrace "emergent play." This describes a living, layered setting that's too vast to script: one that is run by managing implications, not events. Imagine that the players arrive in a town and encounter an individual involved in a lucrative opportunity: the town is crying out for timber, as shipbuilding is booming in light of a naval conflict that is ongoing. This fellow, Nevis, has just brought in a large shipment of wood from a distant forest, where his family is in the present already logging and trimming another such shipment. As a DM, we must ask ourselves, what are the implications of these details?
The rise of shipbuilding implies a growing demand for many things, not just wood. It implies that the town is relatively safe from the war, or at least protected somehow, so that the docks aren't merely raided by an enemy and destroyed. It implies that Nevis alone cannot supply all the wood that the town needs. It implies that Nevis might need a partner, as he already has invented a supply line. And finally, it encourages the players to ask questions about the situation described, that they might discover, for themselves, what part they'd like to play.
We're not trading in "plot points." These are ongoing dynamics — the depth of which depends on our capacity as DM to understand what's going on, what could be going on, what consequences would arise from what decisions the players make... and ultimately, how the players' choices could change the balance of these dynamics. Inserted into this are moments of sabotage, attempted assassinations, raids, defense of property — great opportunities for combat, plunder, reward, status, acquisition of special items and so on, all without the limitations or repetitiveness of just another dungeon.
For the present, grasping that this form of play is possible is sufficient. It's made possible when the players look at a situation like this from the point of view, "There's a lot of unknowns here, that I can't begin to grasp or understand; but I trust my dungeon master. If I ask questions, I can learn what the unknowns are, which makes them known enough that I can begin to investigate them."
These are the four scales of the setting's composition. We're now free to move on.
As with our own experiences, these are not "secrets" or "hooks." They are simply places the players haven't yet investigated. A backpack, apparently filled with something, but which has yet to be opened, is a known unknown. These things are a natural consequence of living in a complex, unmapped, effectively infinite reality. The players, like real people, are surrounded by information of which they possess only the narrowest understanding. And if the setting is large enough, players must likewise accept that there will always be known unknowns. There's no way within the space of a game that played every two weeks, for even six hours a session, for the entire setting to be made "known."
The value of this ambiguity is that, unlike an adventure hook, which exists in isolation so as to manipulate the characters to undertake a specific action, the sheer abundancy of known unknowns allows players to assign their own weight to whatever they encounter. In effect, it's not the dungeon master that elevates the importance of a thing, but the players, through their character's perspective or curiosity. As they pass by a particular habitation, or hear of a dungeon, or the name of a person and their rank, the players automatically self-assign how important each is according to how it potentially fits their goals, fears, hunches and emotional investments. This supports a personalised agency, which in turn makes the players responsible for their actions — and the consequences of their actions.
For example, when in an adventure, the party is assisted by a man, Otto, who gives his origin as a place called "Lothven." During the adventure, Otto dies in a manner that he cannot be raised. The party, having grown attached to Otto, take it upon themselves to take the remains of Otto, or his personal effects, to Lothven, though they know nothing about the location except its name. We are not telling the players to do so; we are merely assigned the task to provide the players a route to Lothven, the presence of whatever it happens to be, as a responsibility we have towards the players. Initially, we may never have had any intention of adding Lothven meaningfully to the campaign; we might have introduced it merely as flavour. But now, the players are creating their own adventure. That gives them agency, it enriches the setting from their perspective, and we have nothing invested ourselves in seeing anything happen except to perhaps put a few random obstacles in their way and provide something interesting to find once they reach the end of their quest.
Through providing hundreds of such opportunities, as dungeon masters we're freed from assigning any importance to anything. We can emplace taverns, towns, rivers, mountain ranges, farmlands, market places and scores of realms and lands without concerning ourselves the least for what's there... until such time as the players choose to go. At that time, we create the path, add details to it, arrange the end locations and enrich as much as we have time for — with this very important condition. Lothven, wherever it is, must have characteristics that make it unique. We cannot just cookie-cut other places with the same shape and purpose, else the players have no special need to go there. No, whatever, Lothven is, it must have a nature that fits not only the place Otto came from, but elements of the Otto that the players knew. This is understandably challenging, since it means we must "make up something" when it's needed, even though we were not the perpetrators of that need.
As such, we must not strive to create "generic codes" for towns beyond their basic structure and presence. We must service the players' choices not only by providing adventure on demand, but by giving their choices weight, respecting the players enough to make every place memorable in its own fashion.
Realistically, then, not every place warrants an adventure. Lothven might be four hovels and a gristmill; but all it needs to have, if we want to give cause for the players to feel good about going there, is one small detail that's "worth it." Otto's mother, weeping, upon being given the things brought a hundred miles to her, says, "Woe is me; one son dead, the other lost forever... what shall I do?"
There it is, an actual hook — but not one forced on the party, but rather surreptitiously given as a reward. This line isn't a demand that the party now search out the whereabouts of the other son — it's the subtle curve in the road that the players may or may not decide to follow. Yet because it's Otto's brother, they may want to learn what's happened to Werner. First, however, we must talk about unknown unknowns.
Beyond what the players have heard about the setting, there are many, many things about which the players know nothing. The aforementioned Werner, for example, never spoken of by Otto, which the players cannot guess at until we speak of it. This is the DM's unexplained prerogative: not only the filling in of gaps in what's already understood, but the vast secret mechanisms of the game world that also exist, whose presence remains an utter mystery until we choose the moment of their invocation.
Some things may be guessed at: it is probable that assassins' guilds exist in the world, but where they are located, or if one is in fact just a few hundred yards from where the players are just now, is utterly unknown. Numerous events may seem perfectly random, but in fact we are keeping it a secret from the party that these things are together mechanised by a cabal, whose purpose has nothing to do with the party. No one knows, presently, that the Duke's son intends, in a few months time, to kill both his father and the king — and so, for the present, only we as dungeon master know it, keeping the secret in our minds until such time that it's right to reveal it.
Our purpose to having such unknowns, and not creating them on a whim, is in part so that we can stir the pot for the players for awhile. They can then imagine they're acting without observation, without the influence of others who are, in fact, ensuring their agency to some degree. This plays in our favour, accomplishing several important facets about our setting, when the reveal comes. To begin with, that all is not as it seems, that expresses that what they see is just a small sliver of a much larger reality — which isn't there to make the humble, but to provide structure for the day when they themselves become part of the manipulators when reaching that capability. Additionally, we establish that the world is going on independent of player knowledge. This provides depth and a sense of purpose to the setting, taking yet another step away from the notion that things happen only for the party's benefit.
Finally, when it's revealed, it doesn't feel like an arbitrary addition. It feels like something that has been earned — a momentum from the "outside" to the inside of things. Discovering the usurpation shouldn't make them feel like the world is too big to manage; it should be done so as to make them feel they're becoming involved in things that really matter. Not as pawns, but as protectors of the king... or, if so inclined, that they have the capability of contributing to the removal of power on that scale. Done right, this should feel like empowerment.
What elevates this approach above a twist-for-twist's sake is the emotional and mechanical resonance it fosters. The world feels earned, not given. The setting mirrors real epistemic growth: awareness, context, larger choices to make, consequential results of which the participants are a part. It lifts them from "just another dungeon" to "what kingdom might we topple today." This drives them towards preparation, gathering of resources, a hyper-readiness that dwarfs the necessity of just buying another sword or picking up a new rope. Now we need ropes and swords for hundreds, perhaps thousands of soldiers — which demands an outlay of resources that can't be collected by raiding a few dungeons. Because the setting is bigger, the players must be bigger too. They're not just heroes any more: they're moving towards becoming majestic.
To envision a game setting this large, the dungeon master must begin to think in layers. As stated already, there are those things in the characters' memories; there's what they SEE; there's what they vaguely know about. Now, there's all the world they do not know, even in reference. The measure isn't just geographical, though — it's economic, social, political, cultural, strategic, technological, with each aspect providing unexpected opportunity and detail. Yet of course we simply cannot draw a setting on this scale as we would a dungeon, which conveys the illusion of total control over every possibility the players might pursue. The world is simply too BIG for that. Mindfully, we must inhabit such a world ourselves, seeing the city and realm with such clarity in our minds that we can make it breathe at our whim — without drawings, maps, lists of character sheets or pretty much everything associated with Candyland-structure role-playing. There's no story; no agenda; no hyper-detailed depictions of room-sized spaces.
Instead, we must embrace "emergent play." This describes a living, layered setting that's too vast to script: one that is run by managing implications, not events. Imagine that the players arrive in a town and encounter an individual involved in a lucrative opportunity: the town is crying out for timber, as shipbuilding is booming in light of a naval conflict that is ongoing. This fellow, Nevis, has just brought in a large shipment of wood from a distant forest, where his family is in the present already logging and trimming another such shipment. As a DM, we must ask ourselves, what are the implications of these details?
The rise of shipbuilding implies a growing demand for many things, not just wood. It implies that the town is relatively safe from the war, or at least protected somehow, so that the docks aren't merely raided by an enemy and destroyed. It implies that Nevis alone cannot supply all the wood that the town needs. It implies that Nevis might need a partner, as he already has invented a supply line. And finally, it encourages the players to ask questions about the situation described, that they might discover, for themselves, what part they'd like to play.
We're not trading in "plot points." These are ongoing dynamics — the depth of which depends on our capacity as DM to understand what's going on, what could be going on, what consequences would arise from what decisions the players make... and ultimately, how the players' choices could change the balance of these dynamics. Inserted into this are moments of sabotage, attempted assassinations, raids, defense of property — great opportunities for combat, plunder, reward, status, acquisition of special items and so on, all without the limitations or repetitiveness of just another dungeon.
For the present, grasping that this form of play is possible is sufficient. It's made possible when the players look at a situation like this from the point of view, "There's a lot of unknowns here, that I can't begin to grasp or understand; but I trust my dungeon master. If I ask questions, I can learn what the unknowns are, which makes them known enough that I can begin to investigate them."
These are the four scales of the setting's composition. We're now free to move on.
No comments:
Post a Comment