Confessions Of A Frustrated Novelist

 

"A plan never survives contact with the enemy," bemoans a military maxim. Modified for gaming, the proverb becomes "the DM's plot never survives contact with the players." The image of DM-as-frustrated-novelist is well known, and even parodied by the haltingly-read descriptions and purple-prose boxed text in a popular Net mp3 (". . .the smell of mildew emanates from the wet dungeon walls. . ."). This novelist tendency is understandable: isn't the point of roleplaying to tell the story of the heroes' careers? Most players in my experience maintain it is, but when they feel a DM trying to puppeteer their characters into a pre-ordained plotline, they often rebel.

"A plan never survives contact with the enemy," bemoans a military maxim. Modified for gaming, the proverb becomes "the DM's plot never survives contact with the players." The image of DM-as-frustrated-novelist is well known, and even parodied by the haltingly-read descriptions and purple-prose boxed text in a popular Net mp3 (". . .the smell of mildew emanates from the wet dungeon walls. . ."). This novelist tendency is understandable: isn't the point of roleplaying to tell the story of the heroes' careers? Most players in my experience maintain it is, but when they feel a DM trying to puppeteer their characters into a pre-ordained plotline, they often rebel. Some attempt to do something completely off-plot to break free; others play along but clearly indicate they are jumping through the "plot hoops" simply to humor the DM. "Let us tell our own story," they protest.

It's about time.

This article is not intended to bash players or garner sympathy for my role behind the screen. I like DMing. It's fun to shape worlds and orchestrate grand plots and tell fascinating stories. While I may not be a novelist, I enjoy telling stories. But DMs and players both need to remember: roleplaying is corporate storytelling. That means the DM cannot railroad the players into a predetermined adventure, but it also implies the players have a responsibility to the story as well.

Allow me a brief rant. Too often I've worked hours preparing a setting, villain, or plot thread only for players to show up without their character sheet. Or without any idea (or notes) about what happened last session. Or cast a spell in combat without knowing its range and duration. Or run a fighter known only for her godlike to-hit modifier. Players need to do homework before the game, too!
Setting the soapbox aside, I'd like to encourage players to tell their side the roleplaying story. I know some players (so-called "power gamers") are interested in making their characters supremely cool and powerful, while other gamers revel in roleplaying all the angst and psychological drama they can muster. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. In truth, I care less about the goal you seek as a player than the means you use to get there. The journey, the story, is what's important, and if the tale is to be a good one, players can't leave all the work to the DM. Help write the story. There are a few easy ways to assist your friendly neighborhood DM in this regard.

First, know your character. Even if you haven't had the time to fully detail your elf mage back to her arboreal cradle, at least pick a few attitudes and personal traits unique to her. Let the DM know what your PC cares about, whether it be family, money, magical power, or whatever. Plot hooks don't grow on trees, you know.

Know what you can do. If you're a spellcaster, be very familiar with your spells or have a cheat sheet close at hand. Remember the special abilities of your class and how they work, and the mechanics of the skills you are likely to use. Don't make us stop and wait while you look up the rules for turning undead every time something busts out of a crypt.

When the game is in progress, help the DM by speaking as your character, not as yourself. This practice is even better if you have a distinct character voice. You don't need an outrageous French accent or a goofy lisp; a simple change in word selection or speech pattern is more than sufficient. It's infectious, too: your fellow party members will soon adopt voices of their own and the group will begin to sound like (gasp) other people.

Talk in the first person. Most players are fairly good about this one, until some point of game mechanics comes up. Then the exchange goes something like this:

Player: "I move to the other side of the goblin to flank him so Cedric gets a +2 to hit."
DM: "That provokes an attack of opportunity."
Player: "Then I tumble instead. What's the DC? 15? OK, I got a 17 so I flank him and roll to hit. . ."

The moment players or DM speak about game mechanics, the story suffers. Know the rules well enough to take most situations in stride without referring to a book. Use them to your advantage or choose a tactically incorrect course if that's what your character "would do," but keep us all in the story by mentioning mechanics as little as necessary. Rather than talking about "to-hit" modifiers and "5-foot steps" and "saving throws", indulge in a little "boxed text" of your own:

Player: "While Cedric occupies the goblin's attention, I'll move around to the other side to distract the little green-skinned devil."
DM: "The goblin sees you move and starts a chopping swing in your direction."
Player: "I try to dive over the blade and roll to my feet behind him. [rolls a dice] 17. I make it, spin, and stab for his spine...."

There is no difference in game mechanics between the two examples (in most game systems). The character receives no special advantage or penalty for "diving over the blade" or "stabbing for the spine." But the players are rewarded by a more seamless and exciting scene that steps away from number-crunching and rules lawyering.

Handling game mechanics in this way requires a healthy familiarity with the rules from both the DM and player. It demands imagination to talk about rules without stating them outright, and there are times artistic license may trump the guidelines in the DMG. For example, when a character receives a particularly vicious hit, the player may say, "I reel backwards from the pain, sink briefly to a knee, then grit my teeth and rise to engage the troll again." Depending on the preferred playing style of your group, this can be simply descriptive (the character's miniature remains where it is on the board) or more literal (the character's actual position is moved backward). I do recommend discussing which of these ideas is preferred, before the game starts, to avoid any misunderstandings.

Another advanced storytelling concept is the idea of the character spotlight. Every PC is a hero and a protagonist of the shared story, but the spotlight idea recognizes that some scenes or chapters focus on a particular person, and it allows that PC to have their moment.

Imagine a party, faced with overwhelming odds and little chance of survival. In a rare moment of noble heroism, the heretofore self-serving warrior grimly draws his sword and says to his companions, "Run. I'll hold them as long as I can." How many times has a variation of this scene occurred in your games? And how many times have the other players allowed the warrior PC to stay as a rearguard? Usually, someone pipes up with, "Well, if you're staying, I'm staying. . ." and a third person agrees, and soon the whole party stays. Even if some of the party ends up surviving the onslaught, the warrior character has been robbed of his moment of glory.

Giving up the spotlight means trusting the other player to write a memorable chapter in the story. It means responding to that part of the story the way your character would. As a player, it means trusting the DM to later bring the story around to focus on your character. This is corporate storytelling at its most difficult: knowing when it's time to have your character step away from the limelight.

So, the next time the DM screen is set up and the dice are thrown down, don't just sit back and leaf through the Monster Manual. Get involved, think as your character, and help spin a tale. First-person corporate storytelling is advanced roleplaying, but it pays off in spades when the group gets it right.

Excellent! I've sent a link to this article to all my players.

I agree with almost everything you've written there. I'd be interested to see one of your group's combats. By the sounds of it you have developed some unofficial conventions as to what certain descriptive actions correspond to in terms of game rules? How do you handle ambiguity (which you did touch on)? How long did it take to get your group to the point where you could run combat efficiently with few rules references?

"You don't need an outrageous French accent or a goofy lisp; a simple change in word selection or speech pattern is more than sufficient. It's infectious, too: your fellow party members will soon adopt voices of their own and the group will begin to sound like (gasp) other people."

I once played in a game where my character was.. well, kind of a hick and a farmboy. I gave him a voice modeled after J. F. Sebastian from Blade Runner, and it was infectious alright.. the other players started copying my voice without meaning to! Even when they tried to stop, they couldn't. Funniest thing I've ever seen.

"The moment players or DM speak about game mechanics, the story suffers."

I can't agree with this.

It's one thing if you're playing some kind of diceless "freeform" game which is really nothing more than interactive storytelling, where there are no mechanics to refer to, and all decisions are arbitrarily made by the GM based on the needs of the plot, the quality of the player's description, and/or the perceived feasibility and effectiveness of the character's action. But when you're playing a game with real mechanics - which most likely has fairly detailed (and perhaps actually tactical) rules for combat - you can't just ignore the fact that the rules are there. Players are expected to learn those rules and use them. GMs are expected to abide by them.. most of the time. Telling people never to speak of them is absurd, not to mention likely to result in lots of misunderstandings and arguments about what's really going on.

Expecting players and GMs to fill every combat with exciting descriptions is likewise absurd; combats will slow down (for most people, they're already slow enough) and the descriptions themselves will get boring after a while. There's only so many ways to dodge an arrow or disembowel someone. There's only so many foul descriptions and invented racial slurs that can be used to refer to an orc; if you have to kill fifteen of them, combat is going to get boring real quick. In short, some things are better glossed over.

I will say, though, that there are times when description is important in combat. Crucial turning points, showdowns with major villains or really dangerous monsters.. essentially, anything that would get the camera's full attention in an action movie. A great example of this might be the Moria fight scene from the Fellowship of the Ring movie: when it's just the Fellowship and the goblins, the camera doesn't really focus on anything. Gimli swings here, Aragorn cuts off someone's head there, goblins shriek and run around. But then when the cave troll shows up, suddenly he owns the camera. Every time the troll moves, we see it. Every time the troll attacks, we see it. Every time we switch to one of the characters, instead of getting a generic half-second "hack and slash" shot, we see hobbits creeping around corners and Legolas running up a chain onto the troll's head and firing an arrow into it. A combat that was generic suddenly turned detailed.

Another example comes from my experience as a GM. It was a single player adventure and my friend's character was taking on a group of armed men and their boss. All of them, even the boss, were definitely below his ability, and hardly worth describing in combat. But suddenly, with most of his men dead, the boss got the upper hand with a couple of lucky rolls. I forget how, exactly, but the PC ended up disarmed and on the ground. At that point the combat suddenly got more detailed, as the snarling boss tried to stab the PC like a piece of litter, and my friend went to some lengths describing how he was rolling around on the ground, trying to dodge the boss' thrusts and get back to his own sword, since he never got the opportunity to stand back up. Finally, just as he was almost within reach of his sword, the guy got him.. but he wasn't dead just yet. His sword had a very limited "wish" sort of ability, and just as he was being stabbed, I ruled that he was finally, just barely, able to reach his sword.

My friend said "Grael clutches the hilt.. and smiles. 'I really wish you hadn't done that.'" And he acted out his character's malevolent, triumphant grin, his arm stretched out across the table. Things went badly for the boss after that.

My point with this example was that most of the combat needed no description, and would probably have suffered from it.. but I wouldn't have traded that one climactic comeback for anything. Description IS important, but it should be used judiciously.

For the visibility of game mechanics issue, each edition of the D&D rules seems to make mechanics much more visible. I don't personally like that but I know people who do.

When I first started gaming, I tried to employ descriptive combat sequences. The idea failed miserably because the DM stated that these would qualify as 'called shots' and would subsequently be more difficult to make.

However, I allow for this type of freedom (should a player choose it) when I GM. But, I fully subscribe to the theory that it is collaborative impromptu storytelling.

The answer is fairly simple and effective for my groups. You resolve the mechanic and THEN describe what happens, giving a description that is appropriate to the outcome on the dice.

It saves you the anticlimax of making detailed descriptions of glorious called shots - which fail. Instead of decribing what might happen, just say what happens.