About 15 years ago I played in a campaign for a system with a DM and we as players felt amazing, the number of times the plot evolved and developed the way we expected, or that NPC turned out to be a villain or good guy important to the story. We didn’t allow these theories or ideas to feed into our character actions, these where conversations we had over a pint between sessions.
At the end of the campaign I had a chat with the DM looking to get some tips as to how he had foreshadowed things so perfectly and he let me in on a secret. He hadn’t, what he had done was listen to us as players, not our characters, and then changed the story to fit some of our ideas and theories. He wanted to give us the sense of joy at knowing we had figured a thing out, but also some of our story ideas and theories where just better then what he had planned.
Ever since then I have tried to weave that into my stories, allowing player ideas, not character theories, the 2 can be very different, to feed into the story. That nervous lad working in the inn collecting drinks, I had him as a nobody, a description just to add flavour, my players become convinced he is the illegitimate son of the king, he looks like him. The characters have no idea and have not picked up on it at all but the players, between themselves, have all sorts of theories and ideas. Some of which I borrow and make part of the story.
Do any other DM’s use this Meta DM approach, nodding sagely at your players theories and ideas while mentally tweaking or downright the writing your story to bring them into it?
Well, adapting your story to what the players are doing is pretty much the oldest DM trick in the book. That's why it's so old, because it works so well. :) It's also very useful for railroading the players without really railroading. "Oh, so you are going to the Eastern Docks? Just so happens, so did NPC X..."
If you want a good in character example of this, the scene in Willow where Madmartigan doesn't want to admit that he wants to help Willow and asks him which way Willow is going. "Oh no! That's the way I'M going! Now I have to follow you and help you along!" :P
In a passage often used in MFA fiction classes as well as studies in surrealism, the narrator to Samuel Beckett's Watt, after describing a fish with an odd diurnal cycle, "But do such a fish exist? Yes, such fish exist, now."
It's not even an old DM trick, it's an old storytelling and improv and standup trick, and fits in the broader range of tricks called "playing to the audience. The difference in gaming is the DM isn't necessarily performing so much as collaborating (and it's really not an all or nothing between performing and collaborating, it's more a sliding scale). I basically call it DMing openly, and consider it and related techniques practiced at the core of my play style contrary to those DM/GMs who spend so much mental energy constructing elaborate worlds. Playing as a "reactive" or "open" well takes energy and effort too (whatever Lazy DM says). There's nothing wrong with such worlds, but my preference is allowing players to have more of a role in building the game world than. It also seems to be that games played in "carefully DM crafted worlds" often require at the session's beginning a pretty heavy prologue/recap of where the party is. Whereas in a more DM open game, when the DM sits down, the players know what the characters want to do, and sometimes have to bring the DM up to speed. it gets into the difference between playing where the DM believes they know what is going to happen vs DMs who are curious about what will happen in a session.
It also gives the DM a wider window for "be careful what you wish for" moments in game.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Well, adapting your story to what the players are doing is pretty much the oldest DM trick in the book. That's why it's so old, because it works so well. :) It's also very useful for railroading the players without really railroading. "Oh, so you are going to the Eastern Docks? Just so happens, so did NPC X..."
Thats how I do it - partly because it's effective, partly because it let the players be more (indirectly) active co-creators of the story we make together.
And if I have the right balance between my plots and being adaptive to the players actions, plans and thoughts, the players constantly railroad themself. Couldn't be better :-)
You can use this for puzzles, too. Don't design a solution. Let the players fail at least once. But on the second or third guess at the solution, provided it makes some kind of sense, yep, that was it.
I don't really do this, because I like to create real puzzles whose solutions can be deduced. And I don't generally use, "Yep, you guessed it," for the plot, either. I run a sandbox campaign, so if they don't figure out one subplot, that's okay. There will be another one. And not solving that subplot will have consequences down the road. My players are starting to realize that. It's important to have failure, as well as success, at every scale. You can still use this trick, but make sure not to declare everything they do a success.
I often use meta dming in a different sense. I often find myself reacting out of character as the dm to the players actions. Occasionally this is okay, like when I say something along the lines of "is that something your character would do" but I often find myself giving the players solutions that I really shouldn't because I am honestly a little fed up with the lack of good answers. I must admit though, that might just be a symptom of changing to a new and different group.
I usually have a solution in mind. However, if the players come up with a solution that fits the clues and it's super clever, I'll sometimes give it to them.
Close counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but it also counts in Dungeons & Dragons.
About 15 years ago I played in a campaign for a system with a DM and we as players felt amazing, the number of times the plot evolved and developed the way we expected, or that NPC turned out to be a villain or good guy important to the story. We didn’t allow these theories or ideas to feed into our character actions, these where conversations we had over a pint between sessions.
At the end of the campaign I had a chat with the DM looking to get some tips as to how he had foreshadowed things so perfectly and he let me in on a secret. He hadn’t, what he had done was listen to us as players, not our characters, and then changed the story to fit some of our ideas and theories. He wanted to give us the sense of joy at knowing we had figured a thing out, but also some of our story ideas and theories where just better then what he had planned.
Ever since then I have tried to weave that into my stories, allowing player ideas, not character theories, the 2 can be very different, to feed into the story. That nervous lad working in the inn collecting drinks, I had him as a nobody, a description just to add flavour, my players become convinced he is the illegitimate son of the king, he looks like him. The characters have no idea and have not picked up on it at all but the players, between themselves, have all sorts of theories and ideas. Some of which I borrow and make part of the story.
Do any other DM’s use this Meta DM approach, nodding sagely at your players theories and ideas while mentally tweaking or downright the writing your story to bring them into it?
What you experienced is what is referred to as emergent storytelling, essentially what D&D was originally designed to be, this was Gygax's vision for the game.
The premise of course is that you should never sit down to write a story, stories are for books not role-playing games. You create places with history/lore and people with motivations and plans. Then drop the characters in the middle of it all and see what they do, what motivates them, which aspects of the world they decide to explore and whatever they do, whatever they decide their plan is.. the execution of that is the story of the campaign and this is what you flesh out as you go.
No one will ever accuse you of running a boring story ever again.
About 15 years ago I played in a campaign for a system with a DM and we as players felt amazing, the number of times the plot evolved and developed the way we expected, or that NPC turned out to be a villain or good guy important to the story. We didn’t allow these theories or ideas to feed into our character actions, these where conversations we had over a pint between sessions.
At the end of the campaign I had a chat with the DM looking to get some tips as to how he had foreshadowed things so perfectly and he let me in on a secret. He hadn’t, what he had done was listen to us as players, not our characters, and then changed the story to fit some of our ideas and theories. He wanted to give us the sense of joy at knowing we had figured a thing out, but also some of our story ideas and theories where just better then what he had planned.
Ever since then I have tried to weave that into my stories, allowing player ideas, not character theories, the 2 can be very different, to feed into the story. That nervous lad working in the inn collecting drinks, I had him as a nobody, a description just to add flavour, my players become convinced he is the illegitimate son of the king, he looks like him. The characters have no idea and have not picked up on it at all but the players, between themselves, have all sorts of theories and ideas. Some of which I borrow and make part of the story.
Do any other DM’s use this Meta DM approach, nodding sagely at your players theories and ideas while mentally tweaking or downright the writing your story to bring them into it?
Well, adapting your story to what the players are doing is pretty much the oldest DM trick in the book. That's why it's so old, because it works so well. :) It's also very useful for railroading the players without really railroading. "Oh, so you are going to the Eastern Docks? Just so happens, so did NPC X..."
If you want a good in character example of this, the scene in Willow where Madmartigan doesn't want to admit that he wants to help Willow and asks him which way Willow is going. "Oh no! That's the way I'M going! Now I have to follow you and help you along!" :P
In a passage often used in MFA fiction classes as well as studies in surrealism, the narrator to Samuel Beckett's Watt, after describing a fish with an odd diurnal cycle, "But do such a fish exist? Yes, such fish exist, now."
It's not even an old DM trick, it's an old storytelling and improv and standup trick, and fits in the broader range of tricks called "playing to the audience. The difference in gaming is the DM isn't necessarily performing so much as collaborating (and it's really not an all or nothing between performing and collaborating, it's more a sliding scale). I basically call it DMing openly, and consider it and related techniques practiced at the core of my play style contrary to those DM/GMs who spend so much mental energy constructing elaborate worlds. Playing as a "reactive" or "open" well takes energy and effort too (whatever Lazy DM says). There's nothing wrong with such worlds, but my preference is allowing players to have more of a role in building the game world than. It also seems to be that games played in "carefully DM crafted worlds" often require at the session's beginning a pretty heavy prologue/recap of where the party is. Whereas in a more DM open game, when the DM sits down, the players know what the characters want to do, and sometimes have to bring the DM up to speed. it gets into the difference between playing where the DM believes they know what is going to happen vs DMs who are curious about what will happen in a session.
It also gives the DM a wider window for "be careful what you wish for" moments in game.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Thats how I do it - partly because it's effective, partly because it let the players be more (indirectly) active co-creators of the story we make together.
And if I have the right balance between my plots and being adaptive to the players actions, plans and thoughts, the players constantly railroad themself. Couldn't be better :-)
You can use this for puzzles, too. Don't design a solution. Let the players fail at least once. But on the second or third guess at the solution, provided it makes some kind of sense, yep, that was it.
I don't really do this, because I like to create real puzzles whose solutions can be deduced. And I don't generally use, "Yep, you guessed it," for the plot, either. I run a sandbox campaign, so if they don't figure out one subplot, that's okay. There will be another one. And not solving that subplot will have consequences down the road. My players are starting to realize that. It's important to have failure, as well as success, at every scale. You can still use this trick, but make sure not to declare everything they do a success.
I often use meta dming in a different sense. I often find myself reacting out of character as the dm to the players actions. Occasionally this is okay, like when I say something along the lines of "is that something your character would do" but I often find myself giving the players solutions that I really shouldn't because I am honestly a little fed up with the lack of good answers. I must admit though, that might just be a symptom of changing to a new and different group.
I usually have a solution in mind. However, if the players come up with a solution that fits the clues and it's super clever, I'll sometimes give it to them.
Close counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but it also counts in Dungeons & Dragons.
What you experienced is what is referred to as emergent storytelling, essentially what D&D was originally designed to be, this was Gygax's vision for the game.
The premise of course is that you should never sit down to write a story, stories are for books not role-playing games. You create places with history/lore and people with motivations and plans. Then drop the characters in the middle of it all and see what they do, what motivates them, which aspects of the world they decide to explore and whatever they do, whatever they decide their plan is.. the execution of that is the story of the campaign and this is what you flesh out as you go.
No one will ever accuse you of running a boring story ever again.