Players Against Player Authorship
Vulpinoid:
I'm getting a bit of this response from my playtest sessions of "The Eighth Sea". We're a group of players who have shared gaming over the past eight years or so, but most of that time I've been the GM.
Two of the players are always moaning about how they'd like to play in this sort of game, or they'd love to be a part of that sort of game...but when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is....silence.
Another of the players always likes to interrupt established storylines with little things that involve only her character to the exclusion of everyone else in the room, but when it comes to sharing that imagination space with others she just gets offended and clams up shut.
The other members of the group just like being along for the ride.
Most of the players agree that we need to do something new and interesting to keep the dynamics of our games from stagnating, and I've tried numerous methods to create new levels of interaction. Many of these have been met with apathy, and some with hostility. None of the other members of the group have been willing to put their ideas on the line to spice things up.
It's frustrating and I feel your pain.
V
greyorm:
Your situation matches, in a number of respects, my own situation a few years ago.
I had an on-line group I wanted to introduce more Narrativst play methods and ideas to, and I talked about such to them, included Narrativist-leaning rules in our D&D game, and so forth, all to no effect. No one ever did anything with them, to my immense frustration.
It required a lengthy group chat and follow-up e-mail conversation in which various confusions and problems were finally unearthed, stemming from habits picked up by years of traditional gaming, and unvoiced concerns and confusions based on all those existing ideas of what "gaming" looks like, the way it functions, and the ingrained assumptions of the consequences to the game experience for particular behaviors.
That managed to get us all on the same page, the group finally grasping what it was I was trying to do and what experience I desired from gaming. But in the long-run, even that did not help. The games were rough and seemed (to me) forced and just not where I was having fun. I don't know if I'd already hit the burnout point by then or not, but I eventually stopped playing RPGs, except with my own kids on the rare occasion, both because the whole experience had burned me out on them and I'm gun-shy of the idea of play now (and, also significantly, because I haven't been able to find any local groups that mesh with my schedule).
Based on all this, I would suggest finding a new group that matches your desires. You have one guy already, the one who wants to play Donjon. Start there. Since there will only be two of you, grab a copy of Mythic Game Master Emulator and use it as either the gamemaster or as a pseudo extra-player to get that "surprise feedback/plot twists" you want.
It occurs to me that you might even be able to handle playing with your regular play group using that, since it won't be "you" coming up with those twists, but you will be receiving such as if a player drew a Swashbuckling card -- though it doesn't do much if what you really want is player ownership of the game.
Another thing you can do is point them to this thread and ask them what they think your group and/or you should do, clearly and non-aggressively pointing out your frustration with the way things are going and your desire to enjoy the gaming experience again.
See if you can all come to some sort of consensus or understanding with them that doesn't rely on ultimatums or pressuring people to do things for others (ie: often mistakenly thought to be "compromising" and which is usually the quickest way to self-destruct your gaming group). What can you all have fun doing? And, BTW, if "nothing" is the answer, that's the answer.
Or maybe it is time to quit playing altogether and put those energies towards something you might enjoy more: if you love setting up situations and backgrounds and stories right up to the point of play, and back out after that, maybe you would more happy writing fiction than playing. Or not. That's something you have to figure out.
Whatever you decide, what you absolutely should not do is burn yourself out: knowingly disappointing yourself with the current group by pushing forward, trying to reshape them, and it certainly sounds like you are burning out. You'll tire of the process -- and you'll tire of gaming -- long before they are playing such that they play without you being disappointed or the whole thing feeling like work.
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...players suggesting plot elements would wreck the GM's carefully prepared story lines. (The point I found particularly surprising, since my group looks down on both railroading and illusionism.)
This seems (to me) to be a fairly important factor in the situation.
I don't know your group, so I don't know if this is the case here, but I've known and played in (and even GMed) numerous groups who claim the exact same, vocally defending the idea that an open, player-driven world is good and true, and yet when you get into play it happens that the exact opposite is the reality in play: some measure of illusionism ensuring the GM's imagined plot and various pre-planned events occur as intended.
Now, you can always point out to such a group that this is happening, but denial is a strong force and if people are invested in playing as if there is no man behind the curtain, the backlash can be angry (even vicious) for your dispelling the illusion of free-will they are relying on for their fun or accepting out of habit.
Mainly, most people just don't like it when others point out any disconnect between their statements/beliefs and actual actions, whatever the situation (from gaming to religion to politics to education to etc). Like I said, I don't know your group, so I can't say what the case is with them. I'm just putting it out there as an experiential observation that could affect how you want to go forward.
Regardless, this disconnect between "hating railroading and illusionism" and "protecting the GM's railroad" should be discussed by your group.
Greis:
I went for a different approach when I started introducing narrative elements into my D&D-campaign (E3.5, Mystara-setting).
1) I don't bother with calling it narrative rules or anything. I just call it houserules, whose purpose is solely to benefit the players by giving them more options.
2) I also assure the players, that no matter how they use these rules, they cannot ruin the plot or my plans or whatever (actually my plans are basicly a series of bangs, so it's hard to ruin anything, but none the less).
3) Most of the houserules have been following the principle "Do something, gain +2 modifier":
- Find a spell in the library? Describe the book in which you hope to find it, gain +2 bonus to relevant skill
- Succeed in disabling a trap. Tell how your mentor taught you, and gain a +2 bonus to Disable Device.
- Play (or tell) a scene, where you question a bartender, gain +2 Gather Information
etc.
I got inspired by Cigarette Smoking Girls about how you could get a bonus by following the anothers advice. I changed it to gain a bonus by adding details or playing a scene. A +2 modifier in D&D can often be worth the trouble, otherwise just spice it up to +4.
The results have been amazing. All kinds of minor and yet very telling scenes are being played out, my players add details to the setting, and it has become very easy for them to do. And in all of this they are inevitably introducing all the spicy details I need to further expand plots and intrigues.
So do it slowly, give a tangible bonus for trying (not for the quality, lets not bother with that), and guide your players. For example, a rogue needs to unlock a door. Tell the player, if he can relate a small story/flashback-scene about how he was taught this skill, he gains a onetime +4 mod. Hopefully he jumps at this opportunity and then invents a mentor! Or have a cleric to relate some of his tenets next time, he needs to do a Heal-check, or have the wizard tell about his old master the next time he needs to succeed a Knowledge Arcana-roll - perhaps you can play it as flashback-scenes!
If your player suggests an alternative way of getting the bonus, then ride with it. And remember to use the things, your players introduce in these small scenes - consider them nice little flags to areas that can be expanded.
Also I sure that you can sneak these options into your Shadowrun game - just have the players add technical details about weaponry, cyberware and computerprogrammes.
Mason:
That's a good idea. I'll definitely be giving that a shot.
greynorm, as much as my group professes to hate both railroading and illusionism, I've known for some time (instinctually anyway) that its not as simple as that. I was running a True20 last year set in mythic Carthage, and I put a lot of work into it as a sandbox style environment where the PC's could go places and explore things, and the game floundered. Only when I specifically started designing linked, linear scenarios did the game build any momentum at all.
So even though my group thinks of railroading as a dirty word, they still respond to it in the short term. They move very confidently towards immediate, GM-provided goals. The overall feeling is, in a prep-heavy game like D&D, in a given session it's rude to jump the tracks. Gone are the days when we improv and riff until the wee hours of the morn. The downside of this is the games end up being a series of disconnected challenges, its pretty rare for there to be a story that anyone (aside from maybe the GM) is invested in. When we sit around telling gaming stories we talk about the Who, What, When, Where and How, but there is rarely any mention of the Why. That element of the game has sadly atrophied.
Lance D. Allen:
I think that if they were familiar with the concept of Participationism, they'd be fine with that.
Railroading is bad because it implies that the players are forced down a particular track against their will.
Illusionism is bad because the DM is basically lying to them.
Participationism, on the other hand, can be functional. The players know that the DM is authoring the story. They want the DM to author the story, so they can explore the DM's story.
As for player investment.. There's the concept of flags. Are you familiar with it?
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