[gamist RPGs] Player Driven Games and
Natespank:
On a tangent:
In my experience, players like certain things in their games. I can't say this list is comprehensive but I think these are crucial:
The players must be:
Stimulated
Challenged
Important and doing important things
Curious
Badass
Respected and acclaimed
Free
and they must care about what's going on.
This list is in NO WAY exhaustive. Regardless, what does this mean for "sandbox" games?
Natespank:
Player Importance, Player Driven Games and Shared Authorship
As I said, I think the players have to feel their characters are important or special in some way. Few RPGs are about Joe the mundane who works at a factory his whole life, who retires and spawns a legacy of factory workers who fill middle management positions in various fields, never leaving the town they were born in. They also crucially have to feel that their actions, mission or project is important.
A player can always say that they matter and that their actions are important. For most people though they're less able to convince themselves than others are able to convince them. They doubt themselves- and even if they're self-sure, people are still social animals. We learn socially. Typically we're more sure of something if it's believed by masses of extremely-certain reputable people. Especially if these people are leader figures.
What this means for game design is that player-driven games are inherently tricky- they'll certainly repulse some people. It's like what contracycle says: after a while the actions themselves, the PCs and their activities, take on a degree of hollowness.
As a design issue I think that everyone's right- a game can't normally be entirely player-driven. The DM has to provide some sort of end goal for the campaign- an ending and ways for the players to pursue this end.
This makes sense in a few ways: I'd argue that the DM is absolutely the group's leader, both in terms of rules and in terms of most social contracts. He can create an entire world where certain areas and things have great significance, and he can create a mass of reputable people who will assign acclaim and significance to the PCs and their quests. To build a campaign goal the PCs may see this as a "extremely important, big goal" and it will not only unify the entire campaign but will validate the PCs investment in the game. Success ought also to be doubtful- that way it's a challenge ;)
I'm going to insert a heroic goal, a paragon goal, and an epic goal, and break my game into 3 distinct campaigns merely with the same characters. Thus, the "end goal" of the heroic campaign can be achieved at around level 10 +/-2. I'll decide on the specifics in a day or two- probably a level 15 dragon at level 10 or so.
As to the player-driven aspect of the game- I need to dilute it until it's at a level where the PCs truly thrive on their choices and goals. However, I have a devious workaround as well: I can reward player initiatives and tangents by bestowing the players with more importance from the world. At first their actions might be arbitrary and slightly bored but they cause ripples and gradually get caught up in some important stuff- everything keeps getting more mixed up and dangerous. I'd like to use this approach in parallel to the DM-provided campaign goal method.
I'd love criticism.
Natespank:
I forgot! About shared authorship and man as a social creature.
(btw, I mean "man" as genderless; our language sucks, i'm just defaulting to the male pronoun)
Since importance is most strongly assigned by those outside the player, I was thinking about how shared authorship works. In my games I absolutely encourage my characters to come up with ideas and run with them:
"My grandfather was a duke, a lycanthrope." -the paladin says. I respond by making the princess familiar with him and his family's history- the player just created a branch of nobility in the land that I'll incorporate.
I reserve the final say though- I refuse a lot of ideas too.
What I'm thinking is that, since self-importance is relatively weak, shared authorship may weaken the game in ways. I think the other players can riff off another player's ideas like magic, but to that player he may feel less stimulated than by ideas coming from outside himself.
I'd like to continue to use shared authorship, but I think I'll tone it down a bit. Ironically, denying the players their every wish may increase their enjoyment.
Natespank:
I apologize if this is off topic but I discovered this last night: a remake of the original Legend of Zelda plus custom modules for PC.
http://www.zeldaclassic.com/what.php
The NES version is slightly better- faster projectiles, better controls, slightly harder- but as long as I'm talking about the game so much this way I can show you something awesome.
ahem, sorry.
contracycle:
A lot of more recent games have firmly rejected your model of the GM as the necessary "leader" of the group. What you are describing is not an automatic or necessary structure, it is just one way or arranging authority wqith the game.
Take for example a game that is still pretty orthodox in methods, like Rune. In this case the GM is a rotating chair in which players take turns; whats more, when GMing a player gets points for constructing appropriate challanges, and these points can then be plowed back into their character when the hand the GMship on to someone else. so in the bcase of each adventure, there is still a GM in the form of there being an admionistrator, an opponent of sorts, and a guiding hand, but there is no GM in the sense of a singular influential personality.
The GM is really just another player. They may have a different set of executive powers, as it were, to those held by the "regular" players; but the various components of what the GM is empowered to do can be split up an distributed among several people. And the existance of a unifying goal is not actually dependent on the existence of the GM, or indeed the GM's individual and personal inspiration.
Unifying goals can actually be rules-based and programmatic.
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