Running DnD with No Plot (Emergent Storytelling)

when I look at the stress that game Masters face it often has to do with campaign design and preparation modern tabletop role playing games like fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons have really pushed the idea of the adventure path or the overarching story narrative for your players to follow and I have two problems with this idea first it makes game preparation for a GM often feel like an exercise in creative writing I found that it gets me into this mindset of thinking what is my sequence of events that needs to happen in the next game session to push the overall narrative forward that I'm trying to tell and that just seems wrong secondly storytelling and creative writing can be hard really hard is one of the things I've struggled a lot with when I game mastered fifth edition I'm not a writer I'm not Jr tolken or George R Martin or a Joe abber cromby yet I'm somehow supposed to come up with great story beats week after week it just kind of felt exhausting and I've seen other GMS express the same sentiment online and unfortunately it can be the cause for GMS to burn out and just not feel motivated to run games anymore most of us don't have a great grasp on how an overarching story should go if we did we'd all be successful fiction writers hell I'd argue that most authors of those published campaign modules don't know how to write a good overarching story if they did you wouldn't see whole Reddit subcommunities pop up or blog posts telling you how to remix those Adventures to make them work in the first place I think the mindset of the GM prepping the storyline is a dangerous line of thinking for the health of your game a tabletop role playing game is a lot different than a book or a movie or a video game those have predetermined plots and plans for the characters to follow the gaming table does not the story happens at the table the players make choices and then you as the game master adjudicate the consequences and that's the magic of role playing games it's you don't know what's going to happen until the things unfold at the table if I decide that they will do X then y followed by Z well I've developed these internal biases in my mind and I'll try to force my players down this predetermined path so they can see my story if they're doing those things predetermined by the GM then they've lost their agency at the table and I think they've lost a lot of fun at the table once they realize they don't have any true choices that move the narrative forward don't fall into this trap so you may be wondering well if storylines aren't the way to go is there a better way and I believe the answer is yes and at least it's something that's worked well for me in my games as I've shifted towards it I talk a lot about sandbox style games on my channel because honestly they've changed how I GM significantly but a Sandbox is just a tool or a style of play what's more important is the idea of emergent storytelling hi welcome back the Earth Moe I'm Randall and today we're going to be talking about emerging storytelling and the tools you need to get started with that style of play so you might be wondering well what is emerging storytelling it's essentially giving your players as much agency as possible let them make choices within the game world and have the world react to their decisions we use different tools and ideas to help facilitate natural challenges and situations that occur as your players explore the world and from those organic elements and Explorations you start to see the story emerge from the play at the table and all of a sudden you have different factions at play and villains identified and your players form goals on what they want to accomplish within the world we talked a lot about how modern overarching storyline campaigns have this idea of of plot baked into them there are different events and things that happen to the PCS and they need to do certain things in order to collect their different plot coupons as they move along the sequence of events that you have planned out for them in emerging storytelling we do not prep plots we design situations I credit the alexandrian for his influential blog post for this idea and you should definitely check it out if you haven't seen it already situations are like localized areas and action for your PCS to explore tiny Snippets of the greater world that your players get to deal with or ignore at their own choosing but if you string enough of these different interesting situations together you start to get an emerging story from the decisions that your players and NPCs make within the game World essentially you need to think about the differing adventuring areas and locations that your players are likely to explore and then you need to make interesting situations happening at those locations for your players to interact with have different NPCs and monsters pursuing their own goals in the different situations what do they want why do they want it and what happens when the PCS show up and start mucking about in the same area if you've been enjoying the video so far you could really help out my situation by giving the video a like and consider subscribing to the the channel let's take a look at the adventure Halls of the blood King by dieago noera for old school Essentials Halls of the blood king is an open-ended Adventure site there are some loose hooks to entice the players to explore it but essentially they have to be motivated by their own Ambitions and enticement of treasure while it's a location-based Adventure the players are exploring the castle grounds of the blood king a ruler of all vampires there's an established situation within the adventure and the back tells us that the premise pitch is on the back with the rising of the blood moon the accursed Abode of the blood king returns to this world the lord of all vampires comes to claim the blood that is owed to him his Halls contain treasure and secrets that would make any ambitious Adventure abandoned reason and caution to seek them out will you risk your soul for gold and glory in the halls of the blood king now you might think well any over ing story module could have a similar setup what makes this module so special well when you look inside of the book or any of necrotic gnomes Adventure modules you won't find a part one or a chapter one it's just a brief description of the situation some rumors Hooks and unanswered Mysteries and then you've got the key Adventure location and that's it you go and your players explore and the different NPCs and factions interact with them in the story emerges from that there's no predetermined plan within it speaking of factions NPCs and monsters these are what add life to your locations and situations ultimately our stories emerge from the characters within them that includes both the player characters and the NPCs you control as the game master make your NPCs interesting in the world they need to have differing ideas goals and motivations some of those your players will agree with and some they will clash with but ultimately it's up to the party to decide who they like and who they want to work against your NPC and factions goals can be encapsulated within a single situation or you can have them a larger piece of the puzzle that is your campaign setting if they get disrupted at one juncture by the PCS well they might have different a news to go about achieving their goals so they can try a different one in the future assuming they weren't outrightly destroyed by the PCS in their last encounter with them goals really let you have a framework for how your NPCs and factions will act within the world I have a video that goes over factions in a sandbox a bit more I'll link it up here and in the description if you want to check it out going back to our case St study the halls of the blood king we see that there are factions in our location-based module there are some motivational spoilers here for the adventure so if you want to play the module without this knowledge just skip to the time stamp on the screen now we get a brief description of who they are and what their goals are within the castle Halls we have the blood king and his vampire aristocracy the blood king is concerned with collecting his blood tributes in the aristocracy are concerned with conspiring against one another we have the vampire Rebels who are led by the blood King's fake daughter she despises the blood king and is plotting a coup against him we have a vampire hunter who's been trapped inside the castle since the last time it appeared in the world and they've done some dark things to survive and she still despises the vampires and wishes to destroy them and then there are a couple more minor factions there are the blood spiders which are a group of pets of the blood King that have grown a bit out of control and lastly there's a strange sentien extra plar fungi that's growing in the dungeons that wishes to expand outside of the halls of the blood king the module even lists out some of the relationships between the groups so you have a good sense of how to play the factions off one another all of its great stuff and it's really simple it fits on a single page but yet it offers so much that you can play multiple sessions with the module and have a great time if you're building a campaign with an emerging story you'll start to find your legs after a bit let the players explore some of the different areas and situations to get a sense of the different factions and monsters that live there they'll start to interact with them and make decisions about what to do with them ultimately your players choices need to have consequences some of them will be good some of them will be bad once your emerging story has developed a bit and the players start to build a reputation for El now is a good time to start introducing those consequences and bringing them into action think back on the different factions they've crossed if they weren't outright destroyed by the PCS how can they come back to haunt the players or if they don't directly Target the PCS think about which factions have goals that conflict with the PC's established goals maybe your players are trying to recover a special magical weapon but that weapon happened to be created by the shadow priest of a cult that the PCS have already crossed well now you can place them in situations where that cult is also looking for the magical weapon and they can come into conflict with one another the conflict should start to feel natural because they're organic they've come from the decisions made at the table and that's a great thing your characters will pursue their own goals they may choose to interact with different factions and ignore others well if you want you can let the factions that they are aren't interested in drop by the wayside that's a completely valid way to go about running your game but you can also just have those factions quietly working in the background on their own goals in the game dungeon World these faction goals are described as fronts fronts are a way to track different impending plans or dangers in the world around the PCS fronts are a way of cultivating some emerging story for the future if their plans are un interrupted by the PCS or other factions in the world then they will start to make noticeable changes to the world around the PCS at some point your players are going to start to notice that things have changed maybe the shadow cult goes ignored by the PCS and their goal is to capture the Frontier Village of Greenwall well let's say they succeed because the players do nothing to stop them then you'll have an area on the map that is suddenly taken over by this cult the PCS May notice refugees fleeing from that area or foul beasts starting to originate from that area of the map that the cult has taken over as they start to perform different profane experiments the world can happen around the players and events can organically emerge from the world due to the players choices or in actions against factions and NPCs I would caution some care here there are two areas where I can see going overboard with fronts first you can have too many of these fronts and that can start to feel hopeless for your players even if they're taking on one front they start to fall behind on others and they can just sort of feel like they aren't making any real progress I think it's a good idea to have the factions compete with one another in the background even if your players aren't dealing with the front that way one front doesn't overrun the players in a quick fashion if you're deciding to use them secondly it's really easy for your fronts to become over ing story arcs I would try to avoid having a big bad evil guy or a main villain in your game arise from events that your players have largely ignored in the game that would just feel like you're forcing some sort of storyline or Central villain on the players despite their choices so far I also probably wouldn't run more than one or two fronts at any given time maybe three and if I had that many I'd make their progress take some real time in game before they start to see noticeable changes in the world there are a few tools I have found invaluable for fostering emerging storytelling opportunities at the table we've talked about fronts you're going to need a way to manage those fronts and progress of those goals essentially you have a stated goal for the faction what they wish to achieve then you need to list out the three to five steps that they're going to take to achieve that goal or front make a list so that it describes it as if the players were not impeding with the progress of the front at all once your players get involved you can revisit how your faction needs to adjust their goals to adapt to the PCS or you can decide if the goal is lost for them and they need to pursue something new if they're not totally destroyed here's a quick example of a front let's say the shadow cult's goal is to open a gateway to the nether Realm well their first step could be capturing the village of green wall then once they have that Village secure they need to excavate the ancient Gateway located underneath the village then once they have the Gateway they can perform a summoning ritual during the solar eclipse activating the gateway to the nether realm for resolution of a faction's goals you can use a couple of different systems I found a couple that I like first is mouse Ritter which has a really simple faction system that you can check out totally free it uses simple resource and dice resolution mechanics to modify a factions goal progress you can set each of those different steps in your front as a goal using the system and once they've made enough progress you can consider that step complete moving on to the next step within the front alternatively you can use worlds without number which has a very indepth faction miname if you want to add that level of detail to your game you can do something known as the faction turn like sort of like a dungeon turn which lets you play out the different factions plans and use their assets to determine if they succeed or not world without number is also completely free and you can check out a version of that I'll include links to both of those in the description of the video so you can check them out Random Encounters are the bread and butter of emerging storytelling so you're going to want to have random encounter tables and contact tables craft your encounter tables to include the different factions and NPCs that you want your players to interact with in both Dungeons and the Wilderness context of your setting I like to include an additional column in my random encounter tables that provide context for the encounter so it's not just something you know I have to make up on the flly so maybe for example we have the shadow cult and they're transporting a hostage and let's say in this case the hostage happens to be one of The Baron's men okay now you have the spontaneous situation that your players can react to but there's a little bit of context to it and their decisions can affect the world and the factions around them because you've tailored your encounter tables to do so maybe the players rescue The Baron's man and they find out he was a scout who went to the Village of Greenwall and he learned when he was there that the shadow cult is unearthing some sort of eldrich Gateway okay now your players have a new adventure location to check out if they want and you've sort of developed this emerging storytelling opportunity just from a random encounter additionally you're going to want to use rumor tables rumor tables let you see different possible areas of Adventure and situations that your players can explore when your players interact with different NPCs feel free to share rumors with them this helps sort of that organic story form by providing more information to the PCS what they decide to do with that information is of course up to them rumors can be true partially true or totally false if your rumor is totally false you should have something else of interest there that takes its place maybe instead of the dungeon being a prison of the Shadow Demon it's actually the Crypt of a holy Saint the rumor was seated by the Saints followers to keep the place safe from Treasure robbers it's also a good idea to add hints of the faction's current goals in your rumor table you can easily have NPC's mentioned they saw refugees on the road from the area around green wall where the shadow cult has taken over or someone saw the sky turned pitch black during the middle of the day down there these different elements add some flavor and context to the World Around The Players Continue to update and refresh your encounter and rumor tables based on the different elements that have emerged from your story organically and you really just sort of help keep the engine running and the story fueled for play at your table emerging story has become my favorite way of playing RPGs lately I find that it takes a lot of pressure off of me for trying to come up with that sort of perfect storyline and puts a lot more Focus on creatively thinking about the consequences to what is unfolding at the game table due to the player decisions I really enjoy the randomized aspect of it too from the encounter tables and the Rumor tables and the different things that the players choose to do I don't know what's going to happen at the table just as much as the players don't know and it's really a fun and exciting feeling as the GM to have sort of that rather than kind of knowing the predetermined path that the players are going to take and you as a GM realize that all that has sort of sprung up not from your own story plotting process but rather the tools and systems you put in place and the decisions and the dice rolls that are happening at the table to make it come to life and it's just such a beautiful thing I really enjoy it because you realize that RPG storytelling is not something pre-planned by the game master but it's something that happens together as a group at the table ultimately as long as in your friend are having a good time playing whichever way you do that's most important let me know in the comments below if you play in a similar emergent storytelling fashion or if you prefer the more overarching story campaign sort of way if you enjoyed the video please give it a like thanks for hopping aboard the Earth Moe and I will see you in the next one

Channel: Earthmote

Views: 67,246

Keywords: ose, dnd, dungeons and dragons, old school essentials, osr, old school gaming, BX, B/X, Basic Expert, TSR, Necrotic Gnome, WoTC, Wizards of the Coast, 5th Edition, 5e, 5e D&D, 5e Dungeons and Dragons, sandbox campaign, sandbox game, Player Character, PC, Sandbox PC, storytelling, emergent story, emergent storytelling

Id: Z7FaSGq09E8

Length: 21min 20sec (1280 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2024