Before I start, I'd like to direct you to this video. It's about going beyond "fun" (as described in the dictionary).
- - - - - The more I think about it, the more I end up thinking that maybe people have been confusing the term "fun" with other ideas/emotions for so long that when they say "fun" they actually mean a completely different term, which in turn is actually an explanation as to why they keep coming back to the game.
Let's say Tomb of Horrors. There's nothing "light-hearted" about a tournament-style competition where the objective is to get as deep into the maze of traps and deadly passageways as possible, yet people who loved (and still love) that adventure would tell you that it's "fun". Then let's go about Call of Cthulu, which is certainly not about going around with any form of humor.
I think the terminology being used -- fun -- actually refers to another, more accurate term that probably didn't gain traction due to how it doesn't slide off the tongue as the given term: engaging.
People want engaging games, even though these games aren't always "fun" or even "enjoyable". Think Silent Hill, Spec Ops: The Line, or a TRPG where you subject your avatar (and yourself) to hours and hours of drama, suspense, tension, horror, and suffering. Is it really "fun" to watch your character suffer negative levels, fall off cliffs, get stuck in death traps or devoured by monsters, or any other stuff in a TRPG? If you use the term "fun" in the same way as "engaging" perhaps the answer is yes, because even if it's not the same type of "fun" as more casual games -- those that do, in fact, fit the term "fun" as normally defined -- it still keeps you enthralled and wanting to play.
Of course, some people do literally play it up as a light-hearted and "fun" endeavor, treating TRPGs as "just another game", but I think it's that perception that hurts the genre and game industry in general. On a D&D table for example, if you have one player being all serious and engaged even though he's not experiencing the game in a "fun" manner, while another ignoring the seriousness and sometimes even intentionally messes with the campaign for the simple reason that "it's just a game, and it's supposed to be fun!", that by itself can be considered very disruptive. What more when you have the entire game industry being unable to develop deep, engaging games because the biggest purchasing body and the people in charge of determining what sort of games are being released *all* look for the "fun" in a game?
And I think this is why "old-timer" gamers express lament if not rage over how un-deadly or how un-fun some of the newer games are: that element of danger of being easily killed and having to restart all over again, the fear of potentially having to re-calculate all your stats because of level or ability drain, that factor of uncertainty and powerless-ness... all that was basically what made the game "fun" for them. It was engaging to them because it actually was not fun, at least not in the normal sense of "fun".
[ I think the thing about the mis-use of the word "fun" explains why, for several years, "normal" folks often looked at gamers in a weird way. ]
A bit more controversial: I think what really made D&D 4E disconnect from previous editions is the fact that it was designed with level 1 PCs less likely to die in one hit, as well as the fact that there's class parity. Some people were so used to this non-magic caster powerless-ness that when faced with the ability of non-casters to be almost equals (at least in battle), even though they tried to play 4E they ended up not liking it, with most not really being able to explain why beyond presentation issues (classes being same-y, and similar complaints). Heck, I think that what really started the problem was 3E, where all caster limitations -- the ones that made people consider all 2E (and earlier) classes balanced -- were easily and effectively removed from the game; after all, 4E had to connect with the 3.x player base by giving them access to casters that didn't have limitations, as well as the pre-3E player base by giving them access to casters that HAVE limitations. Pretty weird that turned out to be, if you ask me.
Back to the discussion: In my (13th Age) campaigns, I have the players themselves determine the tone, flavor and pacing of the campaign using their relationship with the Icons of the world, combined with their unique things and character motivations. This resulted in my two groups having very different campaigns:
One is more drama-centric, with a gradual build-up towards epic greatness and whose stories don't necessarily involve combat (2+ hour sessions have gone without combat).
Another is more action-focused, with lots of crazy antics and a bit of backstabbing here and there too, lots of combat involved (usually instigated by the players one way or another).
To help DMs analyze their own campaigns, I'd like to ask a couple of questions:
What are the key emotions or ideas evoked by your best campaigns, ignoring for the moment the word "fun"?
What are the best highlights of your most memorable campaign?
What are the pitfalls or shortcomings of your least memorable campaign(s), and what in retrospect could you have done to prevent them, fix them, or at least keep the interest of the campaign(s) going, if it was possible to fix at all?
Additional questions may come up later on, will add them as either edits to this post, or as follow-up replies to posts here.
EDIT: Since apparently in spite of the video and the above text (which was supposed to give the context of the discussion, some still look at fun = engaging and vice versa, so I would like to ask those people instead: what constitutes the term "fun" for you in your favorite game(s)? What are the core asthetics that you look for in those games?
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
To help DMs analyze their own campaigns, I'd like to ask a couple of questions:
What are the key emotions or ideas evoked by your best campaigns, ignoring for the moment the word "fun"?
What are the best highlights of your most memorable campaign?
What are the pitfalls or shortcomings of your least memorable campaign(s), and what in retrospect could you have done to prevent them, fix them, or at least keep the interest of the campaign(s) going, if it was possible to fix at all?
Additional questions may come up later on, will add them as either edits to this post, or as follow-up replies to posts here.
Chaosfang, first let me say that this is an excellent post. I don't only want to quote it, I want to staple it to some peoples foreheads so all they can see is this post so it is forced to seep into their eye sockets, travel down their neural pathways and crash into their brains. Very good link, very good analysis. No surprise this post has gone without a single reply up to this point. SIGH.
Let me answer your excellent questions.
1. Prior to my current campaign, my group unanimously stated (aloud...to everyone they talked to) that my best campaign ever was a Star Wars campaign that revolved around midi-chlorians. Oh yeah...you read that right. MIDI-FREAKING-CHLORIANS. See, I set up a situation where there was an Empire, a Repubic and a Sith Empire. The Empire and Republic had a truce going and the Sith Empire was all about shaking it up and taking over. Well, the players were a group that was a joint-creation between the Empire & Republic...kinda like if Russia & the US made an A-Team to deal with special threats to both their interests.
Well, anyway, they found and helped destroy a massive Sith superweapon called The Hand of the Dark Side...a weapon that used powerful Force users descended from certain family lines (Sunrider, Marek, Skywalker, etc) as conduits to target worlds. Specifically to target the midi-chlorians in people on that world. The midi-chlorians would go beserk, kill whoever they were in and then spread like a disease, killing everyone else on the planet like a super-plague. This all took moments to accomplish...every living thing dead and the planet intact. Pretty nasty. So this involved kidnapping (the force users), cloning and weapons creation. Dark stuff considering one of the kidnapped people was a Jedi's baby.
They destroyed the super weapon and that is where stuff got interesting...because one of their senatorial benefactors and all-around awesome-guy, Senator Haladin, revealed that the Republic had created it's own Hand of the Dark Side...to use to enforce "Law & order" across the galaxy and remove the Sith and lingering Imperial threat. The Jedi master in the group also found out that his long-time friend and council-member was ALSO in on this. Can you say betrayal?
This got them fired up like nothing you could imagine! Holy crap did they respond! And in varied ways! The player of an Imperial special ops officer went rogue, influenced by promises from the spirit of a Sith the team had killed who took up refuge in a Sith holocron. He embraced the Dark side and tempted the Jedi masters apprentice (also a PC) along with him, convincing him that he was being immensely held back. They betrayed the group (BETRAYAL!), re-kidnapped the baby and high-tailed it...intending to bargain with the Sith for assistance against the co-opted Republic and the Empire (poor Empire...they did nothing wrong this time!). The other players over the course of a couple games managed to aggressively track them down (while I handled the split party both doing things) and the Jedi master player HUMBLED the apprentice in a lightsaber duel. The special agent escaped and allied himself with a Darth of the Sith (I had a whole council of them) and the apprentice, coming to his senses, repented. Redemption.
The players tracked down a planet that housed an OLD (this game took place over a thousand years after the original trilogy) storehouse & museum of dark side artifacts and super weapons. In it was a massive cloning facility. They had to fight a clone of a rogue Jedi they knew (discovering it was a clone after the fact. BETRAYAL!) and then found that the cloning facility was devoted to perfecting a process where a clone body could take near limitless levels of dark side energy without deteriorating. This would allow a cloned member of the aforementioned bloodlines to be an infinite battery in a Hand of the Dark Side which had as its only weakness the fact that it would burn through it's force-users with every activation of the weapon...it would just burn them straight out. They also found the place had had its data uploaded and transmitted to at least one other planet recently. They resolved to destroy the planet (which they did using one of the superweapons stored there) and then tracked down the signal.
Haladin, the republic senator, outed himself as a member of the Mandalorian group Death Watch and that this was a master plan to put the galaxy under Death Watch control with himself as a new Emperor. Because of the intense hostilities between the three sides, non-Death Watch Mandalorians had been dying in SCORES because of their usage as mercenary forces. This guy was getting everything he wanted. Naturally, the non-Death Watch Mandalorian mercenary in the group felt...well...BETRAYAL and righteous fury over this.
So they tracked the signal...had a big show-down on a junk planet with the previously mentioned Jedi Council Member hard-liner traitor and former friend of the PC jedi master...who also revealed that he had orchestrated the greatest failing in that Jedi masters life to remove him from the council years before to make a bunch of this plan able to move forward. That failure had involved the Jedi master believing he KILLED another Jedi...but it was his friend that actually made this happen through the use of a little Force manipulation. BETRAYAL! Relief? Anger! Oh yeah. Similarly, this was the second attempt at getting a Force sensitive child into the hands of the little cabal to be used as a double-agent with the Sith...the first attempt had included wiping out a colony of non-Jedi force users except for one child...but that child was deemed too weak in the Force to be of interest to the Sith. Guess who that was? Yup, the remaining PC in the party my wife was playing. BETRAYAL! ANGER!
Well, big fight...nice and cathartic...Jedi council member killed.
The PCs then raced across the galaxy to stop Haladin from firing the Hand on the innocent Imperial capital world in an attempt to obliterate all life on it amid a massive threeway space battle between Sith, Republic and Imperial forces. This took the form of two seperate attacks...one on the power source of the weapon and one against Haladin himself (Jedi took the power source and the Mando and non-Jedi took Haladin). Two big fights ensued...long time enemies were killed on both fronts and the second Hand of the Republic (gotta love renaming things for propoganda purposes!) was disabled and destroyed. RELIEF!
It is important to note here that, throughout these events in the game, they were dealing with an agent of Sith intelligence (basically their secret police) that they thought could use the Force to teleport. In reality, the guy could simply use the Force to conceal himself from sight, smell, and hearing while making himself basically invisible to the Force itself. They had always been aware this guy was around and he had made himself known a couple times especially when a Jedi betrayed them and when the special ops PC and apprentice PC were making deals and dabbling in the Dark Side as well. He was fairly inscrutable, masked and typically quiet. He unnerved them since they thought he could just pop in whenever. Nice bit of mental games he could play with his Force ability. Oh yeah...forgot to mention...PARANOIA! Anyway, he was part of the big fight in the power core...when they unmasked him they found out he was a clone of the first young Jedi that he betrayed them. Well, at the end of the game, they mentioned this to one of the captured enemies they had not-killed in the big battles...and he simply replied "What? No. I've seen him without his mask. He wasn't a clone of that man"...that left them scratching their heads. CONFUSION!
The game wrapped up around there with one more session to get everyone to really just unwind and decide what their PCs would do from there on out. At the end, I did a wrap up...then narrated a scene in which the non-clone Sith agent spoke to his 'boss'. It went something like this... "No, sir, no unforseen eventualities. I was able to retrieve the data without incident even though the facility was lost. ... Yes, you were right. The Empire's fleet has been decimated...the Republic's leadership is in a shambles...the Jedi are reeling...and the so-called Darth's have had their number halved and their influence undermined. ... No, no one is aware of your involvement. Everyone involved only saw the cloning production as a means to produce endless ammunition for their weapon. They never suspected the research was used to create your new body. ... Yes, master ... I never doubted you, master. Everything proceeded as you had foreseen, Lord Palpatine"
And that's where the game ended. On the massive MIND-SCREW that pretty much everything that happened had been part of an insidious, long-term contingency plan involving the Emperor being revived in a stronger body. Since then my players have alternately argued between returning to the game to see what happens and leaving it to their imaginations. The latter has won out.
So no, not a classically 'fun' game...it was pretty dark...even the ending was bittersweet AT BEST considering the loss of life and the return of a great evil. Nothing light-hearted about it...I even had PCs trying to KILL one another in character. Betrayals abounded...but they felt organic...they were believable and, worst, they actually trusted a number of the characters that betrayed them, making it all the worse. High tension game. Very high tension. They AGONIZED over decisions and the stress level was high. I loved it. They loved it. The overwhelming tone of the game was definitely a feeling of betrayal and deceit without a doubt...a feeling of being unsure what or who to believe.
So I think that answers 1 and 2.
3? I have had too many campaigns I was not a fan of to count. Invariably one of the biggest problems with all of them was that there was too little choice for the PCs...there were stories, sure, but the players were just sorta going along, getting in fights and having story revealed to them. They didnt' feel invested. They didn't feel like they mattered enough. I wanted to tell a cool story and the stories WERE cool...they liked the stories quite a bit...but it didn't make for a fun game. Hell, I've even run some games where the players LIKED it and the story and whatnot...but behind the shield I felt unfulfilled...I felt like I was watching things I already knew...like seeing a re-run on television. There was no magic to it. No real unexpected. How to fix it? Ditch the story. Ditch the expectations. Let actions, just like in real life, dictate the story that happens. Make story the awesome by-product not the fixed destination. I had to let go of the reins and simply act as a judge...i should have been doing that all along.
I'm on a journey of enlightenment, learning and self-improvement. A journey towards mastery. A journey that will never end.
If you challenge me, prepare to be challenged. If you have something to offer as a fellow student, I will accept it. If you call yourself a master, prepare to be humbled. If you seek me, look to the path. I will be traveling it. #SuperDungeonMasterIITurbo
What are the key emotions or ideas evoked by your best campaigns, ignoring for the moment the word "fun"? - anticipation, disgust, urgency, heroism
What are the best highlights of your most memorable campaign? - the halfling bard fighting off a devil-possessed bridge while Paladin 1 makes a an absolutely EPIC horse ride for his life AWAY from the battle. - Paladin 2 INTIMIDATING the fiendish terrasque (as if terrasque weren't terrible enough) back through the gates of hell - the very lawful priest taking the effort to man-handle a glabrezu through another such gate rather than destroy it, because the devil hadn't 'served his time' - the mech battle on the blood plane (why not?) - the jousting match with meteors to protect the sailing ship on the sea of falling stars (astral plane) -
What are the pitfalls or shortcomings of your least memorable campaign(s), and what in retrospect could you have done to prevent them, fix them, or at least keep the interest of the campaign(s) going, if it was possible to fix at all? - I don't remember, lol. But the last campaign to fall apart was because I just totally ran out of ideas. I might have perservered with the campaign but the nature of the campaign lent itself to a lot of mass battles (roman-style army attempting to take over the world) which wore me out.
A rogue with a bowl of slop can be a controller.
WIZARD PC: Can I substitute Celestial Roc Guano for my fireball spells? DM: Awesome. Yes.
Yes, I watch the video. English is not my first language and even I can notice it is argument about semantics.
At least it have a funny voice narrating and some pictures flashing. That is fun. Or was it engaging?
Engaging (adj.) : charming, attractive Fun (noun) : enjoyment, amusement, or lighthearted pleasure: "anyone who turns up can join in the fun". Fun (adj.) : amusing, entertaining, or enjoyable: "it was a fun evening". Fun (verb) : joke or tease: "no need to get sore—I was only funning"; "they are just funning you".
Fun is an easy way to make games engaging, but it's not the only way. Ever tried Dear Esther, or Loneliness?
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
To help DMs analyze their own campaigns, I'd like to ask a couple of questions:
What are the key emotions or ideas evoked by your best campaigns, ignoring for the moment the word "fun"?
What are the best highlights of your most memorable campaign?
What are the pitfalls or shortcomings of your least memorable campaign(s), and what in retrospect could you have done to prevent them, fix them, or at least keep the interest of the campaign(s) going, if it was possible to fix at all?
Additional questions may come up later on, will add them as either edits to this post, or as follow-up replies to posts here.
Chaosfang, first let me say that this is an excellent post. I don't only want to quote it, I want to staple it to some peoples foreheads so all they can see is this post so it is forced to seep into their eye sockets, travel down their neural pathways and crash into their brains. Very good link, very good analysis. No surprise this post has gone without a single reply up to this point. SIGH.
I was actually considering posting this on your own The Fallacy of "Fun" thread due to relevance, but then again I think it deserved its own thread, since it's much less a discussion of why "to have fun" as a system design objective -- rather than a campaign design objective -- is an erroneous assumption, and more of a discussion that helps DMs analyze for themselves the reasons their best and worst campaigns actually became fun or not fun. Unless of course, their campaigns really did revolve around silliness and shallow, light-hearted gameplay, in which case their campaigns were designed with fun for fun.
And yeah, 200 reads as of post time, only 5 replies (apparently 6 counting a missing [deleted?] post), even though this thread was designed to encourage an actual forum of intellectual capability. *sigh*
1. Prior to my current campaign, my group unanimously stated (aloud...to everyone they talked to) that my best campaign ever was a Star Wars campaign that revolved around midi-chlorians. Oh yeah...you read that right. MIDI-FREAKING-CHLORIANS. See, I set up a situation where there was an Empire, a Repubic and a Sith Empire. The Empire and Republic had a truce going and the Sith Empire was all about shaking it up and taking over. Well, the players were a group that was a joint-creation between the Empire & Republic...kinda like if Russia & the US made an A-Team to deal with special threats to both their interests.
Well, anyway, they found and helped destroy a massive Sith superweapon called The Hand of the Dark Side...a weapon that used powerful Force users descended from certain family lines (Sunrider, Marek, Skywalker, etc) as conduits to target worlds. Specifically to target the midi-chlorians in people on that world. The midi-chlorians would go beserk, kill whoever they were in and then spread like a disease, killing everyone else on the planet like a super-plague. This all took moments to accomplish...every living thing dead and the planet intact. Pretty nasty. So this involved kidnapping (the force users), cloning and weapons creation. Dark stuff considering one of the kidnapped people was a Jedi's baby.
They destroyed the super weapon and that is where stuff got interesting...because one of their senatorial benefactors and all-around awesome-guy, Senator Haladin, revealed that the Republic had created it's own Hand of the Dark Side...to use to enforce "Law & order" across the galaxy and remove the Sith and lingering Imperial threat. The Jedi master in the group also found out that his long-time friend and council-member was ALSO in on this. Can you say betrayal?
This got them fired up like nothing you could imagine! Holy crap did they respond! And in varied ways! The player of an Imperial special ops officer went rogue, influenced by promises from the spirit of a Sith the team had killed who took up refuge in a Sith holocron. He embraced the Dark side and tempted the Jedi masters apprentice (also a PC) along with him, convincing him that he was being immensely held back. They betrayed the group (BETRAYAL!), re-kidnapped the baby and high-tailed it...intending to bargain with the Sith for assistance against the co-opted Republic and the Empire (poor Empire...they did nothing wrong this time!). The other players over the course of a couple games managed to aggressively track them down (while I handled the split party both doing things) and the Jedi master player HUMBLED the apprentice in a lightsaber duel. The special agent escaped and allied himself with a Darth of the Sith (I had a whole council of them) and the apprentice, coming to his senses, repented. Redemption.
The players tracked down a planet that housed an OLD (this game took place over a thousand years after the original trilogy) storehouse & museum of dark side artifacts and super weapons. In it was a massive cloning facility. They had to fight a clone of a rogue Jedi they knew (discovering it was a clone after the fact. BETRAYAL!) and then found that the cloning facility was devoted to perfecting a process where a clone body could take near limitless levels of dark side energy without deteriorating. This would allow a cloned member of the aforementioned bloodlines to be an infinite battery in a Hand of the Dark Side which had as its only weakness the fact that it would burn through it's force-users with every activation of the weapon...it would just burn them straight out. They also found the place had had its data uploaded and transmitted to at least one other planet recently. They resolved to destroy the planet (which they did using one of the superweapons stored there) and then tracked down the signal.
Haladin, the republic senator, outed himself as a member of the Mandalorian group Death Watch and that this was a master plan to put the galaxy under Death Watch control with himself as a new Emperor. Because of the intense hostilities between the three sides, non-Death Watch Mandalorians had been dying in SCORES because of their usage as mercenary forces. This guy was getting everything he wanted. Naturally, the non-Death Watch Mandalorian mercenary in the group felt...well...BETRAYAL and righteous fury over this.
So they tracked the signal...had a big show-down on a junk planet with the previously mentioned Jedi Council Member hard-liner traitor and former friend of the PC jedi master...who also revealed that he had orchestrated the greatest failing in that Jedi masters life to remove him from the council years before to make a bunch of this plan able to move forward. That failure had involved the Jedi master believing he KILLED another Jedi...but it was his friend that actually made this happen through the use of a little Force manipulation. BETRAYAL! Relief? Anger! Oh yeah. Similarly, this was the second attempt at getting a Force sensitive child into the hands of the little cabal to be used as a double-agent with the Sith...the first attempt had included wiping out a colony of non-Jedi force users except for one child...but that child was deemed too weak in the Force to be of interest to the Sith. Guess who that was? Yup, the remaining PC in the party my wife was playing. BETRAYAL! ANGER!
Well, big fight...nice and cathartic...Jedi council member killed.
The PCs then raced across the galaxy to stop Haladin from firing the Hand on the innocent Imperial capital world in an attempt to obliterate all life on it amid a massive threeway space battle between Sith, Republic and Imperial forces. This took the form of two seperate attacks...one on the power source of the weapon and one against Haladin himself (Jedi took the power source and the Mando and non-Jedi took Haladin). Two big fights ensued...long time enemies were killed on both fronts and the second Hand of the Republic (gotta love renaming things for propoganda purposes!) was disabled and destroyed. RELIEF!
It is important to note here that, throughout these events in the game, they were dealing with an agent of Sith intelligence (basically their secret police) that they thought could use the Force to teleport. In reality, the guy could simply use the Force to conceal himself from sight, smell, and hearing while making himself basically invisible to the Force itself. They had always been aware this guy was around and he had made himself known a couple times especially when a Jedi betrayed them and when the special ops PC and apprentice PC were making deals and dabbling in the Dark Side as well. He was fairly inscrutable, masked and typically quiet. He unnerved them since they thought he could just pop in whenever. Nice bit of mental games he could play with his Force ability. Oh yeah...forgot to mention...PARANOIA! Anyway, he was part of the big fight in the power core...when they unmasked him they found out he was a clone of the first young Jedi that he betrayed them. Well, at the end of the game, they mentioned this to one of the captured enemies they had not-killed in the big battles...and he simply replied "What? No. I've seen him without his mask. He wasn't a clone of that man"...that left them scratching their heads. CONFUSION!
The game wrapped up around there with one more session to get everyone to really just unwind and decide what their PCs would do from there on out. At the end, I did a wrap up...then narrated a scene in which the non-clone Sith agent spoke to his 'boss'. It went something like this... "No, sir, no unforseen eventualities. I was able to retrieve the data without incident even though the facility was lost. ... Yes, you were right. The Empire's fleet has been decimated...the Republic's leadership is in a shambles...the Jedi are reeling...and the so-called Darth's have had their number halved and their influence undermined. ... No, no one is aware of your involvement. Everyone involved only saw the cloning production as a means to produce endless ammunition for their weapon. They never suspected the research was used to create your new body. ... Yes, master ... I never doubted you, master. Everything proceeded as you had foreseen, Lord Palpatine"
And that's where the game ended. On the massive MIND-SCREW that pretty much everything that happened had been part of an insidious, long-term contingency plan involving the Emperor being revived in a stronger body. Since then my players have alternately argued between returning to the game to see what happens and leaving it to their imaginations. The latter has won out.
So no, not a classically 'fun' game...it was pretty dark...even the ending was bittersweet AT BEST considering the loss of life and the return of a great evil. Nothing light-hearted about it...I even had PCs trying to KILL one another in character. Betrayals abounded...but they felt organic...they were believable and, worst, they actually trusted a number of the characters that betrayed them, making it all the worse. High tension game. Very high tension. They AGONIZED over decisions and the stress level was high. I loved it. They loved it. The overwhelming tone of the game was definitely a feeling of betrayal and deceit without a doubt...a feeling of being unsure what or who to believe.
So I think that answers 1 and 2.
3? I have had too many campaigns I was not a fan of to count. Invariably one of the biggest problems with all of them was that there was too little choice for the PCs...there were stories, sure, but the players were just sorta going along, getting in fights and having story revealed to them. They didnt' feel invested. They didn't feel like they mattered enough. I wanted to tell a cool story and the stories WERE cool...they liked the stories quite a bit...but it didn't make for a fun game. Hell, I've even run some games where the players LIKED it and the story and whatnot...but behind the shield I felt unfulfilled...I felt like I was watching things I already knew...like seeing a re-run on television. There was no magic to it. No real unexpected. How to fix it? Ditch the story. Ditch the expectations. Let actions, just like in real life, dictate the story that happens. Make story the awesome by-product not the fixed destination. I had to let go of the reins and simply act as a judge...i should have been doing that all along.
Nice answers, took me a bit to read but excellent content nevertheless. I love your answer to #3 accidentally learned that too -- during my second 13th Age campaign, using players' relationship dice, what Icons represent, and a mountainful of improvisation that I never knew I had, I built that entire campaign in real time, as opposed to the more classic method of setting up stuff ahead of time [be it from pre-making a loose framework to creating an entire story or synopsis and working from there**]. Never could look at campaign design the same way again, and I have to thank Rob Heinsoo for that since I based what seems to be 75% - 90% of my campaign design loosely from his 2-hour demo as found here.
** which I think easily becomes railroad-y if the DM slacks off
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
I was actually considering posting this on your own The Fallacy of "Fun" thread due to relevance, but then again I think it deserved its own thread, since it's much less a discussion of why "to have fun" as a system design objective -- rather than a campaign design objective -- is an erroneous assumption, and more of a discussion that helps DMs analyze for themselves the reasons their best and worst campaigns actually became fun or not fun. Unless of course, their campaigns really did revolve around silliness and shallow, light-hearted gameplay, in which case their campaigns were designed with fun for fun.
I definitely agree that this deserves it's own thread. Incidentally, I barely want to post in my own threads anymore...stuff like this thread, however, keeps me going.
And yeah, 200 reads as of post time, only 5 replies (apparently 6 counting a missing [deleted?] post), even though this thread was designed to encourage an actual forum of intellectual capability. *sigh*
The deleted one was an attack on you I asked to be moderated. Also...that bolded part? Probably why you're not getting many hits. If you want, I can make a thread with the same contents and title it "Sage Atop The Mountain: Fun vs Engaging"...that'll be sure to get replies. To be sure many of them will be replies that neither read the OP nor watch the video in it so that those posters can hurry to the task of attacking me and my methodologies, but c'est le vie, no? Beggars can't be choosers. :P
Nice answers, took me a bit to read but excellent content nevertheless. I love your answer to #3 accidentally learned that too -- during my second 13th Age campaign, using players' relationship dice, what Icons represent, and a mountainful of improvisation that I never knew I had, I built that entire campaign in real time, as opposed to the more classic method of setting up stuff ahead of time [be it from pre-making a loose framework to creating an entire story or synopsis and working from there**]. Never could look at campaign design the same way again, and I have to thank Rob Heinsoo for that since I based what seems to be 75% - 90% of my campaign design loosely from his 2-hour demo as found here.
** which I think easily becomes railroad-y if the DM slacks off
Agree very much with the railroad-y remark. When a DM gives themselves an easy out, all too often they will find themselves resorting to it. This is why I remain very strict with myself. I do not fudge dice because it is never "just this once". I would rather struggle with something than give in to be lazy or dishonest with my players. Hell, I would rather outright tell them "Can you give me a minute to catch up with that decision? Wasn't prepared for it?" than resort to a lazier tactic of magician-switching something, etc.
I find it really interesting though that you also came to the result in a sort of "epiphany" way...because the same happened to me. I had become very disatisfied as a DM...because the game had become boring for me. Leading the PCs around, swapping things, playing the little tricks, fudging the dice, manipulating outcomes...it was, frankly, too easy. I had become too good at it. I was DMing on auto-pilot. I jumped from game to game...from genre to genre...all in an attempt to latch onto something more interesting when really it was the approach that was draining me spiritually. I was looking for something challenging and fun while simultaneously taking the "out" that assured I would be diminishing my ability to learn/improve. It took me sitting down at someone's game as a player again (something I have RARELY been...which is a fact I hate...) to realize what was wrong...because I saw the DM doing what I was doing...and I saw right through it. Every time.
I saw the tricks. I saw the illusion. I saw that I was being robbed of my ability to actually play. I was playing a part in a story...not a character in a world. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't play like that. I knew then that it was a lesser form of what the game could be. Still, even from that point it took me a lot of reading to really crystallize in my mind what I was even feeling and thinking. I read books and books and books...or the equivalent there-of in game theory, blogs and everything else I could find...things written in every era of tabletop gaming. I ended up outright rejecting a lot of things I had felt were inviolable. I ate crow on a lot of things I had previously espoused. And it felt good! I sat down for hour long discussions with a friend I went to college with...and we just hashed out game theory. We hammered at each others ideas and our own. And then I started putting it all into practice because theory was only so good...and the result has been spectacular. Demanding...but spectacular. And more rewarding than any tabletop I've ever done. Good times. Very good times.
I'm on a journey of enlightenment, learning and self-improvement. A journey towards mastery. A journey that will never end.
If you challenge me, prepare to be challenged. If you have something to offer as a fellow student, I will accept it. If you call yourself a master, prepare to be humbled. If you seek me, look to the path. I will be traveling it. #SuperDungeonMasterIITurbo
I definitely agree that this deserves it's own thread. Incidentally, I barely want to post in my own threads anymore...stuff like this thread, however, keeps me going.
Thanks. Sometimes I think that flammable threads are necessary just to illicit reactions and even half-decent trails of thought (as you mentioned in another thread), but I think that's a style that's more original to you (and it's simply not my style to do so :P ).
And yeah, 200 reads as of post time, only 5 replies (apparently 6 counting a missing [deleted?] post), even though this thread was designed to encourage an actual forum of intellectual capability. *sigh*
The deleted one was an attack on you I asked to be moderated. Also...that bolded part? Probably why you're not getting many hits. If you want, I can make a thread with the same contents and title it "Sage Atop The Mountain: Fun vs Engaging"...that'll be sure to get replies. To be sure many of them will be replies that neither read the OP nor watch the video in it so that those posters can hurry to the task of attacking me and my methodologies, but c'est le vie, no? Beggars can't be choosers. :P
Thanks on the report, though I would've loved to have exercised the noggin a bit by using facts, intellectual discourse and basically not stooping down to attacks (personal or otherwise) before the post was deleted (hehe).
I'd rather that the thread be renamed to "Forum of the Sages: Fun vs. Engaging". I am asking for interactions between DMs after all [was thinking of editing it myself, seems I can't do so now ]
Nice answers, took me a bit to read but excellent content nevertheless. I love your answer to #3 accidentally learned that too -- during my second 13th Age campaign, using players' relationship dice, what Icons represent, and a mountainful of improvisation that I never knew I had, I built that entire campaign in real time, as opposed to the more classic method of setting up stuff ahead of time [be it from pre-making a loose framework to creating an entire story or synopsis and working from there**]. Never could look at campaign design the same way again, and I have to thank Rob Heinsoo for that since I based what seems to be 75% - 90% of my campaign design loosely from his 2-hour demo as found here.
** which I think easily becomes railroad-y if the DM slacks off
Agree very much with the railroad-y remark. When a DM gives themselves an easy out, all too often they will find themselves resorting to it. This is why I remain very strict with myself. I do not fudge dice because it is never "just this once". I would rather struggle with something than give in to be lazy or dishonest with my players. Hell, I would rather outright tell them "Can you give me a minute to catch up with that decision? Wasn't prepared for it?" than resort to a lazier tactic of magician-switching something, etc.
I find it really interesting though that you also came to the result in a sort of "epiphany" way...because the same happened to me. I had become very disatisfied as a DM...because the game had become boring for me. Leading the PCs around, swapping things, playing the little tricks, fudging the dice, manipulating outcomes...it was, frankly, too easy. I had become too good at it. I was DMing on auto-pilot. I jumped from game to game...from genre to genre...all in an attempt to latch onto something more interesting when really it was the approach that was draining me spiritually. I was looking for something challenging and fun while simultaneously taking the "out" that assured I would be diminishing my ability to learn/improve. It took me sitting down at someone's game as a player again (something I have RARELY been...which is a fact I hate...) to realize what was wrong...because I saw the DM doing what I was doing...and I saw right through it. Every time.
I saw the tricks. I saw the illusion. I saw that I was being robbed of my ability to actually play. I was playing a part in a story...not a character in a world. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't play like that. I knew then that it was a lesser form of what the game could be. Still, even from that point it took me a lot of reading to really crystallize in my mind what I was even feeling and thinking. I read books and books and books...or the equivalent there-of in game theory, blogs and everything else I could find...things written in every era of tabletop gaming. I ended up outright rejecting a lot of things I had felt were inviolable. I ate crow on a lot of things I had previously espoused. And it felt good! I sat down for hour long discussions with a friend I went to college with...and we just hashed out game theory. We hammered at each others ideas and our own. And then I started putting it all into practice because theory was only so good...and the result has been spectacular. Demanding...but spectacular. And more rewarding than any tabletop I've ever done. Good times. Very good times.
I've actually become disillusioned with one campaign due to how the DM's running it, citing just about everything you mentioned. Though he doesn't really fudge the dice, and he does still change the story from time to time, the fact remains that I'm still just playing a part in a story, which seems to have been pre-written already.
Again I have to thank Rob Heinsoo and that wonderful system that he co-authored with Jonathan Tweet, because it's been an eye-opening experience as a DM to run a campaign in a totally different light.
- - - - -
What are the key emotions or ideas evoked by your best campaigns, ignoring for the moment the word "fun"?
What are the best highlights of your most memorable campaign?
What are the pitfalls or shortcomings of your least memorable campaign(s), and what in retrospect could you have done to prevent them, fix them, or at least keep the interest of the campaign(s) going, if it was possible to fix at all?
I think my own answers to these questions are long overdue.
1. Unpredictability and chaos, discovery of self, the impact of one's actions on a global scale. Note that I only look at this in retrospect, because when it comes to the best campaign I've run so far, I still don't know what the ending would actually be (I've been developing a probable ending, but I still leave it up to the players and their actions to determine what their ending(s) would be, even if the end wasn't even close to their initial motivations). 2. SBlocking wall of text... Spoiler:Show
Oh my goodness, that's a lot to sift through; and because the campaign is still ongoing I expect whatever I write right now might not be applicable in a few weeks or months. I suppose the best so far would be everything done by a very disruptive player, since the campaign really began with him being disruptive, and even upon his character's death, undeath and death again, the impact of his actions still ripple throughout the campaign world -- even in places he never set foot on. Which is prety ironic when you think about it.
First off, I asked at the beginning of the campaign who wanted to be the party's traitor. He was the first to raise his hand, and I should've smelled trouble from that point on (maybe I did, but I went along with it anyway, regardless of consequence). Then I began his story being assigned by one of the Icons (the Black, one of the triumvirate of ancient dragons who are collectively known as The Three) to find this ancient dragon locked up in a statue, and he ended up joining the rest of the group in search of said statue (for different reasons [duty to the High Druid, because of a bounty being awarded to whoever found that statue to be specific]). When he found the statue, I had the statue offer him any wish he desired, and so he asked for the power of The Three.
Alarm bells were ringing in my head at the time, but instead of saying "no", I decided to go for the "yes, but" instead. I told him that the statue said that he'll be granted that power, but only after he killed the Three, upon which he was thrown into a different plane while the rest of the party fought some pretty bewildered barbarians (who apparently were teleported there by the statue or something connected to the statue (defensive mechanism perhaps?). His first "death" had the paddings of a tutorial, and I said that he appeared after the fight unconscious.
[ Funny enough, the player whose unique thing was that he could turn into a dragon decided to destroy the statue at the time with his dragon breath, but failed to keep his mental faculties and went berzerk as a result of the transformation, and had to be put down by the other PCs. Fun times ]
When his character came to (several sessions later), he became hell bent towards destroying the Three, which I conceded to allowing as a result of a variety of dice rolls (relationship dice rolls can get very crazy at times). I had him involved in a dream sequence where the Blue (who is another dragon of the Three) was abducted by the Lich King and what seemed to be an undead dragon that used to be the White, an ancient dragon that was killed ages ago. He proceeded to go to Necropolis to free the Blue, and he found her chained and prepared for the ritual that would turn her into a dracolich. What followed was a fight that was way too epic for his caliber (level 3 vs. level 8 and level 14, when the maximum level of PCs is 10; it's like you threw a level 10 PC against a level 21 and a level 40 opponent in D&D 4E); Her original idea -- even though I was aware that it was bound to fail due to this guy's vendetta against the Three -- was that she would sacrifice her physical shell and transfer her essence to the blade that this PC was carrying at the time, then he was to escape by any means possible for her to be raised again in full glory (since normal raise dead was very iffy for her at this point in time [13th Age is quite brutal on the raise dead bit actually])... but what he did was that he took her essence, fought a 2-on-1 fight, broke the blade carrying the Blue's essence (destroying her completely), and eventually becoming incinerated in burning ice + dark lightning.
That should've been the end, given how it's the second time I actually killed the guy, but why waste a good player? I decided that, because he amused the Lich King for his bravado (that undead lich could use someone with that sort of guts after all), he raised him as a wraith. And because he was wielding the blade when it was shattered, the PC also gained a level and a bit of the Blue's essence as well (swapping one of his Fighter class features and a maneuver for a Sorcerer class feature and a spell [totally part of the rules by the way]). After the Lich King learned of the PC's true intentions, he just laughed and played along with the PC -- apparently the Lich King knows something about the statue -- and sent him off to bait the Red so that the Lich King could weaken him and the PC could deal the final blow (as per the statue's word).
As he went off to search for the Red, the party's wizard (for various reasons) ended up popping up near him, and agreed to help with the defeating of the Red. Wizard summons a blood relative (a new player who, at the time, was nearly eaten by an Owlbear [completely different story, funny shenanigans all around]), and the trio proceeded to search for the Red. They find him, wraith PC approaches him, he smells the Blue off the wraith and goes berzerk. Everything broke down from there, because instead of using the wraith as bait to lure the Red towards Necropolis, the two proceed to cast a ritual to freeze the Red's wing(s) in an attempt to talk to him peacefully. Red obliterates the wraith because wraith decides to fly around him in circles in spite of the fact that this is the physically most powerful of the Three.
This is where I made a ruling, if only because there was no going back for this PC (who I really had a lot of fun DMing even though he was basically the craziest of the bunch): I ruled that because the wizard beat the game's highest DC (35) even though normally the hardest DC for PCs of their level was 25, because the two players were working on very unusual circumstances, and because the wraith PC did sacrifice his life, the wraith gave the two PCs enough time to cast their ritual successfully. Funny enough, they forgot to take into account the effects of freezing the equivalent of a flying Empire State Building at over 10 000 feet, and without control of his wings, he couldn't even glide down safely, and thus the Red plummetted to his death.
Not a bad way of ending that PC's story, eh?
Even though his PC is gone though, the fact remains that his killing of two of the triumvirate known as the Three not only weakened the Black's position in the world affairs -- even now the Elf Queen is preparing to invade Drakkenhall and destroy the Black -- but also empowered the Lich King's forces well enough for him to initiate a full-scale invasion of Shadow Port, the premiere smuggling cove of the Dragon Empire and home to the Prince of Shadows (well, two Princes of Shadows apparently). Story gets really complicated from there, and that's just one PC's story.
3. Lack of drive and motivation, character-wise, player-wise and yes even DM-wise. I suppose I simply got tired writing stories and developing "campaigns" (more like strings of encounters) that I know wouldn't really push through the way I wrote them.
Scratch that: I think what really deflated me was the fact that my players generally tend to follow a story (be it a story the DM wrote or the story they themselves fleshed out) rather than let the dice roll and the story flesh itself out in real time.
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
As far as I'm concerned, if it's not engaging, it's not fun. If it's not fun, it's not engaging. If it's engaging, then it's fun. If it's fun, it's engaging.
They need to be one and the same.
My username should actually read: Lunar Savage (damn you WotC!) *Tips top hat, adjusts monocle, and walks away with cane* and yes, that IS Mr. Peanut laying unconscious on the curb. http://asylumjournals.tumblr.com/
accidentally learned that too -- during my second 13th Age campaign, using players' relationship dice, what Icons represent, and a mountainful of improvisation that I never knew I had, I built that entire campaign in real time, as opposed to the more classic method of setting up stuff ahead of time [be it from pre-making a loose framework to creating an entire story or synopsis and working from there**]. Never could look at campaign design the same way again, and I have to thank Rob Heinsoo for that since I based what seems to be 75% - 90% of my campaign design loosely from his 2-hour demo as found 
) to realize what was wrong...because I saw the DM doing what I was doing...and I saw right through it. Every time.
]
