C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part III)

So, this is the third (and last) blog post looking specifically at the interplay between choices, context, and consequences.  As previously discussed, a choice is a decision and context is the information that informs a choice.  There is a third important element, consequences, that deserves a posting of its own, because the idea of consequence has changed the most in role-playing games.  Indeed, I would go so far as to say that, in mitigating consequences, role-playing games have also limited choice, and limited the meaning of context.

More on this below.

Again, Gentle Reader, I’m going to dispense with the “IMHO”s and “IME”s, and assume that you are smart enough to know that I am talking about my own opinions and experiences. 

Consequence is whatever happens as a result of choice.  For example, if Frodo & Co. stick to the road, they might be overtaken by a Black Rider, but if they cut through the Woody End, they might get lost or worse.  Destroying valuable artwork because it is of a necromantic nature means that you will not have the gold selling it might produce.  Not finding the treasure means that you don’t have it.  Giving the Arkenstone of Thrain to Bard means that Thorin is going to be upset at you.  Jumping into lava means you will die, and losing in a pitched combat is likely to mean the same. 

Without consequences that flow naturally from the choices made, those choices themselves become meaningless.  If Frodo & Co. have the same chances of meeting the Black Riders no matter what they do, and can become as lost on the road as in the open countryside, what value does the decision have?  If you can destroy the necromantic art objects, or fail to locate the treasure in a monster’s lair, and the gold finds its way to you anyhow, what does do those decisions matter?  In a word, nothing.

Likewise, if failing in combat, falling into lava, etc., never results in death (or death without the player’s permission), then failing in combat or falling into lava means less than it otherwise would.  There is a safety net built into the system.  To paraphrase a great man, you might as well be playing Candyland with your baby sister.

In the case of Dungeons & Dragons, this mitigation against consequence first reared its head (in a strong sense) in the DragonLance modules, where the GM is admonished to keep a certain NPC ambiguously alive no matter what happens.  In a weaker sense, mitigation against consequence can be seen as early as White Plume Mountain, where there is an encounter that “scales” to the PCs’ condition at the end of the module (or is omitted altogether!). 

It should be easy to see how mitigating against consequences lessens the impact of choice with a single example.  In White Plume Mountain, scaling or removing the final encounter based on PC strength would seem to punish players who did well in the module, while rewarding those who did poorly.  If all parties have the same final encounter instead, it is clear that the “good play” choices leading to a party that still retains greater resources at the module’s end are rewarded by having an easier time in the final encounter, while a severely depleted party might face a TPK (Total Party Killed).

Likewise, if losing in combat always means that you are taken prisoner or left for dead, and given another chance to succeed, losing in combat loses much of its sting.  The result is that the choices leading up to, and within, that combat matter less.

Some GMs work hard to include other consequences to keep choices meaningful.  “If you lose, your baby sister is enslaved!”  Even so, having your baby sister enslaved is simply not as meaningful as having your baby sister enslaved, and also being dead.  Obviously, if it is too easy to restore a dead comrade to life, and if there are few consequences for so doing, even death may lose its sting.

So, it is important for the GM not to mitigate against consequences.  Whatever the natural consequences of a choice are, those are the consequences that will occur.  Sometimes that means an enemy will capture fallen PCs to hold them ransom, and sometimes it means that the PCs are the main course in an orcish feast. 

Yet, not every consequence should be horrendous to endure!

In the last blog, I mentioned that “decision paralysis” is sometimes the fault of consequence.  This occurs when all the choices seem bad, and the player(s) have no expectation of being able to achieve a good outcome.

Game Masters naturally want their players to win, and to succeed despite the odds.  Because of this natural tendency, and because of the importance of consequences for making choices meaningful, much Old School GM advice is based upon fighting this tendency and allowing the dice to fall where they may.  There is a certain encouragement to be a Rat-Bastard Game Master (BRGM).

And that is all well and good, so long as the consequences are natural to the choices made….but sometimes (perhaps too often, depending upon who you ask), all of the choices lead to bad ends.  Or, worse yet, all of the choices but one lead to unnaturally bad consequences, meant to funnel the PCs into a single set of choices of the GM’s choosing.  And one can see where this is learned – if the GM is admonished to keep certain NPCs alive to fuel the story within official adventure products, why would the GM not conclude that the continuity of his expected storyline is more important than ensuring that the choices the players make is meaningful?  There are some GMs who refer to this as an “illusion of choice” – I believe it is an illusion of an illusion.  Most players see through it pretty quickly, and some will do increasingly foolish things to test the walls of their cage.

 Just how much plot protection is built into the game milieu?  Enquiring players want to know!

In order to avoid decision paralysis, it behooves the prospective Game Master to ensure that there are many chances for good consequences as well as ill.  Good consequences don’t have to mean treasure.  They can be people who try to help the PCs in some limited way (I’ve used farmers putting PCs up for the night for free to good effect), alliances, potential romances, even inspiring sights.  Knowledge is always good, and most players appreciate having learned things through play rather than through blocks of GM-provided text.

Whenever possible, consequences should lead naturally into new choices, and/or provide additional context to choices the PCs are already facing.  In this way, the players never run out of things to do, or leads to follow up on.  The game milieu becomes a dynamic place, where descriptions are paid attention to for the context they provide, context is used to make choices, and the consequences of those choices are dealt with while leading naturally into new choices.

And, if you can master this interplay, no matter what else you fail in, you will always be able to attract and hold players.  “Context à  Choice à Consequence” is probably the most important thing a Game Master can bring to the table.

NOTES

The proliferation of mitigation against consequence is probably due, at least in part, to the extended time it requires to create a character in certain game systems.  In many older games, a character death meant that the player was out of action for only 5-15 minutes of real world time.  This is not so for all games.

Likewise, if it takes 45 or more minutes to resolve even a simple combat within a game system, even having another character ready beforehand doesn’t necessarily mitigate against long real world wait times until the new PC can be introduced.

I have met many GMs over the years, and “spoken” to even more online, who believe that they can mitigate against consequence by fudging dice in such a way that their players do not know it.  This may be true in some cases, but I have honestly never encountered it.  Gambling that your players won’t catch onto your clever tricks is a one-way ticket to wondering why you have no players, depending upon just how clever you think you are, and just how tricky.

If you are playing a game of this nature, it is best to use a system (such as Action Points or Fate Points) that allow the player to decide when to mitigate consequences.  This way, because the players are still choosing when to use such resources, the importance of player choice is maintained.  It is important that there be limitations on this resource, or there is no actual “choice” in using it! 

This is true even in games that mimic narratives where important characters seldom die (Star Trek, Doctor Who, or comic books, for instance).  In fact, it may be more true, because part of the conceit of these franchises/genres is that the heroes themselves believe that they are at risk!

It is also possible to set up an in-game situation where death (or some other consequence) simply cannot naturally occur.  The condition of “Captain Jack Harkness” in Torchwood is an example – the character is simply incapable of dying. 

As a final note, I have recently come across the argument that enforcing undesired consequences is a form of railroading.

Well, it can be, if the undesired consequences do not arise naturally from the choices made and the game milieu context they occur in.  I once had a fellow run TSR’s Module A1, where whenever I made a choice the GM didn’t like my characters began aging rapidly until they did what the GM decided they were supposed to do.  Needless to say, I agree that this is railroading, and railroading of such an egregious type that I walked from the table.

On the other hand, dying because you engaged 10,000 maniacs in combat as a 1^st level 1^st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons thief?  There might have been railroading leading you to the situation where you made that choice, but the consequence of that choice is not railroading! 

Likewise “People don’t like my character because he is a murdering sociopath” and “I don’t have the treasure because I destroyed it” are not examples of railroading.  Nor are they examples of the GM making moral/ethical choices for the characters.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, role-playing games are about making meaningful choices.  If you enable your players to do so, even if you have difficulties mastering other parts of the game, you can be a good Game Master.

Context allows for meaningful decisions, because the context is the relevant information that the players have in order to make choices.  Never be afraid of giving the players too much context!  If the players seem stuck, you can always throw them more context!

Choice is what the players do.  They make choices for their characters.  As a Game Master, your job includes providing context for those choices, and ensuring that natural consequences follow those choices.  You job most emphatically is not to make choices for player characters.  It is fine to ask, “Are you sure you want to do that?” but you should not say “Your character would not do that”.  Master the art of keeping your nose out of PC choices!

Even when NPCs interject comments in PC decision making, make sure that you are flowing from the NPC’s knowledge and motives.  There must be a clear divide between NPC suggestions and the DM suggesting through an NPC.  It is worth your while to state clearly, and more than once, that no NPC suggestion should ever be seen as “coming from” the GM!

Most simply described, consequence is outcome.  Consequences should arise naturally from choices made, and from the context of those choices (the game setting, or milieu).  Consequences should also, whenever possible reveal more context and/or open up more choices.  Some game systems and/or playstyles encourage mitigating against consequences more than others, but you should resist the urge to do so.  When the Game Master mitigates against consequences, he reduces the impact of player choice.  An” illusion of choice” is rarely sustainable….if it is sustainable at all.

I have followed these principles for many years, and I have never been at a loss for players.  While no system can guarantee you the same success, mastering “Context à Choice à Consequence” should improve anyone’s Game Mastering.  As I said in Part I, in my experience, anyone who understands this interplay will be at least an adequate GM…and no one who does not, no matter what their other fine qualities, is ever really satisfying.

C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part II)

“Decision Paralysis” occurs in a role-playing game when a player (or group thereof) simply cannot decide what to do.  The character may have many available choices, but the player cannot seem to make any of them meaningful within the context of the game.  The problem is almost always rooted in context or consequence.

If the problem is rooted within context, there are two potential problems.  The first is that the player(s) involved lack enough context to make a meaningful choice.  The second is that the player(s) have context, but there is no clear advantage to any choice that can be made. 

Both problems can be resolved by giving the player(s) additional information.  However,  we also want our players to make their own decisions, so we need to be careful not to add information in such a way as to bias their choices.  Usurping player choices – or, worse yet, getting the players to rely upon you to tell them what choices they should make – is one of the worst things you can do as a Game Master. 

So, how does the GM go about creating additional context without usurping player choices?

Let’s take an example:  A party is exploring the Gloomy Megadungeon of Huge Hallways when they come to a Y-shaped intersection, allowing the group to go either left or right.  The GM knows that the left passage leads to the lair of a troll, while the right passage leads to a hidden treasure, then more passages that end up in an area controlled by goblins.  The group, faced by the choice of going left or right (they have stated that they do not wish to turn back!) end up facing a moment of decision paralysis.

What should the GM do?

First off, wait.  We have been told so often in recent years that the GM is in charge of pacing, that some of us have forgotten that this is untrue.  Pacing is created through an amalgam of player decisions and GM-enforced consequences to those decisions.  If the players decide to spend their time wondering what to do, or discussing their options, that is a valid decision.  The GM must accept that not deciding – or not deciding right away – is also a choice, and should be treated like any other.  I cannot stress that enough.  The natural consequences of bickering over a decision in a dungeon hallway may be unpleasant, but if so, they should occur because they are natural consequences of the players’ choices – not because the GM wishes to control the pace.

If you enforce natural consequences, sooner or later (and most often, sooner), the players themselves will take control over pacing.  That is one of the important functions of wandering monsters in old school rpgs.  They act as a spur to keep the characters moving….but they are not an arbitrary spur.  They do not usurp player choices.

Now, perhaps one of the players will have his character look down both hallways, to see if there is anything he can see.  The wise GM knows that what the player is really looking for is more context, with which to make a decision.  And the wise GM also supplies that context, but not in a way that makes the decision for the player(s).

“The left passage has a bad smell, as though of rotting meat, and you can just see what might be a gobbet of flesh, dropped and left to rot by some creature.  The right passage has cleaner air, but seems to be infrequently used….there is some minor detritus where the passage’s walls meet the floor – a broken boot heel, a  gnawed and dried apple core, a few dried bones, scraps of torn cloth, and the like.”

This adds to the context available to the players – if you want a fight, go left; if you want to go in a less frequented direction, go right – without taking the choice away.  The contextual information arises naturally from how the area is used in the game milieu.  It might even lead to other contextual information – did the heel come from a goblin boot?  Does the apple indicate a (somewhat) close entrance to the surface?  When the GM provides relevant contextual information, that can be used to help make meaningful decisions, the players begin to pay attention to that information.  They might even start seeking it out on their own.

But, let us say that our party still doesn’t know what to do.  They can’t decide between left and right.  Now what does the Game Master do?

Well, the obvious consequence of standing there unresolved is that, sooner or later, the troll comes by.  Either it’s bringing back dinner, or it’s going out to find something to eat.  Or maybe it’s trying to get quickly to its nearby latrine.  The GM is fully within his rights to spring the troll on the unsuspecting party….or, they might hear it coming (from behind them, or from the left way) and hide.  Either way, more context is added….a troll lives down the left tunnel.

Again, this should not be instantaneous, but should arise naturally from the fictional milieu.  The goal is not to prevent the players from making a decision, but rather to enforce the natural consequences of a decision they did make….the decision to stand there and wait while deciding.  In a relatively safe open field, the party could take far longer to safely make a decision.  Although it might eventually rain on them.

Not every detail is context.  Context is detail that is relevant to making meaningful decisions.  As you develop your dungeons, populate your strongholds, and devise your wilderness areas, never be afraid to include too much context.  Instead, you should be thinking, “How can I telegraph this encounter?”  “What footprint should this creature be leaving in the area?”  “What clues can I give to hint at this secret?”

On the other hand, be wary of having NPCs that usurp player choices.  NPCs should always act from their own motives, and from their own limited information.  Rather than have a Council of Elrond that tells the players what must be done, have NPCs who urge the players in this direction and that….some offering good suggestions, others offering less good, all from the basis of their own goals and understanding.  Just because an NPC wants to hire adventurers to perform some task, it does not follow that the PCs should be perfectly suited to that task….or suited to it at all. 

Players get used to the idea that, if an NPC wants to hire them, this is “the plot hook”, and it should be taken.  If you want a living game, based on player choices, you need to break that cycle.  In minor ways at first, and then more strongly, have NPCs offer jobs that are not suited to the PCs.  They might be boring, and so glossed over, or they might be jobs that the PCs are outmatched or undermatched.  You must make certain that the players come to understand that NPCs are not the GM.  What they want is not what the GM wants.  They must be taken on their own terms.

When the players understand that you are not going to tell them what to do, that you are going to offer them many choices, and that the pacing of the game is going to be largely based on their decisions, you have set the stage for truly satisfying play.  This is what a role-playing game can do….what it is best at.  You cannot get that experience from a novel or a movie, or from a computer game.  This is where the medium shines.

Some people will tell you that it is hard to feel involved in a game where character death is common, or where choices are limited.  They site early role-playing games, with high character turn-over, level limits for demi-humans, or non-sword-wielding wizards as examples of these “flaws”. 

As always, play what you enjoy.  Life is too short for bad gaming.  But for my money, the only limitation to getting players involved occurs in the number of meaningful decisions they get to make.  And the important meaningful decisions are not in character generation, or in builds, but in actual play.  You can provide that excellence of play in any system – just remember that the important choices belong to the players, and it is your job to provide context to make those choices, and enforce the consequences thereof. 

You might have to disregard some of the GMing advice your game of choice provides in order to do this.   We’ll discuss this more in Part III, where we’ll be taking a closer look at consequences.

C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

If I were asked to give advice to a new Game Master – or even an old hand looking to better her game – the thing I would go on about is the interplay between choices, context, and consequences.  In my experience, anyone who understands this interplay will be at least an adequate GM…and no one who does not, no matter what their other fine qualities, is never really satisfying.

From hereon out, I’m going to dispense with the “IMHO”s and “IME”s, and assume that you, the Gentle Reader, are smart enough to know that I am talking about my own opinions and experiences.  And, if I am wrong in that assumption, feel free to Comment and tell me so!

At the most basic level, a choice is a decision.  Do we follow the path, or go off into the woods?  Do we explore the swamp in search of the ruins of Zondo’s Castle of Phantasmal Fun?  Which passage do we take at the intersection?  Should we parlay with these goblins?  Do we trust them?  Do we run from the floating gaseous eyeball of death rays…or do we fight it?

Context is the information that informs a choice.  The choice to follow the path or go off into the woods is meaningless unless one has some idea what each choice means.  Do bandits lay ambushes along the path?  Is there some lost ruin supposedly hidden in the woods?  Is there some landmark the characters can make for?  Are they merely trying to cut off a wide curve of road they know is ahead?  Are they trying to throw off pursuers?  Is there a chance of getting lost if they leave the road?

Consequences are what happen as a result of making a choice.  You follow the path, and arrive at the village.  Or you meet some bandits.  Or you take to the woods and get lost.  Or escape the wraiths that are pursuing you to recover a magic ring.

Ideally, the consequences of any given choice lead into new choices.  Rather than simply arriving at the village, you arrive at a village where a man is being beaten by a crowd.   Do you intervene?  When you run into the bandits, do you flee?  Fight?  Let yourself be robbed?  If you are lost in the woods, what do you do?  What do you discover?  What do you do about it?  Having escaped the wraiths, you come out of the woodland near a farmer’s field.  Do you accept his invitation to dinner?  What do you tell him about the strange folk asking about you?

When your game seems to be lagging, it is most likely due to either a lack of apparent choices or enough context to make those choices meaningful.  The easiest way to renew the energy of a game session is to interject a new choice, or to provide some information that enhances the context of already existing choices. 

I have heard folks complain about the amount of background information available in some published adventures, “with no means for the players to learn it”.  Huh.  Of course there are ways for the players to learn that information!  One of your major jobs in presenting a published scenario is to examine that background – that context – and figure out how the players can learn bits and pieces of it.  Then, when play falters, you have something more to ratchet up the excitement than another wandering monster.

(Not that there is anything wrong with a sudden combat.  One of the reasons that combat is popular in role-playing games is that the choices are clear, both in context and in consequence.  The context is, “That bugbear is trying to kill you!” and the consequence is “If you don’t stop him, he will!”  Much of the beauty and excitement of combat can be understood by thinking of it in these terms.  They will also help you to devise more interesting “combat encounters”, by encouraging you to vary the context [often by location, such as on giant gears, requiring different choices], or especially by outcome [when innocents might die, or when your opponent wants something other than to slay you – to capture you, perhaps?]

It isn’t just background information that provides context.  One important part of context is the “footprint” of creatures in the game world. 

A creature whose presence is foreshadowed is often more effective than one who is simply thrown at the PCs out of the blue.  Let us take a basilisk as an example.

With one GM, the basilisk simply appears as an encounter, perhaps turning one or more characters to stone before being ultimately slain.  For the players, it may seem like a GM-driven “gotcha!”, and whatever deaths occur are probably going to feel anti-climactic.  How could they feel otherwise?  The players have had no chance to anticipate the encounter.  Their choices leading to the encounter lack the context needed to make them feel meaningful.

With another GM, however, the players get to hear fearful goblins speak in hushed tones about the “Mistress of the Dark Chasms”.  They see the lizard-like drawings the goblins make before the altars where they worship Her.  They find the broken bits of goblins turned to stone by the creature, and may even see where it rubs its skin against the rocks (including, perhaps, a cast-off skin?).

Now the players have some context with which to base their decisions.  They can stock up on mirrors, try to match their magic to the challenge, or bypass the area entirely.  The cast-off skin might give them the idea that the basilisk could be blind at some point, and thus far less dangerous – some divination might be in order.  Finally, if they do enter the Dark Chasms, and some of the PCs are petrified by the monster, it no longer feels like a “Gotcha!”  The outcome is a natural-seeming consequence of player choices.

As another example, imagine that you are devising a campaign milieu in which you imagine that a great deal of the action will take place as wilderness exploration.  How do you control pacing?  How do you make the wilderness interesting?  Once more, our old friends, Choices, Context, and Consequences come to your aid.

The main bane of wilderness (and, to some extent, town) adventures is that they are seemingly-open-ended.  The choices seem to be limitless, which actually makes it very hard to choose.  After all, it isn’t enough to simply select a compass direction and trudge along…we want our choices to be meaningful.  And to be meaningful, they require context.

We can first provide context by including some landmarks.  Landmarks in a role-playing game do the same thing they do in the real world.  They provide us something to steer by, to aim toward, and to fix our location with.  If you are lost, you can look for higher ground, find a landmark, and correct your course.

Landmarks can have reputations that provide further context. 

The Old Forest is known to be queer, and the Withywindle that runs through it is the heart of its queerness.  Because the hobbits in The Fellowship of the Ring know this, they know also that they should be trying to get through the Old Forest as quickly as possible, and to avoid the Withywindle (even if they cannot do so successfully).  These rumours not only inform the hobbits’ choices, but they foreshadow their encounters with Old Man Willow and Tom Bombadil.  

Likewise, in a role-playing game, if the great mountain range known as the Trollshanks is said to be home to trolls and giants, the players know that they are likely to encounter those creatures, and prepare accordingly.  If they know it is famous for its steep cliffs and deep gorges, they will prepare climbing equipment, or be prepared to make choices to go around.  If they know further that a rich dwarf mine was located there, that has since fallen to evil, they will also have motive to actually enter the area.

Among other things, context (1) foreshadows potential encounters, (2) foreshadows potential rewards, (3) allows the players to set goals, (4) allows the players to understand the goals of other creatures within the game milieu, (5) gives clues that allow for “aha!” moments when the players put things together, and (6) makes choices meaningful because context foreshadows consequence.