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Heroic Knight
 
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So I was reading through the various boards and I came across this comment;
[quote=Chessypig]'Player-led plot' usually means, to me at any rate, a PvP style game - players acting against each other - and the conventional wisdom on this is that you need a large number of players to make it work. Also it suggests a kind of hands-off, players make their own meaning / significance style which looks to be at odds with rewarding 'good roleplay' (which enforces the organisers' vision of what is significant, good at making a strongly themed game experience but not so good at letting players lead).[/quote]
and it kinda got me thinking as it seemed to me to be a rather restrictive criteria to define "player led plot" but doesn't actually define what the term "player led plot" actually means..... my first reaction was to say thats not what I think "player led plot" means, but as I thought a little more I realised that I to am a little hazy about how exactly to define it...
So the question is, what does "player led plot" actually mean*? Can a PvM game be player led? Does it require large player numbers? How large is large?
*Yes I know Maelstrom is the usual referance point for any discussion on "Player Led Plot" so please don't just point at Maelstrom and say "its like that" without actually specifying what it is that you think makes Maelstrom player led.
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Knight
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I read the first part of the quoted text and found myself asking, 'why does player led plot have to PVP?'
Surely 'Player Led' means that the actions of the players guide where the plot needs to be followed?
If the main set-up is an evil necromancer in a dark danky castle, and he needs to be stopped, but the players decide they want to go and vacation in the sunny resort of CostaHell Soul, then you have player led plot without PVP.
Don't you?
(OK it's a daft example, but it's early in the morning and I'm supposed to be thinking about work)
----
Power Corrupts.
This is only a problem for the powerless.
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Wag
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To me Player Led Plot is exactly that. The players can lead the plot in any direction they choose. They wont be railroaded in a particular direction by the ref team who want the plot to go in a certain direction to maybe a certain culmination. This is independent of whether PCs fight PCs or PCs fight NPCs or a mixture of both. Numbers don’t really matter.
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Champion
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After I wrote that, my husband informed me that I'd probably made a common mistake - saying 'player-led plot' when what I was really talking about was 'character-led plot'. Because the player/character identification is very strong in traditional British LARP, 'player-led' is often taken to mean 'what the characters are trying to do is freely chosen and leads the plot', whereas it could just as easily cover systems like linear-commissioning and other co-operative plot-writing, resulting in fairly traditional PvM plot but with player contributions being paramount rather than ref contributions.
OTOH, I think that 'player-led' is normally used to mean 'character-led' on this board.
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Wag
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Feral (4/25/2008)
So the question is, what does "player led plot" actually mean*? Can a PvM game be player led? Does it require large player numbers? How large is large?
To me the essence of played-led plot is with the emphasis on led. It's a game in which the plots are led by players not by the organizers. Typically in any given LRP event things happen. Those things may be initiated and led by the organizers in which case the game isn't player-led or they may be initiated and led by the players in which case it is.
Typically I think people seek to water down this label until it becomes fairly meaningless because they want to attach it to their games despite the fact that it is inapplicable because player led plot is cool and trendy and is the one true way of plot. I think in part this is driven by the classic loosening of the definition to take player-led to mean "player-affectable" as in a piece of plot that is initiated by the organizers but whose outcome can be affected by players, in a number of different ways, possibly not ones that are conceived of in advance. The alternative to this latter kind of plot is one in which the entire outcome is fixed in advance and the players actions ultimately have no meaningful effect. That type of plot tends to draw a lot of criticism and because of that people try and market their games as being as far away from that as possible, often without a clear idea of what that claims mean in my experience.
Can you have PvM that is player-led. Definitely you can. If you have a very real world that is active and dynamic and populated largely with NPCs but where the course of the action that the players are involved with centres around them and the choices they make, then I think you can have player-led. E.g. If your adventure starts off in a tavern and an old man comes in and offers the party a linear to rescue his daughter then ain't player-led. If your adventure starts off in a tavern and the players decide they want to form a raiding party to attack the local orc tribe because they think that reducing orc raids will increase trade to the town and allow the local priests of Blah to cement their control of the town militia then you have a player-led game.
Classically in my experience most people argue that the best solution is a good mix of player-led and organizer-led, which I think is much harder to do than is claimed. Years ago in debating this issue with Ian Andrews we developed (I'm not sure who) an analysis in terms of volume. Any game can have some player-led plot (if Bob decides to sell his magic sword to Dave for cash that's probably player-led). You can think of the amount of player-led plot in the system as a volume control and likewise for the organizer led. However it's remarkably hard to turn the volume of player-led plot up because this is dependent on the players. They have to lead, so you can't control that, the best you can do is try to seed the environment with things that encourage player-led plot. However it's very easy to turn up the volume of organizer-led plot, because you just make it bigger and more obvious and more important.
At a critical level one kind of plot will tend to overshadow the other kind of plot and players will ignore one in favour of the other. The balance differs for different players due to taste, but it's very difficult to focus on arranging a trade deal between two small parties when the necromancer demon lord Andrew, is coming on Monday with an army to destroy the world and he turned up yesterday in camp to tell you all. Threats to the world, even your bit of the world, tend to overshadow the minor things you are trying to accomplish that are goals you created for yourself. The organizer-led plot simply drowns out your player-led plot, like a loud noise drowning out the quieter sounds around. In theory player-led plot could drown out organizer-led plot and I've seen some examples that look something like that happening at Maelstrom, but it's hard to get "loud" player-led plot and hard to get "quiet" player-led plot (possibly it can be done, but it would be hard), so I think if that situation does exist it's much rarer. In theory a nice balance between player-led plot and organizer-led plot may exist, but I've yet to see it done. Maelstrom is an avowedly player-led game but it has included organizer-led plots and it's often been the case that the "volume" control for these plots was too loud. It's a bit like the temperature on a cheap hotel shower, it's easy to get scalding hot and easy to get freezing cold, but it's very difficult to get just right.
The one advantage that PvP has in terms of delivering a player-led experience is that you can be much more confident of what you are going to get, either as a player or an organizer. I've run games that went on for years, kidding myself it was a player-led experience, and only later realized that if the major action was initiated by NPCs and the major reaction was provided by PCs, that was simply "player reactive" plot and could hardly be called "player-led" plot. If you have a game where the antagonists as well as the protagonists are PCs (or perhaps more accurately one in which there are only protagonists) then, if any action at all happens, it pretty much has to be player-led.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Wag
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ChessyPig (4/25/2008)
OTOH, I think that 'player-led' is normally used to mean 'character-led' on this board.
I would agree strongly with that, when I used the phrase "player-led" I really mean "player-character-led". I think the kind of games where the players contribute to the action, rather than their characters is a very very different thing. It's interesting to note however that we get hit with this problem all the time at Maelstrom where people assume that because we say the game is player-led this means that they are encouraged to write and contribute "story" for the game and for their characters. So clearly that understanding isn't universal.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Champion
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I always like to think of things in terms of the Story Matrix, which seems to help...
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Prodigal
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I know this has been touched on before, but do you think 'PC-led' requires player created characters (i.e. can a typical UK freeform be PC-led)?
------PD: St. Legion the blessed, ' "If you're a loyal eidolon, where were you when we killed the first-born?" RW: Ketta Sheng "Girls are evil. They break your heart, and then your spear, and then they get killed" EOS: Hasib Suran: "Yes, older brother, it's your choice. I only advise you." TNN: Druid Coran: "Do not heckle me, witch!"
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