Nirrum is painfully unaware of the value of Dust of Dryness
I, on the other hand, am Painfully aware of the artificial tidal wave that wiped out Berpsin,
Agency and Consistency
You can get away with just about anything so long as you are consistent. 1+1=3? It's unusual but hey, the god of mathematics is saying that's what it is so that's how we do things here. But players, audience members, experientomancers of all sorts tend to come prepacked with all sorts of Silly baseless assumptions. As a designer, you might have expectations for the outcome of your players interactions with the world. If you're designing videogames, you have far more control over that than if you're writing or Mastering a game, as you can easily enforce the rules mechanically.
There's only a problem with this when your agonists end up going where you didn't expect them to go or, didn't want them to go, or have something that you didn't think they should have. When you haven't told them about the rules changing before critically tense points, particularly The moment it matters. But you're not a god, and being able to see the future isn't something that we Human-worms are particularly good at. There are styles and methods which will allow you to get by without seeming too mortal.
Anything you can do, I can do better
fancier, and retroactively before you did it.
The time has come. They have destroyed the Drama of a situation by being incredibly powerful when they should not be. Time to fight fire with fire. Whatever they did that made them powerful, you, the great spirit of dramatic enterprise, can do as well! An assassin strikes the would-be assassin. The Wombo-combo they have is suddenly reversed! Before them now stand creatures that would actually pose a challenge. Entire armies might use the same strategy that your players employ, industries set up on a quirk of the wording of a spell, a planet of hats where the hat is "whatever that one player just did"
Remember that as a curator of experience, you are unbound by stats, or even most rules. The less you abuse this, the better of a Storyteller you will be. By using the same mechanics that your players or viewers use to create an expected result, you have the opportunity to create not only deep literary themes of self-discovery, but you also remain consistent. You can throw your hands up and say "I'm just playing by the rules."
Don't get me wrong, your people know what you're doing. Twists should be sparse, just so that they preserve narrative impact. The important message here is to not fear the power creep for yourself, you, and by extension the story, will be fine. You are a god after all. Ho ho, see what I did there? Subversion! Ha-HA!
Remember that as a curator of experience, you are unbound by stats, or even most rules. The less you abuse this, the better of a Storyteller you will be. By using the same mechanics that your players or viewers use to create an expected result, you have the opportunity to create not only deep literary themes of self-discovery, but you also remain consistent. You can throw your hands up and say "I'm just playing by the rules."
Don't get me wrong, your people know what you're doing. Twists should be sparse, just so that they preserve narrative impact. The important message here is to not fear the power creep for yourself, you, and by extension the story, will be fine. You are a god after all. Ho ho, see what I did there? Subversion! Ha-HA!
Morse Code: Telegraphing and Loss Reflex
Anger is the most powerful emotion humans experience. It is the one that drives us to act the fastest, and the easiest way to make us angry is to take something away. Loss reflex is probably the most powerful motivator on the planet, and agency, the ability to act for oneself, control of one's circumstances, is the most devastating loss.
When your players think that they're being railroaded, when your audience thinks that there's no point in paying attention, you've lost as a storyteller. Part of the power balance is balancing your own power to achieve a desired result. Just as twists should be sparse, telegraphing should be frequent. Your captives need to know what being wrong looks like, what impending terror is so they can change before it hits. Fun is serious business. See, there's no skill in being blindsided. A person dying to something they didn't know about isn't fun because really, they don't even need to be there for it. They were just the person that it happened to. Telegraphing that they don't know things by hinting mysteries or even showing them that their preconceived notions were wrong before it happens is how you end up with tension, because now avoiding those things becomes their goal. This is drama. Surprise is only dramatic when they have the chance to react.
But telegraphing has its own issues that we'll talk about later. The important thing is to understand that consistency allows your players to solve problems in their own way, but also gives you important tools for being able to manage that so that you don't feel powerless in trying to keep your story interesting. Personally all of my villains are rolled up characters, this way my players know what sort of things they're getting into if they find out what their opponent can do. It grants a character that is familiar with that world the ability to adequately judge in character what their enemy is capable of. It also creates a game of seeing who can out-munchkin who, but this isn't the only way.
Having a villain show up in an early sequence is a particularly common tactic. This is fine so long as the villain has a method of leaving that can't be interrupted by the players. A villain or counterparty whose only real schtick is that they run away becomes predictable. A villain or counterparty who doesn't run away runs the risk of being untelegraphed danger. A merciful villain might not be realistic, killing one company member and leaving the rest is a tactical mistake. A powerful villain who manages to show up and kill everyone doesn't add anything to the story, as your protagonists are all now deceased. A villain whose Modus Operandi is to pit-and-forget, allowing the players a chance to escape must be careful to ensure that the player's escape takes long enough for the villain to leave. Much the same theme shows up with traps. A player falling into a trap is all fine and dandy but a trap that's lethal should always be telegraphed by the presence of clever enemies, the parts for more of that trap, or signs that the trap is there.
Having a villain show up in an early sequence is a particularly common tactic. This is fine so long as the villain has a method of leaving that can't be interrupted by the players. A villain or counterparty whose only real schtick is that they run away becomes predictable. A villain or counterparty who doesn't run away runs the risk of being untelegraphed danger. A merciful villain might not be realistic, killing one company member and leaving the rest is a tactical mistake. A powerful villain who manages to show up and kill everyone doesn't add anything to the story, as your protagonists are all now deceased. A villain whose Modus Operandi is to pit-and-forget, allowing the players a chance to escape must be careful to ensure that the player's escape takes long enough for the villain to leave. Much the same theme shows up with traps. A player falling into a trap is all fine and dandy but a trap that's lethal should always be telegraphed by the presence of clever enemies, the parts for more of that trap, or signs that the trap is there.
There's always the option to "Just be a dick" but your actors will resent you for it. Remember, you are a curator of experience, presumably one people wish to enjoy. The skillful path is the preferred one in my experience.
What power creep looks like
Levels are a really good place to start when talking about power creep. Should your desired media have levels, the most important ones to think of are the first, second, third and last levels. In most cases, the second level is a whopping double the potency of the first level, you are literally on whole 'nother level. In one campaign we went from fearing for our lives, hiding behind barrels to avoid gunfire to starting armies with our suicidal valor. It took a year for us to reach second level and when we did? Hoo boy. We felt like the bees knees then, but what'd we get? About 4.5 hp, a minor ability that we could use once in a while, One guy multiclassed, we made it work. In Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition, Level 3 is where a lot of classes get their archetypes, The power jump is surprisingly small with some exceptions (looking at you, assassin). The real sneak is in the spells. "Fuck your map" spells like Detect thoughts, Find Traps, Healing spirit, Hold Person, Invisibility, Knock, Lesser restoration, Misty step, pass without trace, see invisibility, silence. and zone of truth, are all capable of taking your well-planned puzzle and just... ignoring it. Especially knock and Detect thoughts. Entire murder mysteries are built around the idea that you don't know who did it, but when your wizard pops "detect thoughts," and all of a sudden they know who did it. When did this happen? How did this happen? All of your prep time undone by a single spell. There was no creep, it was "SUDDENLY, POWER!" Which is terribly unfortunate if you had put any amount of time into planning the whole thing out. Sure you could use a ring of mind shielding, and risk your players getting one (which is more creep), you could make that spell not work against your villain or target (and invalidate player agency. This is like buying a ), orrrrr you could just let them waltz through what should have been a tense moment and enjoy being badasses. None of these are particularly appealing are they? While it was your lack of knowledge about the capabilities of your munchkins that lead to this, how are you supposed to keep track of the constantly changing landscape of power in your medium?
Worse is what happens when you are the cause of the creep. When you've given your costumers a gift and it's too good. You need to find a way to get it back from them don't you? I'm gonna be honest, in my experience, it's too late now, you'll have to steal it back from them and let them get it back when the power scaling evens out or won't matter much in the future, near the end of a story or at least nearing the end of a chapter.
Worse is what happens when you are the cause of the creep. When you've given your costumers a gift and it's too good. You need to find a way to get it back from them don't you? I'm gonna be honest, in my experience, it's too late now, you'll have to steal it back from them and let them get it back when the power scaling evens out or won't matter much in the future, near the end of a story or at least nearing the end of a chapter.
The effect the players have on your campaign shouldn't be the issue.
Spotlight: Really, You must learn to balance your goons against eachother
You may have noticed that some players seem... better than others, for lack of a superior term. A hack'n'slash fighter in a target rich environment is having a great time compared to the utility musician/pack mule. Your Sneak's sneaking skill doesn't really matter if everyone charges forward before they can get into position or accomplish their goal, or conversely, while your sneak does all the work, everyone else just picks their ears clean waiting for the day to be done.
This isn't really what your adventurelings are here for. They all want to be important (although some may want it less than others, though that's another topic). The important thing is that, as the creator of the world before them, you should learn to enable them all, especially if you can do it simultaneously. As someone who can adjust the world on the fly, your balancing job is fairly easy. The hard part is making sure the party is balanced against itself. Spreading the spotlight to where it is wanted is your greatest task, and for this, I have a couple of points. The first is my Traffic Signalling Technique.
This isn't really what your adventurelings are here for. They all want to be important (although some may want it less than others, though that's another topic). The important thing is that, as the creator of the world before them, you should learn to enable them all, especially if you can do it simultaneously. As someone who can adjust the world on the fly, your balancing job is fairly easy. The hard part is making sure the party is balanced against itself. Spreading the spotlight to where it is wanted is your greatest task, and for this, I have a couple of points. The first is my Traffic Signalling Technique.
It takes place after you, the storyshaman, do something that the group can react to
- Ask the most relevant, usually the closest to the action, player what they're going to do, make eye contact with only them, indicate to the others to be silent. Listen
- Look around for the most excited person who wants to act. They'll be trying to make eye contact usually. If nothing needs to happen to immediately respond to the first player, act on the second. Repeat this step until you've gone through everyone
- Ask anyone who hasn't acted or reacted what they're doing right now.
- Do something again, repeat process from 1. If you reach step 3 again and the others don't react to the current situation, whatever they're doing now becomes the thing you talk about.
- Use discretion at all steps in this process to keep narrative flow. Try to keep time equal.
- Don't force anyone to act when they don't want to, they'll have their own fun.
The second point is to talk to your thespians. They have things to say.
Building up: Don't Tell A Story, Tell The News
Your villains want to win, your forces wish to conspire, your machinactions wish to become godly. These things are forces that exist in a world that might be fictional but should function with verisimilitude. Villains make mistakes, Adventurers come up with clever ideas. People get blindsided by things they didn't think of.
I build my worlds in such a way that I try to think like my NPCs beforehand, how they build their houses, what precautions they take against intruders, how they organize their forces and what they've encountered and know how to deal with. It's pretty front heavy, but once you've got your prep done, you don't need to lift a finger to change anything while your tourists take a romp through a real and dramatically significant world that was built to react in a limited but impactful manner. You don't need to adjust the Drama, you only need to say what just happened. While this isn't the only way to DM, this design philosophy has proven extremely effective for the people I know who have used it. The Unexpected things your players do are now funnier and more significant. The things they do that are expected have their intended effect and increase drama. The things they do that cause detriment were always going to cause detriment, and you can rest assured that what just happened probably wasn't hot bullshit.
I build my worlds in such a way that I try to think like my NPCs beforehand, how they build their houses, what precautions they take against intruders, how they organize their forces and what they've encountered and know how to deal with. It's pretty front heavy, but once you've got your prep done, you don't need to lift a finger to change anything while your tourists take a romp through a real and dramatically significant world that was built to react in a limited but impactful manner. You don't need to adjust the Drama, you only need to say what just happened. While this isn't the only way to DM, this design philosophy has proven extremely effective for the people I know who have used it. The Unexpected things your players do are now funnier and more significant. The things they do that are expected have their intended effect and increase drama. The things they do that cause detriment were always going to cause detriment, and you can rest assured that what just happened probably wasn't hot bullshit.
Considering these thoughts, you should find it a lot easier when designing your playing field to take what's given to you and then to Run With It.
- Nirrum
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