Campaign structure and getting your hooks in

I think we think about adventures and hooks wrong. It struck me recently, when writing about illusionism, that we use hooks all the time in games where they really aren't warranted - we use hooks to disguise the buy in for a game in the narratively-focused style, trying to make it appear as a sandbox.

Let me explain. A lot of narrative-focused campaigns (I even want to say "most") start with a quest hook: Someone comes up to you in a bar and gives you a quest, or bandits attack the town, or you get a message saying that the king is dying, would you mind awfully blah blah blah. By "narrative-focused", I mean campaigns where the GM has prepped a plot they want the PCs to follow - not a bad structure in and of itself, as I'll discuss. But these campaign openers annoy the hell out of me, because they're empty scenes: They look like they have some meaningful choice in them, namely the choice to take the quest or not, but there isn't actually a decision here. The characters could, in fictional terms, refuse the call to adventure, but they won't because the players understand that the game is predicated on their participation. They're not going to turn to the GM and go "Nah, what else have you got?"

I think there's a Tunnels and Trolls solo adventure somewhere where you're given the option to walk away from the opening scene, and the book says something like "You walk away from the adventure and go live the rest of your life. Roll up a new character who will accept the call, or go buy another gamebook you actually want to play."

But it's not just the waste of a single scene at the start of a campaign (arc) that annoys me. There's much more embedded here. Because this is part and parcel of the illusionist approach, and the misconceptions about the rpg experience built into it. See, what the GM is doing when they use a quest hook scene in a linear game is trying to tell the players that they're playing a game where quests or missions or whatever are presented, and the players have the opportunity to pick them up or turn them down - basically, that they're playing something akin to a sandbox. But the game is manifestly not a sandbox - the players are expected to follow the plot. So what gives?

What gives, in short, is that the GM wants to give the players the experience of free choice that you get in a game where the structure allows you to choose whether to take up a particular thread. But, since the game structure they're actually playing in doesn't allow for that, the scene has no bite - the players know there's no actual choice, so don't feel empowered in the intended way. (I've written at length about this here, so won't repeat it.)

What's happening here is that we've built up a kind of ideal rpg experience where the players are free to do whatever they want, to explore the world and pick up or drop whatever threads they choose, but, crucially, no one actually wants to run this game. In a way we've idealised the sandbox as the gold standard for an rpg (just look at how we sell potential players on the idea), but few GMs want to follow through and run an actual sandbox. Instead, what we get are narratively driven campaigns with a clear plot that have pretensions to being sandbox-y in certain respects - the oft-repeated idea that the players can have free choice over what they do, and that the GM has no pre-conceived outcomes, despite the fact that the plot clearly hinges on such outcomes.

Enter illusionism. What illusionism does (or, I should say, "purports to do") for the plot-driven GM is to give the players the experience of free choice over their actions while actually allowing the GM to run the narrative they have prepared. There are many drawbacks to illusionism. But besides all that, there's a certain amount of doublethink going on here.

Put it this way: If you think a linear structure would harm your players' enjoyment of the game, the solution is not to forge ahead and prep that game regardless, and then try to pass it off as a different structure to convince your players that, actually, they are enjoying it. If you're genuinely convinced that your players are incapable of enjoying a certain type of game, prep a different one, or find new players - don't try and deceive them about the game they are playing. 

I've tried to be very neutral here as regards linearity itself: I prefer games with a wide open environment to explore and very little in the way of plot, but I recognise that that's a personal preference, and there are people out there who prefer plot. I think this is the kernel of truth in the (still absurd) argument that states that "some players just like being railroaded" - it's true that a lot of players like the gameplay that comes with having a linear plot structure, but that's not the same thing.

See, there's a really easy, straightforward solution here. So easy I can't believe it's been staring us all in the face the whole time. And it's this: Be upfront with your players about the game you're playing. If you're running a fairly linear, plot-driven campaign (a completely legitimate thing to want to do), tell them that out of game, before you start. If that turns them off, they probably wouldn't have enjoyed the campaign anyway - better that everyone, GM included, gets to play the game they want than to garner players under false pretences of agency.

Now, even in a linear campaign there should probably be some points where characters can have an influence. Usually this will come down to choices of approach rather than choices that determine the action. E.g.: The plot will always have you assaulting this castle, but there are a few ways you could do so (and the GM should be open to approaches they haven't explicitly planned for). A game without even freedom of approach is likely to lack interest, but note that this doesn't preclude even very linear campaigns - D&D 4e and 5e seem to be set up such that you can essentially string a set of combat encounters along a linear path - essentially making it a narrative wargame - and the combat rules in themselves provide enough freedom of approach to keep players fairly engaged. You just need to be honest with the players that this is what they're signing on for, otherwise (and this is incredibly common) they'll chafe at fact that they're unable to influence which encounters follow from which.

This point is not trivial. I think there are a lot of GMs out there who would turn their noses up at the idea of running an rpg as a "narrative wargame", and then proceed to run exactly this campaign structure. Personally, I'm of the opinion that this snobbishness is unfounded - I greatly enjoy narrative wargames - but the point stands: If you really think this campaign structure is no good, then run a campaign with greater scope for players to influence events. Don't just try to mislead them about the influence they do have, and run a narrative wargame anyway.

To circle back around then, I think we set players up for disappointment when we open campaigns with scenes containing these non-hooks. The core point here is that this practice is usually used to avoid pitching the campaign until the opening scene, and to avoid pitching the campaign's structure entirely. As a hobby (as Justin Alexander has pointed out in a different context), we are pretty dismal when it comes to thinking in terms of game structures. As here, we out and out fail to recognise and distinguish between completely different structures, and fail to recognise their importance for the gaming experience - that is, when the structures themselves aren't actively being pooh-poohed as too unrefined or "videogamey". And this is a shame, because railroading basically consists in a mismatch of expectations concerning campaign structure.

Illusionism, such as we've been talking about, is a form of railroading. Railroading is what happens when the GM has a particular idea for what should happen in the game, and pushes or reroutes the players towards this content. However, in a game where the players know what to expect vis-à-vis following a set plot, this doesn't happen - where the GM's and the players' expectations for the campaign's structure are matched, railroading is impossible. For instance, in the tightly-scripted "narrative wargame" campaign, pitched as a more open campaign complete with bogus hooks and the like, the GM will almost certainly have to pull some illusionist chicanery to make sure the players keep showing up at the next intended encounter. However, if you tell the players at the outset that the campaign will largely consist of a fairly linear sequence of encounters, then no railroading is either possible or necessary - at worst, the GM can call out when players threaten to stray too far from the intended path, and note that they're disrupting the game they signed on to play.

(As an aside, the refusal to set expectations leads to a dysfunctional approach to players playing disruptively, where the GM tries to deal with it in game by piling on more railroading, rather than calling it out - after all, if you won't admit that there's a plot they're supposed to be following, what is it you can accuse the players of disrupting?)

It's really easy to pitch a linear campaign properly. For instance: Tell the players they'll be performing missions for a handler; tell them they're on a quest to find the three MacGuffins from three different castles; tell them they heard a really juicy rumour about treasure in the dungeon (then start them at the entrance, hence bypassing the tavern scene); tell them they'll be fighting a number of encounters as part of a warband, at the command of their generals. Just don't go through the rigmarole of acting like they could choose to say 'no' - get them signed on to play the game they'll actually be playing.

There's a natural worry here that no-one will want to play a campaign pitched as being so linear. I disagree - again, I enjoy narrative wargames - but I am sensitive to the worry. For a lot of people, perhaps most, the attraction of ttrpgs is the freedom to control their (character's) own destiny - announce up front that you're limiting that or taking it away and the campaign loses some of its attraction. But again, the answer - and I can't stress this enough - is the following: If being honest about the structure of your campaign makes it sound like it'd be unfun, run a different campaign.

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I'm minded to agree with the point Justin Alexander has been making for a while: That the railroad has become institutionalised as the standard procedure for a campaign, and the only way of running that we teach to new GMs. But the point is that this isn't just a way of bashing linear, narrative-driven campaigns. That campaign structure is fine for those who like it - its merits and flaws are a different discussion. The railroad isn't a campaign structure, it's what you get when expectations about campaign structure don't align - when the GM pitches a campaign as being less linear than it actually is. I've talked before about the benefits of open campaigns over linear campaigns as I see them - this isn't that. This is me saying that the way to de-institutionalise railroading is to teach GMs to pitch their campaigns accurately - to get on the same page with the players about the campaign's actual structure, rather than disguising it because they think the players wouldn't have fun if they knew what game they were actually playing.