There are many ways to play TTRPGs. As long as you’re all having fun you’re doing it right.

It’s easy, however, to stumble over one’s assumptions. Mismatched assumptions about creative control, who’s taking narrative initiative, and what to expect in play are a quick way to sour your fun.

This is a tangent from the “social skills of storytelling” series, working from two inspirations:

First, in my post on consent in RPGs, I mentioned the importance of a shared idea of what kind of fun you’re trying to have.

Second, John Bell’s post about cultures of play over on retiredadventurer.blogspot.com is another helpful starting point and sparked some of my thoughts about unacknowledged differences. You don’t need to give that post to your players as assigned reading, but it may help you—as the storyteller—to identify what roles you expect yourself and your players to fill, and what roles your players expect you and themselves to fill. 

Elaborating on Bell’s post (seriously, go read it) I believe that there’s an important distinction gaming groups need to make in any given campaign about where the balance of authorial power lies.

I think this sorting of “where the authorial power lies” is a distinct map that can be overlaid on Bell’s six cultures of play. Any given culture of play might tend in one direction or the other, giving more power to the storyteller or to the players. Theoretically it should be possible to run a game within each culture of play at nearly any point on the spectrum of “authorial power to the storyteller / authorial power to the player,” but each game system and culture of play is generally better suited to one balance of authorial control than to another.

What do I mean by authorial control or power? I mean that authorial power lets one determine the course of the narrative or the results of a test or challenge. The more authorial power someone has in the game, the greater the scope and scale of their determinations. Playing make-believe with your friends without any rules might be the most equal way of spreading authorial power, but that spread also makes resolving disagreements more potentially difficult and creates more places where players might disagree over competing versions of imagined reality. At their heart, TTRPG systems exist to resolve these disagreements or to prevent them arising in the first place.

Some groups are most comfortable playing in games where the storyteller holds the balance of power. This might take the shape of challenging semi-adversarial play with players matching their wits against the storyteller, facing difficult puzzles and deadly traps. It might take the form of elaborate narratives with planned-out overarching plots. In either of those cases, the storyteller has the vast majority of the authorial power and the responsibility to establish and run the story world. From Bell’s post, I think this could match well with both “classic” and “traditional” cultures of play, as both skew towards giving the storyteller greater authorial power.

This power and responsibility can be both invigorating and exhausting for storytellers. Players in this type of game may anticipate and feel most comfortable with some narrative railroading in the game. Players may either hunt for the storyteller’s desired overarching narrative or expect to be actively pushed onto that narrative’s track by the storyteller. When players expect this but don’t see it, they may wonder what they are supposed to do, or wonder where the real story (or the next challenge) is.

In the “traditional” mold (using Bell’s term), this kind of storytelling has the most in common with the linear narratives of non-interactive fiction like books, television, movies, and comics. Here, storytellers may have a story planned out, they may have narrative beats planned out, they may know more or less where each character ought to end up. This kind of storytelling is facilitated by pre-written scenarios, and is most often modeled by popular actual play shows like Critical Role or Dimension 20—there may be unexpected moments and plot twists, but the general shape of the story is largely known beforehand by the storyteller.

The big upside to this style of narrative is that—by putting so much power in the hands of the storyteller to create a mostly-linear narrative—these stories tend towards greater thematic consistency and smoother narrative arcs more in keeping with our expectations of genre stories. The downsides are the increased rigidity of the story, the reduced ability for players to steer their own course through the world as they see fit, and the fewer openings for players to totally alter the direction of the narrative. For players who really want the experience of partaking in their own big planned out narrative arcs with all the emotional resonance which that entails, this often feels very rewarding. For those players who want the unfettered freedom to explore the story’s world as they see fit, who want to take the initiative and direct the story’s course, this style of play often feels constricting.

It’s also possible to give some of that authorial power to players and their characters without surrendering the storyteller’s role as primary author of the narrative. When player characters determine their own goals and objectives and pursue those without a planned overarching plot from the storyteller, players take a modicum of that authorial power. The storyteller might still have the bulk of the authorial power, and be responsible for running the world around the PCs, but the players have a greater responsibility for both charting their own course and for communicating what they are interested in. This lends itself well to sandbox games, West Marches campaigns, and to games with even more balanced authorial power.

On the far end of this spectrum, with more balanced authorial power, one can find shared storytelling games like those built from Avery Alder’s Belonging Outside Belonging system. In BOB-based systems, there is still a structure present to set the game’s conventions and expectations, to help with turn taking, and to establish who is responsible for adding which pieces of the fiction. But the BOB-based systems’ general approach spreads far more authorial power across every player rather than concentrating it in one storyteller. This broad distribution of authorial power tends to produce very different stories and experiences as compared to systems with more concentrated authorial power, with a great deal of narrative tone depending on what narrative tools and cues are built into the specific game: for example, both Sleepaway and Wanderhome are BOB-based systems, but one creates horror stories while the other tends towards the cozier side of things.

So, when you’re trying to decide what game to play, or what kind of game you want to play, make sure that you and your fellow players are on the same page. Whatever system you might choose, how do you want to assign power and responsibility for creating and running your game’s world? Do you want one person to be in charge of running your game, do you all want to pitch in together, or do you want to spread those duties out unevenly? Are you looking for a pre-planned epic narrative, or an emergent story, or the picaresque adventures of a rotating ensemble cast? I recommend that you come to a clear understanding about these things before you get too far into your game. You’ll be happier for it.