Yes, but if you go through all the trouble of describing the man as a wealthy, retired adventurer, shouldn't him being a wealthy, retired adventurer have a direct impact on the story? That's Chekov's gun. In this example, the gun isn't one of the guns, the gun is that the guy used to be a bad ass.
And this is kind of the core of my predicament. Having immersive descriptions of everything, IMO, leads to a more interesting game, in a living, breathing world. At the same time, it can be misleading from a narrative perspective. D&D(and roleplaying games more generally), have multiple layers going on at the same time - story, the player characters, the actual game(rules, mechanics, etc), the world - which all interact, but have different needs as a DM. And while Chekhov's gun gives players some huge 'omg!' moments, it can also be a yoke around the neck of world depth.
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To follow along the example of the wealthy retired adventurer...
Why is the focus of the story there? Since Roleplaying Games are an interactive experience what gain is there to be had in describing a set piece the players won't interact with?
Are the players there to appeal to the NPC for a favor/quest? Does the description of his home and such trigger in the savvy adventurer's mind to manipulate the NPC in a particular way? To appeal to this NPC's vanity for example for a slight competence boost to Diplomacy?
If not, what's the point? The story is written to convey a message to the players. It influences how they act. Describing the scene quite literally is how the GM shapes how they wish the story to progress.
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I think of RPGs are more like improv than story writing. A bunch of people interactively making up a story as you go along. Also in improv everything is invisible, and you have to actually take the time to describe it (which is similar to RPGs just using words instead of your body). Also you want to give users all the information they need, not worry about them missing something because they didn't guess at a clue.
In improv Checkov's Gun seems even more important, given how many teachers emphasize it. :) So if RPGs are more like improv, then perhaps Checkov's gun is even more important in RPGs than in stories.
The exception to that is specificity, in improv over and over we hear "specificity kills ambiguity" and being specific is better. But in RPGs you have to worry about accidentally creating red herrings by being too specific. So sometimes NOT using specifics may be better, and instead describe the feel or impression the characters get. Such as "gaudily dressed in cheap knockoff jewelry and clothing" or "gaudily dressed in expensive clothing, suggesting he is new to wealth", or "functional clothing that you can only tell is finely tailored when you get close, suggesting he is wealthy but not flashy" etc
So with each scene we can ask ourselves what are we trying to convey, and only include details that matter for that. So trying to convey the atmosphere? Trying to describe elements of a home that would tell the players something about the occupant? Making sure they notice a plot point? Whittle down everything else.
Chekhov's Gun in Pathfinder makes as much sense as Chekhov's Gun in football. You can't know what's important to the story until the story is told, and the whole group tells it. Maybe they ignore the high value prisoner instead of interrogating them, and instead run down the crime ring through their rogue's underworld contacts.
I'd replace Chekhov's Gun with "don't obviously waste time". Don't spend 15 minutes RPing a boy getting scolded by his mother at the market unless the PCs have a reason to be interested by that. On the other hand, don't say "The armory is 10x20, it has armory stuff in it". Just go with the amount of description and attention that strike you as right. Don't worry about making everything necessary and irreplaceable in the story, just make sure everything is interesting.
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Chekhov's Gun in Pathfinder makes as much sense as Chekhov's Gun in football. You can't know what's important to the story until the story is told, and the whole group tells it. Maybe they ignore the high value prisoner instead of interrogating them, and instead run down the crime ring through their rogue's underworld contacts.
I'd replace Chekhov's Gun with "don't obviously waste time". Don't spend 15 minutes RPing a boy getting scolded by his mother at the market unless the PCs have a reason to be interested by that. On the other hand, don't say "The armory is 10x20, it has armory stuff in it". Just go with the amount of description and attention that strike you as right. Don't worry about making everything necessary and irreplaceable in the story, just make sure everything is interesting.
Pretty much this. You can't really cut unnecessary features, since you don't know what is necessary. Your players decide that for you.
Using seeds you planted earlier in description? That's a great thing to do, but it's not Chekhov's Gun.
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Chekhov's Gun in Pathfinder makes as much sense as Chekhov's Gun in football. You can't know what's important to the story until the story is told, and the whole group tells it. Maybe they ignore the high value prisoner instead of interrogating them, and instead run down the crime ring through their rogue's underworld contacts.
This is only true in pure sandbox games, though. Those aren't in the majority. You never know exactly what will happen, but in Rise of the Runelords, preeeetty safe bet that a runelord or two's gonna be involved.
"Really, really strict railroad"
You mean an adventure path?
This is only true in pure sandbox games, though. Those aren't in the majority. You never know exactly what will happen, but in Rise of the Runelords, preeeetty safe bet that a runelord or two's gonna be involved.
Are you saying as long as there's a Runelord or two in your RotRL game, you can safely discard every other element in the game?
Oh wait, of course not, because that would be ridiculous. You understand that there's a difference between the plot of the AP, and the story of the game as played out, yes? As in, if there wasn't one, nobody would have to go through all the trouble of playing Pathfinder?
Without invoking RotRL spoilers, let's just say that one set of players might find it vital to aid and comfort refugees they encounter in their adventure, where others might flip them some coppers and move on. The refugees aren't strictly necessary to the story of the Runelords, but they might be necessary to the story that the players are telling along with you. And what you consider necessary to the plot might be superfluous because the Wizard knows how to use divination spells.
Just because you know some of the necessary elements are ahead of time, that doesn't mean you know all of them.
Edit: Also what Jeff said.
I'm running an in-store Pathfinder game at my FLGS using the Crypt of the Everflame as the starting point. Since I'm not running an adventure path, I've picked out several modules for the players to go through over the course of playing their characters.
To this end, I have introduced all of the catalyzing characters for the later modules at the end of the first module. Without spoiling anything, there is a big celebratory denouncement at the end that seemed like the perfect point to introduce these long term characters. In order to create a properly interactive sandbox with a set of railroad tracks running through it, I've found myself front-loading the first module with Chekhov's guns that either will or will not pay off and play out over the course of this particular campaign. The potential for payoff is there, but as this is a RPG, not everything will be utilized.
As an aside, I've named this the Heroes of the Everflame campaign for my own intents and purposes. I'm a nerd like that and love to see it all come together.
This is only true in pure sandbox games, though. Those aren't in the majority. You never know exactly what will happen, but in Rise of the Runelords, preeeetty safe bet that a runelord or two's gonna be involved.Are you saying as long as there's a Runelord or two in your RotRL game, you can safely discard every other element in the game?
Oh wait, of course not, because that would be ridiculous. You understand that there's a difference between the plot of the AP, and the story of the game as played out, yes? As in, if there wasn't one, nobody would have to go through all the trouble of playing Pathfinder?
Without invoking RotRL spoilers, let's just say that one set of players might find it vital to aid and comfort refugees they encounter in their adventure, where others might flip them some coppers and move on. The refugees aren't strictly necessary to the story of the Runelords, but they might be necessary to the story that the players are telling along with you. And what you consider necessary to the plot might be superfluous because the Wizard knows how to use divination spells.
Just because you know some of the necessary elements are ahead of time, that doesn't mean you know all of them.
Edit: Also what Jeff said.
I invoked the Runelords as a nice, comedic, non-spoilery example. The point is that the GM actually knows exactly where the campaign's headed, barring the odd sidetrek the PCs request. And barring TPKs. But if those happen, nobody's gonna be around to care that, "Hey, that gun never fired!" I have no idea where the "only the Runelords are significant" thing came from—I don't even really know what you're saying with it—but my point was that the GM inevitably knows where an AP is headed. The PCs will be in this location, and they will fight these monsters to get this mythical weapon to kill this jackass. Exceptions to this are extremely rare (unless they involve contrary players or GMs who like to make major modifications).
When you have the right GM, whether an item is a Chekhov's Gun or a background piece can be determined solely by whether the players notice it. If they ignore the refugees that later show up and turn out to be the Runelords (this is exactly how the AP ends I assume), it's background. If they help the refugees who therefore mention lots of hints that they'll see the PCs again, it's Chekhov's Gun (or Chekhov's Gunman, but y'know).
This is exactly why I dislike the reference to Chekhov's Gun. In storytelling, it's the notion that you should not include anything irrelevant to the story in the story. In TV Tropes, it's something that first appears insignificant that later is revealed to be important. OP asked his question in the former sense, and so that's how I replied.
In other, more confusing words, putting Chekhov's Guns in an RPG has nothing to do with applying Chekhov's Gun to RPGs. The fact that you know RotRL will feature Runelords is irrelevant to the application of Chekhov's Gun as a principle. The question isn't "can I feature this thing, but then reveal it's importance later?" (obviously yes), the question is "should I include this detail that I think is probably irrelevant" (answered in my first post in this thread).
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Honestly, there are three interpretations at this point: Semi-literal, classic, and trope.
Chekhov's Gun (Classic Edition) is about not including anything irrelevant. This actually isn't totally impossible in a game—just make a note of everything and have it come up later. Could make for an interesting circular sort of campaign.
Chekhov's Gun (Sorta Literal) is more about not including something that seems important and not having it come up. "One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." By "sorta literal", I mean we take this at face value—that he's talking about things equivalent to a loaded gun.
Really, it's kinda a misleading metaphor, since what he actually meant was Classic Edition. It was more about being concise and less about not building false expectations. A gun implies the latter.
also shakespeare was not that good and tesla? totally photoshopped it
Chekhov's Gun (Trope Edition) is what I'm talking about here. I think it's the most relevant to RPGs. But if the OP wants to talk about simplistic descriptions, sure. I can see going with them if you have overly proddy players.
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Honestly, there are three interpretations at this point: Semi-literal, classic, and trope.
Chekhov's Gun (Classic Edition) is about not including anything irrelevant. This actually isn't totally impossible in a game—just make a note of everything and have it come up later. Could make for an interesting circular sort of campaign.
Chekhov's Gun (Sorta Literal) is more about not including something that seems important and not having it come up. "One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." By "sorta literal", I mean we take this at face value—that he's talking about things equivalent to a loaded gun.
Really, it's kinda a misleading metaphor, since what he actually meant was Classic Edition. It was more about being concise and less about not building false expectations. A gun implies the latter.
also shakespeare was not that good and tesla? totally photoshopped it
Chekhov's Gun (Trope Edition) is what I'm talking about here. I think it's the most relevant to RPGs. But if the OP wants to talk about simplistic descriptions, sure. I can see going with them if you have overly proddy players.
Seeing as the OP later posted this...
I am struggling with the idea, because I am a novelist and also a DM. In my books, I adhere very strictly to Chekhov's gun. In my games, however, I want to describe every room in great detail, but not everything is important. I want to add details that are interesting and give the world life, without them necessarily becoming plot points. But oftentimes the players will latch on to something and then drive the plot in that direction, and I would have to stumble to keep up. So if I adhere to Chekhov's gun in the first place, I won't have that issue, but I feel my game will suffer from a lack of detail.
... I figure he means the "Classic Edition", not the TVTropes knock-off.
So far people have mentioned Loot and NPC's specifically, I would like to add another interpretation: Plots and Lore
What I mean is: referencing something either in the backstory of the characters or in the lore of the setting that later turns out to be important.
I am aware that I could be talking about simple foreshadowing, but I believe the difference is when the specific are almost identical or too similiar to be disregarded. And it should be possible to interact with somhow.
Example: at the start of the game the party learns of a great tragedy that occurred long ago and led to the creation of the BBEG , later, through magic(tm)and time travel (oh noooo) they find a way to avoid the tragedy and change the timeline to a (hopefully) better but at least different outcome.
In this case the piece of history is the proverbial Chekhov's Gun.
Do you agree?
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Depends, what enhancement bonus did Checkov give it?
I don't allow guns in my games.
lol.
I'm okay with guns as long as no one loads them.
I support gun control as well, Xethik.
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Vis-a-vis "classic" vs "trope" and in general:
The classic concept isn't massively different to the trope when playing an RPG. Mostly on the ideas of a game world vs a novel. In a novel, you have the evident factor that the person is reading for a story. Conversely, gaming (video and tabletop) has a huge world-interaction element. Pictures painting 1,000 words, so to speak. When your medium is the written word alone, you don't need to mention the pans, workspace, stove, etc - in a picture, it would look strange without, and a gameworld would be accusably unfleshed/incomplete without. The idea of irrelevant details is a bit fuzzy.
That isn't to say you have to give the precise interaction of every bit of dust (Victor Hugo's 500 pages-of-Paris-porn is insufferable enough, a game doesn't need it) but that a detail you don't expect to be made use of still has a place in a scene. Primarily on a distinction given above; is it interact-able? This is where you meet the classic idea, while simultaneously giving the tools for the trope anyway. Not a single detail is irrelevant because the details given have use.
But oftentimes the players will latch on to something and then drive the plot in that direction, and I would have to stumble to keep up. So if I adhere to Chekhov's gun in the first place, I won't have that issue, but I feel my game will suffer from a lack of detail. I think there is a line somewhere and I was hoping it was more well defined. However, it seems there is a number of different approaches, which have given me cause for thought. So, thank you! And continue, please :)
Conversely, this problem exists. A great possibility exists here with many details which slightly breaks the above but provides that wondrous tool of a red herring; the cigar is just a cigar. Let players invest time in researching the wrong detail; then let the actual plot catch up on them; well done for taking down a smuggler's ring, you know there is a cult you were investigating, right?
In lieu of this, I take the advice I received from an older GM: Don't have stories you're heavily invested in, have actors and give them motivations; a) It helps the improv element b) It means you aren't constantly rewriting.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You really should describe WHAT Chekhov's Gun actually IS in the opening post, for those not in the know. It would allow for more people to participate in the discussion.I was hoping for opinions from those well versed in the concept, not gut reactions from those just learning about it. I wanted experienced, tested opinions, not nascent ones. I am struggling with the idea, because I am a novelist and also a DM. In my books, I adhere very strictly to Chekhov's gun. In my games, however, I want to describe every room in great detail, but not everything is important. I want to add details that are interesting and give the world life, without them necessarily becoming plot points. But oftentimes the players will latch on to something and then drive the plot in that direction, and I would have to stumble to keep up. So if I adhere to Chekhov's gun in the first place, I won't have that issue, but I feel my game will suffer from a lack of detail. I think there is a line somewhere and I was hoping it was more well defined. However, it seems there is a number of different approaches, which have given me cause for thought. So, thank you! And continue, please :)
Internet forum discussions will always be better when you give everyone participating the chance to be informed. People are going to comment whether you inform them or not, so by not providing basic information, you get more comments that are uninformed. I don't want to get in a long debate about this, just pointing out something useful for future discussions.
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More on topic, "being relevant to the story" is a huge, vague space. Not everything has to be strictly central to the story. Some things are included in descriptions to help build mood/theme/context for other things. Just because a detail has been revealed doesn't mean everything about it has been revealed.
One thing I do as DM is ask players what details they remember from session to session. When players remember details, I include them as relevant, which achieves several purposes:
1) it ties the story together well
2) the player feels clever for remembering
3) I keep the game interesting because I'm focusing on the things they're paying attention to
I'm not afraid to rewrite my plot mid-session to incorporate cool ideas my players have, and I don't just mean cool ideas for actions they take, but cool ideas they have for the villains to be doing. If a player says "Oh man, it'd really suck if the bad guy was planning to do....." I often incorporate some element of that into the plan now.