RPG Storytelling and the Illusion of Choice

Lore Story Forum
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I’ve been playing a lot of traditional RPGs lately (mostly D&D, Dread, and Fiasco), and it’s made me reflect on the relationship between the storytelling and the RPG experience.

When you prepare the story for an RPG, you of course have a broad idea of the plot in mind. At the same time, you want to give players enough freedom so that they feel like important participants in the narrative. You want them to feel like their choices matter, even if the outcome is significantly predetermined.

You do this by creating a situation where the players are willing accomplices in the story outcomes. If they resent the story, or just don’t buy in, they will try to break it. But if the narrative you set up is broadly consistent with the goals they have for their characters, players will help you out, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of GM tricks to keep things more or less on track (i’m talking about with regards to the broad strokes of the plot; the details can and frequently do go in wildly unexpected and entertaining directions).

This is where I think modern WoW is struggling. I touched on this on another thread, but felt like it deserved its own discussion.

WoW is also an RPG. But the story is increasingly written as if for a different medium, such as television, or novels. The focus is increasingly on the story of the major NPCs, mostly faction leaders, with the PCs mostly serving as trusted subordinates (at best) or obedient henchmen (at worst). So this really disrupts the sense of player agency. Imagine a traditional RPG where the GM role-played the central characters and the players were treated as sidekicks. Yuck.

Worse still, the plot has increasingly gone in directions that many players don’t see as compatible with their characters. For example, I play a paladin. A Blood Elf paladin who doesn’t mind a bit of pragmatic violence, to be sure, but not someone who’d be okay with burning down a city full of civilians or blighting an entire zone. Conversely, I’m sure there are plenty of Alliance players who don’t agree with backing off on the Horde because they felt bad about killing Rastakhan. My point is that the more the narrative is at odds with how players see their characters, the more players refuse to buy in. And my experience with traditional RPGs is that players who don’t buy in first become disruptive, and then quit.

I think the Blizzard writers should stop looking at mediums like television for inspiration, and focus on RPG storytelling. The first question for any narrative should be: will the players feel a sense of agency? and the second question should be: will this storyline be flexible enough to be consistent with how most players see their characters?

TL/DR: RPGs thrive when the GM creates a story around the goals players have for their characters. When that happens, the players help the GM (or game) to make the story work. WoW is currently failing to offer this experience to many players. The story has become adversarial: the writers are trying to tell us how to act and feel rather than letting us find our own stories within the broad outline of the plot.

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Part of the problem is that Blizzard is seemingly trying to make Horde players who are bothered by what their faction is doing to feel like Saurfang, but that is a horrible position to be in. Players want pride in their faction, not to feel ashamed of it. We want to be heroes of our faction, but Sylvanas casts too much doubt on the value of being loyal to it. It is not just we are not given adequate choices to rebel or just refuse to be part of something through story choice, it is that the villain bat is a cruel thing.

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Saurfang is better off than us because Saurfang got to leave.

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The problem is that, as a series, Sylvanas with her current ambitions cannot be allowed to succeed: to kill the Alliance and raise and undead Stormwind populace to serve her. We know that inevitably there will be a future expansion and that expansion must be built on a status quo ending where either Sylvanas is redeemed with a new perspective/goals, or removed from the plot in some fashion.

And with that knowledge we can already predict the ending of BfA: MoP 2.0, be it a Siege or Raid or Dungeon or Quest, a confrontation is necessitated to remove Sylvanas from the macro plot.

The Horde and Alliance have to exist mechanically, which also means the Alliance can’t dismantle the Horde or post any meaningful justice to their warchrimes. Sylvanas will face justice and the Horde leaders who were complicit in the War of Thorns will be Grom’d.

That’s why, as a fan of the late Telltale Games, I hate the illusion of choice being given to Sylvanas fanboys. A determinate/alternate path has to merge with the “canon” state of the world, however crudely, because future stories necessitate all streams merging into the same river, even if the paths differ.

I don’t know why Blizzard is cowardly enough to give a loyalist faction and give Horde players hope that their choice matters. By game design, it cannot. I never quite understood why WoW players thought that player choice would improve things----every person you spare (as a choice) or side with hoping to spare them later down the road will die in a freak accident off screen.

Blizzard should not be be shaming players for a path they were forced to walk, but neither should they cruely give players agency in a setting where they’re, at best, jobbers.

Blizzard approves of Anduin being the High King and “prep” players and Alliance vassal states to be ready to forgive the Horde because that’s the only scenario this setting will work for future stories. But rather than giving in-universe justification for the Horde existing as a stabilizing force in a chaotic world or a superpower with a foreign ideology to the Alliance, Blizzard simply assumes most Alliance players share Anduin’s ideology, rather than Genn or Rogers mindset. It’s the same reason they chose to Isolate Tyrande in her own little purgatory because she, of all characters, would upset the grand plot Blizzard has for Anduin/the Alliance, however idiotic that grand plot may be.

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I left too. Horde main since wrath, now can’t stand it and play a dwarf pally.

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I dunno. Player choice might have been cool outside the current mop2 scenario. We will probably never know.

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The issue of the other Horde leaders not rebelling already is one of not properly showing and explaining what they fear. It is a reasonable guess that it is because they fear the Alliance coming for them, but that doesn’t sit well with our meta knowledge. They do not say"that was terrible, but if we rebel too soon without a major blow to the Alliance they will kill us" outside of Saurfang in Old Soldier, which would be something. If the Alliance was morally gray, perhaps showing Anduin struggling to actual have authority, then maybe it would be more understandable for leaders who are freeing Baine in 8.2 to have waited to do anything against her.

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Another important difference between standard rpg and whatever this is is the fact most rpg’s try to make the Journey itself matter. WoW devs think that a massive TWEEEEEEEEEEST is what matters the most.

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He doesn’t though, which is a problem, because he wants to depose a leader and start a civil war before that aforementioned criteria is met.

The writing team doesn’t actually ever reference that being an important part of staging a coup.

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This is exactly right. And perfectly illustrates the problem with delivering the story through the NPCs, rather than the players. We wind up being forced to agree with NPC character arcs that often don’t make sense for our characters. And then the story no longer feels like it belongs to us.

Instead of being a story-driven game, it becomes a story accompanied by a game.

Edit:
Here’s how I would make the WoW story more RPG friendly.

  1. Tell it through the player’s experiences. Big NPC-driven events should happen rarely, and should be delivered from the vantage of the PC, or in optional external media. Novels, online comics, etc., are brilliant for enhancing the story through the tales of people like Jaina and Thrall.

  2. Don’t write story arcs that require players to behave in extreme ways. For example, I would never dream of starting a D&D campaign by informing my payers that they have just helped murder thousands of people. As soon as you require players to do something that is not compatible with their sense of character, you’ve lost them.

  3. Avoid story beats that ignore the fact that this is an MMO. There is no need to write the PC as the High Warlord/Grand Admiral/Whatever. Whenever the game does this, it is basically telling me that everyone I play with, such as the guild members who helped me defeat the Big Bads, aren’t real. Only my story actually exists. That undermines the who premise of an RPG.

An example: when I was a kid, I hated that Chewbacca never got a medal at the end of Star Wars. He did as much as the others - why no medal for Chewie?

Well, when I defeat some terrible threat with the help of an entire raid but then the WoW narrative plays out as if only I am the main champion of the Horde/Alliance, it’s just Chewbacca-ed everyone else that I did that stuff with.

  1. Don’t surprise players with what their characters do. Plot-based story twists are fun. Character-based story twists (i.e. that make player characters behave in an uncharacteristic way) are not fun, they are alienating. In an RPG, the GM doesn’t get to dictate how player characters feel and act.

  2. Make the story the setting for the players to create their own stories. You can still have an overarching plot, of course - every RPG campaign needs one. But the players need to feel like it is their story while they are playing.

This is an RPG. Write it like an RPG.

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I agree completely. On top of being apart of these extreme actions, the motivation by the npcs who are dictating the story dont make sense.

Motivation is central to creating character driven stories. Blizzard botched it when they decided to start having such dramatic events where the npcs had little, none, or stupid motivation.

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This is where games like FFXIV and SWTOR are leagues ahead of WOW when it comes to story telling.

In those MMOs, the Story revolves ‘round the PC’s actions as the main driving force of the narrative. In WOW, I just felt like I was ridin’ in the backseat while Anduin, Jaina, or Sylvanas drove.

In FFXIV, while the game designates my character as the legendary “Warrior of Light” (Soon to be Warrior of Darkness in the upcoming expansion), the narrative recognizes that many of the Big Bads can’t be solo’d. The Warrior of Light/Darkness didn’t defeat the raid boss single handed… they had help from their fellow adventures. Because that who the Warrior of Light/Darkness is, first and foremost in the narrative… an adventurer.

SWTOR is probably the best of these three MMOs when it comes to the vehicle of telling the narrative (imo). BioWare kept their usual multi-choice responses, giving the players more freedom to choose what kind of character they are playin’. BioWare even wrote the Light-side Sith and Dark-side Jedi responses in away that made sense since you don’t suddenly swap between factions for pickin’ a Dark-side response on a Jedi or a Light-side response on a Sith.

A Light-sided choice as a Sith doesn’t mean your character acts like a virtuous beacon of light… they’re more like you just promise not to kill everyone if they do what you ask. Playin’ a Light-side Sith is almost like playin’ a Dark or Anti Hero.

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Oops. My OP didn’t directly address my thread’s title.

The illusion of choice is vital to making an RPG work. As a GM, you start with a story that you want the players to play out - perhaps one you’ve created, or perhaps a pre-written scenario. But the game only works if the players feel like they have freedom. So how do you square that circle?

Fortunately, the players want to go on the adventure that you have prepared. They know that while, in theory, they can do whatever they want, in practice, I have something prepared and the game will be way more fun if they commit to the story. So they do, because they want to know how the story comes out. They simply imagine that their characters have chosen that path, and then set about helping to make the narrative as fun as possible. Randomness still happens - dice rolls are a thing, and players inevitably make unexpected calls - but the big plot points generally work out as expected.

Similarly, in Vanilla WoW, you knew that your narrative was significantly pre-determined. But you still felt like you owned your character’s story arc. Because you weren’t being forced into choices that felt wrong, you used your imagination to work with WoW’s writers and came out feeling like the story of your PC was unique, even though the main plot points were anything but.

In BfA, that illusion is largely broken because many players feel like the narrative is requiring them to do things they don’t want their characters to have to do. It feels like a violation of that character’s story. And when you’ve had the character for a long time (since TBC, for this one!), that feels like a betrayal from your GM.

RPG storytelling is a collaboration between GM and players. In BfA, that collaboration has broken down.

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I think the focus needs to be on the journey rather than the destination.

For me, the point of choice is to permit any given character to act in accordance with their personality and motives. A greedy character should be able to make greedy choices, a noble character should be able to make noble choices, and a nationalistic character should be able to make choices that accord with their national identity. If all three of these paths lead to the same outcome, then so be it - as long as each character’s path to that point felt honest to their characterization.

For most of WoW’s history, none of this has mattered much, because “the enemy” has typically been a clearly defined third party that very few player characters would have any reason to sympathize with. Blizzard pointed us at the bad guy and it was within everyone’s characterization to fight that bad guy.

Garrosh complicated matters, but only slightly, because Thrall was a longer-standing character that Orc loyalists had more reason to side with. There were certainly some die-hard Garrosh supporters who were forced onto a track that didn’t make sense for their characters, but not many.

Then Blizzard made a series of really, really, really bad mistakes. I won’t go through them here, there are plenty of “why BfA’s storytelling is terrible” threads already.

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Your post 100% encapsulates my biggest problems with WoW, and I agree completely with what you’re saying.

However, I think the problem goes deeper than how the devs write the story — the issues are also mechanical.

Question — what are the core mechanics for experiencing WoW? Are they quests situated out in a large world, where players progress their characters through a slow, immersive grind? Or are they raid and dungeon set pieces, where players can progress very quickly if they have mastered the right skills to play at a high level?

Because I’d argue that quest-driven play works better for the kind of PC-oriented story you’re talking about, where loads and loads of relatively unstructured decisions build up your character’s personality and story. In more dungeon set-piece oriented gameplay, it’s harder to make choice meaningful or to make the PC the center of the action.

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I think this is true to a degree, though RPG campaigns also tend to build towards a climactic confrontation that is pretty much plotted out in advance. I don’t think that the raw mechanical fact that the players are all experiencing the same raid as everyone else needs to ruin immersion, especially if Blizzard’s writers can stifle their urge to write about the raid as if one person was responsible for taking down the big bad.

There’s no avoiding some of the elements of gameplay that are different from a pen and paper RPG. This also has to function like a video game, so things like running a boss over and over to get the mechanics right are going to be a challenge to RPG immersion. But I don’t think those sorts of things are ruinous challenges.

Players just need to buy into the raid as something their characters would do. Then they will build a story around how their particular guild/raid group took it down. If the players are on board, their imaginations will fill in a lot of gaps.

And I have no doubt that the gaming aspect of WoW matters a lot more to some than does the story aspect. But I think almost every player participates in the story to some degree. They will excuse the game mechanics just as dice rolls simply become part of the fun in D&D.

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I originally stopped playing WoW for a year because of Theramore. Having to participate in that as a paladin was gross.

That being said, my new toon supports the Dark Lady, so it feels like crap again to feel like im on the wrong side for staying loyal.

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The worst part is that Blizzard lacks so much of the competence to make their stories work, they push their railroad by explaining things off-handedly on Twitter or dismiss things as irrelevant.

When Horde players felt ostracized by their own faction in 8.0, a few tweets came out saying that people among the Horde are grumbling but they didn’t have time to portray that in the game.

Why? It’s essential for the buy-in into your narrative. Cut out a cutscene of Jaina being sad, that isn’t relevant after the xth one. Give us the context to make your story work rather than the cheap plot beat you didn’t work up to.

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I’ve been thinking about things like this a lot lately, during my months-long break from WoW. Like you, I’m an avid TTRPG player and game master. Most of my gaming friends either have in the past or currently play WoW, so it comes up at the table quite a lot.

WoW has always had an immersion problem in that the story dictates what we, the players, do. It’s been easy to overlook most expansions because we’re fighting big evils; Kil’jaeden, Arthas, Deathwing’s back, Archimonde, Sargeras’s miscellaneous minions, and so on. All things that can’t be reasoned with, all things that aren’t interested in our loyalty, and all things that wanted to destroy our world. So while their ends were inevitable, we could still be invested in those ends because of their very nature.

And with the end of the big evil, so too do all the little evils end, or at least go away for a while. When we beat Kil’jaedeon, Archimonde, etc we buy a reprieve from the Legion. When we kill Deathwing, all the minions of the old gods are dead or flee. Defeating Arthas defeated the Scourge as a whole. Evil is vanquished for a time and all the realms of mankind are saved.

When WoW focuses on the faction conflict, it’s immediately set up for an unsatisfactory end due to the fact that the big evil’s defeat just means the little evil is slightly less evil. And it doesn’t help that approximately half of the players are the little evil by association. When Garrosh was defeated, it didn’t negate all the quests Horde players did that followed his agenda. Likewise the same will happen with Sylvannas. We, the Horde players, became the narrative equivalent of the Twilight’s Hammer, the Cult of the Damned, the Fel Horde and such. We were minions of the big evil. We became the mobs we used to grind mindlessly for XP and loot, again from a narrative perspective.

And when the big evil is defeated? We’re still hanging out in Orgrimmar, questing in Zandalar, running old raids for transmog. We don’t suffer the fate of the lesser evils. We only get their narrative build-up, never the climax. We never get the payoff.

And for the Alliance, it’s worse. Their whole experience throughout a faction conflict is as heroes comes into question. In the past, they (with us) pushed back the big evil and made the lesser evil scared enough to run off and hide, if they even survived. But against the might of a single warchief leading part of the might of a nation, they can at best hope to kill the figurehead and some of their closest aides, but the bulk of the lesser evil? It’s still sitting there in Orgrimmar. And in another year? Those lesser evil minions be hanging out in Dalaran 3.0 right across the way from them, using the same vendors, using the same banks, and having cooler mounts.

Imagine telling your players in a TTRPG that this evil society they’ve been fighting for years is now socially accepted everywhere those players go because the players defeated Gary Sue McGuffin in the Sunken Temple of Quasi-Elemental Evil, and his defeat absolves them of all their actions. Because that’s what the post faction conflict narrative says.

And that’s without retreading the whole question of why my heroic savior of Azeroth a dozen times over is now happily performing hits for the Banshee Queen and actively participating in a war for a resource that I also happen to know is the lifesblood of the planet I happen to live on.

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Oh, we can leave…

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