(Actual) Rules For Role-Playing?

[erik]

The thing I don't understand is... if the rules (i.e. what make it a game) aren't specifically geared towards role-playing (the improv, or acting-out), does the label fit?

If not then the label is being used stupidly.

Role playing games should have rules to handle the shit that you don't want to resolve by role playing. Monopoly fails as a role playing game in this regard because its rules only handle people moving in a circuit around a board while spending money on real estate.

A game can have some rules for guidance of the actual acting out of your character, but that's not necessary.

[Chamomile]

There are tons of implicit 'common courtesy' / 'social contract' rules, but there is this common problem of, to quote Chamomile:

tons of irrelevant details and plot threads that no one cares about, which will either be ignored or be developed solely by whatever proportion of people at the table actually like doing that, so you may as well let those people just take care of things start to finish

Which is, it seems to me, the case of the Dungeon-Master Express™ going full-steam ahead on the one end, and the case of the Fish-Malk / Chaotic Neutral / LulzSoRandumb player on the other end.

That is so far from the situation I described that I have no idea how you could have come to that conclusion. Not only am I describing a situation in which no railroading could possibly be taking place, and not only was I making no comment whatsoever on the actual quality of the players who subsequently take charge of the narrative, everything I was describing was an edge case result of the kind of rules you are advocating for and not at all a common result of roleplaying games.

I don't know why someone would sit down to a RPG and then not try to RP.

Your inability to comprehend other people's viewpoints is getting pretty well established in general, so that's not really surprising. Some people do not, in fact, go to RPGs for the roleplaying. Some of them just want to have a social experience with their friends. Some of them like engaging with a world as a strategic puzzle, and like that having a real human being managing that puzzle means it can react to bizarre, outside-the-box actions. Not everyone who plays RPGs is doing it exclusively for the reasons you do.

I mean, if there were actually rules for this sort of thing in D&D's Dungeon Master's Guide, wouldn't a cursory attempt to follow those rules make even novice story-tellers appear like up-and-coming Matthew Mercers?

No. Why would you think that the talents of a professional voice actor could be replicated by reading one chapter of a book?

The simple principle is that what people find FUN they will do significantly more of, and that something being fun is its own reward.

This starts off on a bizarre ramble that goes absolutely nowhere. You don't actually provide any reason to believe that there is a way to quickly and easily motivate people to do something they would not otherwise want to do, you just ramble on about irrelevant bullshit and then declare yourself correct at the end. People want to do what they find fun. A significant portion of RPG players do not find role playing very fun to engage in personally. If you could find some secret sauce that would make them want to role play anyway, you could apply the same technique to convincing people to doing office work and become one of the best paid consultants the world has ever seen. Odds are excellent that you have not found and will never find this holy grail of human motivation.

[ArmorClassZero]

@Chamomile:

You seem offended. I'm sorry you were offended. No one is attacking you. Relax.

I'm not trying to get into forum fisticuffs with you, so I'll be brief: the 1st quote of yours I used because it described a phenomenon that I've experienced in D&D (tons of irrelevant details) sometimes from the GM, sometimes from the Player. I didn't quote context because I wasn't trying to discredit or argue against your idea. Also, I would presume anyone sitting down at a table to a RPG nominally wants to do it and be there. The 'bizarre ramble' I go on was confirmation of the obvious, "people participate in RPGs with different priorities and find different aspects fun". Matthew Mercer is a decent enough story-teller, even if his stories aren't that great, but I like the straw-man you built out of my quote. XD Finally, this isn't about rules that make a player want to RP, but finding / designing rules that, if they follow said rules, result in RP the same way following the rules for D&D result in... math.

I appreciate your input though, so I'll ask, what are the sub-types of RPGs that you mentioned?

@angelfromanotherpin:

Cool, I will check them out. Polaris looks really interesting.

@Erik:

Care to offer your definition of RPG? I'm legit curious.

[erik]

A collaborative game where multiple players take on roles of characters, often with rules to help adjudicate conflicts.

[Chamomile]

You seem offended.

Why, yes, I do get irate when people nominally talking to me flat-out ignore what I write to have pretend conversations with imaginary people instead.

I'm sorry you were offended.

Bullshit. You do the exact same thing again in this post.

the 1st quote of yours I used because it described a phenomenon that I've experienced in D&D (tons of irrelevant details) sometimes from the GM, sometimes from the Player. I didn't quote context because I wasn't trying to discredit or argue against your idea.

So when I said "X will lead to Y" and you said "only Z will lead to Y" you didn't mean, like, in a way that disagreed with me, you just meant in a way where you hold two mutually exclusive positions to be true simultaneously.

Also, I would presume anyone sitting down at a table to a RPG nominally wants to do it and be there.

You seem to be bad at reading, so I will repost for you the section that you missed last time:

Your inability to comprehend other people's viewpoints is getting pretty well established in general, so that's not really surprising. Some people do not, in fact, go to RPGs for the roleplaying. Some of them just want to have a social experience with their friends. Some of them like engaging with a world as a strategic puzzle, and like that having a real human being managing that puzzle means it can react to bizarre, outside-the-box actions. Not everyone who plays RPGs is doing it exclusively for the reasons you do.

The 'bizarre ramble' I go on was confirmation of the obvious, "people participate in RPGs with different priorities and find different aspects fun".

A position you simultaneously claim to be both obviously true and obviously false, in this post within the space of two sentences.

Matthew Mercer is a decent enough story-teller, even if his stories aren't that great, but I like the straw-man you built out of my quote.

What exactly do you think being a storyteller is? Especially if you're acknowledging that it's not correlated exclusively with the quality of the stories being told?

Finally, this isn't about rules that make a player want to RP, but finding / designing rules that, if they follow said rules, result in RP the same way following the rules for D&D result in... math.

Following the rules in D&D results in math because they are mathematical formulae. There is no equivalent for roleplay, and there is absolutely no barrier to roleplaying in any given RPG except people's desire or not to do so. You can claim that this isn't about making rules that make a player want to RP, but that claim is false, because a lack of desire is the only thing that keeps people from roleplaying and every idea you've posited has been to hold other parts of the game hostage in order to coerce roleplay out of people who would ordinarily be here for something else.

[Cervantes]

ok here's something we actually can agree on - in the Book Layout thread it was noted that RPGs typically don't sit down and say "okay, here's how you make an adventure"

so instead of focusing on this weird shit abt forcing players to pretend to be elves (that whole thing is just resolved by mechanical incentivizing, no?), how the fuck do you make an adventure that's not a railroad? it's a CYOA but with an undefined amount of choices at an undefined amount of branching points

[MGuy]

My guess is that ACZero is looking for mechanics that push players toward role-playing with I guess the end goal of making it So that the optimal way to play the game includes or is linked to role-playing. Something like the Vices/Virtues thing come to mind where you create minor awkward obstacles for yourself in exchange for meta currency for later situations.

I don't think his focus is on making an adventure open ended. Mechanics that push for a certain kind of play are what he's looking for. I've done the meta currency thing before and that yielded some results but it clearly favors people who are already geared to do the things it encourages and results in the players being rewarded for their personality in real life instead of skill so I stopped doing it.

[ArmorClassZero]

Forum fisticuffs it is then. En garde!

Why, yes, I do get irate when people nominally talking to me flat-out ignore what I write to have pretend conversations with imaginary people instead.

This is a forum. I can speak to the readers at large and appeal to the crowd for input or other perspectives. This isn't or wasn't a converstation or debate specifically between us.

So when I said "X will lead to Y" and you said "only Z will lead to Y" you didn't mean, like, in a way that disagreed with me, you just meant in a way where you hold two mutually exclusive positions to be true simultaneously.

It is possible (and even useful) to quote someone out of context because the quote reveals or illustrates a general truth that is pertinent to the point they are trying to make. When you said "X will lead to Y" I made a comment about my experience with Y, my comment being that Y already occurs independent of X.

You seem to be bad at reading, so I will repost for you the section that you missed last time:

Your inability to comprehend other people's viewpoints is getting pretty well established in general, so that's not really surprising. Some people do not, in fact, go to RPGs for the roleplaying. Some of them just want to have a social experience with their friends. Some of them like engaging with a world as a strategic puzzle, and like that having a real human being managing that puzzle means it can react to bizarre, outside-the-box actions. Not everyone who plays RPGs is doing it exclusively for the reasons you do.

The 'bizarre ramble' I go on was confirmation of the obvious, "people participate in RPGs with different priorities and find different aspects fun".

A position you simultaneously claim to be both obviously true and obviously false, in this post within the space of two sentences.

It is entirely possible to want to do something but have different priorities within, and enjoy different aspects of, that thing. It is not an example of cognitive dissonance to presume that someone who agrees to a RPG session does so with different priorities than others at the table, and enjoys different aspects of, the game. Wanting to participate in an RPG, and agreeing to do so, does not mutually exclude reasons beyond RP like socializing or tactical miniatures combat or whathaveyou.

For reference, my original comment was "IDK why someone would agree to play a RPG and then not at least try to RP" because to me that notion is like sitting down to play Settlers of Catan or Monopoly and then just half-heartedly rolling your die and moving your piece whenever your turn comes around. It doesn't exclude socializing or power-gaming or whathaveyou, but IMO it defeats the purpose of being a player in the game since in that instance you're little more than a glorified spectator.

What exactly do you think being a storyteller is? Especially if you're acknowledging that it's not correlated exclusively with the quality of the stories being told?

A story-teller is the person who tells the story. They may or may not be the creator of a particular story. The quality of a story being told depends on a lot of things and tends to be subjective. A story-teller and the quality of the story are obviously correlated, but exclusively so? I'd hesitate to agree. Audience expectation is is a big factor in perceived quality of the story. M. Night Shamallama's The Village was competently told and decent enough, but it was marketed as something it was not (a horror film) and the public perception for a long time afterwards was that it was a shite movie.

The skill and trade of the story-teller is such that most people will never look behind the curtain or under the hood to find all the little bugs, plot holes, implausible premisses, character inconsistencies, etc etc.

[ArmorClassZero]

@Cervantes, @MGuy:

I was looking at Polaris as angelfromanotherpin suggested, and it has the kinds of ideas that I'm looking for / leaning towards.

In Polaris players use keyword phrases to set a scene; the powers of the GM are distributed amongst each player in the group, which I really like, with each player having dominion over some specific aspect of conflict resolution for another player; you've got some fairly standard stat checks as die rolls; players resolve conflict in large part by narrating how they think the story or conflict should play out, and negotiate back and forth using key phrases until they settle on something or one of them turns to the dice to decide; everything the players do directly advance the plot.

Polaris[/i]]
During play, it is of the utmost importance that every
player says what they want to have happen.
A good sort of statement to make is something like:
“I perform an expulsion, knocking her sword aside, and with
a quick thrust I run her through the heart. She dies.”
or maybe:
“I kiss him, and he falls into my arms. He loves me.”
A bad sort of statement to make is something like this:
“I swing at him.”
“I move in to kiss her.”
Each of the first set of statements, you see, contains a result
of the action.[/i]

Every time I've tried to implement this kind of result-is-in-the-action narration in my D&D games the DM looks at me like, "Wtf u doin'?"

My initial quotation of Sorcerer's rules seems to have given people the wrong idea. I'm not looking for rules that give the GM more power. I'm looking for rules that give the players more power for asserting their voice / narrative creativity into the game. Having rules that encourage, allow, support, facilitate this are not something I've seen often. Yes, in D&D (and ShadowRun and VTM and PathFinder) you ostensibly have this kind of narrative control with your Ranger or Bard and whatever moves you make with them, but you're allowed to be proactive only in a very limited degree.

It is important to note that the rules of Polaris don't 'force' or 'coerce' anyone into doing anything, anymore than the rules of D&D 'force' or 'coerce' your hero into gaining certain abilities at certain levels or requiring certain stat values in order to function properly.

Polaris also seems to be open-ended as well. It's not a rail-road since their is not single authoritative voice to command what happens next - each player is agreeing to, or rolling dice when they disagree, about what should happen next, often meeting each other half-way with bargains and trade-offs about how the story is going to unfold. It seems pretty neat, even if the setting is 'small scale' or 'limited'.

[Chamomile]

This is a forum. I can speak to the readers at large and appeal to the crowd for input or other perspectives. This isn't or wasn't a converstation or debate specifically between us.

You're really going to try and convince me that a post in which you quoted me three times and other posters not at all wasn't directed primarily at me?

When you said "X will lead to Y" I made a comment about my experience with Y, my comment being that Y already occurs independent of X.

You claimed that Y occurs specifically not because of X. "This is a case of [thing]" inherently means that it is not a case of some other, mutually contradictory thing.

It is entirely possible to want to do something but have different priorities within, and enjoy different aspects of, that thing. It is not an example of cognitive dissonance to presume that someone who agrees to a RPG session does so with different priorities than others at the table, and enjoys different aspects of, the game. Wanting to participate in an RPG, and agreeing to do so, does not mutually exclude reasons beyond RP like socializing or tactical miniatures combat or whathaveyou.

You have clearly failed to read and comprehend what I wrote for a second time. I'm not copy/pasting it for you again so that you skim it, assume it means what you thought the first time, and ignore the actual words. The position you are ascribing to me is wrong. Actually read my post this time, and try again.

For reference, my original comment was "IDK why someone would agree to play a RPG and then not at least try to RP" because to me that notion is like sitting down to play Settlers of Catan or Monopoly and then just half-heartedly rolling your die and moving your piece whenever your turn comes around.

Yes, you have already well-established that you are myopically incapable of understanding that other people want different things from you, but if you want to have any kind of conversation on the subject, you are going to have to get past that. This is not the first time I have explained this to you.

A story-teller is the person who tells the story.

I'm cutting your disingenuous off-topic rambling, because you've completely dodged the actual question: How exactly do you expect that being a professional voice actor doesn't significantly impact how Matt Mercer tells a story?

[MGuy]

Well if you want a system for allowing players to be able to take narrative control of the game I think that you're still looking to develop a sort of meta currency. I tried to find a thread I made some time ago where I give a little outline of the narrative abilities I was wanting to implement but I can't find it right now so I'll maybe type down the summary later. There's a thread somewhere explicitly about narrative abilities though so you can give that a search on here.

[Cervantes]

so really it's not "rules for RPing" but rather "I want more player control over non-player characters and outcomes, taking that control out of the GM's purview" or even GM-less games. but that's totally fucking different and isn't really acknowledging why the GM/Players distinction came about in the first place.

meta-currency is really the best suggestion in this department

My guess is that ACZero is looking for mechanics that push players toward role-playing with I guess the end goal of making it So that the optimal way to play the game includes or is linked to role-playing. Something like the Vices/Virtues thing come to mind where you create minor awkward obstacles for yourself in exchange for meta currency for later situations.

I don't think his focus is on making an adventure open ended.

i honestly just don't care abt what ACZero cares here, im more interested in the whole question of "how do you teach or explain good adventure design?"

[Dogbert]

My Two Cents:

The closest I can think of to "Rules for Roleplay" in a game are:

1) A robust Introduction chapter with explicit statements regarding what are the expectations for player characters within the game.
2) Robust Intro and Chargen chapters with enough information for characters to make informed chargen decisions that reinforce said expectations.
3) A rules system that coherently reinforces the playstyle preferred by the author.

[erik]

i honestly just don't care abt what ACZero cares here, im more interested in the whole question of "how do you teach or explain good adventure design?"

I feel like there's two categories, sandbox and module.

When playing in the sandbox, players typically do the unexpected. A session may go down where nothing really happens, but the players are happy because they've organized the local seamstresses into a union and negotiated better wages.

I think for sandboxing the good design rules are:
• Don't be afraid to say "yes". Let the players do their crazy things.
• Try to flesh out NPCs. Give them a couple traits for players to latch onto and remember.
• Let the world continue apace. Having a good source of exposition like a traveling bard, a newspaper, fleeing refugees, etc. lets the players know there's other stuff going on in the world. Don't be too heavy handed on it though. Players will be even more pleased if they put it together themselves.

Modules is where you are planning a series of scenes/encounters.

I think good design rules for modules are:
• Try to create encounters that are challenging, but especially will provide opportunities for some characters to shine.
- corollary, you have to be able to know what is an appropriate opposition and reasonable expectations of what the characters are capable of
• It is good to offer choices. Players may have opportunities to side with one faction or another.
• It's good to have a mix of exploration and combat. Every now and then a good full combat adventure is alright, but often it is nice to have a little exploration where you can slide in a bit of exposition and make the scenes more meaningful.
• A good MC guide should have a solid index of modular sample combats at different challenge levels that you can use to build your own adventures. They can probably be about 1 paragraph with 1 stat block each.
• Likewise an index of modular sample exploration sites would be good.

[Dogbert]

I think good design rules for modules are:

I'll add:

Keep it Simple.

Say with me:
"I'm not the next JRR Tolkien."
"I'm not the next GRR Martin."
"I'm not the next Ryo Mizuno."

Just do a theme park without "movable parts" players can potentially fiddle with to go off-rails. Make the encounters and the circumstances fun enough that the players will gladly put their brain in neutral and hop in their wagon.

The problem with rich stories is that you run the risk of players actually wanting in on said stories, and interacting with them... and your module's scenario happens to be written in stone, and 9 out of 10 GMs will stick to the script, so the more complex the plot, the more it will look like a Second Order Idiot Plot from the outside (see Rise of the Runelords) and the more players will resent being railroaded.

[ArmorClassZero]

You're really going to try and convince me that a post in which you quoted me three times and other posters not at all wasn't directed primarily at me?

Yes. I refrained from quoting other people initially because they either didn't give me a lot to work with, and / or I was afraid quoting them would get a hostile response from them, which... is exactly what happened. I quoted you because you were the most engaged in this thread besides angelfromanotherpin and actually gave decent responses.

I'm almost convinced at this point that you're either a) trying to troll me, or b) unnecessarily butthurt, and the sad thing is that I had and have nothing against you. I'm not going to go out of my way to explain myself, again, although I enjoy the sparring. For someone who accuses me of being dense and not comprehending other's viewpoints, you should probably go back and reread what I said. You'll find we're actually in agreement on some things. Regardless, I hope you'll assign whatever values you think appropriate to my INT and WIS attributes, file it away appropriately, and move on.

I'm still looking for rules for role-playing, if you're interested in returning to that discussion.

how do you teach or explain good adventure design?

I think it has to / should follow good story structure. You establish Main Conflict, which provides Character Motivation, then Rising Action (Minor Conflicts arise related to the Main Conflict), then Climax (the greatest moment of tension, suspense, uncertainty of outcomes), followed by Resolution (do they live happily ever after or suffer a fall-from-grace?)

Matt Parker and Trey Stone from South Park have said that (paraphrasing) the key to making a good story is not to have "and then... and then... and then..." but instead use the phrases "but..." and "therefore...", the implication being that the words 'but' and 'therefore' keep cause and effect linked better than "and then..." e.g. Cartman learns about X therefore he does Y BUT (as a consequence) Z is set in motion.

Dan Harmon, creator of Community and co-creator of Rick & Morty, uses this model to help structure his stories.

This model is based on Joseph Campbells' The Hero With A Thousand Faces.

[Chamomile]

Yes. I refrained from quoting other people initially because they either didn't give me a lot to work with, and / or I was afraid quoting them would get a hostile response from them, which... is exactly what happened. I quoted you because you were the most engaged in this thread besides angelfromanotherpin and actually gave decent responses.

So you start by claiming that yes, you are in fact going to make the argument that your post wasn't primarily directed at me. You then go on to reinforce that your post was primarily directed at me. You're clearly incapable of stringing thoughts together at all coherently.

and the sad thing is that I had and have nothing against you.

I don't care whether or not your specific reasons for misrepresenting my arguments and wasting my time are personal. I am entirely aware that I could avoid this fight by ignoring your shitty behavior. You may have noticed - I am the one who started the fight because of your shitty behavior. The shitty behavior is the problem here, and you're still engaging in it.

You'll find we're actually in agreement on some things

I'm pretty sure we're in agreement that Matt Mercer is physically alive. So what? We are also in disagreement on some things, and you are being a dishonest jackass about it (for example, insinuating that I believe that we disagree about literally everything and that simply being disagreed with at all is what's got me agitated).

But, fuck it, since various flavors of dishonesty are clearly the only tools in your conversational box, I'm done with you.

[Whipstitch]

I'm almost convinced at this point that you're either a) trying to troll me, or b) unnecessarily butthurt, and the sad thing is that I had and have nothing against you

I'm not sure what you expected since you made a classic non-apology apology en route to telling Cham he's butthurt and his point was irrelevant.

I mean, here's what the abridged conversation looked like from the outside:

ACZ: "What rules do you think encourage, facilitate, cultivate the kind of role-playing you want to see in your games?"

Chamomile: "I've found that the best way to encourage roleplaying is to be gentle and to provide incentives so that the interests of what the character should want and the interests of the people playing them are aligned. That means players should have the opportunity to generate irrelevant bullshit but it is not required."

ACZ: "But if D&D doesn't require roleplaying, is it even really a roleplaying game?"

Chamomile: "I feel you, Philosoraptor, but I don't think you want to go there. It would be nice if there was a way to generate roleplaying in a way that does more good than harm, but I don't think it's possible because some people are only comfortable with RP in small doses. Ultimately games are leisure activity, not a job, so all you can do is lead the horse to water and hope it drinks."

ACZ: "Wait a minute, did you say irrelevant bullshit earlier? That sounds like railroading and Fishmalks! Railroading and fishmalks are bad! Chamomile's point is moot, moot I say! Also, I feel it's nonsensical that anyone would play an RPG if they didn't enjoy the roleplaying. Ignore the fact that my prior posts indicate that such behavior is a common occurrence and D&D is popular despite having no more enforced RP than Monopoly. It should be possible to build rules that make a newbie into Matt Mercer."

Chamomile: "...wut? It can't be railroading if it's player generated. Are you dense? Being dense would square nicely with this stunning reversal. Matthew Mercer is a professional voice actor, what the fuck?"

ACZ: "You seem offended. Don't worry, I wasn't talking to you, exactly, even though I quoted you by name in bold letters and said your comment didn't matter. I won't rise to your Matthew Mercer straw-man."

fade to a burning pile of tires

[MGuy]

Gonna admit I didn't read all the back and forth between him and Cham. Didn't seem to be going anywhere and wow the conversation is moving along. If we're talking about advice for GMs then I'd tell anyone I'd be teaching to let players generate content. I have found a lot of success just by giving players scenery to chew on and then playing into or against their expectations. Most players (not all) mainly want to feel like their actions matter and if you can pull that off doing the rest is pretty easy.

[hyzmarca]

Fate has a fairly functional version.

Every character has "aspects", descriptive words or phrases that describe his personality, flaws, and narrative role, both negative and positive. A player can invoke a relevant aspect to get a bonus to an action. And in situations that warrant it, the GM can invoke one of a character's negative aspects. In which case, the player can go with it and get a unit of metagame currency (a fate point) or refuse.

So, players are rewarded for roleplaying beneficial personality traits with bonuses and for roleplaying harmful personality traits with metagame currency that can be spent for bonuses later.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Mm, something FATE-based that ACZ might also want to check out is Houses of the Blooded. There's a fair amount of declaratory power for players, and a greater mechanical focus on what are traditionally rp elements.

[tussock]

You're Role-Playing when you're using a persona, and making decisions and doing things as you believe the persona would make those decisions and do those things.

Which is to say, home invasion and murder and looting may not be your deal, but these characters have higher motivations that, you know, they do a lot of home invasion and murder and looting, and don't even feel bad about it.

It's a Game because there's rules for doing those things and not everything your persona wants to do will go their way, which provides challenge and response and so on. It's generally your goal to succeed with the persona, so you mostly want the things for them that they would want, and the game will support you doing stuff to achieve that, albeit with some challenges and difficulty along the way because it's a Game.


So while you can Roleplay the Top Hat guy in Monopoly who is very happy about his railroad acquisition and has bought you an expensive but Ironic birthday gift, it's a bit more disconnected from the obvious side of an RPG by not having the step in the rules where your Derro Fighter is called Eric, uses a Two-Handed Mace, and is Chaotic Good, because that's a person who wants treasure so he can fight better, for liberation or whatever.

There's a tremendous number of roleplaying hooks in a modern D&D and similar games beyond that start too, with the things opposing you having reasons for doing so, which can't really be resolved other than by killing them or Role-Playing, or perhaps both at the same time.

[Cervantes]

how do you teach or explain good adventure design?

I think it has to / should follow good story structure. You establish Main Conflict, which provides Character Motivation, then Rising Action (Minor Conflicts arise related to the Main Conflict), then Climax (the greatest moment of tension, suspense, uncertainty of outcomes), followed by Resolution (do they live happily ever after or suffer a fall-from-grace?)

Matt Parker and Trey Stone from South Park have said that (paraphrasing) the key to making a good story is not to have "and then... and then... and then..." but instead use the phrases "but..." and "therefore...", the implication being that the words 'but' and 'therefore' keep cause and effect linked better than "and then..." e.g. Cartman learns about X therefore he does Y BUT (as a consequence) Z is set in motion.

Dan Harmon, creator of Community and co-creator of Rick & Morty, uses this model to help structure his stories.

This model is based on Joseph Campbells' The Hero With A Thousand Faces.

This is the perfect example of the exact kind of wrong-headed shit that people usually say with regards to adventure design. Adventures are not stories.

Also: I'm a bit wary of the sandbox/module dichotomy. I feel like it makes more sense to think of it as always being a sandbox and that there are quests within that sandbox. Any module can turn into a sandbox if your PCs decide to ignore the hook and go rally for Dwarf/Drow marriage.

[erik]

For my ersatz dichotomy of sandbox/module, I mean you're typically doing only one of those at a time. Players can and do change gears, but when they're interested in one, the other kind of takes a back seat until interests change again.

[OgreBattle]

Shinobigami's meant for one shots with player vs player conflict and hidden agendas. You could run the game purely by mechanics as a boardgame but the point is to flavor mechanical outcomes with personal roleplay.

Game Structure
Before the game begins, each player should have a completed character sheet. The Game Master will hand each player a handout containing their character’s Mission and Secret. Once everyone is ready, play begins.
A scenario is made up of four separate phases: Introduction, Main, Climax, and Ending.

Introduction Phase
The Game Master will introduce the NPCs and the scenario’s inciting incident during this phase, and give each player character a scene. During these Introduction Phase scenes, the character gets to show off their character, describe their appearance, and reveal their Mission to each other. The players will record the names of each character in the People section of the character sheet for future reference. The objective of the scenario, and the “prize”, is introduced.
girls_talk

Main Phase
During the Main Phase, the players takes turns as the Scene Player. While acting as a Scene Player, a player has narrative control over a scene in which their character comes closer to fulfilling their Mission.
A Scene Player may choose between a Drama Scene and a Combat Scene. During each Drama Scene, a player will roll on the Scene Chart for inspiration, then narrate a scene in which their character uses a skill to forge an Emotional Bond, uncover another character’s Secret or Location, or recover a lost Life Point. If a character has found another character’s Location, they may engage them in a Combat Scene. Combat Scenes are quick, lasting only a number of turns equal to the number of combatants, meaning that each combat is quick and bloody.

A Cycle is complete as soon as each player has taken their turn as Scene Player. A scenario typically has 3 Cycles. Once the final cycle is complete, the Climax Phase begins.
In the Main Phase, the Prize is put into play: It may stay with one person or change hands several times over the course of the three cycles.

Climax Phase
The Climax Phase is where lines are drawn and the ending determined. Each player will need to rely on allies they think they can trust to survive and complete their goals. A final combat scene with special rules will last a number of rounds as decided by the GM or scenario. This is the only point in the game where a character can be knocked out of the game or even killed. The last person standing can claim the Prize, or perhaps they will reject it in favor of another reward more in line with their true character goals!
Once the people standing lay down their arms, the game moves to the Ending Phase.
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Ending Phase
The events of the Ending Phase are largely determined by the outcome of the Climax Phase. Repercussions and the results of complete or failed missions are shown or acted out in a final scene for each character. Finally, experience points are handed based on completed goals, secret goals and player actions.
And From There…
Commonly the next step is… to play the game again! Likely another day, and perhaps with a new Game Master. Perhaps all or some of the previous session’s characters will appear again (though it’s not a given). Maybe there will be a new antagonist, or maybe the characters will act as each others’ enemies. With a simple new scenario (and a new “prize” to capture) and new secrets, no two games of Shinobigami will ever feel the same!

http://shinobigami.com/shinobigami-overview/

You're creating the backstory of your character through play. Could be modified for other genres.