D&D (2024) Ways to turn 5e into a Story Now game (+)

[BookTenTiger]

Last year I played a lot of Ironsworn, and it made me fall in love with Story Now games. I did some solo Ironsworn games, then ran some for my friends. The experience of being a GM but not actually knowing where the story was going to go was thrilling!

For fun, I'd like to brainstorm some ways to convert 5e D&D into a Story Now game. What would I need to add, change, or delete in order to run 5e as Story Now?

I know there are some fantastic Story Now games out there I could just run or play instead. But that's not what this thread is about.

My understanding of "Story Now" is that the story is not preplanned by the GM. Much of the world is purposefully left blank. As the game progresses, the actions of the characters, and choices of the players, provide opportunities to learn and answer questions about the world. If the characters are traveling to a Wizard's Tower, they might make a roll during the journal or upon arrival. A good roll would set up a positive arrival: what sets the characters up for success at the Wizard's Tower (example: a friendly NPC has a camp nearby)? A bad roll would set up a negative arrival: what is more challenging about the Wizard's Tower (example: the wizard has returned from the dead and is gathering an army of zombies)? The characters would react to the result, and the story progresses from there.

Often Story Now games are supported by a big bank of campaign truths, collaborative world-building, or random tables. In Ironsworn, you start a campaign by establishing truths about the world: how big are settlements? What is the nature of magic? How frequent are encounters with the supernatural? And then are are lots of fantastic tables to generate everything from settlement names to combatant actions. There are also two tables of "themes" and "actions" that can create very evocative results like "withhold chaos." Finally there's a simple system of "Asking the Oracle" which just produces a "yes" or "no" when asked a question.

So what would this look like with 5e D&D?

One of my initial thoughts is changing the basic nature of d20 rolls. In 5e, most rolls are Success or Failure, based on AC or DC. To create a Story Now game, d20 rolls would have to be changed to a similar system of Success / Failure / Success at a Cost. It could look something like:

1 - 8: Failure (with a Cost)
9 - 16: (Success at a Cost)
17+: Success

When picking a lock, the Rogue makes a Dexterity Check with Thieves Tools, and gets a 15. They successfully pick the lock, but the bolt opens with such a loud noise that it alerts nearby guards.

Since there would be a larger chance of costs, you probably wouldn't want to ask for a roll unless failure is actually interesting. Furthermore, it may be useful to have the actions of the whole group be represented by a single roll. For example, if the group is climbing a cliff, everyone's efforts could be represented by just the Ranger's roll. If there's a cost, it could be the weakest member of the party falling or getting hurt.

In combat, would it make sense to remove the enemies from Initiative and instead have them "act" on Failures and Success with a Cost? That might be a little too much of a departure from 5e.

But the most important thing for Story Now 5e might be something D&D has done for a long long time... Random tables! Random Encounters, landscape features, NPC generation... All those things would be important, and could be filled in with Story Truths.

It might also be good to have Random Tables for Costs / Failures for different actions. Many Story Now games do this through "moves." I could see the same thing being applied to 5e. You could have moved such as "Search," "Travel," and "Negotiate." Then each move could have a little table like this:

Negotiate
You attempt to sway someone, usually through Diplomacy, Deception, or Intimidation.
Success: You change the target's mind, or find out what it would cost to do so.
Success at a Cost: You change the target's mind (or find out what it would cost you to do so), but it will also require a personal sacrifice (such as gold, a pledge, or a trade of services).
Failure: You fail to sway the target's mind. Choose or roll for a cost:

1. The target's opinion of you is tarnished.
2. A complicating truth about the target is revealed.
3. A complicating truth about the situation is revealed.
4. Suffer one level of exhaustion due to the stress.

Let's imagine the Paladin is trying to convince the Peasants to organize a militia to help face down a local Hill Giant. He gives a rousing speech and rolls a Diplomacy Check. He gets a 12. The Peasants agree to help if he will stay for the next few weeks and aid in the harvest.

Later, the Fighter is trying to trick the Hill Giant into fleeing the township, saying there's a big scary dragon that visits once a year. He rolls Intimidate and gets an 8. He fails to sway the target and rolls for a cost. A complicating truth about the situation is revealed... It turns out the Hill Giant came here because dragons have taken his precious territory, killed all his clan, and are probably coming to the Township next!

Anyways, those are just my thoughts for now. What do you think? How can 5e be adapted into a Story Now game?

 

[Stormonu]

Sure, it just depends on how much you want to change.

What I'd consider - round robin on checks. Each time an oracle question comes up, a different player has to tackle the challenge (any one who hasn't done a challenge yet). Once all players have done a challenge you can start over.

Combat could be set up and done via a battle mat with the oracle used to determine who/what is being faced and if there is any complications or twists. D&D has plenty of wandering encounter tables to handle this sort of thing throughout its history.

Or you could abstract/simply the combat system with some sort of attack vs. CR checks (DC 8 + CR or somesuch) with consequences for a failure (take damage from one of the participants attacks, spend resources to mitigate) - or even a hybrid of the two.

 

[zakael19]

Last year I played a lot of Ironsworn, and it made me fall in love with Story Now games. I did some solo Ironsworn games, then ran some for my friends. The experience of being a GM but not actually knowing where the story was going to go was thrilling!

For fun, I'd like to brainstorm some ways to convert 5e D&D into a Story Now game. What would I need to add, change, or delete in order to run 5e as Story Now?

I know there are some fantastic Story Now games out there I could just run or play instead. But that's not what this thread is about.

My understanding of "Story Now" is that the story is not preplanned by the GM. Much of the world is purposefully left blank. As the game progresses, the actions of the characters, and choices of the players, provide opportunities to learn and answer questions about the world. If the characters are traveling to a Wizard's Tower, they might make a roll during the journal or upon arrival. A good roll would set up a positive arrival: what sets the characters up for success at the Wizard's Tower (example: a friendly NPC has a camp nearby)? A bad roll would set up a negative arrival: what is more challenging about the Wizard's Tower (example: the wizard has returned from the dead and is gathering an army of zombies)? The characters would react to the result, and the story progresses from there.

Often Story Now games are supported by a big bank of campaign truths, collaborative world-building, or random tables. In Ironsworn, you start a campaign by establishing truths about the world: how big are settlements? What is the nature of magic? How frequent are encounters with the supernatural? And then are are lots of fantastic tables to generate everything from settlement names to combatant actions. There are also two tables of "themes" and "actions" that can create very evocative results like "withhold chaos." Finally there's a simple system of "Asking the Oracle" which just produces a "yes" or "no" when asked a question.

So what would this look like with 5e D&D?

One of my initial thoughts is changing the basic nature of d20 rolls. In 5e, most rolls are Success or Failure, based on AC or DC. To create a Story Now game, d20 rolls would have to be changed to a similar system of Success / Failure / Success at a Cost. It could look something like:

1 - 8: Failure (with a Cost)
9 - 16: (Success at a Cost)
17+: Success

When picking a lock, the Rogue makes a Dexterity Check with Thieves Tools, and gets a 15. They successfully pick the lock, but the bolt opens with such a loud noise that it alerts nearby guards.

Since there would be a larger chance of costs, you probably wouldn't want to ask for a roll unless failure is actually interesting. Furthermore, it may be useful to have the actions of the whole group be represented by a single roll. For example, if the group is climbing a cliff, everyone's efforts could be represented by just the Ranger's roll. If there's a cost, it could be the weakest member of the party falling or getting hurt.

In combat, would it make sense to remove the enemies from Initiative and instead have them "act" on Failures and Success with a Cost? That might be a little too much of a departure from 5e.

But the most important thing for Story Now 5e might be something D&D has done for a long long time... Random tables! Random Encounters, landscape features, NPC generation... All those things would be important, and could be filled in with Story Truths.

It might also be good to have Random Tables for Costs / Failures for different actions. Many Story Now games do this through "moves." I could see the same thing being applied to 5e. You could have moved such as "Search," "Travel," and "Negotiate." Then each move could have a little table like this:

Negotiate
You attempt to sway someone, usually through Diplomacy, Deception, or Intimidation.
Success: You change the target's mind, or find out what it would cost to do so.
Success at a Cost: You change the target's mind (or find out what it would cost you to do so), but it will also require a personal sacrifice (such as gold, a pledge, or a trade of services).
Failure: You fail to sway the target's mind. Choose or roll for a cost:

1. The target's opinion of you is tarnished.
2. A complicating truth about the target is revealed.
3. A complicating truth about the situation is revealed.
4. Suffer one level of exhaustion due to the stress.

Let's imagine the Paladin is trying to convince the Peasants to organize a militia to help face down a local Hill Giant. He gives a rousing speech and rolls a Diplomacy Check. He gets a 12. The Peasants agree to help if he will stay for the next few weeks and aid in the harvest.

Later, the Fighter is trying to trick the Hill Giant into fleeing the township, saying there's a big scary dragon that visits once a year. He rolls Intimidate and gets an 8. He fails to sway the target and rolls for a cost. A complicating truth about the situation is revealed... It turns out the Hill Giant came here because dragons have taken his precious territory, killed all his clan, and are probably coming to the Township next!

Anyways, those are just my thoughts for now. What do you think? How can 5e be adapted into a Story Now game?

I think instead of how you've consider this, a better way of doing things is chunking out goals similar to the 4e Skill Challenge (and how various creators have recommended implementing them into 5e). 4e works very well as a Story now ruleset once you break the chains on SC mapping, but it also has a) way tighter math then 5e and b) no expertise (see a) and c) easily accessible consequence functions for failure (healing surges primarily).

When I've toyed with this, it was primarily though the view point of SCs. Because these allow players to state a goal (success in this skill challenge Rallies the Town militia), increment it with a known end state (0/8 successes before 3 failures), leaves the approach open to fictional positioning instead of any predetermined "thou shalt roll a 15 to persuade this one guy or you fail lol," and lets you register and update the failure states for each progress marker (ok, you want to try and convince the old sergeant to back you? this is going to be a medium check at DC15, on a failure...hmm...not only is it going to mark the second failure of this challenge, I think he's going to spread the word you're not to be trusted which is going to make direct appeals to any other guards at disadvantage").

4e Story Now uses standard combat rules, but incorporates Skill Challenge successes either through combat, or sub-tasks therein, involving the combat as part of the narrative. This you could do, even if 5e combat is missing the robust math and various system enabled options for improvisation and the like.

 

[Clint_L]

I guess I'm wondering why you wouldn't just play Dungeon World. You're basically describing its mechanics.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I guess I'm wondering why you wouldn't just play Dungeon World. You're basically describing its mechanics.

Because Dungeon World already exists and it's fun to think of new ways to hack 5e.

 

[overgeeked]

My understanding of "Story Now" is that the story is not preplanned by the GM. Much of the world is purposefully left blank. As the game progresses, the actions of the characters, and choices of the players, provide opportunities to learn and answer questions about the world. If the characters are traveling to a Wizard's Tower, they might make a roll during the journal or upon arrival. A good roll would set up a positive arrival: what sets the characters up for success at the Wizard's Tower (example: a friendly NPC has a camp nearby)? A bad roll would set up a negative arrival: what is more challenging about the Wizard's Tower (example: the wizard has returned from the dead and is gathering an army of zombies)? The characters would react to the result, and the story progresses from there.

My reading of Cubicle 7’s Journeys book seems to align with this.

Most of what you’re talking about seems easily doable with an improv-ready referee. You should look at some OSR D&D-likes as they are generally filled to bursting with random charts. The GM’s Book of X series has some good ones, including Proactive Roleplaying, that might work well for this.

Using group checks, skill challenges, clocks, and countdown are easy low-hanging fruit.

The devs have said 5E works on the assumption that PCs succeed 65% of the time. So 1-7 would be a “no, and.” Adjust from there.

Dungeon World has things like fronts, so no reason for not doing something similar in 5E. The mentioned Proactive Roleplaying would help with this.

 

[Tonguez]

Backgrounds Traits- Bonds, Ideals, Flaws- should have had more active wording so they could be used to give in game advantage

Remove the inspiration cap and have Flaws actively earn inspiration whilst making things complicated for PCs.
Let inspiration then be linked to an ideal or bond to give advantage.

Remove HP and Damage, instead have Con+level = Hits. Attack v AC earn 1 Hits, every 5 points over AC earns +1 Hit. HITS can be damage OR be used to impose narrative conditions.

Do the same thing with Skills v DC with every +5 over DC earning +1 narrative bonus the PC can use to add something to a scene

 

[Aldarc]

I would look at a game like Fabula Ultima. It's not d20, but it draws heavily on indie games like Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, Fate, Burning Wheel, etc. It may have some ideas that you could draw upon for 5e.

 

[pemerton]

I'd like to brainstorm some ways to convert 5e D&D into a Story Now game. What would I need to add, change, or delete in order to run 5e as Story Now?

<snip>

My understanding of "Story Now" is that the story is not preplanned by the GM. Much of the world is purposefully left blank. As the game progresses, the actions of the characters, and choices of the players, provide opportunities to learn and answer questions about the world. If the characters are traveling to a Wizard's Tower, they might make a roll during the journal or upon arrival. A good roll would set up a positive arrival: what sets the characters up for success at the Wizard's Tower (example: a friendly NPC has a camp nearby)? A bad roll would set up a negative arrival: what is more challenging about the Wizard's Tower (example: the wizard has returned from the dead and is gathering an army of zombies)? The characters would react to the result, and the story progresses from there.

I think the biggest technical issue for playing 5e in a "story now" style is how to handle action resolution and consequences. Framing is fairly straightforward - even when improvising, D&D (all versions, including 5e) has heaps of pre-build encounter elements (NPCs, creatures, maps, etc) that you can use for framing - but how do you resolve declared actions?

You could try and use "Intent and Task" (a la Burning Wheel: DriveThruRPG), but a lot of actions in 5e don't require a check and so can't be resolved this way. And suppose that a player declares "I pick <so-and-so's> pocket, looking for gold!" There are rules for working out if the pocket is picked, but how do you work out if there is gold, and if so how much? BW (for instance) has rules for the difficult of scavenging up or otherwise looting 1D of coins, but 5e D&D doesn't. 4e D&D has treasure parcels, but 5e doesn't. I don't know 5e well enough to have good suggestions for solutions here.

Another (related) question is how to establish finality in non-combat resolution. Adapting skill challenges from 4e might be one possibility, and then trying to find a way of converting the use of (fictionally appropriate) spells etc to successes; but 4e uses a simple and uniform currency (encounter power, daily power, ritual) whereas 5e has level-based effects, and so you might need to work out a new scheme for translating from ability/spell usage to success.

To elaborate a bit on the issue I'm talking about in the previous paragraphs, consider: in an Athletics-type check for a skill challenge, what benefit to the check does a rogue get from their Second Story Work ability? The ability as written seems to assume that the GM has a map drawn and has a "timeline" running and the benefit (if any) of the ability is determined as an outcome of the degree to which it lets the PC move across the map in a shorter time. But in a "story now" context, where there is no pre-drawn map and no pre-decided timeline, what benefit does a player get to their check from the fact that their character is quicker when climbing? Maybe advantage? Anyway, I think this is something that would need to be thought through.

I think a secondary issue is that a lot of 5e is balanced around the "adventuring day", which creates pressure on the GM to think in terms of collections of events (encounters), rather than one situation at a time. I think "story now" 5e might want to handle this in a mostly informal way. Or perhaps you could require some sort of test/check to safely make camp, with failure meaning that the PCs have to go on with their current body of resources - maybe with a bonus per hit die spent (so it is easier as the PCs become more weary).

Also, you might find this thread helpful: Advice for new "story now" GMs

 

[Stormonu]

You could try and use "Intent and Task" (a la Burning Wheel: DriveThruRPG), but a lot of actions in 5e don't require a check and so can't be resolved this way. And suppose that a player declares "I pick <so-and-so's> pocket, looking for gold!" There are rules for working out if the pocket is picked, but how do you work out if there is gold, and if so how much? BW (for instance) has rules for the difficult of scavenging up or otherwise looting 1D of coins, but 5e D&D doesn't. 4e D&D has treasure parcels, but 5e doesn't. I don't know 5e well enough to have good suggestions for solutions here.

p 136, Individual Treasure from the DMG. Or use the old individual treasure types from 1E/2E.

I think the Skill Challenges idea is a good one - steal whatever works from older editions of D&D you can get your hands on. There's been 30+ years of work on the system, someone's written up something that will help, don't be afraid to draw from it just because it isn't in the current edition.