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Perils of Freeform Storytelling, a Frosthaven Lament · Pick Up and Deliver

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  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as
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  I step out of the post office and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
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  I'm Brendan Riley.
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  While greeting listeners, it's a gloomy day here in suburban Chicago.
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  We've got a light drizzle going.
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  My glasses are getting some water on them.
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  But not so bad that I can't do an episode of the podcast for you.
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  So let's jump into it.
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  So my family has made significant progress in playing Frosthaven.
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  We are about 65 plays in.
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  We have covered most of the three main storylines and we're running into a problem where we
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  don't have enough to do.
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  So I've been looking around online and we've discovered some places where we could or
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  should have been doing other things than we did.
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  Our things got revealed in a different way than we would have liked them too.
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  And it leads me to this episode which I'm calling The Perils of Freeform Storytelling,
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  a Frosthaven lament.
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  Now I want to be clear first, I think Frosthaven is an incredible achievement.
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  I think it's a remarkably good game.
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  I've been really enjoying it, but the pathing system for giving scenarios is much less satisfying
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  than I would like it to be.
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  So I wanted to talk a little bit about the structure of the way the game is designed
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  and where I think the choices that are made to enable freeform storytelling or enable
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  storytelling that feels like it has a lot of agency make it difficult for players or make
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  it difficult to ensure that the overall narrative experience is a positive one.
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  So to start with, I want to be clear, I think Frosthaven is a really interesting, fun, exciting
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  game.
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  I've loved my time with it and I'm looking forward to playing it a lot more.
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  I love that it has a very wide open play space.
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  The idea of being able to explore things in a variety of different ways is really compelling.
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  That's great.
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  I love that there is a depth of possibility in the non-dungeons spaces.
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  There's a lot of potential there for really interesting things.
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  You have this town where you can build these buildings and you defend the town from monsters
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  and different stuff happens.
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  That's the, there's interesting possibilities there, potential for compelling experience.
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  And there is a huge variety and mastery possibilities in the different types of characters.
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  This too has been really compelling and I think leads to a lot of possibility in the experience
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  of the game.
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  The overall flow of Frosthaven is remarkable.
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  I think that the skill that available in the characters is incredible.
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  The design space that has been created with a variety of different characters is works really
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  well.
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  So broadly speaking, those are the things I like about Frosthaven.
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  However, what I'm going to talk about for the rest of the episode are the places where
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  I think that the choices they made which were designed to create open storytelling experiences.
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  In fact, hamper our ability to enjoy those storytelling experiences by undermining them.
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  Okay?
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  But I'm, that's what I'm talking about here.
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  I guess last warning, we haven't played the entirety of Frosthaven but we've played a lot
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  of it and my plan here is to talk about the game without boundaries about spoilers.
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  In order for me to talk in a freeform way without very careful planning, I'm just going to talk
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  about the points that I've noted down and if I spoil something, well, I apologize for
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  that.
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  So if you are playing Frosthaven or you think you're going to anytime soon or you're
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  concerned about having elements of it spoiled, maybe now is the time to search out another
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  episode of Pickup and Deliver.
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  There are 730 some episodes to choose from, but this one I am going to be talking about
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  Frosthaven in detail.
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  So start with, I want to pause it a question about what kind of storytelling Frosthaven
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  wants to do.
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  The genre that it explores and the kinds of things that the game's choices seem to aspire
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  toward.
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  It would best be described as role-playing game.
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  Gloomhaven and Frosthaven feel like an adaptation of a Dungeons & Dragons style role-playing
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  game where you have adventures that have skills, their skills get better over time, they gain
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  equipment and they use that equipment to go do missions and gain experience and loot.
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  You could get a long way describing Gloomhaven before people realized it was not a tabletop
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  role-playing game but as in fact a Euro style puzzle game or it is a puzzle game anyway.
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  It's fun and adventurous and everything but it is a puzzle game.
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  It's about how to solve the puzzle of defeating the monsters, maximizing the efficiency
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  of your characters and accomplishing some of your goals along the way.
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  I think this desire, the narrative desire to create a role-playing experience and the
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  desire to create a mechanically interesting algorithmic experience in the Dungeons call
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  part of the game are inherently at odds with one another.
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  Alright so I'm going to start with agency for players.
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  In tabletop role-playing games, agency for players is always a tricky element because it is
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  the core of what games like that are about.
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  The idea is players have agency to decide or to explore what is going on in the world around
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  them.
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  The Dungeons Master or Storyteller or whatever title you have for them is providing a series
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  of encounters for them and hopefully they feel engaged or enthusiastic about tackling those
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  encounters.
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  They should feel like they have some choice or some ability to explore those encounters
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  but often the real heart of the magic in a tabletop role-playing game is the feeling that
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  you decided what you're going to do and then you discovered this amazing story.
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  There is a two way street here, right?
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  Collaborative storytelling like Dungeons and Dragons often requires that players remember
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  the rule at the heart of improv, yes and, the idea that I am going to hear what you're
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  saying and I'm going to build upon it rather than reject it.
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  Now in Dungeons and Dragons often the way that could happen is that the DM or GM will offer
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  a couple different story hooks in the players will pick one of them to follow.
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  The rejection part would be the GM offers a couple story hooks and the players instead
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  choose to start building a farm or they just do something completely different from the
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  rest of the story that had been planned.
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  This is a common joke among GMs that you can make all these plans and your players will
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  find the one detail that you will just threw in for flavor and they'll hone in on that
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  and off they'll go into a completely different story and you'll have to roll with it.
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  So the agency that allows for that kind of experience and the frustration GMs feel when
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  they put a lot of planning into a story and then they don't get to use that story because
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  players have decided to do something else is at the heart of this collaborative storytelling
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  process that is Dungeons and Dragons.
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  And when a tabletop game tries to replicate that experience there are some fundamental
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  flaws.
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  For one, the stories in this game in Gloomhaven or Frosthaven are all planned out already.
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  There is no not doing the stories.
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  For instance in Frosthaven in order to play the game you have to do a scenario.
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  The scenarios are generated by the game and you have a variety of them available to you
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  at any given time.
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  You pick one and you go do it.
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  I think the game makes the most sense if you stick to a storyline so you pick multiple
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  games in a storyline and you follow that so that you can kind of keep track of what's
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  going on.
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  But the game does allow you to pursue multiple lines of inquiry at once.
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  So the game has some openness to following different plot hooks but it isn't really open.
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  You only can do the plot hooks that are available to you.
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  Where Frosthaven feels like it's trying to offer an open world, it is not in fact offering
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  one.
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  And this is one of the challenges we have faced.
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  As we've gotten to the point where we have finished two of the three storylines, it sort
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  of looks like we're on the verge of finishing the third one.
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  And there's a whole bunch of content we haven't accessed yet.
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  And this leads to the element that comes out of a role playing game which is that as the
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  GM you could nudge your players back onto the path.
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  In some context people might call this "rail-roading" it's described as bad being a bad GM because
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  you're forcing players to follow a story that they didn't want to follow.
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  They say we're going to leave town and you say the gates to the town are closed you can't
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  leave.
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  But there's a party happening at the pub, right?
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  Like you come up with a narrative reason they have to do the one thing you prepot you
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  plant.
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  I would say a good GM plan would be okay you leave, they go on to the road in the woods
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  as they're going through the woods they encounter a troop of travelers who are having a party
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  and you just move the party in the pub that you'd planned to be in this clearing in the
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  woods.
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  You don't have to tell the players that that's what you did.
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  But if you have a story you want them to encounter you can shift it around try to be nimble
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  in your storytelling.
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  Frost haven't really have that.
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  But in making it appear that it does I think we actually lose narrative coherence.
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  One of the challenges we had because we would shift around from story to story because
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  the game kind of said you could you can pick any of the open stories.
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  We didn't really follow the story lines as close as you should and often we forgot what
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  was going on.
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  So sometimes we'd have to go back and read stuff from previous adventures or we'd have
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  to remind ourselves or we just play and the narrative wouldn't make as much sense as
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  it should.
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  Now I think this is entirely Frost haven's fault certainly is ours for not proceeding
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  in a logical manner.
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  But one of the things I'm feeling now is that given how far we've gotten and it's clear
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  we missed some things. There's this puzzle book that you need to kind of solve in a timely
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  fashion in order to produce, proceed things.
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  And then there are these challenges which feel optional in our in fact optional but they
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  unlock a ton of content.
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  And because we didn't do these challenges we were finding ourselves behind the gun in
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  terms of finishing other kinds of content.
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  So those are two of the gameplay elements in Frost haven that feel as though the game
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  would have worked better, had it been a little more strict about okay here's your next adventure.
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  Had the adventures been much more in a straight line or like once we start down a narrative
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  path you have to do this whole narrative path.
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  The other challenge is that the game is built up around retirement.
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  The main thing that you get when you retire a character is access to more buildings and
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  the buildings often have links to other adventures or they open up other narrative story possibilities.
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  Well we had trouble at one point in our game where we were having trouble retiring a character.
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  I played a character all the way up to level 9 because I couldn't retire it.
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  The retirement goal that I got was just really excessive and for me to get it I basically
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  would have had to be a much more selfish player than I am.
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  So for me to make progress on my personal goal I would have had to have less fun.
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  I've talked about the challenge of Dead of Winter for me is that in order to create
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  cover for the potential trader in the game each player gets a personal goal that they're
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  not allowed to talk about so they can't collaborate with other players on it and that in order
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  to accomplish it they have to play selfishly.
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  I would say Gloomhaven also has this problem.
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  You have a lifetime goal that you're not supposed to talk about with the other players and
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  it allows you it encourages you to play selfishly.
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  Well Gloomhaven is a game of cooperation.
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  You're supposed to be a team and I get like narratively somewhere at the core there are the
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  ideas you are these selfish mercenaries who are working together for your own purposes.
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  Which is kind of the style of Dungeons and Dragons but the play counters that.
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  The way that Gloomhaven or Frosthaven are fun for us is to work together to talk about
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  I think I'm going to be able to go early.
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  I can help you with this.
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  I can boost that.
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  I can move him there.
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  I'll go here.
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  Are you going to where are you going to go?
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  The planning of the attack is part of what's fun about the game.
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  And so to create circumstances where to progress the game you have to play in a way that's counter
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  to the fun of the game feels like a problem for me.
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  And then finally the third thing I guess I wanted to bring up about the Frosthaven experience
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  is the Overland map more and more just feels like a bookkeeping.
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  It doesn't feel like an engaging development of story.
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  The story is happening in the prelude and the conclusion to the adventures.
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  But the stuff in the village itself really just isn't as compelling.
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  And I think that the overall experience of it is harmed because we are finding ourselves
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  getting the point where it doesn't feel like there's much left to do narratively, but
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  we have a ton left to do from a character perspective.
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  We all are only on our third characters I think.
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  And there are three or four different characters that we haven't played at all.
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  That doesn't feel fun to get to the end of the game and have a bunch of content you
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  just haven't even touched.
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  There are also a whole bunch of scenarios that we haven't played or can't play because
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  of narrative choices, right?
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  So there's a couple of scenarios where you choose A or B. And when you choose A, you have
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  these six scenarios and when you choose B, you have those six.
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  So now we have six scenarios out of like the hundred that we aren't going to get to play.
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  And there's a couple different places like that in the game.
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  Again, when you're running on a stuff to play, that part doesn't feel fun.
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  We are also running into the problem of like the game feels like we should be advancing
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  the town more than we actually are.
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  And again, all of these things feel like they come from the goal of making this feel like
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  an open world in contrast to the narrative requirements of having a story that moves
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  along at a reasonable pace in which the players can understand how to move it forward.
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  And I think that's the place where we are running into a lot of trouble is that a lot
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  of what happens in the game is randomized.
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  There are these encounter cards that can give you things, but you don't get to pick which
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  encounter cards you encounter and the game isn't on a timeline in the same way that we would
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  like it to be.
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  So I think overall the gameplay of Frosthaven has been incredible, but the elements that
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  were added to make the game feel more like a role-playing game have in fact hampered the
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  experience for us.
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  But I think had the game been closer to Gloomhaven in its approach and its style in the kinds
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  of things that it did, we probably would have enjoyed it more.
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  Or we wouldn't be frustrated now, we would just be continuing to play adventures.
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  Of course I acknowledge that any game like this is a mix of different choices and goals
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  and sometimes it's about choosing to privilege one kind of play over another.
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  That's part of game design and sure.
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  But for us the kinds of game play that they privileged don't work, we would enjoy them
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  if they worked, but they don't work or they're not foolproof and we are the fools.
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  There is my lament about Frosthaven.
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  I do want to point out that the Haven games are near the top of my top 50, I don't remember
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  exactly where, but I think they're in the top 10.
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  I really like them a lot and I've enjoyed playing them hours and hours and hours and hours
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  and we're still playing almost once a week, not quite once a week, but almost.
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  So I've not given up on Frosthaven yet, but I wish that it were a little smoother.
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  So that is my take on Frosthaven and the nature of its open story time.
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  What do you think?
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  Have you played Frosthaven?
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  What do you think about the way that it construct stories?
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  Head over to boardgamegeek guild 3269 and share your thoughts there.
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  Love to hear them.
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  In the meantime, thanks for joining me in my walk.
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  I hope your next walk is supposed to be my noise.
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  Bye bye.
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  Brought to you by Rattlebox Games.
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  [MUSIC]