What makes an TTRPG a "Narrative Game" (Daggerheart Discussion)

[AbdulAlhazred]

There was quite a bit talk about connecting the characters to the world, and this is a part of the reason why in D&D I want to curate species and classes, and I want classes to be concrete things that are diegetic rather than just arbitrary mechanical packages. For my world I designed several cultures and organisations that were the origins of certain classes and subclasses and I have limited list of species each of which has an established place in the world. Then by just choosing these basic D&D building blocks, alongside their background, the character already has some connection to the world.

For myself I find it weird that something so artificial and reeking of 'artifact of game mechanics' as a class would do that. Worlds full of Fighters, Clerics, and Wizards seems awfully cartoonish to me. I don't honestly see how a lot of them would do much in terms of 'connection', though perhaps you can color all paladins as belonging to a single order, perhaps. The main classes though? What is the connection between one fighter and another? I don't see much that is inherent in that similarity. Now, if our PCs are brothers, like say Ron Edwards' anecdote about the 3e game he ran where the half-orc and the half-elf characters are half-brothers, THAT says something to me!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think you can. Not caring about the actual argument, but people cannot imagine infinite.

What does it mean to imagine 1738 meters? Can you really appreciate things like the mass of the gold implied by that? I doubt it, not in any really concrete way. You can kind of thing about analogs of this gold mountain, etc. I agree that 'infinity' is less connectable to everyday experience, but if that makes it impossible to imagine, then how do you imagine anything that can't actually exist? Clearly we mean SOMETHING when we talk about 'I imagine I cast a spell', for example. So in the end I think this line of reasoning isn't going to be very useful, even if it isn't necessarily 'wrong' in any sense.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What does it mean to imagine 1738 meters? Can you really appreciate things like the mass of the gold implied by that? I doubt it, not in any really concrete way. You can kind of thing about analogs of this gold mountain, etc. I agree that 'infinity' is less connectable to everyday experience, but if that makes it impossible to imagine, then how do you imagine anything that can't actually exist? Clearly we mean SOMETHING when we talk about 'I imagine I cast a spell', for example. So in the end I think this line of reasoning isn't going to be very useful, even if it isn't necessarily 'wrong' in any sense.

Not the same. Like we can imagine casting as spell just fine. We can imagine unicorns just fine. In movies people make such things seem real. Sure, such imagininings might lack in precisions, and perhaps our 1738 meters mountain is not exactly that, as no one perceives real mountains with such accuracy either (our accuracy of imagination probably depends here on the amount of experience we have of real mountains. Imagining infinity is more like imagining a square circle. It is fundamentally impossible. Not that this has much to do with the topic.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

For myself I find it weird that something so artificial and reeking of 'artifact of game mechanics' as a class would do that. Worlds full of Fighters, Clerics, and Wizards seems awfully cartoonish to me.

The game mechanics feel way more artificial if they don't even represent anything concrete.

I don't honestly see how a lot of them would do much in terms of 'connection', though perhaps you can color all paladins as belonging to a single order, perhaps. The main classes though? What is the connection between one fighter and another? I don't see much that is inherent in that similarity.

It is certainly true that some classes and subclasses work better this way than others. But I created an animistic religion for druids and rangers, as well as totem barbarians. There are culture with ancestor worshipping for ancestral guardian barbarians. There are origin stories for arcane tricksters and eldritch knight, there is a place where most wizards go to study. Stuff like that. Perhaps that is cartoony to you, to me it helps to build a world which the characters feel like natural parts of, instead of unique weirdoes that are issekaid into an alien world.

Now, if our PCs are brothers, like say Ron Edwards' anecdote about the 3e game he ran where the half-orc and the half-elf characters are half-brothers, THAT says something to me!

That of course is something that exists on top of this. Though that is no a connection to the world, it is a personal connection between two characters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Not the same. Like we can imagine casting as spell just fine. We can imagine unicorns just fine. In movies people make such things seem real. Sure, such imagininings might lack in precisions, and perhaps our 1738 meters mountain is not exactly that, as no one perceives real mountains with such accuracy either (our accuracy of imagination probably depends here on the amount of experience we have of real mountains. Imagining infinity is more like imagining a square circle. It is fundamentally impossible. Not that this has much to do with the topic.

I imagine things experientially. A 1738 meter tall gold mountain evokes an image with the impression of tall hillness, and gold color. An INFINITE gold mountain just invokes an image of one that extends beyond the limits of sight. I don't see a qualitative difference here. Likewise with imagining casting a spell, I agree, I can imagine that, so I CAN imagine things which are fundamentally impossible.

I think the idea of the 'limits of imagination' may be something that is interesting to discuss for a couple of reasons, but it certainly isn't going to add much to the topic of this thread .

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The game mechanics feel way more artificial if they don't even represent anything concrete.

Yeah, I just can't understand what that concrete reality IS. Humans who literally have a trait (is it biological, what is it) that makes them 'fighters' or 'wizards'? Sorry, it never worked for me. D&D and rules like "wizards can't use swords" just always broke my brain from day one. I mean, I got it fine in pure gamist terms, but that's it, it's a pure gamist construct! I actually like D&D, but it has no character of realism at all for me. Never did.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yeah, I just can't understand what that concrete reality IS. Humans who literally have a trait (is it biological, what is it) that makes them 'fighters' or 'wizards'? Sorry, it never worked for me. D&D and rules like "wizards can't use swords" just always broke my brain from day one. I mean, I got it fine in pure gamist terms, but that's it, it's a pure gamist construct! I actually like D&D, but it has no character of realism at all for me. Never did.

Classes are weird, but they're even weirder if they're just arbitrary mechanical packages. And they don't have "biological traits" of being wizards etc, but it is that in the setting wizardry is a recognised thing that one can study, and it works in certain ways, thus there is certain commonalities among its practitioners. So one is a wizard same way than one is a doctor.

And of course wizards have been able to use swords for a long time. They're generally just bad at it.

But I think this is connected to the deeper difference in attitude, which is the role of rules. I think one important purpose of the rules is to tell us about the fictional world and to define it, and you probably don't.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Imagining infinity is more like imagining a square circle. It is fundamentally impossible

That the concept is being discussed means we can indeed imagine it. We may not fully comprehend the concept, but we can imagine it

Also, for someone who’s accused others of semantic quibbles that go nowhere, this seems like a strange nit to pick.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That the concept is being discussed means we can indeed imagine it. We may not fully comprehend the concept, but we can imagine it

Perhaps I am understanding "imagine" to be more about imagining you are experiencing it via your senses, visualising. There are a lot of things we can conceptually understand, but about which I wouldn't say that we can truly imagine them.

Also, for someone who’s accused others of semantic quibbles that go nowhere, this seems like a strange nit to pick.

Absolutely true!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Classes are weird, but they're even weirder if they're just arbitrary mechanical packages. And they don't have "biological traits" of being wizards etc, but it is that in the setting wizardry is a recognised thing that one can study, and it works in certain ways, thus there is certain commonalities among its practitioners. So one is a wizard same way than one is a doctor.

Except that just doesn't really work. I mean, think about the real world. Doctors are all sorts of things. Some are highly athletic, study BJJ in their spare time, and are world-class triathletes. Some are tubby old 5'1" Italian men, etc. There's NOTHING at all realistic, or even particularly justified by fiction, about wizards that cannot wield swords, assuming they bother to learn how. Sure, wizardry is A thing you could learn and study, but no one thing in any realistic world MUST be the be-all and end-all of your entire existence. This argument MIGHT almost work for wizard, too, being a discipline of which we are free to make up every element as we see fit, given its imaginary nature. But you didn't talk about Fighter, or most of the other classes, for which this sort of logic really just doesn't do anything at all.

Again, I'm not super hostile to the ideas of classes as A) Heroic Archtypes, B) Simple mechanical Packaging for chargen and advancement purposes, C) Cultural ideals existing within the game world to which people aspire. Note that A and B here cannot be relevant to the population in general, and probably not to most NPCs. You could kind of posit C as a thing. Like there's a 'Model Hero' that is represented by each class and thus it is common to see wannabe adventurers emulating one of these stereotypes. Still, emulating and exactly being governed by as a set of rules aren't quite the same thing!

And of course wizards have been able to use swords for a long time. They're generally just bad at it.

I agree, EVEN THE DESIGNERS OF D&D see my point! This was pretty much a free win for them, the wizard can have a sword if he really wants, but since they gave him always-on At-Wills/Cantrips it is an utterly moot cosmetic point (I admit, my dwarf transmuter was actually fairly effective with a sword, there just wasn't much point in bothering).

But I think this is connected to the deeper difference in attitude, which is the role of rules. I think one important purpose of the rules is to tell us about the fictional world and to define it, and you probably don't.

Indeed. I think that's the cart driving the horse, for sure. I mean, it is cool if the rules tell us about the sorts of things we are imagining in our play, but I'm not much on actually defining the nature of the imagining via rules, they have other more effective uses.