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

[FrogReaver]

A RPG in which the GM decides, in advance and unilateraly, what is at stake in all the key moments of play - eg the DL modules - is the opposite of player-driven RPGing. It's what I call a railroad.

This seems to place player driven play in most RPG contexts on a spectrum. That is anything short of all key moments being decided by the GM in advance and unilaterally contains at least some player driven play.

 

[clearstream]

I’m in the midst of rereading Lord of the Rings, and that Czege quote certainly fits how Tolkien wrote a lot. Have a character show up and do something interesting, and figure out why along with other characters.

It can often work that way. The way I see it is that implications, ambiguities and silences are leveraged to discern meaning in the ongoing context. So something that was colour can turn out to matter in an unexpected way. The words of a prophecy can turn out to fit where we find ourselves. The King can turn out to be a tyrant. And so on.

 

[Autumnal]

Absolutely. It’s part of the fun, both in writing and gaming.

 

[FrogReaver]

On stakes - If players can unilaterally set the stakes of a scene and then have a mechanic resolve it, then what is the need for a DM?

What I observe most often being described in these games is more the player chooses the positive outcome, the dm the negative and then the dice determine which version to go with. Or the player chooses the success outcome the dice are rolled and if not full success then the dm chooses the complication or failure state.

Generally the dm’s input is constrained to follow from the fiction, but he may also be constrained in a manner such that he can only pick complications that arise from aspects the player has indicated on the character sheet.

In any event the games don’t usually have unilateral setting of stakes for a particular conflict by the player. The GM typically gets to at least choose a negative outcome from a list of player approved options.

Even in games that by rule give the player veto power on any stakes they don’t like, their are typically other rules that compel them to not be a weasel or similar such that they aren’t playing the game in good faith if they try to game the stake selection process for precisely the stakes they want. Or to say it another way, what the player puts at stake in a given instance isn’t completely in his control.

 

[FrogReaver]

If you quoted the rest of that section of my post, perhaps you'd have a better understanding of what I'm saying.

There are times when you use far too generalized language, such that the words chosen are applicable to any rpg, but then you try to restrict those words to only being applicable to narrative rpgs. Depending on how offensive that implication is I may try to understand what nuance you intended as I’ve shown in many of our back and forths here, or if particularly offensive I may just focus on the why the generalized language being used is wrong.

We can take any characters we like and run them through The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, right? Their backgrounds don't matter in any fundamental way except perhaps as flavor or as reasons for the decisions the players make. But the "story" of that module is not the story of the PCs. It can be anyone's story.

I’m happy to comment on this idea, but first I must note that it doesn’t support the notion that some RPGs don’t provide meaningful player choice.

On module play - I’m not a huge module fan, but I’ve yet to see a module where player decisions do not matter at all.

I think there is a conflation of 2 things in your posts in this topic, the uniqueness of the story elements and whether player choices matter.

One can have a unique story (or story elements) that is all about the unique aspects of the characters that contains no meaningful player input.

Likewise one can have a totally generic story that contains tons of player input.

These issues are orthogonal. I get the sense that story uniqueness is important to you and that’s fine. Maybe that’s even key of narrative play (initial thoughts are that it might very well be).

 

[clearstream]

So on this account a prompt that an English teacher gives to the class - say, that contains a photograph, an obituary, a calendar page and a snippet of narrative text, with the instruction to the class "write a story that incorporates these prompt elements" - is a ludonarrative.

So are some poems, and some visual artworks.

And that's because all you are describing, with the words "an assemblage of deliberately chosen signifiers . . . all containing narrative potential without committing to a single told story" is a collection of imaginary stuff deliberately put together, that might inspire someone to imagine a story that incorporates them all.

It's a bit of a digression, but thank you for this particular feedback. I had supposed it obvious to all that signifiers would have to include dynamic signifiers, but armed with your feedback I can see that, that is not at all obvious!

Furthermore, it perhaps can't be just that the signifiers are dynamic... possibly more needs to be said about the particular way in which they are dynamic. On the other hand, playfulness and gamefulnes also lie in the attitudes of the "reader" toward the signifiers - their purposes and norms of traversal - and so I can see that alternatively (or as well), "reader" as I mean it here needs better definition.

So that was extremely fruitful and apposite my deeper interests. Thanks again.

 

[thefutilist]

Second, the player might choose still to do it even if they don't think they can succeed; they might want to make a point by being a martyr. Third, whilst sometimes it might be good idea for the GM to reminds the player about the realities of their position, I don't think the GM necessarily need to hold their hand this way. The players are free to make choices, even bad ones.*

(* Also, several times I've seen players to make choices that I as GM thought were insane, but then the dice turned out to like the players a lot and by a miracle they manage to pull it off.)

So ultimately I think Narrativist play is more of an attitude and creative relationship between two people rather than a set of techniques, procedures or systems. I think this relationship will tend to gravitate toward selecting certain techniques and systems but not necessarily. This makes it really hard to say what Narrativism is.

If I was teaching ‘how to do Narrativism’ for a kind of trad game. Something like 5E. Then a lot of it would be about attitude. I’d also state how important it is for the GM to constantly be in communication with the players about the consequences of actions. This is one of the big techniques you’ll find in a lot of Narrativist play.

If you insult the tyrant king he’s going to behead you, there will be no roll, the people he’s oppressing won’t care. You’ll just be a head in a basket. Do you want to do that?

They might and if they did it could be awesome.


What we find in the example @pemerton posted is a lot of ambiguity about what the fun is meant to be. What is it that the GM expects to happen, there is a range of behaviour that seems acceptable and insulting the tyrant king isn’t within that range. The player didn’t know this and so we have a mismatch.

So what is within the acceptable range and is it worth doing? Those are two separate questions.

I think @soviet would answer something like, thespian expression of character with no actual consequence is within the accepted range and it’s not worth doing. (I’d agree). This criticism can be applied to a whole play style that is sometimes called Trad, story teller, GM led. The type of style that uses adventure models where there is a sequence of events that must be triggered. Or put another way, there is a direction that the story must go in.

This has almost everything to do with the way the DM manual AND the culture surrounding this sort of play, says how you should deploy the mechanics (to what end). It has very little to do with the mechanics themselves. To the extent that we get ludicrous stuff like having to fudge the dice because the mechanics aren’t actually built for the style of play that now surrounds them.

If you ask me if 5E is a good game and I take you to mean the DM advice and the culture surrounding that advice. Then I have a terribly negative view of it (this is a family friendly site, normally I would express my disposition in a more forecful way).

If you ask me if 5E is a good game and I take you to mean just the mechanics. Then, meh. See my previous posts about the matter.

 

[FrogReaver]

@clearstream

Would it suffice to say that narrative is a spectrum of how unique the game is to the characters, measurable by how different a given game would be with significantly different characters? At least this seems to be one of the reoccurring themes when it comes to describing narrative games.

I think the techniques typically used to produce the kinds of narrative games I’ve described above get associated as a defining trait of narrative games, when they are more tools to push a game in that direction in a satisfying way.

A narrative railroad where the GM takes into account player defined character traits at character creation to create a unique railroad that would only apply to that character makes for a good thought experiment.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Why is it so difficult for some to differentiate the presence of certain pieces of content within a scene and what is at stake in a scene?
Say, for example, a PC has entered into a jousting tournament. The presence of a duke and his daughter in an observation box, the duke's loyal knight dressed in tournament regalia to fight the PC, an audience of village peasants and royal observers, and a jester are all content of the scene.

But what's at stake?

Say the player says, "If I win this tournament, I expect to have an opportunity to meet the duke's daughter, alone, in the castle gardens to discuss the duke's plans related to his sworn enemy, Baron Updike."

In Ironsworn, the player invokes a Compel move to "Charm, pacify, barter, or convince" the duke to allow this visit---even if the duke isn't aware of what will be discussed. The player describes the persuasive action, perhaps with some banter, swordplay, and flattery.

If the Compel succeeds with a strong hit, the rules clearly state that the person who has been compelled will "do what you want or share what they know."

At this point, the GM has now, by rule, agreed to these stakes assuming the other parts of the Compel move are met ---



If the GM disagrees that the stakes are relevant, then the GM can suggest or revise how far the duke is willing to assent to the player's declared intent. But once the stakes are set, it is imperative on the GM to faithfully maintain the intent if the player succeeds---even to the point of "revising" or "introducing" elements of the fiction that maintain fidelity to the player's declared stakes in the outcome.

In trad/GM-driven play, there are no mechanics that can compel the GM to agree to a set of relevant stakes and then adhere to them upon success. If the player wins the tournament, the GM is, BY RULE (or lack thereof), not bound to the stakes. (S)he can introduce some other complication or "thing" that derails the intent. The GM may decide that despite the duke's intent, the daughter refuses to meet with the PC. The GM may decide that it's "realistic" for the duke's guards to take offense at the PC and waylay him/her before the meeting ever happens. The GM may decide that the duke's archrival murders the duke's daughter before the meeting happens. There's any number of ways the GM might "decide" that to "maintain game world fidelity" that the PC's meeting with the daughter never happens.

Instead of looking for ways to evolve the fiction in a way that fulfills the outlined stakes, the GM subverts them through any dozens of means at his/her disposal to further "the story" in the way the GM sees fit.

Now of course, can a 5e / trad GM follow the same guidelines and adhere to the player's declared stakes? Of course! But there's no rule or compulsion other than "GM thinks this is interesting." Whereas Ironsworn constrains the fiction that the GM introduces to maintain fidelity to the player's success.

Or of course the GM can ignore the constraints placed around the Compel move entirely. At which point the GM has ceased playing Ironsworn and is temporarily playing some other game, because the GM is no longer playing by the agreed-upon rules.

To avoid this sort of compulsion, in 99% of my experience with D&D 3e and Savage Worlds (when I'm not GM-ing), the GM just sets the stakes for individual actions or scenes to be incredibly low, basically never allowing the full realization of a player's intent, and instead puts up road block after roadblock, since simply giving the player their declared success is somehow "boring" or "easy mode" or "emblematic of the wussification of Gen Z" or whatever.

This is a good post and explains the difference well.

I also want to note that here too the GM has to accept the initial stakes and not anything the player might suggest is automatically acceptable. So the duke agreeing to the meeting will be OK whilst the duke abdicating might be not.

But the most important takeaway her is that this reveals the structure which makes this sort of game more of an exercise of collaborative storytelling and less about immersing to the viewpoint of the character. It really is the player haggling with the GM about stoybeats, rather than the character haggling with the duke about a deal. The former pair can agree that the duke's daughter will not be killed by unknown third party before the meeting, the latter cannot.

 

[pemerton]

On stakes - If players can unilaterally set the stakes of a scene and then have a mechanic resolve it, then what is the need for a DM?

You say you've played BitD - its rulebook tells you one answer.

Here are some possible answers - not all are true for all RPGing: framing scenes; preparing NPCs; saying what the NPCs do; saying what happens next when a player fails a check; saying what happens next when a player succeeds at a check.

I don't think any of this is very mysterious.