I don't think this is the right example. For one thing, Theoden can be viewed as the PC here. Having admirably played to their flaws and succumbed to Wormtongue, they are railroaded by Olorin, the Maiar primordial spirit in their magic-wielding Istari form. The whole thing plays out in accord with the GM's setup. Even tranferring this to the example being cited (ad arguendo accepting the PC as Gandalf), it's as if a PC with an entirely different standing and power were in the court, and in that case it's likely the GM would have directed NPC responses in a different way.
The notion that anyone in LotR is a PC or NPC makes no sense to me. It's a novel.
My point is that, in the inspirational fiction for D&D, a major ruler - Theoden - is challenged in his court and has his mind changed.
If the players are not expected to challenge the GM's NPC tyrant, why is the GM framing them into that scene at all? There may be an answer, but it's obviously not going to be one that connects to
player-driven RPGing!
I think what
@hawkeyefan's contrast between content and nature could be about is whether player has agency not as to what happens in the scene, but in the scene setup itself. Say the GM has the King worked out and it makes sense that they'd react as they did? Can the
player change the King's motivations here? Perhaps inserting a moment in the King's past where they stood before a Tyrant in a similar setting. With that history inserted, handing the King back to GM as an adversary that they manage, the GM will likely now direct their responses in a different way.
Well, I'm pretty confident that I know what
@hawkeyefan's contrast was about, as I described it and hawkeyefan liked my post and didn't post any correction of me. (Whereas, when I understated what he meant about RPG as a medium that is different from film, he did politely correct me.)
I don't know of any RPG that permits what you describe - the player establishing an NPC's backstory like that. But I know plenty of RPGs that take it for granted that the players can establish what is at stake in a scene, and what their PCs' goals are in that scene.
Referring back to my discussion up thread of ludonarrative requiring establishing narrative potential without committing to a given story, that can be achieved in a couple of ways. And at least one of those ways you seem to be ruling out as non-narrativist
I don't really know what "ludonarrative" means - it's not a term I'm familiar with - but I'm not surprised that some of what you describe about RPGing is not narrativist. After all, you are not a notable advocate or expositor of narrativst RPGing.
A. GM (or game designer FTM) can set the scene up with terrain and actual and potential adversaries (NPCs whose stakes potentially conflict with those of players). PCs enter that scene and although they set nothing up, it plays out in response to what they do. Only through knowing what PCs do, can we know how it will play out. And that is true even though they didn't play any part in setting things up, and cannot modify the nature of those things. Although we must work with the stakes as set, it can involve genuine stakes-motivated-conflict, and as to what stakes matter here and now can be down to what players do. I believe that this is the kind of setup the cited quotation describes.
There are many, many variations on this. Who gets to decide the PCs' goals within the scene, and what is at stake? I mean, as you describe it this could be an episode of Apocalypse World - but AW permits the players to establish stakes (by use of moves like Read a Situation, Read a Person, Seize By Force, and Seduce/Manipulate).
Or it could be a total railroad like the example from 5e Curse of Strahd play that I linked to upthread.
Without specifying the system whereby what is at stake in an action resolution, and how it is described - ie basically everything that matters in approaches to RPGing - we can't tell what's going on in terms of player agency and narrativistic or non-narrativistic play.
B. GM and players can set the scene up. PCs enter and it plays out from there. Beyond setup, there is no editing of the nature of the scene. Only how things go out based on what the PCs do.
I don't know what you mean by "players set the scene up". I mean, is a player saying "I look around for a <useful person fitting such-and-such a description>" and then succeeding on the check (say, Streetwise in Classic Traveller - a 1977 RPG! - or Circles in Burning Wheel) an example of this?
Is the player saying to the GM "I'd like to go and visit my friend the blacksmith" and the GM responding "OK, you turn up at the smith's place - but they seem to be missing!" an example of this?
C. GM can set the scene up, and players can be empowered to add to and edit the scene as they play it out. They can edit the King's nature to add that snippet of history at the moment it matters, so that GM will be inclined to direct their responses in a different way.[/INDENT]
I don't know what you mean by a player being empowered to "edit the scene". In MHRP the player can, under certain circumstances, declare an action to establish an Asset, or spend a PP to establish a Resource - does this count as editing the scene? In some versions of D&D, a player can spend a spell slot or memorised spell to make it true that the scene includes a creature under their control (in the fiction, the PC casts a summon-type spell) - does this count as editing the scene?
These descriptions of play that are devoid of specifications of actual play processes, of the relationship between clouds and boxes, etc, seem pretty unhelpful to me.
The example of Gandalf and Theoden is at best a case of A. Gandalf is able to challenge Theoden in his own court due to facts already established. Over the course of the scene, the natures of Gandalf and Theoden are revealed but not changed. (I think arguing that their natures are changed, will be contradicting earlier posts about what counts as a "nature" change versus a "content" change.) Given it's authored up front, there's no possibility of a "nature" change.
This just makes no sense to me at all.
As far as I know, of active participants in this thread I'm the one to have most recently run
a MERP/LotR-type game with Gandalf statted up as a PC. In that system - a MHRP variant - there are multiple ways that Gandalf freeing Theoden could be resolved. Theoden could be a Scene Distinction - King Burdened by Weariness and Wormtongue - and Gandalf's actions would be aimed at eliminating that Distinction, with Wormtongue as a statted NPC providing the opposition.
Or Theoden could be statted as a NPC, suffering from Mental and Emotional Stress, with Gandalf performing recovery actions, and Wormtongue adding to the Doom Pool and/or directly opposing those actions.
Which approach to use is a matter of taste and skill in GMing that system. I don't know how either is supposed to fit into your A/B/C schema, which as I've said doesn't actually make any reference to the processes of play that I and (I believe)
@soviet and
@hawkeyefan are interested in.