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

[Crimson Longinus]

Honestly I agree with you on much too. My own practice of Narrativist style play emerged largely when I adopted 4e D&D. It's a bit of a weird transition game because we all thought we were going to play trad D&D and then we got a few sessions in and it was like, no this game really works best if you stop prepping adventures! I did do a lot of what you're suggesting though, like defining situations and possible outcomes. The SC system kind of suggested that, but I gradually moved pretty much to just letting the players name quests, posing obstacles and letting the challenges kind of write themselves.

It is so weird that this is people's experience of 4e. Mine was that it is too prep heavy, and that's one reason I stopped running it.
I find 5e much easier to prep.

 

[thefutilist]

As to agency, I think I understand where you were going with that -- as in, is it healthy narrative for whoever holds the narrative reins to always be correct, and that it must always be respected? Is it really serving to make a better story for all, or is it simply a destructive tug of war over versions of events? Do the dice come into play here, or is any version of the input suspect? Maybe I'm wrong, but the quandary you laid out was interesting.

Yeah you got it. Although it's hard to discuss in detail without examining specific resolution systems and how they're applied.

 

[thefutilist]

Honestly I agree with you on much too. My own practice of Narrativist style play emerged largely when I adopted 4e D&D. It's a bit of a weird transition game because we all thought we were going to play trad D&D and then we got a few sessions in and it was like, no this game really works best if you stop prepping adventures! I did do a lot of what you're suggesting though, like defining situations and possible outcomes. The SC system kind of suggested that, but I gradually moved pretty much to just letting the players name quests, posing obstacles and letting the challenges kind of write themselves.

That’s fascinating. I know a lot of people talk about 4E as Narrativist (I know Ron does) but I never believed it could actually change the nature of play like that.

 

[FrogReaver]

From The Forge :: Narrativism: Story Now

The ideas expressed in this article seem very pertinent to this discussion. Example below.

The real question: after reading the transcript and recognizing it as a story, what can be said about the Creative Agenda that was involved during the role-playing? The answer is, absolutely nothing. We don't know whether people played it Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist, or any combination of the three. A story can be produced through any Creative Agenda. The mere presence of story as the product of role-playing is not a GNS-based issue.

Story Now​

Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be addressed in the process of role-playing. "Address" means:

• Establishing the issue's Explorative expressions in the game-world, "fixing" them into imaginary place.
• Developing the issue as a source of continued conflict, perhaps changing any number of things about it, such as which side is being taken by a given character, or providing more depth to why the antagonistic side of the issue exists at all.
• Resolving the issue through the decisions of the players of the protagonists, as well as various features and constraints of the circumstances.

Can it really be that easy? Yes, Narrativism is that easy. The Now refers to the people, during actual play, focusing their imagination to create those emotional moments of decision-making and action, and paying attention to one another as they do it. To do that, they relate to "the story" very much as authors do for novels, as playwrights do for plays, and screenwriters do for film at the creative moment or moments. Think of the Now as meaning, "in the moment," or "engaged in doing it," in terms of input and emotional feedback among one another. The Now also means "get to it," in which "it" refers to any Explorative element or combination of elements that increases the enjoyment of that issue I'm talking about.

There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s). Story Now has a great deal in common with Step On Up, particularly in the social expectation to contribute, but in this case the real people's attention is directed toward one another's insights toward the issue, rather than toward strategy and guts.

 

[zakael19]

For what it’s worth, I struggle to see how 4e really pushes hard toward narrativist play. I see it more baby-stepping in that direction. I view it as being more gamist and less simulationist than other versions which is what I think drove much of the strong opinions against it.

Maybe it’s actually the better example of a game lacking narrativist mechanics which can still play in a very narrativist fashion (didn’t for me, but many here report it did for them).

@pemerton mentioned something earlier that might help explain the better for narrativist feel. 4e did get rid of alot of mechanics that may have previously gotten in the way of narrativism. The biggest one I can think of is moving fairly hard away from the daily resource attrition based game. This means players aren’t strongly incentivized to make decisions to minimize resource attrition and can instead make decisions to maximize their thematics and narrative.

Go take a peek at any of the PBP games @Manbearcat has going in the appropriate forum here and you’ll see a bunch of 0 prep player/premise ideated and reactive 4e play. As a player in one of his, it’s been super eye opening how supportive of a story now play style the super clear rules + math & narrative beat facilitating SC system is.

It’s not quite as good at creating complications off mixed successes (or failures) as something like the PBTA is - but with clearly identified consequences from player fiction + rolls you get damn close, with a robust and easy to throw together combat system on top. I used some of his techniques to toss together a quest arc for a group doing a trial 4e game online, and they worked great.

 

[FrogReaver]

@Crimson Longinus the 2nd to last paragraph I quoted above likens narrativist play to authors writing a novel or screenwriters and film. An observation you’ve made before that Ron Edward’s appears to agree with here.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@Crimson Longinus the 2nd to last paragraph I quoted above likens narrativist play to authors writing a novel or screenwriters and film. An observation you’ve made before that Ron Edward’s appears to agree with here.

Well, nice to see that I agree with him about something!

 

[hawkeyefan]

@Crimson Longinus the 2nd to last paragraph I quoted above likens narrativist play to authors writing a novel or screenwriters and film. An observation you’ve made before that Ron Edward’s appears to agree with here.

I think that’s more about the timing of “story” such as it is. It’s not predetermined… it’s happening in the moment.

Now.

We are playing the game, and we’re involved in what’s being said by others and what we’re saying, as well… and that’s when the creativity is happening. Now… in the moment of play. Just as when a writer or similar creative has that aha moment of creativity… when they first have or express the idea.

It’s about not committing so strongly to ideas ahead of play. Save the creativity for play.

 

[pemerton]

It is futile, because your definitions are unclear and when provided examples no-true-Scotsman goalpost shifting commences. I don't care for your narrativist seal of approval, but I do know that many of the qualities you list regularly happen in RPGs that are not usually considered narrativist.

You mean like AD&D and Rolemaster?

Players determining the direction of the game, rising action, addressing themes, moral conflicts, characters dealing with personal issues. All basic stuff found in one degree or another in most games.

I have no idea whether you are doing narrativist RPGing or not. I mean, you seem to repeatedly deny that you are, and so I take you at your word. I don't know enough about the details of your play to form a considered view.

One thing that I notice, though, is this: when I read Edwards, Czege etc talking about techniques for scene-framing, narrativist play and the like I was blown away. Not all of it made sense at first - because I lacked the experience of a sufficient variety of RPGs and techniques - but the core ideas shed amazing light on my own RPGing. It helped me understand what had been so great about (say) my AD&D OA and thief campaigns, and what I had been going on in the best moments of our RM play. It also helped me work out why following advice in books like the Wilderness Survival Guide and the RM Campaign Law seemed to hurt my game, even though this was presented as the way to play.

Whereas you seem to find all commentary on narrativist play, discussion of techniques etc as being at odds with your own play. That makes me think - tentatively - that your play is predominantly high concept sim. And that the addressing of theme and moral conflicts that you refer to are closer to the way this comes up in DL, ie with pre-established answers, rather than via player decision-making about the meaning of what is at stake.

Perhaps I'm wrong? As I said, I'm just inferring from your posts.

our great old one warlock in 5e d&d wanted to try and start a cult. From there on his cult became a big part of the fiction. It grew, did lots of culty things and even needed set back on the right path when entrusted leadership was leading it somewhat off path. It was far more than ‘im wearing a blue shirt kind of flavor’ but we never battled the cult in direct combat either.

Who is the "we" who never battled the cult? Why would the warlock PC be battling his own cult? I'm a bit confused.

Or take my character a tempest cleric. I was interested in taking the weather as omens. (Sometimes even using augury for aid and sometimes making it up myself). Before this character weather conditions were rarely ever brought up. But because I drove that the dm started including it. Can I point to any big thing doing this drove me or the party toward? No, but fictionally it did start to impact all the players decision making process about whether to take a certain course of action now. Sometimes the dm would even intentionally signal good sign or bad sign by changing weather conditions, etc.

Maybe I should ask the thread directly, are these examples of player driven, narrative elements in my 5e d&d games?

The weather stuff sounds like colour, plus the GM sending you information about elements of the fiction they have prepped but not yet revealed. I'm not seeing the player-authored rising conflict across a moral line.

 

[pemerton]

I am not raising them in order to be answered, I am pointing them out as scope for variance.

I don't know what this means. Variance in respect of what?

I mean, there is a lot that can be said about the respective role of players and GMs in scene-framing. As one example, Gygax's PHB assumes that players will play a key role in scene-framing, by (i) obtaining information about the contents of various rooms in the dungeon, and then (ii) opening the doors of those rooms - thereby "triggering" those scenes - and trying to defeat/evade the inhabitants so as to get the treasure. This structure of play is key to Gygaxian gamism.

Later approaches to AD&D - which seem to have continued into 3E and 5e D&D - eschew step (i) as part of the expected procedure of play. Thus, players trigger scenes much more "blindly" and with the GM having correspondingly more control over what scenes are triggered. This certainly changes the nature of any gamism - giving it much more of a lottery element, at least from the players' perspective. It can also feed into a general decline in gamist orientation and an increase in "being there" high concept simulationism.

The preceding is just a small bit of what might be said even about map-and-key as a technique, and the different ways it can support scene-framing, and the different sorts of aesthetic goal that may in turn be well-served by such scene-framing.

Is this an example of "variance"? If so, it strikes me as very odd that you think I need to have it drawn to my attention, given that more than anyone else on these boards, and certainly in this thread, I provide actual examples - from various RPGs and common procedures and techniques used with them - of the complex interrelationships between mechanics, techniques, procedures and aesthetic goals.

Interesting. I was looking at "framed", "resolved" and "generates theme" each as properties. Such that a game could have a "scene" property, and (via scenes) could have the properties "framed", "resolved", and "theme". I'll label those FRT for convenience.

What does it mean to say that a game has a "scene" property? Do you mean that a scene is framed as part of the game? More than one?

And what does it mean to say that a game has the "framed" property?

In this case I would wonder if frequency, accuracy and intensity matter. It seems very likely that they do, in which case what you have described isn't a binary. EDIT: I see @Crimson Longinus making observations relating to this.

By frequency I mean are all scenes FRT? What is some are and some aren't? What if some types of scenes always are, and other types always aren't?

By accuracy I mean given scenes are FR, how often does that generate T? With scope for variance as implied above.

And by intensity, I mean that given scenes are FRT, how noticeable, impactful, relevant to player interests, and a whole suite of concerns of that sort, is the theme? It seems to me you have something in mind for this that is binary for you - a pemertonian-T - but would not necessarily be chosen by or matter to others.

Because, again, I don't really follow what you are saying, I don't know how to answer. I mean, I already posted this upthread: does it bear upon the questions you ask here?

there is the fact that both the process of working through the "hardware" scenes, and of dealing with the fallout from those scenes, either (i) produces fiction that blocks the previous rising action across a moral line, or (ii) produces fiction that gets in the way of player determination of future stakes and conflicts.

Again, I report that this is actual experience from actual play of narrativist AD&D and RM. It is very very easy to fall back into GM-driven scenes with GM-driven resolution.

I've also often quoted a key bit of BW player instruction text - is it relevant?

This is from the Revised rulebook, p 269; the same text is also in the Gold rulebooks:

Use the mechanics! Players are expected to call for a Duel of Wits or a Circles test or to demand the Range and Cover rules in a shooting match . . . Don't wait for the GM to invoke a rule - invoke the damn thing yourself and get the story moving! . . . If the story doesn't interest you, it's your job to create interesting situations and involve yourself.​

I've frequently posted about some of the things I do, as a player in Burning Wheel, to try and make sure that scenes that interest me are being framed.

I've also often posted about how, as a BW GM, I set about framing scenes that I hope and believe will be interesting for the players.

I have no idea what you are positing to be a binary. Like, how can intensity be a binary? Intensity of necessity admits of degree, as far as I can tell.