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

[Micah Sweet]

Well as you know many trad GMs are running an entire world simulation in their heads. Weather patterns, intercultural tensions, socioeconomic forces, the eroding impact of high fantasy magic on a pseudo-medieval feudalist civilisation that cannot logically sustain itself.

"Aren't they just making something up that sounds right to them, and dressing it in a veneer of dispassionate verisimilitudinous inevitability?"

No they aren't, how dare you!

So this post is nothing but an excuse to make fun of and demean people with simulationist preferences, as if worldbuilding has no basis in its choices beyond DM imagination.

Thanks for that.

 

[Celebrim]

No, not at all.

Ok, then. You've refuted yourself.

I don’t think people tend to be talking about Ten Candles when it comes to “narrative RPGs” though. It’s more a storytelling game like Dread or Fiasco.

No, Dread is definitively a Nar RPG. It has a fortune mechanic and tests.

There is some overlap between the idea of Nar RPG and a storytelling games, but where I draw the line is that a story telling game generally doesn't have fortune tests and often lacks a GM. If there is dice involved and some sort of proposition fortune resolution loop (though the three events might not occur in that order), then you have an RPG. If the RPG determines fortune by things that have to do with the knowledge of the overarching story that is being created, then you have a nar RPG. (Note, I'm using "nar" here as a term of art for the reason that I early said "narrative" is such a bad one.)

Storytelling games tend to very close to theater games. When I think of a story telling game I'm thinking about something like Montsegur 1244. And speaking of a Nar rule, that game features the rule that no main character can die before the epilogue. And yes, something as far from a trad RPG as Montsegur 1244 might be better classified as "not an RPG".

But that still doesn't mean that DW is in any fashion a nar game. It's a very trad RPG with an encouraged play style that loosely borrows from the idea of nar play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Please name some of these writers room narrative games.

Note that 'narrative games' is not a forge term.

"Narrativism" is a Forge term.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The first "writer's room" game I encountered (played it at an event) was Universalis (first release in 2002, very Forge Era). I pretty much described it that way before I heard the term (it feels like you are a bunch of writers brainstorming a movie or TV series.)

Most systems I've played along these lines seem like making sketches/outlines with the occasional fleshed out bit. You are not writing the full novel or reading the full script. You let your imagination fill in the gaps.

Many GMless games seem to fit this space, sometimes less explicitly than Universalis. I'd argue The Quiet Year does, and Belonging Outside of Belonging engine seems to. My latest work, God-Killer Prophecy feels like collaborating on an epic fantasy novel and I'd call it writers room (there is a prologue, three chapters in book one, three chapters in book 2, a final confrontation and an epilogue). Play rotates between a prophecy phase, which is a kind of chapter/world-region creation, and an adventure phase.

Todd has always called the ScreenPlay engine writers room (ScreenPlay, High Plains Samurai) -- mostly I think this is in the "player's are encouraged to introduce NPCs." We didn't do that when I played a 1 hour demo of it though.

n.b. links are to Compose Dream Games Marketplace which I run. I get 15%, the rest goes to publishers. There is a UK site as well with many of the same titles.

The Quiet year is a lot of fun as a worldbuilding tool.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The latter is what I would call simulationistic. But is any game that isn't simulationistic necessarily narrativistic? I don't think so.

That's quite true, although IME a lack of simulationist sensibilities often goes hand in hand with significant Story Now elements.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

To refer to Storyteller. I'm not calling him a good or a polite person -just saying he wasn't going after D&D.

Makes no difference. The fact that he felt the need to go after anyone implies a lack of impartiality which throws the whole thesis into doubt.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

Slightly sidetracking the discussion, but I always thought the interesting component of the narratively-focused style of role-playing-game design is how you can use game mechanics to guide play towards something that is more genre appropriate. For example there was a big and fairly heated discussion in that Adventure Time RPG discussion because the designers had dropped an original system they had designed in favour of D&D 5e.

This prompted some responses to the tune of "This is bad. D&D as a system is inappropriate, because it does not encourage behavior that is appropriate to an Adventure Time style adventure".

This was met with some hostility by some people arguing that "Since Adventure Time is inspired and based on D&D to a large degree it makes no sense to say that D&D wouldn't fit the AT setting".

But the thing is AT does not work like a D&D setting since players playing like how AT characters behave is highly suboptimal. D&D encourages safe play.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Makes no difference. The fact that he felt the need to go after anyone implies a lack of impartiality which throws the whole thesis into doubt.

Ironically I would say that the need to go after him and things he said elsewhere is a textbook example of ad hominem (especially when it involves misrepresentation of what he said) and throws objections to his theses into doubt.

No one is impartial. Especially not people who write reams of essays on a single subject. Ron Edwards was, so far as I can tell (and like many others) motivated by wanting the "Storytelling game of personal horror" that Vampire wanted and didn't deliver on. And his Narrative essay is useful and insightful (as to an extent is his Gamist essay) while his Simulationist essay is a grab bag of things he doesn't get on with (some of which he understands the appeal of and some he doesn't)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That's quite true, although IME a lack of simulationist sensibilities often goes hand in hand with significant Story Now elements.

If my understanding of Story Now is correct, it allows players to add things to the game that had not previously been established as existing. This would be contrary to a simulationist approach.

However, I don’t think a narrative game is necessarily Story Now (although it certainly can be). So a game can be both narrative and simulationist.

 

[Celebrim]

But the thing is AT does not work like a D&D setting since players playing like how AT characters behave is highly suboptimal. D&D encourages safe play.

It is true that D&D and any other trad game will encourage "safe" tactical play where you minimize risks, but on the other hand that doesn't mean that what actually happens in play is safe tactical play where the players are minimizing risk. Players aren't perfect dispassionate decision-making machine and in real life "hilarity ensues" with rash actions, over complicated plans, intraparty conflict, etc.

Given how much "stupidity" players will get up to on their own without any mechanism to guide it other than imperfect information, I wonder whether a system that strongly encouraged players to take rash action or to fail spectacularly wouldn't overcompensate and create something that is a parody of a parody rather than a natural story.