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

[Manbearcat]

This thread is incredible.

Phase 1: No no, narrative and narrativist are the exact same thing, stop being so nitpicky.

Phase 2: Well I don't know about narrativism specifically but I think narrative games as a whole are like this.

Phase 3: Narrativism doesn't exist

Phase 4: <Ignore concrete definitions given repeatedly of terms for a decade, make conversation utterly intractable and muddled, then blame those you've conversed with for more than a decade for the intractable and muddled nature of the ongoing conversation...and make sure to strategically forget all the ridiculous TTRPG jargon you've internalized for decades...the kind of stuff in both magnitude and wonkitude that would make a casual outsider's head spin>

Phase 5: Ok, Narrativism does exist, but, despite me having no experience of any consequence, I'm going to assert complete nonsense both vaguely and about specific games (games you've run on the order of 100s to 1000s of hours worth of table time) that has no connection to reality...oh, and I'll assert those things with all the confidence in the world!

Phase 6: Narrativism doesn't exist and you're elitist/jerk/pretentious (etc etc etc...the kind of crap you'd only say to strangers on the internet)

 

[soviet]

Phase 4: <Ignore concrete definitions given repeatedly of terms for a decade, make conversation utterly intractable and muddled, then blame those you've conversed with for more than a decade for the intractable and muddled nature of the ongoing conversation...and make sure to strategically forget all the ridiculous TTRPG jargon you've internalized for decades...the kind of stuff in both magnitude and wonkitude that would make a casual outsider's head spin>

Phase 5: Ok, Narrativism does exist, but, despite me having no experience of any consequence, I'm going to assert complete nonsense both vaguely and about specific games (games you've run on the order of 100s to 1000s of hours worth of table time) that has no connection to reality...oh, and I'll assert those things with all the confidence in the world!

Phase 6: Narrativism doesn't exist and you're elitist/jerk/pretentious (etc etc etc...the kind of crap you'd only say to strangers on the internet)

Phase 7: You're saying this 'narrativism' can do something that non-narrativism can't? How dare you insult the hard-working D&D players and their families in this way! I am literally shaking right now.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I don't consider PbtA games very narrative. Like on a scale from one to 10, with Rolemaster being a 2 on the mechanistic side, and "freeform but playing with a a net, and ostensibly using some published system" being like a 9, I would place most PbtA games at about a 6 or a 7.

And yet it was explicitly written to be a narrative game and is taken as one by those who like narrative games. As @pemerton pointed out Vincent Baker literally wrote "The entire game design follows from “Narrativism: Story Now” by Ron Edwards."

Your scale has nothing to do with narrative and everything to do with being rules light. Freeform is not synonymous with narrative - and if "freeform with a net" is a 9 then on a narrative scale I'd put Apocalypse World as an 11 or a 12 as it provides tools . Meanwhile on the rules-light scale Apocalypse World is pretty chunky and I wouldn't put it that far away from D&D 5e for the players.

Narrative is not synonymous with "rules light" and so far as I can tell it is only synonymous with "has a metacurrency" when used as a snarl word by people who don't like the idea of metacurrencies. Meanwhile people who like narrative games use it entirely differently from the haters - as games that encourage narratives.

I consider them pretty much a hybrid of narrative and mechanistic games. You can, and probably will, say, "I speak from my heart and try to romance the guard captain," but you can also say stuff like, "I try to run toward the guards and slide past them on the floor like Mega-Man," and both are valid Moves.

And one's a persuasion check and the other acrobatics in D&D 5e? In terms of metacurrencies, of course, D&D 5e is more of a narrative game than Apocalypse World due to Inspiration.

 

[pemerton]

Who decides these things?

Not a trivial question, I can report, as a long-time RM GM.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Games that are at more of a midpoint between mechanistic and narrative can have either or both sets of those kinds of problems. My big complaint about Dungeon World is that it does things I don't want it to, and doesn't do things I do; it constrains a lot of choices by defining very specific things about characters and certain procedures, but then some of the Moves just ask me to make up stuff on the spot. So it's challenging to "re-skin" the mechanistic elements, and challenging to get the "make story" parts of the game to answer questions raised by various tests and challenges. So it has a little bit of leakage at both ends.

I should jump back to this and say that Dungeon World is not Apocalypse World if you're using it as a baseline; Dungeon World is to me the equivalent of putting in a modern racing bike engine to a vintage VW Beetle; sure the modern engine is much better in some ways and has much more acceleration. But it still handles like a car and the aerodynamics are often odd. Roughly half the elements I consider to make AW a superb narrative game are either incredibly watered down or removed entirely in DW.

 

[Manbearcat]

Phase 7: You're saying this 'narrativism' can do something that non-narrativism can't? How dare you insult the hard-working D&D players and their families in this way! I am literally shaking right now.

Phase 7 addendum: <Meanwhile, the person/s you're saying are insulting D&D players are, in fact, D&D players and have been such for decades and run as much or more D&D as any other person on the planet>

Phase 8: Performatively clutch every pearl and get every vapor within a 1000 mile radius to manipulate the game theory of the site.

Phase 9: Go post in the utterly ridiculous "I didn't post in another thread" thread that has somehow become an outlet for obvious, embarrassing, passive-aggressive attacks that is somehow beyond moderation <-ing>.

Wash/Rinse/Repeat/Time is a Flat Circle

 

[Micah Sweet]

As I have frequently posted, including in this thread, AW does not have what you call "narrative mechanics" - unless you consider an instruction to the GM about the content of consequence narration to be a narrative mechanic.

I do consider that to be a narrative mechanic, yes. Also, are you telling me that no ability in any AW playbook allows a player to have any control over the fiction beyond what their PC is in-universe capable of? If you say yes I'll accept that, but frankly it's hard to believe.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Although your reply to @AbdulAlhazred has clarified things a bit, I still don't know what RPGs you have in mind.

If the RM Influence and Interaction result is not "narrative" in your sense, then it seems that Apocalypse World wouldn't be either.

You say that Dungeon World "requires you to make things up on the spot", but I mean so does classic D&D. (Like, you roll 12 on 2d6 for your monster reaction check - now you have to make up what the monster says, why they are so friendly, etc.)

I don't see AW or DW or Burning Wheel as being any different from classic D&D in requiring things to be made up. But they are different in the principles that the GM is meant to conform to in making things up.

Who's making things up on the spot? The GM or the player?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Phase 4: <Ignore concrete definitions given repeatedly of terms for a decade, make conversation utterly intractable and muddled, then blame those you've conversed with for more than a decade for the intractable and muddled nature of the ongoing conversation...and make sure to strategically forget all the ridiculous TTRPG jargon you've internalized for decades...the kind of stuff in both magnitude and wonkitude that would make a casual outsider's head spin>

Phase 5: Ok, Narrativism does exist, but, despite me having no experience of any consequence, I'm going to assert complete nonsense both vaguely and about specific games (games you've run on the order of 100s to 1000s of hours worth of table time) that has no connection to reality...oh, and I'll assert those things with all the confidence in the world!

Phase 6: Narrativism doesn't exist and you're elitist/jerk/pretentious (etc etc etc...the kind of crap you'd only say to strangers on the internet)

If I thought someone was being elitist in a coffee shop conversation, I'd tell them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If I thought someone was being elitist in a coffee shop conversation, I'd tell them.

Surely simply having a conversation in a coffee shop is elitist?

Any true citizen knows the proper place for such conversations is down the pub.