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

pemerton · Apr 16, 2024

Emberashh said:
A very long winded way of repeating that players can just make things up and the GM isn't allowed to poopoo their bright ideas, something that is so innocuous the only thing you have to do to add it to any game is just to have a GM who isn't being anti-social.

Have you played The Green Knight. Agon 2e? Your post gives the impression that you haven't.

Emberashh said:
Call of Cthulu in particular isn't just about the players being the passive recipients of lore that have to push the right buttons to get the lore nuggets. COC is an exploration game, and Players have to engage with the gameworld in more ways than just those that get the GM to say something.

You are the one who introduced the phrase "pushing the right buttons to get the lore nuggets". So you'll have to tell me how it differs, in meaning, from "an exploration game" that requires the players to "engage with the gameworld".

Emberashh said:
the actual gameplay experience is much more robust than you're giving it credit for

I neither awarded credit to the CoC gameplay experience, nor withheld credit. I said nothing about its credit-worthiness.

pemerton · Apr 16, 2024

Crimson Longinus said:
But could you perhaps give some examples in which this difference in GMing principles you identify as the real distinction produce different end results for similar fictional staring situations?

I did, in my post.

hawkeyefan · Apr 16, 2024

Crimson Longinus said:
It is not. Gameplay where we solve a murder mystery where the culprit, clues, motivations, red herrings etc are predetermined, and one where the rolls and/or the GM determines those things on the fly just are drastically different things.

Do you think these are more drastic from a GM perspective or a player perspective?

Do you think it’s more about the process of how these things are determined or the way they’re experienced?

Neonchameleon · Apr 16, 2024

clearstream said:
This is all extremely important thinking. From a ludological perspective however, it contains room for disappointment: why limit ourselves to what has been developed in prewritten linear narrative? This dissatisfaction is part of what drove a rift between ludologists and narratologists for a time (now reconciled so far as I can make out in post-classical narratology.)

Because the tool that does everything does nothing. There's nothing saying that games like Wisher, Theurge, Fatalist shouldn't be a thing. Just that Apocalypse World isn't actually one of those games.

clearstream said:
You'll have to say more about the relevance of this, as it's not clear to me. The desire is not to improve on freeform narrative, but to find new features of narrative. It's not particularly interesting, in a sense, to find that resolving premises is compelling: that was already known.

To unpack what actually happens is that all mechanics produce drag; they slow things down and they produce barriers to entry. All of which slows down the game (a bad thing), disrupt peoples' flow (a bad thing), makes it harder to play (a bad thing), and makes fewer people want to play it (another problem). They also have benefits - but what Vincent Baker has done is found ways to minimise the drag

Apocalypse World moves have the rhythm of freeform; they are made when narration would be handed over in freeform which minimises disruption of flow and slowness - and makes it easier to remember when to play
Apocalypse World moves are all the same - 2d6 + stat vs 7 and 10. That's simply adding three single digit numbers against a threshold. It's always the same roll and always easy math so it's again blindingly fast and easy to learn.
Apocalypse World moves can lead to interesting decisions/questions and never leave you having wasted your time with a "roll to see if you have to roll again". You literally get more out of handing over narration with a move than just handing it over.

So what you have is an intensifier and an additional element of randomness that stacks with freeform for as minimal a cost as possible. Working out how to do something better is itself a worthy goal.

Emberashh · Apr 16, 2024

pemerton said:
Have you played The Green Knight. Agon 2e? Your post gives the impression that you haven't.

I've played both.

And fyi, it is very poor form to root your counter arguments in accusing others of lacking knowledge. You can just point out what you think is an inconsistency and we can hash it out.

pemerton said:
You are the one who introduced the phrase "pushing the right buttons to get the lore nuggets".

The phrase yes, the idea no. You shouldn't be trying to act like that isn't what you were saying:

pemerton said:
"In classic CoC, the players' goal is to learn the stuff the GM has written up in advance by declaring actions that will prompt the GM to tell them that stuff"

pemerton said:
from "an exploration game" that requires the players to "engage with the gameworld".

I have not met a single person who plays COC, even for the very first time, and approaches it like they're trying to rack up a high score, and nothing about any of the editions I've read indicates that is how its supposed to play.

As a matter of fact, speaking anecdotally, I haven't ever played either of the two editions of COC I've sat for and not had it take multiple sessions before we even get to investigating anything at all.

pemerton said:
I neither awarded credit to the CoC gameplay experience, nor withheld credit. I said nothing about its credit-worthiness

Well, thats why it gets a bit tricky. You may not think you did, but thats not how it reads, especially when you're boiling down the games entire experience to an inaccurate snippet, and positioning it next to something you are claiming provides for a more emotionally and intellectually significant experience, as you've stated near verbatim in previous posts.

hawkeyefan · Apr 16, 2024

Emberashh said:
The conclusion pops up so consistently because when certain folks try so very hard to justify and prove the value of their preferred design, they inevitably drift into arguments that, intentionally or not, point to the tyrant GM.

Its hard not to see that as the root issue when arguments start talking about being "de-protagonized" if the GM isn't sharing any overt amount of narrative control.

I don’t know. As I shared, in my case, it was almost entirely my decision as GM to look for games that worked differently. I might suggest that part of the reason for this is that I thought some of the pain points I saw with my players might be addressed by a different approach… but none of them were pushing for another game. None of them would have described me as a tyrant GM.

I don’t think that means I wasn’t controlling most of play.

Emberashh said:
COC is an exploration game, and Players have to engage with the gameworld in more ways than just those that get the GM to say something.

What do you mean by this? How do the players engage with the game world without the GM’s input?

Emberashh · Apr 16, 2024

hawkeyefan said:
Do you think these are more drastic from a GM perspective or a player perspective?

Not that these questions were pointed at me, but its not really a matter of who it affects more, but of how the game itself as a collective experience is affected.

hawkeyefan said:
Do you think it’s more about the process of how these things are determined or the way they’re experienced?

Its both. Game feel matters.

Wolfpack48 · Apr 16, 2024

Neonchameleon said:
I can make an argument that there are a few that are; Fiasco and The Quiet Year come to mind, and then only for some players. And one of the things they have in common is that they are GMless. In general and in my experience "trying to form the best story" is the domain of trad or neo-trad GMs.

Ok, that makes sense especially for a GMless game. In my board game example of Arkham Horror 2e, an intelligence is often ascribed to the board game rules - “the game knows” - Which very much feels like an adversarial “GM.” Credit to the designers.

I’m not so certain that I understand forming the “best” story being an aspect of traditional games, unless you are referring to things like prewritten scenarios. In that case, I somewhat agree in that the author is making some assumptions ahead of time about the way things will go. Maybe Dragonlance being the biggest example. That said, I am referring more to the in-the-moment play in game rather than the framed scenario, which is more determined by the way the referee is running things than the scenario itself. A referee without preconceived notions about direction is more open to the adventure going any number of ways. And some scenarios are specifically written to be open ended situations rather than linear plot points.

hawkeyefan · Apr 16, 2024

Neonchameleon said:
I can make an argument that there are a few that are; Fiasco and The Quiet Year come to mind, and then only for some players. And one of the things they have in common is that they are GMless. In general and in my experience "trying to form the best story" is the domain of trad or neo-trad GMs.

In the days of 2e, when my current play group first came together, I was absolutely crafting a story as GM. My players largely expected this. It was the dominant form of play. We were inspired by the Dragonlance novels and modules and all the gaming material that was likewise influenced by them. All the metaplot that really took hold in that era.

This mode of GMing largely carried over for us into 3e. We were definitely incorporating what would come to be called neotrad type elements, but the role of GM as primary storyteller was still strong.

Again, none of my players would have ever described me as a tyrant GM.

Neonchameleon · Apr 16, 2024

Wolfpack48 said:
Ok, that makes sense especially for a GMless game. In my board game example of Arkham Horror 2e, an intelligence is often ascribed to the board game rules - “the game knows” - Which very much feels like an adversarial “GM.” Credit to the designers.

I forget which of the Forgeites came up with the rule of thumb that it's a poor game that makes the same person responsible for any given character getting both into and out of a situation. And indeed that sounds like good design.

And that feeds back to what a lot of narrative games actually do - which includes pacing through things like the XP systems being tuned and ramping up the tensions. Most Story Now games are designed to come to a conclusion in a handful of sessions (AW traditionally takes about a dozen) and allow the setting to be burned to the ground as you do; with no need to preserve the setting or the lives of the PCs everything is on the table.

Wolfpack48 said:
I’m not so certain that I understand forming the “best” story being an aspect of traditional games, unless you are referring to things like prewritten scenarios.

Both modules and the GM being called the Storyteller and pre-authoring the story. (I'd say White Wolf was worse than Dragonlance this way). In most narrative games I've played the concern of the MC isn't to make sure that the game goes in a given direction so much as to make sure that it goes, and set things on fire or load nitrous oxide into fuel tanks where necessary.

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

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