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

[AbdulAlhazred]

Not exactly. Story Now requires that each scene be framed as an act in a previously existing conflict that tests the stakes of that conflict, where initial conflicts are introduced by the players and then tested, and that the resolution of the conflict is always a matter of player choice. Introducing new elements to the fiction is a tangential concept.

In other words, Story Now requires whomever is responsible for framing scenes to tailor that scene to the conflict that has been signaled by the player. Cut to the chase. Let's have the story the player wants now. See also "play to find out what happens".

Woah! Story Now literally means that the 'story', that is the content of the scenes being imagined during play, is being authored NOW and not at some other time. This contrasts with 'Story Before' where someone pre-authors a series of scenes and elements which are then brought into play, either in sequence and/or in response to certain 'triggers' (IE actions by the PCs). Narrativism/Narrativist play MAY, and often does, employ the Story Now technique for obvious reasons, but frequently also uses pre-authored elements, a loosely mapped out milieu, etc. that are not strictly Story Now. So I think SN is relevant to a discussion of what sort of game Daggerheart is, but we should not confuse it with the question asked by the OP.

To contrast: Narrativist play PRIMARILY revolves around PC protagonism. That is, the PCs conform to the definition of protagonists in a fairly complete way. "A protagonist is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles." If we then look at Edward's writing on the subject is that he looks at this through the lens of Exploration. Edwards means "what is imagined by the participants as a whole during play" by this. Edwards also specifies that SN requires some 'problematic feature of human existence be addressed'. I think this is a concomitant of 'PCs are protagonists' and 'Story is developed during play'. But anyway, the primary point that arises, IMHO is that the PCs are genuine protagonists. This is not the case where the situations to be encountered are pre-authored, definitionally.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The funny thing is, after we rejected 4e as our regular RPG experience after about a year or so of play, a couple of friends and I used the system exactly as a series of context-less arena fights, for about six more months. It's a lot of fun that way, and it sidesteps all of our complaints about the game.

Yeah, I'm not implying that anyone can't do that, especially with 4e or 3e perhaps, which DO feature exact positioning and at least attempt to systematize a lot of the basic stuff that comes up in combat. I think you'd have somewhat more trouble doing that with 5e, though I'm sure it isn't literally impossible. I think it is fair to say that 4e played this way is not really an RPG though. Anyway, we agree on some things .

 

[Neonchameleon]

Woah! Story Now literally means that the 'story', that is the content of the scenes being imagined during play, is being authored NOW and not at some other time. This contrasts with 'Story Before' where someone pre-authors a series of scenes and elements which are then brought into play, either in sequence and/or in response to certain 'triggers' (IE actions by the PCs). Narrativism/Narrativist play MAY, and often does, employ the Story Now technique for obvious reasons, but frequently also uses pre-authored elements, a loosely mapped out milieu, etc. that are not strictly Story Now. So I think SN is relevant to a discussion of what sort of game Daggerheart is, but we should not confuse it with the question asked by the OP.

And for anyone looking for a citation, to quote Ron Edwards from the main Narrativism essay

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.​

 

[Crimson Longinus]

To contrast: Narrativist play PRIMARILY revolves around PC protagonism. That is, the PCs conform to the definition of protagonists in a fairly complete way. "A protagonist is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles."

Sure. Which happens in most RPGs.

If we then look at Edward's writing on the subject is that he looks at this through the lens of Exploration. Edwards means "what is imagined by the participants as a whole during play" by this. Edwards also specifies that SN requires some 'problematic feature of human existence be addressed'. I think this is a concomitant of 'PCs are protagonists' and 'Story is developed during play'.

But that really has nothing to do with protagonism. You can have the characters be protagonists, without addressing "problematic feature of human existence," (although it is probably more interesting if you do.) You can also address such things without the PCs being protagonists (although it is probably more interesting if they are.)

But anyway, the primary point that arises, IMHO is that the PCs are genuine protagonists. This is not the case where the situations to be encountered are pre-authored, definitionally.

That's obvious hogwash. Of course PCs can be protagonists, even though they encounter preauthored situations, as long as outcomes of their interaction with the situation is not determined.

This is what I dislike about Edwards. He makes overreaching claims that seem to be aimed to disparage other playstyles, and jumbles a bunch of unrelated things together.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure. Which happens in most RPGs.

Not in my experience. Lets take an example: The classic 5e module Lost Mine of Phandelver. There are a number of locations in this module, but they are all pre-authored and each one offers a limited set of outcomes. While you can visit some of them out of order, or even skip certain ones, the overall plot arc is entirely 'canned'. The PCs will go to several locations, fight things/negotiate/investigate - which it is being determined by the location, not the PCs generally speaking. Eventually they will end up at the mine, where they will fight certain opponents, again maybe varying the order or avoiding some of them. There's only very shallow protagonism here, and no Story Now character to the thing at all. What happens in most RPGs is not what I would call Narrativist play, in which the players, through the orientation of their PCs to the central premise, define what play is about and explore that premise.

But that really has nothing to do with protagonism. You can have the characters be protagonists, without addressing "problematic feature of human existence," (although it is probably more interesting if you do.) You can also address such things without the PCs being protagonists (although it is probably more interesting if they are.)

I don't think you can MEANINGFULLY have protagonism, because you cannot meaningfully assemble any sort of narrative with any tension at all, without that conflict (problematic feature as Ron puts it). Without that the game is simply toothless, it is nothing but a sort of equivalent of cosplay. Likewise if the PCs are not protagonists then the players are mere setting tourists, watching the story happen. This is exactly describing a whole category of trad play!

That's obvious hogwash. Of course PCs can be protagonists, even though they encounter preauthored situations, as long as outcomes of their interaction with the situation is not determined.

No. That is, I object to this formulation because you are destroying the distinction between two very different things! Wandering around in a module working through the encounters - albeit you may have considerable leeway in how and when you address them - does not equate to the sort of play you get in Dungeon World where the PCs engage propositions that are largely authored by the players, and if pre-authored content appears it is only in REACTION to what the players have done. These are different things!

This is what I dislike about Edwards. He makes overreaching claims that seem to be aimed to disparage other playstyles, and jumbles a bunch of unrelated things together.

Well, I disagree. You are welcome to your opinion, though I would point out that an entire movement of RPG game design has produced many successful games with a starting point being Ron's essays. I'd also point out that we should not go entirely overboard and focus too much on what one guy said 20 years ago. There's a DEEP literature that has arisen around Narrativist play. Some of it contradicts Edwards, some ignores him, some validates at least some of what he said. Either way, it is inarguably a basis for a lot of modern RPG design.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Not in my experience. Lets take an example: The classic 5e module Lost Mine of Phandelver.

No, let's not! It is a module, canned adventure. Of course it is limiting, at least if you play it inflexibly by the book. But that's not what I mean. You don't need to play canned adventure, you can easily play a game where the characters significantly influence the direction of play without playing a narrativist game.

I don't think you can MEANINGFULLY have protagonism, because you cannot meaningfully assemble any sort of narrative with any tension at all, without that conflict (problematic feature as Ron puts it). Without that the game is simply toothless, it is nothing but a sort of equivalent of cosplay.

No. There are a ton of shallow stories that do not address such concerns where there still are clear protagonists. Whether you do affects the depth of the story, not whether there is protagonism.

Likewise if the PCs are not protagonists then the players are mere setting tourists, watching the story happen. This is exactly describing a whole category of trad play!

Yes. But as addressing problematic human issues can happen without protagonism and protagonism can happen without it, it is completely unrelated to the thing! Sure, doing so probably makes your games more interesting, but trying to marry it to this specific style of play is just weird.

No. That is, I object to this formulation because you are destroying the distinction between two very different things! Wandering around in a module working through the encounters - albeit you may have considerable leeway in how and when you address them - does not equate to the sort of play you get in Dungeon World where the PCs engage propositions that are largely authored by the players, and if pre-authored content appears it is only in REACTION to what the players have done. These are different things!

It's a spectrum and you have to again use the extreme example of a canned module to make a point. In any case, you cannot hijack normal world like "protagonism" and say it only can exists in the games of your preferred style, as by normal understanding of the worlds that is not case. This is the sort of Edwardsian Newspeak which is intended to smear other approaches.

Well, I disagree. You are welcome to your opinion, though I would point out that an entire movement of RPG game design has produced many successful games with a starting point being Ron's essays. I'd also point out that we should not go entirely overboard and focus too much on what one guy said 20 years ago. There's a DEEP literature that has arisen around Narrativist play. Some of it contradicts Edwards, some ignores him, some validates at least some of what he said. Either way, it is inarguably a basis for a lot of modern RPG design.

I did not say that he didn't have any worthwhile insights. They're just buried in toxic and pretentious blathering.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not in my experience. Lets take an example: The classic 5e module Lost Mine of Phandelver. There are a number of locations in this module, but they are all pre-authored and each one offers a limited set of outcomes. While you can visit some of them out of order, or even skip certain ones, the overall plot arc is entirely 'canned'. The PCs will go to several locations, fight things/negotiate/investigate - which it is being determined by the location, not the PCs generally speaking. Eventually they will end up at the mine, where they will fight certain opponents, again maybe varying the order or avoiding some of them. There's only very shallow protagonism here, and no Story Now character to the thing at all. What happens in most RPGs is not what I would call Narrativist play, in which the players, through the orientation of their PCs to the central premise, define what play is about and explore that premise.

I don't think you can MEANINGFULLY have protagonism, because you cannot meaningfully assemble any sort of narrative with any tension at all, without that conflict (problematic feature as Ron puts it). Without that the game is simply toothless, it is nothing but a sort of equivalent of cosplay. Likewise if the PCs are not protagonists then the players are mere setting tourists, watching the story happen. This is exactly describing a whole category of trad play!

No. That is, I object to this formulation because you are destroying the distinction between two very different things! Wandering around in a module working through the encounters - albeit you may have considerable leeway in how and when you address them - does not equate to the sort of play you get in Dungeon World where the PCs engage propositions that are largely authored by the players, and if pre-authored content appears it is only in REACTION to what the players have done. These are different things!

Well, I disagree. You are welcome to your opinion, though I would point out that an entire movement of RPG game design has produced many successful games with a starting point being Ron's essays. I'd also point out that we should not go entirely overboard and focus too much on what one guy said 20 years ago. There's a DEEP literature that has arisen around Narrativist play. Some of it contradicts Edwards, some ignores him, some validates at least some of what he said. Either way, it is inarguably a basis for a lot of modern RPG design.

Do you realize just how insulting these remarks are to everyone who doesn't subscribe to your point of view? Setting tourists, watching the story happen, because the players didn't have a hand in creating the situation they are in besides deciding to go there? So your PCs actions are otherwise meaningless? Are you interested in discussing the pros and cons of different playstyles, or just trashing anything that isn't your definition of narrativist?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Not in my experience. Lets take an example: The classic 5e module Lost Mine of Phandelver. There are a number of locations in this module, but they are all pre-authored and each one offers a limited set of outcomes. While you can visit some of them out of order, or even skip certain ones, the overall plot arc is entirely 'canned'. The PCs will go to several locations, fight things/negotiate/investigate - which it is being determined by the location, not the PCs generally speaking. Eventually they will end up at the mine, where they will fight certain opponents, again maybe varying the order or avoiding some of them. There's only very shallow protagonism here, and no Story Now character to the thing at all. What happens in most RPGs is not what I would call Narrativist play, in which the players, through the orientation of their PCs to the central premise, define what play is about and explore that premise.

I think here it's important to note there's a difference between the protagonist and the PoV character. The PCs are always PoV characters - but in some extreme cases (mostly written in the 90s) have about as much influence on the plot as Rosencrantz and Gildernstern in Hamlet/Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead. In Phandelver and most APs they have more - but are generally reacting rather than acting, putting them in the same category as Sleeping Beauty

Well, I disagree. You are welcome to your opinion, though I would point out that an entire movement of RPG game design has produced many successful games with a starting point being Ron's essays.

Ron's essay on Narrativism being a good starting point for many people doesn't actually contradict with his comments about simulationism being disparaging.

I'd also point out that we should not go entirely overboard and focus too much on what one guy said 20 years ago. There's a DEEP literature that has arisen around Narrativist play. Some of it contradicts Edwards, some ignores him, some validates at least some of what he said. Either way, it is inarguably a basis for a lot of modern RPG design.

And with this I agree.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

If you were talking about 1e AD&D I'd be sympathetic to your argument here, but in terms of 5e D&D (a subject I'm not an expert on) a lot of the complaints I hear coming out of the system is just how ridiculously hard it is to kill anyone in the system. And D&D in general has always been just a raise dead spell away from making death not have as much consequence as you'd think.

But I agree that if you want to mimic a cartoonish aesthetic you have a system where a character can get toasted and thus out of play for the rest of the scene perhaps, but then are alright again at the beginning of the next scene - albeit perhaps captured and needing to plan a daring escape. Part of this though is just a table agreement for everyone not to be ruthless and bloodyminded.

It is true that D&D 5e is extremely survivable and probably more survivable than many other systems in the same style, but it still relies on and rewards optimal play and it has little in the way of mechanics to handle things like being captured.

This is going to vary from group to group, but think of something like a normal dungeon. What is the optimal play? It is to search every room systematically (unless you have a time limit). You don't want to miss loot, because loot is valuable.

Look at the process for making characters. It's annoying and complicated. It rewards playing safe. Heck, a lot of GMs hold back just to avoid ruining the campaign.

To emulate something like that it isn't just important that it is hard to die, but that even in cases where death seems likely, death isn't actually likely.

 

[Celebrim]

Yeah, I'm calling you on this one. Dungeon World, a PbtA-based game, is a hack of Apocalypse World, and @pemerton literally just quoted the text from AW 1e which states unequivocally that it is exactly that. Here it is, in post #43

I can't read pemeton's posts and logging out to look, I'm unsure which one of his posts you are talking about. Are you talking about the one where the author claims the design of the game is inspired by RE's "Story Now" essay?

All I can say is that intentions have nothing to with outcomes. "No myth" is not the be all end all of "Story Now", which reading RE's Story Now essay would make clear. Further, even if it was, "No myth" doesn't inherently mean it's the players that fill in the myth - who has narrative authority is a tangent to Story Now which was my main point. Rather Story Now is focused on who defines the conflicts ("premise" in forge speak) not who defines the myth, as I said. A GM running a Story Now game could have sole narrative authority (that is to invent the myth) but would be expected to invent myth that tests the conflict ("premise") introduced by the player characters.

This is made obvious in the context of DW where you are encouraged as the GM to "draw maps and leave blank spaces", so it's not even "no myth" but just "myth light". If DW is Nar then so is B1: In Search of the Unknown (maps with blank spaces).

If players set the premise is the entirety of being "nar" then the Star Wars game I'm running with WEG D6 is nar just because the players said, "Can we be in a Star Wars game where we all play bounty hunters?"

That doesn't fly! DW is a Narrativist style RPG, that is it is built around the concept of a player-driven style in which a narrative unfolds which has the player characters as the protagonists - in the true sense of the word.

Player characters as the protagonists is a standard feature of pretty much all RPGs. The fact that you have to write "in the true sense of the word" shows that I'm not one trying to redefine words. Being player driven and has the player characters as protagonist are concepts that could apply to any sandbox game. To claim otherwise would be to define protagonism such that the protagonists of most stories aren't protagonists, which is surely silly. To make it clear, most protagonists don't get to define what their own story is about and yet they are still very much protagonists. All that is required to have protagonists is for them to be the main character of the story and the one that is responsible resolving the main conflicts of the story. Now, that second condition can lead to some surprising facts, such that Indiana Jones is not the protagonist of "Raiders of the Lost Arc" but actually the deuteragonist - a main character who is of secondary importance responsible only for resolving only the conflicts side plot. But that being a "true" protagonist requires you to both establish the conflict as well as resolve it is both wrong and borders on committing one of the most common fallacies of nar play.