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

[pemerton]

Still catching up a bit, is the suggestion here that simulationsim isnt a valid goal of llay?

"Valid" is not the write word. GNS is a descriptive analysis, not a normative one.

Edwards' view is that the goal of "getting the medium working" - that is, of having a group of people successfully getting together to imagine setting, situation, character and changing that via system - is something that everyone wants, and that hence it is not a distinctive goal in itself.

I don't agree - contra him, it seems to me that there are many RPGers whose aspiration is precisely to get the medium going and to do nothing further with it.

 

[pemerton]

What follows is a prediction that we'll see more and more hybridisation from here on out, as features that collectively form what folk label "narrativism" are experimented with and found to have utility to other modes of play.

Relating to @Arilyn's post such games will be narratavistic without being "narrativist", as that labels a specific set of features that must all be present, including those sited in a culture of play. Due to that latter, narrativistic games will be amenable to drift to "narrativism". Daggerheart may prove to be an example.

"Narrativist" doesn't - at least in the usage stipulated by the person who coined it - label any features at all. It labels a goal of play. Is Daggerheart well-suited to that goal of play? @Arilyn expresses doubts. @Campbell seems to incline the other way. Both have relevant experience to support their judgements, so I suspend my own judgement.

Will there be a lot of RPGing using Daggerheart that is not narrativist? I am confident that the answer to that question is yes. As with a lot of PbtA and (it seems) FitD play, people will drift the system towards what I think of as high concept simulationism (ie a relatively high degree of player and GM pre-establishment of plot and plot arcs, with less authorship and creation focused around the moment of crisis).

 

[Campbell]

My personal view is that Daggerheart will most likely exist in the same liminal space as Cortex Heroic/Prime, Dune 2d20, D&D 4e and to a lesser extent Dungeon World do. All of the above utilize conflict resolution and lack mechanics like alignment or paladin vows that reinforce specific themes rather than address/test a premise. They also lack the sorts of features that lead to requiring a lot of GM extrapolation.

Basically, they are games that I don't view as counterproductive to premise focused gaming but lack the sort of bite that a game like Apocalypse World or Masks has such that a certain amount of premise addressing play will rear its head even if you are not actively seeking it.

Daggerheart does have some very good prompts in their classes/playbooks, but those questions can be answered in a way that does not prompt ongoing conflicts (and beyond conflict resolution there is no reinforcement of premise forward play). I described the prompts to @Manbearcat as a rorschach test for Story Now vs Neotrad play preferences.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Ah, the gotchas of the medium (of forum posts). That should read

Alternatively, one could say that although it took awhile to understand it, play [of TTRPG's that have any concern for story] is and has always been about ludonarrative. It's play [of that sort of TTRPG] iff it's about ludonarrative. Ludonarrativism says that the only way storyline can develop in [as] play is if it is about the premises developed by players. Otherwise it is storyline imposed on top of play, and thus (in that respect) not play at all. The thesis then is that 1. unpacks into multiple further modes of play.​

So obviously one can have play of other games such as roshambo without supposing that it's within the game/narrative overlap. Recollect that I was developing a strawman around

1. [TTRPG] Play [that] adopts and pursues premises developed by players
2. [TTRPG] Play [that] adopts and pursues storyline ideas

I was speaking to the topics of this thread... but I should have spelt that out. It's possible that a dungeon crawl has some sort of interest in story, once we get away from assuming Western tradition dramatic structures; just as some forms or facets of poetry are counted narrative.

Well, I DO think there's a story/narrative to a Dungeon Crawl. It emerges out of the interface between the GM's predefined setting, the dungeon, and the player's attempts to 'beat' it, or at least achieve some scaled amount of the win cons. I also agree that there is meaningful roleplay possible there, meaningful in the sense that it can prompt different descriptions of outcomes from the GM, and the generated narrative will reflect that too (and some of that RP might simply be color in a gamist sense, having no impact on the course of play, but coloring the narrative). So, there's a few things there, but anyway, that sort of play is really pretty thoroughly examined at this point. It is mostly interesting, to me at least, in terms of being a point of origin and baseline from which a lot of contemporary thought appears to still be centered on.

I think the main topic of this thread was originally about whether DH is designed with narrative in mind, and then the subsequent and inevitable 400 page wrangle about what THAT is (or alternatively what the OP was envisaging it is). As near as I can tell we got to Narrativist goals are one thing, and what is meant by 'narrative play' might be somewhat a different thing that is more closely aligned to the 'cultures of play' or something like that.

 

[FrogReaver]

"Narrativist" doesn't - at least in the usage stipulated by the person who coined it - label any features at all. It labels a goal of play. Is Daggerheart well-suited to that goal of play? @Arilyn expresses doubts. @Campbell seems to incline the other way. Both have relevant experience to support their judgements, so I suspend my own judgement.

Will there be a lot of RPGing using Daggerheart that is not narrativist? I am confident that the answer to that question is yes. As with a lot of PbtA and (it seems) FitD play, people will drift the system towards what I think of as high concept simulationism (ie a relatively high degree of player and GM pre-establishment of plot and plot arcs, with less authorship and creation focused around the moment of crisis).

I’m confused. Earlier in the thread when I tried to speak of narrativism without mentioning game mechanics I got tremendous pushback that we couldn’t talk about it without the mechanics. Now it sounds not just like ‘we can’ but like ‘that’s the only way we can talk about it.’

 

[Manbearcat]

I’m confused. Earlier in the thread when I tried to speak of narrativism without mentioning game mechanics I got tremendous pushback that we couldn’t talk about it without the mechanics. Now it sounds not just like ‘we can’ but like ‘that’s the only way we can talk about it.’

Are you using mechanics and system interchangeably here? If so, there is the problem.

System includes ethos & principles (which necessarily entail goals/meta of play), structure, authority distribution, techniques, and mechanics (resolution, advancement, etc). Mechanics are the portion of a game engine that deals with (a) building characters and opposition, (b) resolving disputes over how situation-states and game-states transition to new ones, (c) how characters advance/evolve/ablate/perish/retire (etc), (d) and everything else that interacts with those particulars (build, resolution, advancement/retirement/etc) such as currencies.

So no, you can't talk about Narrativism without mentioning system. Because each system will tell you the goals/meta of play (including how, or if, they are a novel instantiation of Narrativist priorities/play) while mechanics do not. This is why "going mechanics-hunting" is not an effective way (or at least, not in isolation) to discern what a game is about/trying to do. I mean, routinely in these conversations you see the same people see metacurrencies and related economies and mistakenly predict or think "oh, this is a Narrativist game." Then those same people will see basically the D&D equivalent of Bangs (player-authored situations which generate conflict to be dealt with/pursued right now, investing play with both an immediate moment of thematic or evocative or ethos-cementing decision-points and an evolving, cascading situation-state as a result) in the form of the 4e Quest system (which marries seminal indie techniques to advancement) and see "meh."

Now finding the technique of player-authored situations (or by-proxy) like the above is not going to guarantee "oh, this is an expression of Narrativist priorities so this is surely a Narrativist system." You'll find some of that tech in Neotrad games so there is subtlety there. That subtlety is the pivot point of "is there actually a crucible of conflict here...is there actual threat/duress/meaty consequences which can dynamically change the situation-state...or is this basically a fait accompli and tantamount to player-side railroading?" Nonetheless, finding the technique (and possibly married advancement) of Bangs and kindred in a system is an infinitely better proxy for Narrativism than a benny, hero, drama (etc) economy.

 

[clearstream]

My understanding is that this is a fairly recent publication. I was talking about the classic version of the game, which went through various iterations in the 1980s. Apologies if that was not clear.

That makes sense.

I don't have a copy of Griffin Mountain. But personality guidelines for NPCs - which (presumably) the GM is expected to adhere to in playing those NPCs - is not the same as Passions for PCs. Pendragon's Traits and Passions act as constraints on (and also generate incentives for) the players' play of their PC.

This is a tremendous change to how players play their PCs. It was recognised as such when Pendragon was published. It is still widely regarded as a big deal now, as best I can tell.

(I don't know what the contemporary RQ text says about Passions, or how they are to be used. But if it tells the players of the game to use them in the same fashion that they are used in Pendragon, then yes, that is a big change. If they are presented as an optional sub-system, then players of the game are being presented with an option to make a big change in how they play compared to "default" RQ.)

Yes, I know what you mean. So Passions in RQ: Roleplaying in Glorantha (RQ 7e) are the same as Pendragon's. The mechanics are identical or if not extremely similar. Along with Passions, Pendragon has Traits whilst RQ 7e has a parallel mechanic in Runes.

I read somewhere that one of the Chaosium designers said that the Personality Factors on that record form were part of an arc of development that evolved into Passions in Pendragon and at some point returned fully-fledged to RQ. A quick search turns up this episode that I found interesting and shows a version of that early record form.

I don't know if Passions reached RQ in 7e or in one of the Avalon Hill or Mongoose editions.

 

[clearstream]

"Narrativist" doesn't - at least in the usage stipulated by the person who coined it - label any features at all. It labels a goal of play. Is Daggerheart well-suited to that goal of play? @Arilyn expresses doubts. @Campbell seems to incline the other way. Both have relevant experience to support their judgements, so I suspend my own judgement.

Right, I am straying from that usage certainly. A few nar- terms that are being used in different ways in this thread

Narrativist​

Narrativism​

Narrativistic (mine)​

Perhaps a good disambiguation of these is

Narrativist - as you have it, a goal of play​

Narrativism - a systematic mode of play that can be identified by its features​

Narrativistic - game texts / modes of play that share salient features with narrativism​

Or maybe others can propose something better?

Will there be a lot of RPGing using Daggerheart that is not narrativist? I am confident that the answer to that question is yes. As with a lot of PbtA and (it seems) FitD play, people will drift the system towards what I think of as high concept simulationism (ie a relatively high degree of player and GM pre-establishment of plot and plot arcs, with less authorship and creation focused around the moment of crisis).

I think so, too. Hence I call Daggerheart narrativistic, rather than it forming an example of narrativism.

 

[clearstream]

I’m confused. Earlier in the thread when I tried to speak of narrativism without mentioning game mechanics I got tremendous pushback that we couldn’t talk about it without the mechanics. Now it sounds not just like ‘we can’ but like ‘that’s the only way we can talk about it.’

Note the distinct words - narrativist / narrativism - and let's not neglect - narrativistic. The poster was referring to "narrativist". Looking back at the context in which I used that term, I intended at the time "narrativism" (going by my newly proposed glossary).

Truly, I am amazed that I could have used them so carelessly! But there is a residual ambiguity in that a narrativist would presumably approach play narrativistically. Thus "narrativistic" perhaps should imply both "like a narrativist" as well as "in the manner of narrativism."

 

[pemerton]

I’m confused. Earlier in the thread when I tried to speak of narrativism without mentioning game mechanics I got tremendous pushback that we couldn’t talk about it without the mechanics. Now it sounds not just like ‘we can’ but like ‘that’s the only way we can talk about it.’

Are you able to link me to one or more of those earlier posts? What pushback did I give you?