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

[Celebrim]

In your example, you ran a spontaneous AD&D game. Unless there's a lot more to this story, there's nothing inherently narrative about that.

I didn't say there was. In fact that there is nothing inherently nar about that is my point. I'm trying to prove that merely being no myth, story now, or whatever is at most necessary but not sufficient to be nar. (And in fact, many obviously nar games aren't no myth.)

Unless you made some mechanical adjustments, the rules of AD&D aren't kind to the example characters you used. Perhaps this was largely a roleplaying/social experience, which AD&D largely did without rules, but level 1 wizards and thieves are notoriously bad at doing the things you would expect them to do in the fiction.

What's that got to do with anything? How powerful the character is changes genre but not whether they are the protagonist.

I've said repeatedly that you can run a narrative game in any system

I don't agree. I agree that you can create a narrative in any system, or that you can improvise in any system, or that you can give characters agency in any system. But that would render "narrative game" a meaningless term if that is what it meant.

, but one designed for that play will have more options for the players to have agency, let the GM adjust to what the player does on the fly (again, mechanically) and have that random chance element that neither the player nor the GM have at their control. That's what a good narrative game does. You can do a lot of those things with a game like AD&D, but a game that's designed around that will have you asking "Should I let that happen? What's reasonable in this situation?" a lot less.

This is just such vague meaningless pablum. Inherently to random chance, neither the player nor the GM have it at their control. You aren't actually distinguishing anything specific about the game with the above description.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Like I said, it is mistaking the trappings for the thing itself. It is not malicious.

It might not be malicious, but it is still spreading misinformation. Misinformation that is harmful to understanding and can be actively toxic to people in trying to find games they like.

Neither blood or willpower are metacurrencies, as they're not meta, they represent things that are diegetic.

They are as diagetic as Fate characters can be run as. For that matter you can easily make a Fate character that uses Fate as willpower.

 

[pemerton]

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.

What do you mean by "narrativist game"?

Do you mean a game specifically designed to facilitate narrativist play? Then yes, it's trivially straightforward to do narrativist RPGing without using such a game. As Edwards talks about in his essay.

I've done it using AD&D, and Rolemaster. Neither is an ideal vehicle. I've done it using Classic Traveller, which turns out to be quite a good vehicle provided one just ignores the onworld exploration rules. I've done it using 4e D&D, which is a fine vehicle but rather abashed in its self-presentation.

Do you mean you can have player-driven play that is not "narrativist" in Edwards's sense?

Then I'm more doubtful until you tell me what you have in mind. If you mean there can be non-railroad dungeon crawling of the classic B2 G1-3, S2, C1-2 variety, then yes. Classic dungeon-crawling is player-driven in the sense that the players choose how to engage the challenge, what their gear and spell load-outs will be, etc. But concepts of "story" or "protagonism" are barely applicable to that sort of play. It's much closer to wargaming in its ethos and concerns.

If you mean that you can have player-driven play although the GM is the one who establishes situation, all the significant elements of situation, who the "BBEG" is, what consequences flow from successful as well as unsuccessful actions - then I don't think so. I've done that sort of RPGing. The players contribute colour. But not a lot else.

 

[pemerton]

The sort of design in a game like Apocalypse World (and much of the instruction in Daggerheart) is about enabling a process of play where those moments are frequent and by design rather than incidental.

OK, so this is relevant to the thread topic!

For those of us who got bogged down half-way through the book, what can you tell us about the Daggerheart insructions and process of play?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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

You have put it quite well and succinctly.

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 think this: The Forge :: Simulationism: The Right to Dream would be the definitive Edwards text on Sim, and it seems far from derogatory. I'm not going to go delve into the depths of Forge archives and whatever to dig up dirt on Ron or anyone else, because frankly it is irrelevant. What he says in this essay is pretty illuminating. I'm sure there are perfectly valid grounds for disagreement on some of the aspects of it, so why go dirt digging? Plenty of game designers and pundits have said something-or-other that offended someone. I don't consider that to invalidate their work, necessarily.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You CAN try, and to some degree of course you may succeed. However, 5e is still built around GM architected plots, for example. You can try to eschew that, but then you will run into issues like the resource management architecture of 5e working against you. The core 'task' based binary pass/fail resolution system doesn't do the sort of snowballing that PbtA or FitD games rely on, etc. It is a poor fit.

That's just bizarre. None of this has anything to do with being player driven. You're attaching virtues to your preferred style that it does not in truth uniquely posses, and in doing so implying that those same virtues exist in other styles.

As for working from the example of a module, that is what 99.99997% of all 5e play is coming from.

Of course it is not.

That's the real lived experience of play in that system. I mean, I've played a fair amount of 5e, with a skilled GM.

And you played just modules? Maybe you shouldn't have? Of course anecdotes differ, I have not run a module since I was a kid, nor any of the 5e games people I know are playing are modules.

"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."

Yes.

None of this sounds like RPing a day of muffin baking. Yes, sure, the conflicts can be local, even personal, but there needs to be a conflict to be explored, and it needs to be weighty enough to concern us, at least at the scale of the protagonist, or it isn't really going to make very interesting play. I mean, sure, tastes vary, if your enthusiasm for RPing whether or not you can get the souffle to turn out or not is great enough then go for it!

Of course there is conflict. But not any conflict is ""problematic feature of human existence." Unless it is, and this was just Edwards being pretentious again, and any conflict will actually do. But that case that literally happens in every RPG all the time constantly, so certainly isn't a unique feature of any style!

We can TALK ABOUT problematic human issues, but without protagonism we are not going to be able to engage with them at the level of imagining playing them out. I find that trying to deny that there is a specific kind of play which puts these things in the central position and relegates other considerations to the periphery is what is 'just weird'.

Sure, there is. It just isn't directly tied to protagonism or narrativism.

Nonsense. Look, you have your preferences, but if you are going to claim I'm 'hijacking' a word, then tell me how my definition, which I have taken from credible sources, isn't justified. Trad play is de-protagonizing in several ways, and I'm FAR from alone in coming to that conclusion, nor have I used any unusual language or leaps of logic in doing so.

Of course you are. Here you are using this insulting language again. You're again claiming that only your preferred style possesses the quality, which in truth is found in other styles as well.

Yeah, well, read it. I just went back and read the whole "Narrativism: Story Now" essay, and your characterization of it is completely off base. There are a number of areas that are discussed and it all hangs together quite well. To call it 'blathering' is simply silly, and if you call ordinary writing 'toxic', I think that's not a reflection on the writer in this case. The Forge :: Narrativism: Story Now

I mean you have repeated some of his toxic ideas here.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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?

Yeah, that was the one.

 

[Neonchameleon]

That's just bizarre. None of this has anything to do with being player driven. You're attaching virtues to your preferred style that it does not in truth uniquely posses, and in doing so implying that those same virtues exist in other styles.

That's a straight up misrepresentation. He's not, so far as I am aware, saying that Narrative-aligned games uniquely possess certain virtues, just that they are more focused on them and because of it, if designed equivalently well, better at them. A van can drive fast. A sports car can carry cargo. But if you want to carry cargo you probably want the van and if you want to drive fast on streets you probably want the sports car. They are not equally good at everything; they are both better at what they are designed to be focused on.

Of course you are. Here you are using this insulting language again. You're again claiming that only your preferred style possesses the quality, which in truth is found in other styles as well.

Here you are misrepresenting him again by claiming exclusivity rather than focus.

 

[thefutilist]

To address the title of the thread. Narrative game tends to be used in two ways.

The first is that you have a number of Ogre counters and you can spend one to have an Ogre turn up. Something like that. The players can establish facts about the world or there’s some kind of meta-currency, meta because it doesn’t align with the characters actions. All that kind of stuff.

The second is a game that facilitates Narrativism (as defined by Ron Edwards)

I think the first usage is so common people can just have it. I think the second usage is actually really tricky because if you ignore the GM sections and just focus on mechanics, then yeah almost every game can. Does it mean some games are better at it, if we ‘just’ look at mechanics? That’s kind of impossible to say because it’s going to come down to preference.

If we forced every drama student in the world to play RPG’s in the Edwards, Narrativist style, then my intuition tells me that some mechanics would be heavily favoured over others. Who knows though, in the future we might see a ground swell of people who are really glad Edwards laid out the foundation of the style so they could use it in their 1E D&D play. I mean it seems unlikely but...

 

[pemerton]

The system does nothing to facilitate this kind of play at all. Your other example is the same thing.

This notion of "system" and "system matters" comes from an essay by Edwards: The Forge :: System Does Matter

By "system" Edwards doesn't mean "the stuff in the rulebook". Though that may be part of the system. By "system" he means a means by which in-game events are determined to occur.

Many RPG books do not state a complete system. For instance, in classic D&D play a very important means by which in-game events are determined to occur is that the GM - by reference to a map - tells the players that their PCs see a door, and then the players declare that their PCs open that door. And the GM then looks at their notes, which tells them what is behind that door on their map.

That is a system - I call it "map and key" for short - but I don't think it is fully spelled out in any version of D&D, although Moldvay Basic probably comes closest.

When we are talking about "narrativst" RPGing, we are talking about a system in which the players make a significant contribution to establishing the stakes of the situations that the GM narrates to them. Normally, this means that they (the players) also contribute in some fashion to the fictional elements that occur in those situations: for instance, the situation might involve or pertain to a NPC who the player has established matters to their PC.

The only D&D rulebooks to clearly talk about such a thing, as part of the system for establishing situations, is 4e's PHB and DMG, in their discussion of player-authored quests. But it can be done in other versions of D&D - eg I've done it in AD&D, in the second half of the 1980s.

But AD&D is not an ideal vehicle, because its rules for consequences tend to pull play away from those theme-laden situations. You can ignore the rules, of course, but this has its own problems: eg the game quickly turns into "GM decides" or "GM says", which undermines the players' role. 4e D&D doesn't have the same issue with consequences that AD&D has, and hence is a better vehicle for narrativist RPGing.

You could have a crappy GM instead who has read the exact same rule books as you have but who has no idea how to deal with a game with only one character and who can't make up a story on the spot.

Sounds GM-driven to me. Driving to where the player said they wanted to go isn't the same thing as letting them take the wheel.

So what do we mean by "making up a story on the spot"? Do we mean working with the player to frame a situation? Or do we mean deciding what happens next, and leading the player through a romp?

The latter is GM-driven. The former can be player-driven. As I said just above, the problem with AD&D is that its rules for resolution and consequences tend to get in the way, and the more the GM sets them aside for that reason, the more likely play is to turn into the GM leading the player through a romp.

This is why good rules design can facilitate - sometimes quite a bit - a particular sort of approach to play.