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

[pemerton]

I've played both.

OK, so how did you experience the difference between sussing out the fox, and the players engaging with the Signs of the Gods for the island the PCs arrived at?

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

OK? I mean, I didn't say anything about high scores, and I don't even know what it means to rack up a high score in CoC. I didn't say anything about that. I identified the basic gameplay process: the players declare actions that are intended to prompt the GM to reveal information, without prompting the GM to bring police or cultists or Elder Gods down upon the PCs.

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. [/quote}This seems a bit weird to me. What did you do for several hours of CoC play where you weren't investigating?

 

[soviet]

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.

It's the (Paul) Czege Principle

 

[pemerton]

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.

Sounds like Paul Czege's "Czege principle".

 

[pemerton]

It's the (Paul) Czege Principle

Snap! (Almost.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Mate. You're being a tad sensitive here, given you were going "trad gaming is deprotagonising" moments ago. Like yeah, making insulting mischaracterisations of other's playstyle is not nice, but pot, kettle and all that.

Wait a minute. First of all these are different orders of statements, entirely. I didn't say 'all trad gaming is deprotagonizing', although we could argue about that and MAYBE it is! I mean, that's a specific statement which I can explicate in a logical way. According to the definition that I provided for 'protagonist' it includes elements such as "makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward." If the key decisions are all coded into GM prepared material, that is all the INPUTS to those decisions, that certainly REDUCES protagonism, which I would label 'deprotagonizing'.

Whereas choo choo mother may I railroad, which was used to dismiss the entirety of Narrativist play (well, after denying it even exists) is simply an offhand derogatory statement, nothing else.

I mean, you don't have to accept my judgment, by all means don't. If you wish, refute it, or don't bother, I'm not really interested in getting into this sort of pointless debate, but I see a very significant difference between what I've said and what @Emberashh said.

EDIT: And I again apologize for assigning all of that to Emberassh, it was Celebrim who said 'choo choo mother may I'. I'm a bit under the weather today, sorry.

 

[Pedantic]

What conflict resolution (especially the more moment to moment sort seen in Apocalypse World) does is it continually volleys the ball back to the GM to frame situations/scenes that speak to the premise of the game or the characters. Task resolution inherently results in focusing on things outside the core premise of the characters and/or game. When I run Masks I'm always making GM Moves that speak to what's come before, but also bringing in new elements that are relevant to the characters (address their personal situations, reputations, come between player characters, etc).

The point of task resolution is to allow that drift of premise, but that means at some point if addressing that premise is like important to me than I have to intercede the flow of task resolution. There can be benefits to doing so, but it's fundamentally different in nature to the level of focus on character level concerns that conflict resolution allows.

Like you use task resolution because you want some level of conceptual drift, some focus on color, some focus on things outside the premise. Because those things will occur just in the play of the game regardless of intention when we use task resolution. It's an inevitable outcome of the process of play. It's also the sort of outcome I sometimes value because sometimes I want to play in or run a game where the spotlight is as much on the settings' factions or NPCs as the player character.

This post stood out to me, because I don't really disagree with any of it, but it's just feels completely sideways to me. The analysis isn't wrong, but it doesn't feel relevant. I wanted to break it down and run through why it feels so off.

What conflict resolution (especially the more moment to moment sort seen in Apocalypse World) does is it continually volleys the ball back to the GM to frame situations/scenes that speak to the premise of the game or the characters. Task resolution inherently results in focusing on things outside the core premise of the characters and/or game. When I run Masks I'm always making GM Moves that speak to what's come before, but also bringing in new elements that are relevant to the characters (address their personal situations, reputations, come between player characters, etc).

This isn't, in my understanding, a function of the GM. It actually can't be, unless you conflate several different GM roles that I would view as being professionally firewalled. Setting up all of the pieces and then moving the ones you're supposed to control are separate jobs that simply reside in the same person. Situation is the result of chains of actions from the PCs and those NPCs. Setting up an interesting board for all of those actions to happen on is fairly difficult, and the sort of thing GMing advice is theoretically supposed to teach you how to do, plus ideally you want a series of tools to let you try and evaluate likely outcomes (things like CR in a combat focused game, or even things like a faction-specific list of goals). The actual progress of what does happen is down to system though, it's a result of player choices being fed through mechanics to see the results, which, assuming sufficient GM honesty, sufficiently detailed rules and sufficiently engaged players, should allow players to push an agenda into the situation.

Conflict resolution is disempowering to the player; they can't influence what is "framed," and they get so little say in the resolution, because it's always down to one test. You don't have a lot of agency to affect the outcome, and the situation is so transient before the next concern occurs. My sense in those games is that the player isn't supposed to care; you aren't supposed to want any given outcome or drive to any result, the "drive like a stolen car" concept. Instead, you're there to engage with the premise, the real act of agency was agreeing to play a game about X in the first place.

I personally don't know how to do gameplay under those conditions. The act of playing a game necessitates a goal, and a goal necessitates tools to try and achieve it. I'm lacking both; I can't really control what happens, but that should be alright because I shouldn't really care what happens. It's an actively hard perspective for me to try and adopt, even when I think the tool is useful. Subjectively, I've always felt like things happen too "fast" in that kind of environment, and flounder around for mechanics to go interact with things.

The point of task resolution is to allow that drift of premise, but that means at some point if addressing that premise is like important to me than I have to intercede the flow of task resolution. There can be benefits to doing so, but it's fundamentally different in nature to the level of focus on character level concerns that conflict resolution allows.

This point feels like an inversion. Task resolution allows you to go and hunt down a premise you care about. Players can want things, and use the means of resolution to go get them. You're describing an outcome of the mechanic as if it's the intent, when the design goal is orthogonal.

Like you use task resolution because you want some level of conceptual drift, some focus on color, some focus on things outside the premise. Because those things will occur just in the play of the game regardless of intention when we use task resolution. It's an inevitable outcome of the process of play. It's also the sort of outcome I sometimes value because sometimes I want to play in or run a game where the spotlight is as much on the settings' factions or NPCs as the player character.

This relentless focus on "what is it about?" is the thing that always feels so weird in these conversations. That just isn't a first order priority; it's about whatever happens, we can talk about what it turned out to be about when we're done doing the thing, the important thing is making sure that the player's decisions have an impact on that.

 

[soviet]

Snap! (Almost.)

It would have been best if we'd both been ninja'd by Neonchameleon themselves

 

[Emberashh]

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

Well its not like there can't be multiple perpindicular issues at the root of why these games were created. Its just in terms of why the tyrant GM argument is reoccurring is because defensive arguments keep pointing at it as the problem.

Thats as true here as it still is when you read the Forge, and historically, the context is clear on that. GMs in the 90s were, even at there best, all becoming tyrants because it was trendy to try and do the sort of thing Dragonlance made popular, and it wasn't long before the Forge came out and all these people were said to be suffering brain damage.

It still isn't the only reason the Forge showed up nor why its creators went down the paths they did, but it is a strong recurring theme throughout the last 20-30 years of indie TTRPG design.

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

The GMs input isn't really the issue here, unless we've come to a point where just describing a room is somehow a problem if the players don't get first dibs.

In COC, exploration is much of the point. Your set into a tense, moody world and will eventually find yourself compelled to address the strange occurrences in this world. But until then, you're just in it, and depending on the scenario this can lead to all sorts of things.

My first run at COC, we spent IIRC around 3 sessions worth just exploring a haunted house that had nothing to do with the actual mystery. It was just there as an impetus to bring the characters together, and while not known at the time, the Keeper was basically just making things up as we poked and prodded and got lost in that damn house lol that, as it turned out, was just a crappy old house.

Despite making no real progress on anything of note, I would never say that experience was wasted. It perfectly set the tone and even when we all came to the conclusion that it really was just a crappy old house, the mood was still tense going into what we were actually there for, because we didn't know what to make of what we went through.

That's where the idea of story making game really shines, because when a game facilitates story making, your real life experience is as much a part of the overall narrative as the in-game events are. The line between Player and Character blurs because we were completely synchronous. Mr. Archibald was just as stumped as I was.

There's nothing inherently stopping the PBTA style of game from doing this (Ironsworn does it, and I've had good experiences with how Fellowship works), but they are, on the whole, not very careful about how their ludonarrative elements merge with the intended story telling that comes from the player themselves.

As I mentioned earlier, thats the crux of how my Events system works. Players have a lot of agency to spontaneously create and collaborate on elaborate side adventures, but the way it is designed aligns the system much better ludonarratively speaking.

I feel like that last part got a little word salady, so let me rephrase: while Players can input their own narratives, the game guides the integration of these new narratives into the gameworld through carefully designed ludonarrative mechanics.

The impetus to introduce a new narrative is diegetic, the prompt nudges the player towards a likely distraction in their task, and their input is then converted through improv mechanics into a more concrete part of the gameworld.

Even when the Player wants to be cheeky and try to conjure a pile of gold into the forest, the means by which that becomes a real part of the gameworld is what tempers the amorphous nature of its creation. The pile of gold is now cursed, and makes for one heck of a curiosity, especially when the Bandit chasing my friend faceplants into the pile and turns into gold himself.

 

[soviet]

Conflict resolution is disempowering to the player; they can't influence what is "framed,"

This is literally the opposite of the case.

and they get so little say in the resolution, because it's always down to one test. You don't have a lot of agency to affect the outcome

What? Many CR games have fortune in the middle and all sorts of escalation/metacurrency style mechanics.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah see you're not even paying attention to who you're talking to.



Level headed criticism with a dearth of supporting arguments is condemnation now? Again, I think you're conflating 3 or 4 people here.



I would say first identify who you believe you're speaking to and then calmly discuss the issue without getting lost trying to defend games from criticism.

Pardon me, it was @Celebrim who used the whole 'choo choo' 'mother may I' phraseology. You did dismiss Narrativist play as GM Railroading, but I misstated who made exactly which statement. I apologize for the confusion on my part.