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

[soviet]

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'.

I think trad gaming is inherently deprotagonising and that's the point of such games.

 

[Theory of Games]

Aaaaaand 44 pages in and we have a fight folks!

 

[Emberashh]

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?

There wasn't much of a difference at all, given I was running the Green Knight and my players somehow managed to not ask the Fox any of the expected questions before giving up and killing it.

In Agon we weren't getting much more than what the Signs basically tell you verbatim they're about, which kind of works against the idea of having to interpret them when theres only so many things you can actually do on the islands.

And I'd also say that the idea that they sort of just esoterically exist and could be introduced to the players before they've begun, without intervention that is, kind of shorts the idea.

But at that point you're off the rails of the book and just making things up, at which point I start to question the point if I have to come up with the clever ways to have the Signs appear to the players, so that at least some interesting scenarios can come out of the small amount of content I'm working with.

Particularly when, coming back to the present, the idea was supposedly this was supposed to result in a more equal share, and not a dramatic increase for GM and a small, if thematic, increase for the singular leader.

You did dismiss Narrativist play as GM Railroading

You should read what I said more carefully. I never equated them in that way, and it wasn't a dismissal but an observation.

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."

Note, however, that this isn't how game protagonists work. You're talking about written protagonists.

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'.

So again it must be stated that protagonism and its de- opposite are completely phoney concepts that don't exist. A protagonist is always a protagonist, and is an immutable concept unless the character itself thats considered the protagonist literally changes to a completely new one, sliding the old character into a new role.

None of that is whats happening just because the GM might have made the poor decision to build a railroad.

What you're actually talking about is agency, and the fundamental reduction that occurs on a railroad. Which is fine. Its completely valid to have an issue with it and nobody is arguing with you because we think the railroad is good actually.

You're being argued with because of phoney jargon describing an already existing concept, on the basis of a problem that we all agree is bad. And because, of the argument that supposes that the railroad is an immutable component of the games in question (which you argue when you position the Games as reducing agency, and not individual GMs), and not something universally recognized as a terrible way to runna game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.


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.

But a system like the move system that PbtAs use does this SUPER SUPER WELL. Sure, you can get any level of quality of play out of 5e's resolution system, but you are going to have to put a lot of work into it to get that. With AW it 'just happens'. There's no wasting time with gauging difficulty and this and that, say your action, GM says "OK, that's move X", 2d6 + STAT, 6-, 7-9, 10+ bing bang badda boom! Things roll fast and because every move is either introducing some player desired advancement of the fiction, and/or some new, potentially problematic, factor there's very little chance of things 'squibbing'. Yes, theoretically in 5e if the GM is very assiduous in culling checks (no, that's got uninteresting failure conditions, nothing is at stake, etc.) you might get some of that momentum, but a lot of the system text assumes differently, and so does the culture. PbtA also has no 'firewalling' of GM roles. The GM (in AW/DW at least) is a 'Fan of the Characters' and has an explicit job to create tension and adversity, but also to reward success. I mean, AW is a bit of an "you are all doomed in the long run" sort of a game, but DW definitely allows for 'winning through', and despite some people claiming otherwise there IS such a thing as 'skilled play'. Subsystems exist to help drive things, adding obstacles (no more light!) etc.

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.

Ehhhhh, not quite. I mean, sure you are encouraged play kind of fast and loose, but that doesn't mean you don't play to win. You play your character authentically, and the PCs sure don't want to go down, do they? Or if so only for a good cause (to them). I would say, from recent Stonetop play it is more like a '4 check thing'. If I roll 6- 4x in a row, I'm probably pretty darn screwed, maybe dead. In recent play I had one PC fail around 4 checks and visit Death's Door. I had another character get to a point where he was about to be obliterated after 3 or 4 bad rolls, and then I pulled out a boxcars and saved my ass. Note: BOTH of those characters were taking risks! Either of them could have played it safer and probably the same sequence of checks would have resulted in a lesser predicament.

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.

I think it is a misunderstanding. I don't feel like my play is any less goal-directed in DW/Stonetop than in B/X D&D way back in the day. You take whatever risks you care to take, and then see what fate dishes up. Generally you have something you are wanting to achieve, and a plan, and resources, and you see what happens. Certainly PbtA's mechanics are no more swingy and arbitrary than those of B/X!

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.

I don't understand how conflict resolution doesn't do this. I am not even of the opinion that resolution and premise are that tied together. I thought all @Campbell was saying is that task resolution allows for some 'outside focus' on non-premise things. I kind of get where he's coming from but honestly I think there's plenty of ways to 'drift' if that's what the table wants.

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.

So, where we all (IMHO) came to our preferences is in terms of wanting to stop faffing around. I found there was so much faffing around in most D&D play, and then play would lurch off in a direction of the GM's choosing and leave all my character's concerns and values on the table. Like, sure, some digressions are OK, and in a DW game, for example, you probably go chase off after some other PC's concern at some point that only tangentially interests you. Still, the whole process is about 'zero faff'. Move forward, keep the situation evolving, keep the momentum of play, and really engage with the premise, and frame it in relation to the characters, and do that all the time!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think trad gaming is inherently deprotagonising and that's the point of such games.

Well, @Emberashh mentioned 'side adventures' in his last post in reference to some mechanics in his system. What it really impelled me to ask is "where did the MAIN ADVENTURE come from?" Because this is the beating heart of the question. Narrativist play, in the Edwardsian/Bakerian sense entirely eschews the concept of 'main adventure'.

Well, to tie it back to the OP, this is what I would look for: Does Daggerheart model play on a model in which a 'content supplier' supplies a core set of elements independent of, and usually pregenerated before the creation of, the PCs? If so, then it is PROBABLY not a Narrativist system, though it certainly could incorporate certain aspects of such systems.

This was also why I rejected Emberassh's assertion that there are Dungeon World adventures, or not that they don't exist, but that they represent anything that relates to DW as its designers envisaged it, based on reading and playing the text.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Note, however, that this isn't how game protagonists work. You're talking about written protagonists.

Well, according to YOU, but I'm not in agreement on that point! And this probably marks a philosophical divide that we may not be able to bridge. As long as I've played RPGs, my desire was always to act in a way in keeping with being fully a protagonist (modulus the tension that in a multi-player RPG that role must be shared in some fashion, or I guess potentially some players can be minor characters, though not many RPGs go that route).

 

[Wolfpack48]

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.

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.

I can see the pitfalls of a prewritten scenario, but having gone through a number of them, they can be quite fun, especially if it feels like characters have agency. I do remember a number of White Wolf scenarios where I distinctly felt as if agency was being roughly yanked away from players, more than any D&D module I ever ran, even Dragonlance.

I always preferred the term referee to DM or GM or Storyteller as it felt more neutral. What will the players do in this situation, and play role as impartial arbiter. That said, it’s also their job to apply pressure and challenge - that’s where the story comes. I’ve experienced this is plenty of traditional games, but it’s been mostly due to a good referee.

 

[Emberashh]

What it really impelled me to ask is "where did the MAIN ADVENTURE come from?"

Well that depends entirely on why the Players are travelling somewhere.

Sometimes, they might just be out in the Outlands specifically to screw around. Its a sandbox game, the adventure is what you make of it.

There will be things going on in the world that will spill out into grand adventures if they decide to pull on them and go down the rabbit hole, but that same content is just as likely to become an NPCs grand adventure if the Players want to be Bakers or just roam around bullying the countryside or whatever. Its a sandbox game, the adventure is what you make of it.

A philosophy that props up the whole concept is that Agency doesn't exist if failure isn't possible. Your choices matter because the world isn't going to put grand adventures to, say, put an end to the tyranny of the pirate ship Sailorman's Beware just because you want to do something else first.

Narrativist play, in the Edwardsian/Bakerian sense entirely eschews the concept of 'main adventure'.

I also think you're reading too much into my casual use of "side adventure" in the specific quote. Synonyms here are attractors, distractions, diversions, short cuts, loopdiloops, and so on.

This was also why I rejected Emberassh's assertion that there are Dungeon World adventures, or not that they don't exist, but that they represent anything that relates to DW as its designers envisaged it, based on reading and playing the text.

I don't believe I asserted that at any point. In fact Im pretty certain I never even implied it. But it has been a long day so who knows, Im sure you can quote the offending text.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You're being argued with because of phoney jargon describing an already existing concept, on the basis of a problem that we all agree is bad. And because, of the argument that supposes that the railroad is an immutable component of the games in question (which you argue when you position the Games as reducing agency, and not individual GMs), and not something universally recognized as a terrible way to runna game.

I don't recall ever saying it was universally bad, or even bad at all, just not what we're interested in. There's no 'phoney jargon' here either. Protagonism is indeed related to agency, but they are not the same thing. I could have complete agency as to my PC, and still not be a protagonist! I think your argument here is basically 'excluded middle', because I'm not arguing that there is an 'immutable component' in reference to GAMES at all. GMs run games, at least in the sort of game we're discussing here, so when you have a GM that is prebuilding a large part of the anticipated narrative structure, in a culture where the convention is strongly for the players to 'play it through', that may or may not be a 'railroad', but it IS in some degree deprotagonizing'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't believe I asserted that at any point. In fact Im pretty certain I never even implied it. But it has been a long day so who knows, Im sure you can quote the offending text.

May well have been someone else, my brain is definitely filled with fuzz and mucus today... As I say, DW adventures do technically exist, though I think the concept is weird and totally subverts the intent of the game... lol.