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

[soviet]

Platonism is controversial in the context of logic or mathematics.

It doesn't get off the ground as a theory of fiction. What sort of underwear was Holmes wearing when Watson first met him? There is no answer to this question. Conan Doyle never wrote it down, and never said anything that entail or even tends to imply any particular answer.

Just wait til George Lucas writes the prequel

 

[Wolfpack48]

I play more computer games than is probably optimal for a grown-ass man, and, though I can see where too much systemization could sterilize play, I haven't seen it being an actual problem in the games I've most recently played (Stonetop, Dogs in the Vineyard, The One Ring, and Torchbearer). The presence of processes and frameworks for play in the games is actually freeing, at least for me as a GM, as it allows me to move the overhead of coming up with ad hoc resolution systems or managing long, open ended improvisation onto the system and focus on keeping play moving.

EtA: I'm not running Stonetop or Dogs, so this is observational as it relates to those games.

I hope I’m wrong, I really do. I think my fear is of systemizing the roleplay itself. The improvising and play acting a character. I know some folks don’t like that improv aspect of roleplaying so may be systematizing that. Not saying it’s bad in general, just personal preference to freeform play the character without guardrails.

 

[Wolfpack48]

It's nice to have something to blame. But I will say that this reads to me a bit like an old man yelling at clouds sort of generalization.

I think that the bigger influence of video games is less about optimization and more about players wanting to way to realize and play character concepts, which leads to things like Neo-Trad and Daggerheart. Optimization happens. Optimal strategies and meta-games form (e.g., hirelings, 10 ft. poles, using water for trap floors, etc.). Optimization was how the game was played in the beginning. There was a certain "play to win" aspect of the game, with players looking for optimal ways to play the game. Gamism as a play agenda has been a long-established part of the game since its wargaming inceptions.

We never played to ‘win’ only to experience the world and the adventure. Unless you are defining ‘winning’ as surviving to continue playing your character. The very concept of ‘winning’ a roleplaying game reeks of computerization and min-maxing.

 

[pemerton]

I think the failure of communication here is fundamentally one of concept. The intent of the design of Agon is that the PLAYERS interpret the signs, they're not something made up by the GM. Its not a puzzle to be solved! When you encounter an Agon Island you get 3 signs. Now, the GM/Island Author may have in their mind some kind of idea of what these signs might portend, but it isn't up to the GM to assign them meaning! The PLAYERS assign meaning to the portents and BY DOING THAT they establish what the island is 'about'. Thus every island is about a topic which is selected, to a degree, by the players. Now, the nature of the conflicts is GM-determined, so its certainly not a case of the islands being blank slates, but the 'proper orientation' of the players to the island, maybe you could call it the 'win conditions' is determined by what the leader declares the signs to mean.

This is really a kind of unique feature of Agon that sets it apart from other Narrativist designs a bit. But in order to understand how this works, you have to be able to accept that it is players who are in charge of this determination, that there are no 'right answers' as to what the signs mean.

I'm not sure who you are saying has failed to communicate. I think the rulebook is clear. I think what you say in your post is also clear, and is - broadly - a summary of and gloss on what is said in the rulebook.

Judging from @Emberashh's posts, it seems that Emberashh's group did not play the game as per the book, but as a GM-driven thing. That would explain why no difference was noticed between Agon 2e and The Green Knight.

 

[Emberashh]

Yet we know a lot about Holmes, even though he is not real. So that fictional person can be though to have certain sort of objective reality, even though it is not super detailed.

The point I'm making when I say that a gameworld has to exist is that gameworlds facilitate what games in the agregate are about: interaction.

You can minimize the gameworld, often to the point where it isn't recognizable as itself (especially when we consider physical games like sports or board games), but that doesn't change that it still must exist, or there is no interaction, and what we're talking about is no longer a game.

In RPGs, as I've noted, they all share a core narrative improv game. In improv games, the gameworld is referred to as a Scene, and it, like in all other games, will and must always exist, because its an immutable part of how you interact with the game's mechanics.

Improv gameworlds can often be as simple as an implied backdrop, but can also readily elaborate into things we could even call similar to a video game's gameworld.

In more typical RPGs, that is what we see, with many game rules facilitating a more elaborate and concrete gameworld for other players to interact with.

This, I'll add, is part and parcel to why I say the Rules of a game are just as much an improv player as the GM and the colloquial Players are. They contribute to the improv game via the same basic mechanics, and in turn add to the overall narrative of the game experience as it continues.

This is why RPGs are not just conversations.

 

[pemerton]

Yet we know a lot about Holmes, even though he is not real. So that fictional person can be though to have certain sort of objective reality, even though it is not super detailed.

This makes no sense. I mean, I know a lot about Middle Earth. That doesn't mean it has "objective reality". It just means that JRRT wrote lots of words about the things he imagined!

I get the pleasure in pretending - I play RPGs. But when we are talking about how RPGs are played, what possible good does it do to pretend that imaginary stuff is real. No one uses that to explain children's playground games. Why would we do it in explaining adults' imagination games?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yeah what was said in the past few posts was kind of shocking, as they aren't far off from sounding like min-maxers. Which is just a bizarre juxtaposition given what these folks seem to want out of their games.

Narrative min-maxers that can't seem to appreciate a slower and more meandering pace is just not something I'd have ever thought could be a thing.

Speaking only for myself, I can assure you that min-maxing has nothing to do with not wanting to watch Mr. Archibald debate Trotsky’s assassination with Pavel. Nor does it have anything to do with not wanting to wander around a non-haunted house for three sessions.

Those things simply don’t sound very interesting to me as a player in an RPG. If you and your group enjoy them, that’s great, I’m glad there are plenty of games that accommodate that style of play.

What would be nice is if you didn’t classify a difference in opinion as some kind of flaw.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This makes no sense. I mean, I know a lot about Middle Earth. That doesn't mean it has "objective reality". It just means that JRRT wrote lots of words about the things he imagined!

And those words objectively exist, the ideas those words convey exist.

How we perceive it ultimately is not that much different than how we perceive non-personal history, even though that actually happened. We don't know what sort of underwear Caesar wore when he crossed Rubicon either. It is just words and stories.

I get the pleasure in pretending - I play RPGs. But when we are talking about how RPGs are played, what possible good does it do to pretend that imaginary stuff is real. No one uses that to explain children's playground games. Why would we do it in explaining adults' imagination games?

Mate. Pretending that the imaginary stuff is real is the whole bloody point! Like that is literally what the entire hobby is based on!

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Mate. Pretending that the imaginary stuff is real is the whole bloody point! Like that is literally what the entire hobby is based on!

I think this is overly broad. Whatever I am doing when I play a role-playing game, and that might warrant some interrogation, pretending imaginary stuff is real is decidedly not it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think this is overly broad. Whatever I am doing when I play a role-playing game, and that might warrant some interrogation, pretending imaginary stuff is real is decidedly not it.

I think you might be doing it wrong then...