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

[Crimson Longinus]

So you said when you play an RPG, you don't want to feel like a writer or director. That's during play. What about when you GM? What about when you prepare for play? What about GMing during a session? Aren't there times where there is an element that is similar to that of a writer or director?

Yes, there are. But during play there is always a lot of pretending happening. Like I would go so far to say that it is pretty fundamental aspect of playing a RPG.

Now, let's take one more step back. What about when we're just talking about what we do when we game? Yes, we're pretending... but what helps us do that? Is it the "objective reality of the game world"? Or is it actual concrete things we can talk about?

Something like "I become Lilandir the elf" is a lot less helpful from a process standpoint than "I always try to speak in Lilandir's voice to help me remain in character".

One is an actual thing. The other is flowery language that just masks what's actually being done.

Sure. As long as we agree that we are actually trying to pretend to be elves we can proceed to talk about most effective ways of doing so.

 

[Emberashh]

Is this again one of these inane semantics arguments? Like are we arguing about what "real" means? Like obviously we all understand that Middle-Earth is not real in physical sense, but the idea of Middle-Earth is real idea, and that there are recorded details about that idea gives it certain objectivity.

So when we say the game world has "objective reality" it means it has that sort of existence independent of the knowledge the players have of it.

A related supporting thought here is the concept of fiction writers discovering things about the world they created. Tolkien did it, and practically every fantasy author of note would agree thats how they approach things.

Hell, I do it in writing my game. I never planned when I started to have Varangian Pidgeon people that sound like the Swedish Chef or Maritimey Pirate Bears occupying a continent of floating mountains, but I sure was dumbstruck when I first set foot there.

Labeling me as a "narrative min-maxer" is just a silly attempt at a dig, and speaks more to your ignorance than anything else.

Well, for one, I didn't label you anything at all and you should read what I said more carefully.

And for two, at no point did I ever consider it a dig against anybody.

If one feels that term is a dig, then thou doth protest too much.

Those are novelists. Novels are (generally) experienced differently than RPGs.

Which isn't the point of asking that question, though I suppose with your answer I can still glean what I was looking to find out, at least at n=1 anyway.

What about when you GM? What about when you prepare for play? What about GMing during a session? Aren't there times where there is an element that is similar to that of a writer or director?

Most games that don't operate with the expectation of improvising everything on the fly (regardless of who does it), will have support in that regard. GMs for these games don't have to write anything they don't want to, and prep in of itself isn't a part of gameplay to begin with.

In-game, it still comes down to whether or not improv is being employed, and there's a distinct difference between having to author the details of a gameworld on the fly and having to author the next plot beat or what have you.

Its along that line where modules and adventure books tend to succeed or fail in my experience.

And, because I just like to do it and am unashamed, this is something where I think my idea for Quest Blocks comes quite in handy, and I recently wrote out a play example that illustrates the idea:

In a nutshell, these are basically stat blocks that cover the different "Acts" in a generic Quest, detailing what all needs to occur before the Quest can proceed onto the next Act and so on. Each Quest Block will generally have multiple quest types that it covers, and each sequential Quest Block will carry the next respective Act for the given quest, if there is one depending on how complex it is. These Blocks will also detail what happens if the equivalent of "failure" or "nothing" occurs for that portion of the Quest. An "Assassinate" Quest, thusly, would tell you to loop back to the start, but then also tell you, as Keeper, what to introduce in terms of additional Quests that will have to be done. For example, "Track the Target" or "Infiltrate".

For example lets say we have a very simple, but bespoke Quest where someone has to go to the Western Watchtower, and report back to the Jarl about the supposed dragon sighting in the area.

The bespoke Acts for this would be:

Consult the Soldier
Meet up with the Scouting Party
Travel to the Western Watchtower
Investigate the Area
Slay the Dragon
Report to the Jarl

As you'll notice, each one has a clear "Verb" that signifies the overall idea of that Act, and this is more or less how the Generic Quests will work.

Now, lets say the players never get involved. This quest would trigger immediately after returning the Dragonstone from Bleak Falls Barrow, so lets say the players just bamf out and aren't immediately shuffled into the new Quest.

How this would be handled would be Time Based. The Keeper, as part of their Prep, would have already rolled some dice to determine how long each Act takes before it progresses into the next. The Blocks for the Quest would note the dice to roll and the Time denomination; in this case, we're talking minutes for pretty much every single Act, and so we'll have the dice be 2d20. 40 minutes max between each Act, which seems reasonable even for a more realistically sized Skyrim.

So, if the Players bamf out, they'll still be playing, and so time will progress as they do so. As this Quest in particular happens within a matter of an hour or two, The Keeper will probably be tracking this just using the Blocks. For more longer term Quests that could have days, weeks, or even months in between Acts, they will use a Calendar to track the Quest and mark that its advanced to the next Act. (And notate when the next Act triggers, if they didn't already predetermine it)

For Bespoke quests, what occurs as a part of each Act will be pre-written, meaning that regardless of the level of player involvement, the events of the Act that aren't affected by the Players will simply backfill into the Canon when the Act triggers. (Generic Quests are more open to interpretation and improvisation in this regard)

Now, as to what happens. The Players have Bamf'd, so no one had technically taken up the Quest. Lets say that Irileth, the Dunmer Housecarl to the Jarl, is what's called a Keeper Player Character, or KPC. KPCs are essentially a variant NPC who, in collective with all the other KPCs of their Region/City, basically form a systemically created "Culture" for these places. But in terms of Quests, depending on the KPC's personality, they will have a chance to take up any Quests that are pending in these areas.

Because this is a bespoke Quest, and because this specific KPC was already a part of the intended Scouting Party, we'll say that she takes up the Quest and there's no check involved on the Keepers part to see if they or someone else does it.

From there, each Act continues, as its obvious at this point what I'm talking about, we know what happens. The scouting party meets up, they travel to the Watchtower unimpeded, and only have seconds to try and investigate the area before they're beset by the Dragon.

Personally, I don't think they'd have had a problem taking down the dragon eventually, so we'll say that Irileth eventually lands the killing blow on the Dragon.

From here, obviously, the overall Questline this Quest is a part of supposes that the Player (or one of them) is the Dragonborn, and this likely would have been predetermined when they all created their characters. So while we could try to say that Irileth becomes the DB, lets say for this example she doesn't.

So, now comes whether or not the Players opt to get involved.

At each stage, the time to trigger the next Act serves a second purpose in giving the Players a, relatively, broad window to intervene or, at minimum, witness the Quest in action.

Lets say, then, that this whole quest happens, but then the Players happen to be travelling back through the area and come up on the Dragons corpse. The Quest would, in its reference material, say what happens in this sort of circumstance.

The people of Whiterun started to carve up the Dragon, but struggle with it, and as the Players come upon the scene they'll be witness to, lets say, the town beggars being put to work trying to cut into the dragon's hide.

As soon as the intended Dragonborn approaches, and lets say, touches the Dragon, cue them absorbing its soul, and then this triggers the whole Greybeard thing.

The reference material would also say, in this instance, to re-open the original Quest's last Act, and have the Players report to the Jarl.

Each Act would have guidance like this; for example, if the players crash Irileth reporting to the Jarl, this might open a new kind of Generic Quest to Harvest Dragonbones from the Dragon. And it can go on and on like that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It seems to me that both you don't seem to have much appreciation for the creativity I was speaking to in that post, which runs counter to what you both claim to prefer.

And in particular it seems neither of you got that the point of the idea wasn't to stop the mechanic from fulfilling its intentions, but to enhance it and make it more intriguing for everyone. Context is what matters, and arbitrarily receiving them with no connection to the fiction, as we like to say, robs the Signs of the kind of impact they can deliver.

I mean, just answer this: what is more interesting? Being handed a non-diegetic card before you've played, or seeing the Signs of the Gods appear at crucial moments?

And it has to be said, I've read a number of the actual Greek myths as part of coursework, and not just the big name ones. The Gods don't appear to mortals, as signs or otherwise, arbitrarily at non-descript times. They always have context.

Now of course, I'm sure the next argument will be just rolling all of that up into player interpretation, but thats not how the book reads, and you'd have to be coming into the game with the foreknowledge that you'll be making stuff up

And, just for funsies, I will also highlight here that the Book's own play example doesn't do any of that, so neither of you can try and fire back at me acting like the Book actually expects you to add context to the Signs:

View attachment 358503

I see, it was somewhat ambiguous. You're simply advocating for a technique in which the GM decides when to reveal each sign throughout the adventure. I mean, I don't discount your point that it has a certain immediacy and impact, but you're also pretty much denying the players, the leader at least, the chance to employ the signs when they see fit, not just when the GM considers it apropos. Part of the 'magic' of Agon is that things are full of symbolic/situational/cultural signals, but it is up to the players alone to read meaning into them. I think some islands are actually a bit short of the ideal there, like the one with the hell gate where the bad guy is pretty much a stock bad guy. Anyway, I would suggest another option, which is that you give the leader 3 sign cards and let them decide where each sign appears and then describe its significance. I think that would actually be kind of cool.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Do they mean “effect”? It’s not usually what you want (that would typically be “affect”), but they’re talking about bringing something into existence, which is correct usage of “effect” as a verb.

Well, it is a pretty rough draft text... I agree, effect would be proper. You can see what I mean though, it is like the author is approaching right up to the line of saying something fullblown Narrativist in intent, but not quite doing it. You could interpret that phrase like a statement in Apocalypse World, almost, or you could interpret it more like "well, the players should contribute little bits too." I do think, taking the rather large chunks of the whole text I read, as a whole that they're trying to sort of split the difference and suggest that some of the story might come purely from the GM, and some might be framed in a more collaborative fashion.

 

[Emberashh]

What I meant was that there's a gulf in conceptual frameworks between yourself and @Emberashh which seems to lead him to see the signs as a kind of breadcrumb mechanism, or perhaps that he was saying that the sign was only a way for the player to signal their win condition in a specific contest. I'm not sure what his procedure was exactly, if the player or the GM interpreted the sign (or maybe it was just assumed that it had an unambiguous meaning and what he's saying is that the meaning only became clear at that point in play, which is missing the whole point of signs IMHO).

I don't really see how either of you find what I'm saying ambiguous. All I suggested was adding a more interesting mechanism to introduce the Signs to the Leader than "here's your Sign(s)", that as I noted is more in line with how such things worked in actual Greek Mythological narratives.

The Leader still interprets the signs, and the mechanic works as it does normally. The only difference is timing and context, which allows the GM to contribute to the overall effect the Signs provide the experience.

And its not like these things dropping out of the sky isn't a thing either; but thats still contextual. Agamemnon receiving a dream from Zeus may as well be random from his perspective, but its still contextual in the context of the Illiad's narrative; it was never a random occurrence.

but you're also pretty much denying the players, the leader at least, the chance to employ the signs when they see fit, not just when the GM considers it apropos.

Well thats what I was getting at with the Islands not having all that much to do, as there isn't that many options to actually lose out on when it comes to filling out the Vault. Particularly if we're assuming we'd want more than a single session playthrough anyway.

And plus, you could easily stipulate that the Signs have to come early, which is actually how it happened in my example; going after the Serpent was nearly the first thing we did as the cultists tried to take us as soon as got on shore.

Anyway, I would suggest another option, which is that you give the leader 3 sign cards and let them decide where each sign appears and then describe its significance. I think that would actually be kind of cool.

Now that is what I'm talking about. Thats a great idea.

Something I find strange is that the game does have a section regarding making a Sacrifice to the Gods, but its only used for Favor/Wrath with may be a Bond.

I could easily see such a thing being leveraged in a secondary way to get another Sign while on the Island. This is the kind of thing I'm thinking of when I describe feedback loops interacting with one another.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yes, there are. But during play there is always a lot of pretending happening. Like I would go so far to say that it is pretty fundamental aspect of playing a RPG.

Sure. As long as we agree that we are actually trying to pretend to be elves we can proceed to talk about most effective ways of doing so.

Yes, but we're not playing here on ENW. We're talking about playing. No need to pretend here. That's the point. We're talking about how we do the thing, we're not doing the thing.

So in viewing play as a craft, the fiction we craft is not "objectively real".

 

[thefutilist]

But that's not what RPG's are about. When I play an RPG, I don't want to feel like a director or a writer, I don't want to feel like that even as I GM one.

I’ve got a thought experiment for you taken from the first session of an Apocalypse World game.

So one of the characters is called Midnight, she’s like a sexy assassin type deal.

As GM I want to know what her deal is as regards her priorities (you can read that as a mixture of world view and ethics and it’s a similar thing). This is my goal for what follows.

So I ask her some questions and she establishes she does in fact raid people, scavengers mostly, in the old city.

I ask her what the old city is like and she says it’s, well a huge tract of abandoned post apocalyptic city. (so remember my goal)

I decide that there’s going to be a scavenger gang in a bus, but as Midnight gets close she realizes that (one) it’s actually loaded with a good amount of scavenged loot, it’s a good haul (two) the families and children of the scavengers are on board.

So I describe the scene of her riding her bike through the city and approaching them, she sees them and they haven’t seen her yet. She also sees the haul and the families.

Now because of how I use the system this means there’s probably only going to be a few outcomes. She basically has the following four choices in response to what I just said.


1: Let them go


2: Pull up and blast away (no danger to herself, she’ll get the haul but she’ll kill some of the family members)


3: Pull alongside and threaten them (minimal danger to her, very small chance the coach will get away). If they don't submit to her threat, she HAS to blast away at all of them, killing family members.


4: Try and kill the scavenger warriors and disable the van without killing the family members (a higher chance of the haul escaping, minimal danger to her but still some)


Now in your play style, is what I just did legitimate? I’m especially interested in what you think of my reasoning as GM for choosing what to put in the world. (To see how midnight deals with this on an ethical level)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

At what point do you believe I specifically ever argued that there wasn't a difference?

Is it that one post where I stated that, in the context of their respective games, Story Now isn't too dissimilar from the GM Railroad?

Granted, there was a whole supporting argument in that post inbetween when I said the latter and when I specifically said it was in the context of their respective games, but I'm sure you read the post in its entirety before commenting on what I said, especially after I pointed this out to you once before.

And sure, available play time matters, but that also fundamentally puts some barriers up in regards to how you can fairly judge one game in comparison to another.

For example, Go-Fish typically is a much shorter playing card game than a full set of Texas Hold'Em, assuming you're playing till somebody has the entire pot anyway. But you can't really compare the two. We might objectively say Go Fish is simpler and doesn't require much thought compared to Hold'Em, but at the same time they serve completely different audiences. Go Fish is mostly a kids game. Texas Hold'Em is the most popular card game in the world and is specifically gambling centric in its audience.

To compare them at is completely out of pocket and does both games a disservice.

However, coming back to RPGs, its not something we can necessarily ignore that the narrative games only came to exist as a reaction to more trad style games, and like it or not, trad game people aren't the ones who fired on the proverbial Fort Sumpter when it comes to toxic discourse and impressing specific game styles over another.

There may have been a lot of that amongst gaming groups back in the 80s or 90s, but it was never a centralized thing like what we saw the Forge foster coming into the naughties and 2010s as their efforts cumulated primarily in what we see as the PBTA style of games.

If we want to take to the perspective that the games simply can't even be compared at all, then only way forward means everyone needs to stop making comparisons, period.

And that includes in how we describe the games we're talking about. I shouldn't be making comparisons when I describe my game (i actually try my best not to, even if I'm burying it the usual discourse), nor the games I tend to prefer (which isn't actually all that many anymore).

And likewise, when a narrative person describes AW, Agon, etc, they can't doing any of that either.

I think theres something to be said for just speaking to what a game does, and not what we think it does, and there's a pretty clear distinction there. If I want to go back again and describe my living world concept, I'm not going to be making overtures to what I think it does. I can only describe what it literally does and how it works.

Thats why I'm always on about gameplay loops and mechanics, because that cuts through all the opinionation, intended or otherwise, and just focuses on what the game actually does.

Sigh, it gets rather exhausting. You don't like Forge-style Narrativist play, that's fine! The trashing of all of its exponents, etc. is OLD, at best. I had a full USENET news feed starting in 1982, IIRC (fed out of Maryville's VMS system IIRC). I've read a LOT of alt.rec.games! The RPG trash talk there is as old as the hills, and to try to dump on Ron Edwards and the Forge people as somehow atypical or even extreme is quite inaccurate. Your distaste for this type of play is entirely your business and, heck, your like or dislike of certain people isn't my business either, really. I just think it would behoove you to leave it out of your rhetoric. You will find that the discussion will be far more civil and focused on substantive issues.

Likewise your, IMHO completely erroneous, equation of Narrativist Story Now play with a GM Railroad simply exposes a lack of insight into the techniques. I don't mean that as a stone to cast at anyone, but how else can I put it? I'm a mathematician, if you cannot explain L'Hôpital's Rule to me and use it to perform simple calculus tasks, then I don't think it would be mean of me to point out your lack of understanding in that subject!

Otherwise, I mean, I don't have any problem at all with you having your preferences, etc. It might surprise you to discover that I am not personally all that hung up on specific forms of play myself. That is, I can enjoy a wide variety of RPGs, and it isn't really in my character to look for reasons to be displeased with a given instance of play. I mean, sure we all have SOME limits, but I think different styles surface different aspects of the various elements of RPGs. Like there's nothing wrong with crunchy 'deep game loop' play. Heck, TB2 does it REALLY well and its definitely got a lot of Narrativist DNA.

I also think that some of the more purely Narrativist play is not nearly as shallow as you pass it off as, not shallow at all. There's a lot of 'stuff' going on in a Stonetop game, and I don't just mean "the logistics of the village." BitD, likewise, there's a LOT of skill in being able to balance 6 different spinning clocks and come up with clever ways to try to resolve them or keep them in play. Some of it may be 'fuzzier' than perhaps you like, but even coming up with good fiction isn't a cake walk. I mean, I tend to play with people who are adept at this sort of play, or at least really experienced RPG players in general. If I come up with some lame excuse for why we should tick a clock, it ain't going to fly! Now, maybe BitD is going to be a different game with some 13 year olds playing and hamming things up, I don't know.

 

[Emberashh]

I’ve got a thought experiment for you taken from the first session of an Apocalypse World game.

So one of the characters is called Midnight, she’s like a sexy assassin type deal.

As GM I want to know what her deal is as regards her priorities (you can read that as a mixture of world view and ethics and it’s a similar thing). This is my goal for what follows.

So I ask her some questions and she establishes she does in fact raid people, scavengers mostly, in the old city.

I ask her what the old city is like and she says it’s, well a huge tract of abandoned post apocalyptic city. (so remember my goal)

I decide that there’s going to be a scavenger gang in a bus, but as Midnight gets close she realizes that (one) it’s actually loaded with a good amount of scavenged loot, it’s a good haul (two) the families and children of the scavengers are on board.

So I describe the scene of her riding her bike through the city and approaching them, she sees them and they haven’t seen her yet. She also sees the haul and the families.

Now because of how I use the system this means there’s probably only going to be a few outcomes. She basically has the following four choices in response to what I just said.


1: Let them go


2: Pull up and blast away (no danger to herself, she’ll get the haul but she’ll kill some of the family members)


3: Pull alongside and threaten them (minimal danger to her, very small chance the coach will get away). If they don't submit to her threat, she HAS to blast away at all of them, killing family members.


4: Try and kill the scavenger warriors and disable the van without killing the family members (a higher chance of the haul escaping, minimal danger to her but still some)


Now in your play style, is what I just did legitimate? I’m especially interested in what you think of my reasoning as GM for choosing what to put in the world. (To see how midnight deals with this on an ethical level)

To butt in, I'd say that this is pretty much exactly what we mean when we say you can do these things with any game. World building alongside the player as they begin play is just par for the course good GMing in just about any system, and any setting book that hasn't lost the proverbial plot leaves a lot of the map superficially empty for that reason.

Places and such might exist as names but details will only extend into elaborate places that contain more empty spots, like important cities or regions.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well, for one, I didn't label you anything at all and you should read what I said more carefully.

And for two, at no point did I ever consider it a dig against anybody.

If one feels that term is a dig, then thou doth protest too much.

Here's what you said below, with some bits bolded by me for emphasis.

But I also wasn't saying being a narrative min-maxer is a flaw. Its just a weird thing that only just then occured to me, that, in hindsight, actually explains a lot about how you folks think and why you prefer the things you do.

Clearly, you were speaking to me and several others. Don't try and weasel out of it.

Which isn't the point of asking that question, though I suppose with your answer I can still glean what I was looking to find out, at least at n=1 anyway.

No, you really can't. You have minimal understanding of what I like about RPGs, and all you can do is guess at how that might translate to my enjoyment of novels.

Most games that don't operate with the expectation of improvising everything on the fly (regardless of who does it), will have support in that regard. GMs for these games don't have to write anything they don't want to, and prep in of itself isn't a part of gameplay to begin with.

My question wasn't limited to one type of game. And there are some Narrative/Story Now games that still have prep, even if it's of a different sort and scope than traditional prep.

In-game, it still comes down to whether or not improv is being employed, and there's a distinct difference between having to author the details of a gameworld on the fly and having to author the next plot beat or what have you.

Its along that line where modules and adventure books tend to succeed or fail in my experience.

And, because I just like to do it and am unashamed, this is something where I think my idea for Quest Blocks comes quite in handy, and I recently wrote out a play example that illustrates the idea:

I have no interest in hearing about your game. As I'm not familiar with it or how it works, or how the bits you've shared work in conjunction with other bits, it doesn't illuminate anything for me.