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

[hawkeyefan]

Now it's possible to have a prepared scenario in which player choice matters to the generation and delivery of theme. Off the top of my head I can't think of any published D&D module that is an example, but there are numerous examples in the Prince Valiant rulebook and the Prince Valiant Episode Book. Another example is found in the HeroWars Narrator's Book by Robin Laws: The Demon of the Red Grove. But I don't think those scenarios are what @hawkeyefan had in mind - he was clearly referring to D&D modules. And frankly I'd be surprised if you have these examples in mind either.

I'm trying to think of any D&D modules that work this way, and I don't think there are any. There are so many that it's possible I'm unaware of them... but I wouldn't be surprised if there are not. They're intentionally designed not to work that way.

Now, module play is not the end all be all of D&D. Folks can play their home game however they choose. But I think an important factor here is that module type play is the most well-known and observable play style, and it very clearly does not address the themes and concepts of specific characters. This is important because this style of play allows for this... it does not require addressing the themes of the characters in the same way that a game like Masks does. Looking at @Campbell 's example with his Protege character. If the game doesn't address the relationship between the mentor and the protege and the details that have been established about them, and how that impacts the Protege's relationship with his team... then the game has failed to do what it's supposed to do.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Okay... I think of all of that, the bit about framing a rival gang is the closest thing to what I'm talking about. You had a more specific motive in that case than just the general one of getting coin. What was the situation with framing the rival gang? What were you trying to accomplish by framing them? Why?

I think we just wanted to keep our rival gang busy by setting another gang upon them.

Those are more of the kinds of things that I think makes the game shine. When you have investment in the situation beyond just the basic idea of stealing stuff. The more of that there is in play, the better.

Sure, but again this is something you can do in any game.

Well, yes, there is a player principle "don't be a weasel". So there may be more than one approach, but ultimately, it's up to the player, but they should be choosing within reason.

I don't see how you don't see this as an improvement to player agency.

How would it? Like sure, I could choose whether I stab a person with finesse or skirmish, but as I have three in former and zero in the latter, it is really not a choice is it?

And in most games you can try different approaches. In D&D you can present your approach of getting a NPC to do what you want more as intimidation than persuasion.

Well the point is to keep things confined in a way... to make things so that the same people keep coming up. The idea that you can just leave and go where there are no ramifications from past actions, no pre-existing relationships and so on... that's specifically what Blades is trying to avoid.

Sure, but again, that's just the setup, and would have similar effect in another game too. If a Vampire game is set in one city, then we need to deal with the NPCs and factions of that city.

 

[Campbell]

Sure, but again this is something you can do in any game.

Let's take specific games out of it. Do you think it would be fair to say that some techniques and processes of play might get you there more reliably or more easily? That different processes also come with their own sets of tradeoffs?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's surprising, because it's foundational to Edwards' concept of narrativism. The reason player must be understood as simultaneously author and audience is because of differences in the medium of games (non-linear, dynamic) and books or films (linear, non-dynamic). Narratology eventually had to make an adjustment to this, leading to post-classical narratology. Ludologists like Espen Aarseth called ludonarrative "ergodic literature" meaning it was literature you had to do some work to unearth.

I put it myself that

Narrative subsists in a reader traversing a set of signifiers, organised with in mind a meta-property, which is their collective signified. This applies to games as well as books, films, and comics. A reader works to traverse a “text”. Whether that is as little as turning the page or keeping their eyes open, attentive, and processing, or as much as making decisions that rearrange the signifiers. Narrative intention lies in the organisation or curation of the signifiers, without which we could otherwise call ordinary living "narrative".
So a ludonarrative is an assemblage of deliberately chosen signifiers (think of elements like snippets of history, illustrations of forests and towers, rules modules such as character ancestries, creature descriptions and parameters, and so on: all containing narrative potential without committing to a single told story).

I was using organic but perhaps supervenes is a better word: ludonarrative is the kind of narrative that supervenes on storygames, and not storybooks

But to me this reads like a description of trad play! Where are, in Narrativist play these 'assemblages of signifiers' located? How does the narrative supervene on these things? Yes, all play produces ludonarrative, but this is a pretty empty observation! The whole point here is the question of where do these signifiers come from in Narrativist play?

So, when @Crimson Longinus talks about ordinary criminal activities being put forward by the BitD GM as the focus of play, it doesn't sound like Narrativist play to me because I don't see how the GM is engaged with the elements put forward by the players. Did he take the stakes put on the table by them? I didn't get that impression, it sounds more like he dreamed up a situation and just dropped it on them, like "well this week the Billhooks decided to beat up your pickpockets and take over the marketplace!" Now this might be a decent entre to a score, but that's assuming the crew created trouble with the Billhooks (mechanically represented by faction clock going negative). It's also going to tie into turf, plus likely some rivals, maybe a threat to someone's vice provider, or more general relationships/alliances.

Now we begin to see what these mechanics are really FOR in BitD. Yes, the GM can frame things, but it is this framing that supervenes what the players have established through previous action, declarations constituted by game rules, and the mechanics which interact with those elements.

In other words, if the crew muscles in on the Billhooks, they push back! The fact that the lurk set up a lucrative pickpocket ring in the marketplace just about obligated the GM to go there!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Let's take specific games out of it. Do you think it would be fair to say that some techniques and processes of play might get you there more reliably or more easily? That different processes also come with their own sets of tradeoffs?

Yes, sure. But for example in this specific instance it is more about the setup than any specific mechanics. Like that we have situation where we have allies, and rivals and we vie for control of the underground of the city. That this is the fictional situation naturally directs what the action will be about. I could see the overall dynamic working very similarly with more trad system with such a setup.

I am not saying that mechanics do not matter at all or are interchangeable, but I still feel the main thrust and themes of the campaign really do not, nor cannot rely on the mechanics, they rely on the fiction.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So, when @Crimson Longinus talks about ordinary criminal activities being put forward by the BitD GM as the focus of play, it doesn't sound like Narrativist play to me because I don't see how the GM is engaged with the elements put forward by the players. Did he take the stakes put on the table by them? I didn't get that impression, it sounds more like he dreamed up a situation and just dropped it on them, like "well this week the Billhooks decided to beat up your pickpockets and take over the marketplace!"

No, it's not like that.

Now this might be a decent entre to a score, but that's assuming the crew created trouble with the Billhooks (mechanically represented by faction clock going negative). It's also going to tie into turf, plus likely some rivals, maybe a threat to someone's vice provider, or more general relationships/alliances.

Now we begin to see what these mechanics are really FOR in BitD. Yes, the GM can frame things, but it is this framing that supervenes what the players have established through previous action, declarations constituted by game rules, and the mechanics which interact with those elements.

In other words, if the crew muscles in on the Billhooks, they push back! The fact that the lurk set up a lucrative pickpocket ring in the marketplace just about obligated the GM to go there!

The stuff is most of the time related to our rival gangs, sometimes to our personal rivals and to the stuff we did before. Though sometimes the entanglements or such result new stuff being introduced. But most of this is still basic criminal stuff, gang competition, cops beating people etc. Sometimes it is more personal than that, related to stuff of specific characters.

But again, this sort of stuff happens in most games. It is not unusual that your past actions influence future events, in fact it is weird if they don't.

And I don't think we're playing it wrong. It is game about criminals doing criminal stuff so most of the game is about that. It's not that deep. Now what @Campbell said about Masks sounded being more about personal connections and dynamics, so that seemed more significantly different.

 

[innerdude]

Me: (I think about the Kings priorities.) Yeah that makes sense. So it’s a conflict then. Will your words embarrasses the king enough for him to relent or is he going to hold fast. Also if you fail, things will go badly for you. And either way you’ve made an enemy of him.

Player: I’m ok with that.

We roll and the player wins.

Me: There’s a shocked gasp from the court and the King turns red. He says in a strained tone. ‘well never let it be said that I am not beneficent, you shall have your walk in the gardens’

Me: look at my prep and see that this night is the night I’ve written down that the assassin murders the princess.

Me: so next day as you’re preparing for your garden stroll. There’s a scream. The princess has been murdered in the night.

And the thing I've bolded is what I'm absolutely naughty word sick of in regards to trad play.

For reasons unknown, the GM's creative fiction created 6 seconds / 6 minutes / 6 hours / 6 days / 6 weeks / 6 years ago is seen as sacredly immutable, wholly not subject to the player's expressed desires to explore their character's deeper protagonistic drive.

And furthermore, any attempts by players to bring fulfillment of their character stakes to the GM's table are met with derision, eye-rolling, and declarations of, "Go play your computer games or stick with your bland, boring 5e easy mode if you want that crap. We do REAL roleplaying at my table!"

Even though the player has clearly expressed what they want the stakes to be. Has clearly expressed that they are pursuing in-character goals towards an end that speaks to the themes they want to explore. What possible value is it to completely negate the player's expressed (and well-earned by this point) stakes in the outcome?

So that the GM can keep pretending that their made-up fiction is somehow more "complete" and "whole" and "untarnished" and "verisimiltudinous" and therefore more "worthy" than if the GM had modified the fiction? Even though the fiction was MADE UP COMPLETELY FROM THIN AIR, NO MATTER HOW LONG AGO IT WAS MADE UP?

Why in the world does a single line of pre-written fiction negate the player's intent to speak with the duke's daughter?

"Hmm. Well, sorry, my pre-written fiction is more important than anything on the player side. Sorry, sucks to be you."

Yeah. I'm done with that.

The games I'm interested in playing now are games where the GM is asked implicitly and enforced by rule explicitly to honor player intent. Games where the GM is expected to keep their "living world" radically more open and malleable and work with the players to realize character intent.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So whilst I don't think usually downscaling the outcomes from those what the players expected is needed there are some situation in which it is. And I don't know a single game where this is not the case. And in situation where the exact thing the players want to achieve is impossible in one go, if possible, it is good idea to give them progress towards it.

Are you genuinely arguing that this is not commonly the case in almost every RPG? That the players can just ask literally anything and the GM must allow them to roll for it? Because I just don't think this is the case. In earlier Ironsworn (IIRC) example we saw this was not the case. It is not the case in Blades, I doubt it is the case in Burning Wheel either, but please don't make me find the PDF.

And simply from narrative sense being able to get anything with one roll is obviously undesirable. If this tyrant is the main enemy, overthrowing of which the players are invested in, then just marching to them and telling them to abdicate, and they do, would not be a very good story. Gimli just shattering the One Ring with his axe because he mistakenly though that he could would not be a good story. And if the dramatic angle of your character is that their brother is missing, then just finding the brother drinking in a nearby tavern via a circle check would not be a good story.

You're again erected this sort of absolutist dogmatic objection that doesn't actually correspond to the reality. The thing you protest exist in practically every game in one form or another.

No it doesn't. Explain to me how a PC in Dungeon World 'wins' in one move by convincing the Duke to abdicate. What move can he trigger to do this? I will save you trouble, NONE! There's a generic move in DW to convince someone, but the PC requires leverage to trigger it, which means fictional position that is evaluated by the GM. This sort of arrangement will exist in all Narrativist play, trust me. Fundamentally what can be accomplished by an action will always have limits set by fiction, or maybe even mechanics. Always the framing of these limits is at least partly up to the GM or some other mechanism. Otherwise you would not have an RPG.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

No it doesn't. Explain to me how a PC in Dungeon World 'wins' in one move by convincing the Duke to abdicate. What move can he trigger to do this? I will save you trouble, NONE! There's a generic move in DW to convince someone, but the PC requires leverage to trigger it, which means fictional position that is evaluated by the GM. This sort of arrangement will exist in all Narrativist play, trust me. Fundamentally what can be accomplished by an action will always have limits set by fiction, or maybe even mechanics. Always the framing of these limits is at least partly up to the GM or some other mechanism. Otherwise you would not have an RPG.

Sure. I did not doubt it was otherwise. Take it up with @pemerton who seems to have an issue with the player declared stakes of royal abdication not being accepted.

 

[innerdude]

To carry the theme of this thread forward from my last post ---

Narrative games are those that bring thematic character intent + stakes to the fore of play, and have implicit and/or explicit mechanics and incentives for GM's to honor those intentions, stakes, and themes above their own conceptions of the game world.