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

[Emberashh]

I said nothing about your GM's creativity. I said that you didn't play the game as the rulebook tells you to, which explains why you didn't notice the difference from another RPG which is intended to be played the way you played Agon.

You assert that the signs have no impact when used as the book instructs them to be used. But I can tell you that that is not true when I play. You are generalising baselessly from your own experience.

As for your quote of the book's play extract, notice how the hero player recalls the signs (that the GM told her about) and then makes a decision about what Artemis wants. This is not an example of the GM narrating the sign in such a way as to tell the players what the gods want. It's the player deciding what Artemis's sign means, exactly as the book says the game is to be played.

As said, you don't get what I'm even talking about and clearly have no capacity to appreciate it. You're so overly focused on the idea of the GM getting to contribute you miss the forest for the trees.

And, in keeping with the hilarity here, a funny thought I had is that Agon in particular is centered around the book's fiction being the bulk of the game.

And here I thought you guys didn't like playing in someone elses fiction.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I've never direct a play, or a film. I have scene documentary accounts of this, though. And it doesn't seem to me that the director pretends that the fiction is real in the process of producing the fiction.

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 want to immerse in the world, feel like being there, experience a viewpoint of a fictional character. And all that entails pretending it is real.

To talk about how RPGing works - posting on these boards - isn't playing a RPG. We can't talk about how the game play works if we're making stuff up? I mean, a social scientist, who wants to write about RPGs, isn't going to pretend Orcs are real, anymore than a historian of Greece, writing about how the Iliad was created and received at various periods in Greek history, pretends that Achilles really did the things that Homer says about him.

So what? None of that is playing an RPG. When we play we pretend it is real.

Yes. When I say "I'm twenty feet tall", the words exist. The ideas exist. That doesn't mean I'm twenty feet tall. As it happens I'm not even six feet tall.

Yet to me both of these statement are about as real that Doyle's statement that Sherlock Holmes was a bit over six feet tall. I have never seen you, and unlikely that I ever will.

This issue prompted a debate between Meinong and Russell over 100 years ago. There are pros and cons to Russell's particular technical solution to the meaning of false or non-referring statements. But no one agrees with Meinong.

Now you're just running together epistemology and metaphysics.

Of course we don't know what Caesar wore. But we know that he existed, and that he probably wasn't naked, and hence that there probably was something that he was wearing. Michael Dummett defends an anti-realist approach to some of these sorts of things - thinning out the metaphysics in the absence of epistemic access. But no one goes the other way - conjuring Middle Earth into being on the basis that it's just as real, given JRRT's books, as Caesar and his kit who now are recorded only in books.

You're in the weeds here. But if it helps you, remember what Kant said. The reality itself is unknowable, all can know our mind's conception of it. And there Achilles, Caesar and Holmes are just as real. Or perhaps you're just overthinking this. It's advanced cops and robbers. We pretend to be other people in order to play. And I for one am thankful that I am not yet too jaded and detached to have such childish fun!

 

[hawkeyefan]

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 want to immerse in the world, feel like being there, experience a viewpoint of a fictional character. And all that entails pretending it is real.


So what? None of that is playing an RPG. When we play we pretend it is real.


Yet to me both of these statement are about as real that Doyle's statement that Sherlock Holmes was a bit over six feet tall. I have never seen you, and unlikely that I ever will.

You're mistaking the act of playing for the discussion on playing. Here, we are discussing playing. So there's no need to pretend as if it's "real"; we can be frank about the processes and procedures that, when playing, help us.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

I worry about the use of 'objective' here. I personally would say that things Holmes' underwear LACKS any character of 'reality'. Now, maybe his hat is 'real' in the sense that it 'really appears in the fiction' so we can make assertions about its fictional appearance, etc. and test them against the text. Personally I would not say that kind of reality is 'objective', though, as some of the hat's traits simply don't exist, like it was not manufactured, and thus cannot have had a manufacturer.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You're mistaking the act of playing for the discussion on playing. Here, we are discussing playing. So there's no need to pretend as if it's "real"; we can be frank about the processes and procedures that, when playing, help us.

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.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I believe you'll find that's been going back and forth here pretty consistently not just in this topic, but everytime the usual suspects on either side of the debate get together to argue for a week.

I have been careful to not disparage anyone else's chosen style of play. I'm personally glad there's a variety of games.

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.

I don't know who you mean by "you folks". I play all manner of games, and play them differently, and I don't categorize myself as a specific type of gamer.

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

I would be very curious to get a census on how much you folks enjoy things like the long, meandering descriptions of Tolkien or something dense like Hemingway.

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

 

[Emberashh]

But beyond that, there IS a profound difference in the dynamics of play and experience between Trad games and Narrativist ones

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.

 

[kenada]

Like, on P 95, the last paragraph is literally this very ambiguous statement about the nature and source of the fiction. It talks about how the GM 'could' make stuff up on the fly, or maybe they use a map and key, etc. It then tries to state that either way the story should be generated such that "each player should feel free to affect a story that doesn't exist yet" but what exactly entirely 'affect' means, in concrete terms is pretty slippery.

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.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

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?

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.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Yeah, my brain is still foggy from this darned cold I have. 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'm beginning to see how it is very difficult for some people to inhabit a mind set where the goal is not accomplishing certain things within the fiction in play, but in accomplishing things THROUGH PLAY. I'm not focused on what is accomplished IN GAME particularly at all. I mean, it is very important, but RPGs extend far beyond that, and not just in a purely mechanical book keeping sense! I expect we share some of this "the shape of the whole game experience is pleasing when..." kind of thing. In the case of Agon and Signs it is pleasing when the leader makes clever and imaginative use of them to contextualize play and, for instance, mark divine favor in the vault of heaven.