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

[AbdulAlhazred]

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:

Players write them in HoML, though we don't do it in such a formalized way. Player declared quests are the game's core driver in terms of 'what to do next'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.



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.




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.

Yeah, it isn't a perfect game, by any means. OTOH I mostly liked the islands. They're fairly simple, but each one admits of at least several approaches, and given the signs can be deployed strategically to try to make the gods happy with what you're doing (or not I suppose), I think there's a fair bit of variety. We played through most of the book's islands, and made up a few of our own. I think the game is fairly limited in scope, but over the course of a dozen or more sessions our characters definitely acquired some depth.

Honestly though, I think it is already almost too easy to get divine favor and bonds with gods, etc. While we did fail to 'sort out' a few of the islands (the one with the giant I remember was particularly messy, the gods didn't generally come across as super threatening, and we mostly avoided outright wrath. Of course we might have been going easy on each other, lol. The players rotated duty as the Strife Player. I can see how things might be a bit different if you had a GM who was out to really make the heroes work for their lunch!

 

[Morrus]

At this point, I can no longer treat anything you have to say as being anything more than a comedy bit for an unknown audience.

As said, you don't get what I'm even talking about and clearly have no capacity to appreciate it.

Oh look, Emberashh resorting to namecalling... again. You won't be appearing in this thread again.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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)

The reason for setting up this is fine. I like ethical dilemmas. What I don't like here is how you present the options, and how limiting they are. Like for example why in #3 threatening them, but if they don't yield chickening out instead of shooting is not an option? (I suspect I know why, it is due what move this is, but I don't like it.) But perhaps these were just likely examples, and not actual limits?

Also, I'd try to present this so that the player of Midnight can concentrate on immersing to the situation, feeling like they're this person in such situation, making the choices. I.e. pretending that this is real.

I would also give the scavengers and other people present motivations and personalities, and try to faithfully present them as real people, instead of just as props for this dilemma.

And if this means that the player manages to somehow sidestep the situation, and defuse it in a way I didn't expect, then that is fine too, even though it wouldn't result the dramatic decision I envisioned. It's fine, there will be other situations, and respecting the player's agency to respond like a real person and think out of the box is more important that the specific dramatic beat.

So yeah, what I'm kinda saying is that I'm more fine with setting up the initial conditions so that challenge to the character's morals/beliefs/nature/etc are likely to occur, but once we are in the thick of it, I want the situation to be immersive and not feel artificially constrained just to make a point.

 

[thefutilist]

The reason for setting up this is fine. I like ethical dilemmas. What I don't like here is how you present the options, and how limiting they are. Like for example why in #3 threatening them, but if they don't yield chickening out instead of shooting is not an option? (I suspect I know why, it is due what move this is, but I don't like it.) But perhaps these were just likely examples, and not actual limits?

Also, I'd try to present this so that the player of Midnight can concentrate on immersing to the situation, feeling like they're this person in such situation, making the choices. I.e. pretending that this is real.

I would also give the scavengers and other people present motivations and personalities, and try to faithfully present them as real people, instead of just as props for this dilemma.

And if this means that the player manages to somehow sidestep the situation, and defuse it in a way I didn't expect, then that is fine too, even though it wouldn't result the dramatic decision I envisioned. It's fine, there will be other situations, and respecting the player's agency to respond like a real person and think out of the box is more important that the specific dramatic beat.

So yeah, what I'm kinda saying is that I'm more fine with setting up the initial conditions so that challenge to the character's morals/beliefs/nature/etc are likely to occur, but once we are in the thick of it, I want the situation to be immersive and not feel artificially constrained just to make a point.

Thanks for the reply. Interesting response and not what I expected. This is full on no-myth play (at the scene framing level) and I personally wouldn’t think in these terms from about session three onwards. I mean I like ethical choices so they’re going to flavour the stuff I do but they wouldn’t be at the front of my mind. (not saying they would necessarily be at the front of yours either, especially as things become more fixed, I was just expecting that you’d reject the methodology flat out)

As to motives and immersion and so on. I would think a bit about the priorities of the scavengers before the scene and whatever I decided would become binding. As far as how I offered the choices up, depends on the player and how well they know the system. I’d address myself to the character but I would probably use move names. If they knew the system I’d say something like, you could go aggro or if you want to avoid civilian casualties that would be do battle.

You make interesting points about what choices exist for the player but that’s probably a full on conversation by itself and it’s probably really tricky.

 

[Wolfpack48]

Again, I think that this is an old-man yelling at clouds statement blaming the ills of today on kids today and their rock n' roll and hula hoops, or video games as it is in this case. It also demonstrates an incredibly selective perception of the history of the hobby. I understand that you never played to win, but that "play to win" attitude and optimzation has very much been a long and standing part of the hobby regardless of what you did at your table. As I mentioned before, the game's origins came out of "play to win" wargaming, and some of that playing to win attitude, min-maxing, and optimization was there at the very beginning before you could blame video games. The reality of this fact does not in any way, shape, or form hinge on what you did at your table at all. Please, stop blaming computer games because it makes you sound out-of-touch and it's quite condescending and disrespectful, unintentionally or not, towards people who did grow up playing video and computer games.


Do I catch whiffs of OneTrueWayism and BadWrongFun here?

Pretty sure “beat the game” and “winning the game” were all coined with the advent of computers and arcade games. lol, I have nothing against computers, I work in the industry and play plenty of computer games. But tabletop rpgs are something special - they do something no computer game can do — offer unlimited choice and immersion. I don’t blame computer games, but I fear some tabletop designers are looking to computers for guidance when it should be the other way around.

I also don’t think cavemen were thinking about “optimizing their build” when they figured out how to use fire. I guess you can call it that if you want, but then it’s just inserting more computing speak into a non-digital universe.

 

[pemerton]

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.

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?

@Crimson Longinus, I already posed that the play of RPGs involves pretending - though I note that @Old Fezziwig says that it needn't be about pretending certain things are real, and that's an interesting claim.

My point is that pretending things and imagining things doesn't make them real. That's it.

I'm not disputing that certain sentences may entail or suggest certain other sentences - eg if there are two Orcs, and two Orcs join them, then there are now four Orcs; if I'm thinking of a beach then that means there's sea nearby - but of course part of the magic of pretending is that we can pretend that certain entailment rules don't hold. For instance, we can pretend we are in a dreamworld where basic facts about physical endurance of Orcs over time don't obtain; and so maybe when the second two Orcs join the first two Orcs, now that means that I'm in a forest looking down on the domain of some Ogres.

But these "associations of ideas" don't mean that the things we're imagining exist. There are no Orcs; no wharves of Hardby; no lands with floating mountains; etc. We don't perceive them; we don't move through them in our bodies; we don't learn about them by way of inquiry.

And all this is fundamental to RPG play. You and @thefutilist discusses a scene involving a PC on a motorbike, who sees a bus with people and loot on board. In the fiction, the PC hears the bus; sees the people, faces against the glass; smells the fumes; feels her heart beat speed up as she aims her weapon (or not - maybe she's so hardened that no emotion grips her - that might be an interesting detail). At the table, though, we have two people talking to one another. They see one another, and some bits of paper, and some dice. They hear words being spoken. Maybe the smell the potato gems that someone heated up for snacks.

In the fiction, the bike is travelling smoothly, or the road is bumpy, or there is no road - just a gravel flat that the PC is travelling across. At the table, no one knows because no one has thought about it or said anything about it. Maybe the GM introduces that into the fiction as a consequence - something goes wrong with the player's plan, the GM narrates them coming off their bike, the Harm move is rolled, it indicates extra harm, and the GM narrates the extra harm as resulting from the PC sliding at speed across the gravel of the flat.

We can't make any progress on talking about how this stuff is done by using the language of "discovery of an objective fact". It's not an objective fact if the GM made it up just now - whether "it" is the gravel, or the bus, or the fumes, or the faces against the glass, or whatever other bit of the fiction "it" is.

 

[Wolfpack48]

On the contrary, I don't think video game design is being taken seriously at all in the tabletop space, and thats a prejudice that keeps the hobby niche and offputting to a lot of people.

And also why much of the video game world considers TTRPG theory a complete joke.

Much of the linearity that folks don’t like in ttrpg’s are inherent in computer game design. It’s really hard to devise a sandbox as a computer game, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to play in one anyway.

I’d much rather the two mediums just took their own paths. Maybe I’m just an “old man yelling at clouds,” but I’m preferring people interactions to devices these days.

I find with a lot of RPG complaints, a lot of whats lacking is procedure. Far too much of how these games play is still implied and taught from person to person (see, the improv game) and you can solve a lot of games problems just by adding in more procedure.

When done well, it doesn't get in the way of roleplaying, it can only enhance it. You can get too obtuse and intrusive with it, however, and thats a discussion worth sinking some teeth into. As I've related, Im always trying to find ways to make gameplay indistinguishable from roleplay, as I think thats the peak of doing procedure well.

My biggest fear is too much procedure around the improv part of the game. If I have to check the rules or the character sheet or wonder whether I am behaving within constraints, that’s the point where it becomes intrusive. What I DO like is a procedure that takes into account my roleplaying. If I made a good speech or behaved in a way in line with my character concept or the adventure, I’d like to reflect that in any test I need to make at the end of it. Perfectly fine with a roll to seal the test.

 

[Aldarc]

Pretty sure “beat the game” and “winning the game” were all coined with the advent of computers and arcade games.

I hope you understand that this point is irrelevant. Do you realize how many phenomena predate their terms? Did viruses and diseases not exist before scientists gave them their names? Or maybe do you think that scientists invented these diseases and are the cause for their existence? Do you think that no one was trying to "beat the game" or "winning the game" during the days of wargaming? Do you think that no one was approaching D&D with a mindset of "winning the dungeon" or "beating the game" before being corrupted by your ridiculous video game boogeymen?

I'm pretty sure that wargaming existed before video games and that D&D came out of the wargaming hobby. I'm pretty sure that there was tournament play in D&D where people would bring their awesome characters to try and beat dungeons. I'm pretty sure that gamism as a play agenda was meant to partially describe the playstyle that was prevalent in D&D of playing to win, with Gamism as a term coming from Use.net days when video games were nowhere near as prevalent as they are today.

but I fear some tabletop designers are looking to computers for guidance when it should be the other way around.

Nah. But don't worry, there are computer games looking at TTRPGs for inspiration. However, you would be deeply misguided if you think that tabletop designers have nothing to learn from computer/video games.

I also don’t think cavemen were thinking about “optimizing their build” when they figured out how to use fire. I guess you can call it that if you want, but then it’s just inserting more computing speak into a non-digital universe.

I'm talking about the roots of the hobby, our hobby's foundational beginnings, and a prevalent part of our hobby's play culture that has been there since the beginning. You are trying to pretend that it never happened and/or that it wasn't, presumably because you want to sell a narrative that blames video games.

 

[Autumnal]

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.

First, I note that I’m 58 and have been playing computer games since learning Star Trek on Dad’s PDP-8 on weekends. I have ghastly quantities of hours on various Civ games, World of Warcraft, and like that.

I find games like the PbtA family less like any computer games I’ve played or watched than more mainstreams RPGs. I’m not at my best at the moment and am not wording very well. But the size and shape of the units of action that comprise moves supports roleplaying very well for me.

Some of it is that relatively large chunks, closer to conflict than task resolution, is freeing to my creativity. The less atomistically I have to think about things being done, the more I can think about the situation as a person would, folding together motives and methods more organically. Some of it is other stuff I’m not thinking of right now. But the experience is real, in any event.