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

[Crimson Longinus]

Or maybe this HeroQuest? There's been a lot of them actually. The original Hero Wars for Glorantha was interesting. The things I liked about it was creating a character based on a 100-word description, the idea that a contest such as an unimportant fight with some wandering orcs could be resolved with a single die roll, and bidding Action Points (AP) during an extended contest. It didn't take complete hold, but there were some interesting ideas in there.

Eh, or maybe that was the Glorantha HQ I didn't like? There are several of these? Are they just different edition of the same basic rules chassis, or are they drastically different?

I remember the dice mechanic and how they were roll under but there were masteries etc to be very unintuitive and needlessly convoluted.

 

[pemerton]

Eh, or maybe that was the Glorantha HQ I didn't like? There are several of these? Are they just different edition of the same basic rules chassis, or are they drastically different?

HeroWars, redone as HeroQuest, and then HeroQuest Revised, are basically the same system. The lattermost is presented as generic, but has a Glorantha chapter at the back.

Also, the latter doesn't use Action Point bidding. It does allow staking more or less in an extended conflict, but not at the same level of granularity as the first two.

 

[Wolfpack48]

Eh, or maybe that was the Glorantha HQ I didn't like? There are several of these? Are they just different edition of the same basic rules chassis, or are they drastically different?

I remember the dice mechanic and how they were roll under but there were masteries etc to be very unintuitive and needlessly convoluted.

Yeah, there was this one too, lol -- each one tweaked previous versions.

Initially the mastery rules "bumped" the success level by one, but I think in later editions that was tweaked by mastery adding an additional roll and comparing the number of successes....? Maybe...? We're using the RQG rules these days, so I haven't looked closely in awhile. Just thought those editions had interesting ideas, but they also seemed to be a work in progress.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Funny, I think it has almost enough lore (they really need to add the Fae). I have no interest in playing AW. I despise that sort of setting/tone, and am genuinely repulsed by it - which is probably why I never really considered PBTAs beyond a bit of looking at MOTW before now. Stonetop's spin walks just enough world definition to be incredibly compelling, it's a setting that I desperately want to play any sort of game set there, lol.

I think people get hung up on lore a bit in terms of character -centered narr play. That is, if you have a bunch of it, that's not an impediment to play focused on character concerns. It will cloth them in slightly different color, perhaps. So I don't have any issues with Stonetop lore, except if too much is canon then replayability might suffer.

The 'danger' with tons of lore is that it can become itself the focus of exploration, that the centrality of character is lost. Or that some sort of Hickman-esque metaplot grows out of it.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Over 550 posts on narrative theory and I can't deduce any action I could take make to make a game more narrative...

 

[Neonchameleon]

Over 550 posts on narrative theory and I can't deduce any action I could take make to make a game more narrative...

I've given two to start with with a third easy extension. The two to start with are to entwine the characters' backstories and entwine them with the setting. Then the third is give them conflicted relationships with the main bad guys. All instead of "you meet in a tavern and may as well have been Isikai'd in from separate worlds to somewhere you have little reason to care about."

 

[pemerton]

Over 550 posts on narrative theory and I can't deduce any action I could take make to make a game more narrative...

So in this video Ron Edwards talks about his "story now" 3E game, that he GMed for a dad and kid down the road (WARNING - the video has some NSFW language):


Their two PCs are a Half-Orc and a Half-Elf, brothers with the same (human) mother. The game starts at their mother's funeral, and goes from there.

Trying that sort of thing - like @Neonchameleon says - will help.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I've given two to start with with a third easy extension. The two to start with are to entwine the characters' backstories and entwine them with the setting. Then the third is give them conflicted relationships with the main bad guys. All instead of "you meet in a tavern and may as well have been Isikai'd in from separate worlds to somewhere you have little reason to care about."

Thanks. In my defense, it's easy to miss among all the definition warring.

 

[billd91]

Thanks. In my defense, it's easy to miss among all the definition warring.

If you laid all the gamers in the world end to end… they’d all point in different directions.

 

[clearstream]

It gives me concrete neo-Meinongians - who have Holmes as a concrete object "existing" in a non-actual world - and abstract neo-Meinongians - who have Holmes as an abstract object that is a bundle of properties describing the "Holmes role". But, as the author of the entry explains, "Because Conan Doyle’s stories are quiet on these matters, Holmes on the Meinongian model is not right-handed; nor is he left-handed; nor is he ambidextrous. He does, however, have the property of being one of these." The same will be true in respect of Holmes' undergarments.

Relating to your #486 this describes a version of platonism in which Holmes exists whether or not we know what sort of underwear Holmes was wearing when Watson first met him. It is perfectly respectable for platonists to say that numbers exist as abstract objects, and not consulting detectives, but some say both.