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

[clearstream]

I don't understand. Both imaginings can exist at once. The reader in @pemerton's example can indeed hold both in mind at once!

Likely true, although I did not take us to be concerned with what it was possible for the reader to imagine, but only ways in which what they imagined might be made more tangible.

Interactive shared fictional media of the sort which RPGs fall into is a bit different, being performative in nature.

Expressive, performative and experiential. We've talked about player as author and audience, both at once. There is another facet that comes up in narratology of videogames and could apply here, which is the rendering of the imagined. In order to be audience to the imaginings of someone else, their imagining must be rendered somehow.

While we can each hold different views and orientations to play, at some level our imaginations must agree in the Shared Imagined Space, else the process of play will break down. This might even be a test for what constitutes an RPG, at least typical ones.

I do not follow what you might / might not be objecting to. You seem to be saying that externalising and agreeing is needed to count as an RPG. I said that externalising and agreeing helps reify. These ideas don't seem to be in conflict.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Likely true, although I did not take us to be concerned with what it was possible for the reader to imagine, but only ways in which what they imagined might be made more tangible.


Expressive, performative and experiential. We've talked about player as author and audience, both at once. There is another facet that comes up in narratology of videogames and could apply here, which is the rendering of the imagined. In order to be audience to the imaginings of someone else, their imagining must be rendered somehow.


I do not follow what you might / might not be objecting to. You seem to be saying that externalising and agreeing is needed to count as an RPG. I said that externalising and agreeing helps reify. These ideas don't seem to be in conflict.

You stayed that the reader could concede her imagined ending, but I saw no concession there, merely alternate imagining, so I failed to see how 'tangibility' or even authority was involved. I expect on the subject of RPG imagining we must largely agree. That agreement seems to reinforce my point.

 

[Manbearcat]

This conversation about "what constitutes real in a TTRPG" is rather the crux of a lot of the splitting of priorities (and entrenched culture war battles that ensue) in these conversations here, elsewhere, and in actual meatspace.

Several years ago on here (or elsewhere...or perhaps both...I can't recall), there was conversation around what constitutes useful in DW's Spout Lore's 10+ result (interesting and useful result). It was at that point that I introduced the term "actionable" to the conversation. Its abundantly clear if you read and incorporate the fullness of the source material (both its parent in AW and the game itself) that the 10+ result of Spout Lore is meant for the players to be afforded an arrayed, shared imagined space which generates advantageous fiction and is the prerequisite for triggering subsequent moves which puts them (the players through their PCs) on a better (better here which is bounded by DW's novel interests; the premise of the game, the embedded protagonism within each playbook, and facility to move gamestate positively) footing to fulfill their goals. And again, this is not for the GM to decide or to thwart. The game tells you quite clearly to honor their victories. They earned "useful." It needs to be so. And they decide on that, not the GM. So if the GM is too coy, too opaque, too...whatever...a new form of "useful" (actionable) needs to enter the conversation via an utterance by the GM or an exchange between GM and player so that the players can act upon the introduction of this content into the shared imagined space.

So, with that said, it becomes very clear to me just how much I diverge as a GM from so many ENW GMs. Simply put:

When something enters the imagined space, it needs to be actionable by one participant, another participant, or all participants.

Given that, I don't think its any coincidence that my GMing history is overwhelmingly Gamism and Narrativism with only a brief (and begrudging) foray into Simulationism from 99 to 04 with an FR 3.x game. I don't put things into the imagined space for them to be benign. I don't want to spend table time on benign things. I want to know what your hat looks like or what color your coat is or your particular PC's affectation only and unless it is actionable by a participant in play. It needs to be an essential component of situation-framing, of game/situation-state changing, of fleshing out essential decision-space, or of rendering fallout/consequence (inventorying hardship/cost). There are rare occasions where I will ask players something about their affectation or their countenance or their dress. When I do, I hope they know (and they should if they've been players in any of my games for any amount of time) that I'm asking them this for game-related purposes. I want to know this so I can frame a situation or change a situation-state or flesh out their decision-space or inventory and then render consequence/fallout. That is the pretext for my question and they should understand and answer according. That sort of focused, integrated answer makes it actionable for me as a GM to say next what I'm going to say...which the next thing I'm going to say needs to be actionable to them.

That makes introduction of content into the shared imagined space "real" to me; the magnitude/scope of actionable.

The more people say stuff that isn't actionable, the more rudderless the back-and-forth is, the less "real" the play is to me and the more its just wasted time. Its like a boxing match where the fighters just passively probe and circle on the outside rather than "close the damn distance, get in the pocket, and exchange." An easy example is something like Info Gathering phase in Blades in the Dark. If I'm asking you questions, I'm asking you to point me in the direction of "True North" where "True North" is what the hell Score are we going to do tonight? Don't just wander. Don't aimlessly explore. Have a goal...and pursue it. And communicate it to me, and the rest of the table, clearly with the utterances coming from your mouth.

That is "real" to me in TTRPGing. For others, its clear that "real" is having a four hour session of conflict-free, mechanics-free, freeplay and no combat in D&D; just players chatting about the internal workings of their PCs, delivering affectation and color, and musing or passively exploring. We hear that all the time. That is a virtue championed and signaled to the rest of the TTRPG world pretty routinely. I get that is "real" to a certain, unknowable size cohort of TTRPG players. That couldn't be less "real" to me. What I want is for everyone at the table to always and ever say things that are actionable, that decisively changes the situation-state and gamestate of play. Do it again. Then again. Then again. Until our game is done.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This conversation about "what constitutes real in a TTRPG" is rather the crux of a lot of the splitting of priorities (and entrenched culture war battles that ensue) in these conversations here, elsewhere, and in actual meatspace.

Several years ago on here (or elsewhere...or perhaps both...I can't recall), there was conversation around what constitutes useful in DW's Spout Lore's 10+ result (interesting and useful result). It was at that point that I introduced the term "actionable" to the conversation. Its abundantly clear if you read and incorporate the fullness of the source material (both its parent in AW and the game itself) that the 10+ result of Spout Lore is meant for the players to be afforded an arrayed, shared imagined space which generates advantageous fiction and is the prerequisite for triggering subsequent moves which puts them (the players through their PCs) on a better (better here which is bounded by DW's novel interests; the premise of the game, the embedded protagonism within each playbook, and facility to move gamestate positively) footing to fulfill their goals. And again, this is not for the GM to decide or to thwart. The game tells you quite clearly to honor their victories. They earned "useful." It needs to be so. And they decide on that, not the GM. So if the GM is too coy, too opaque, too...whatever...a new form of "useful" (actionable) needs to enter the conversation via an utterance by the GM or an exchange between GM and player so that the players can act upon the introduction of this content into the shared imagined space.

So, with that said, it becomes very clear to me just how much I diverge as a GM from so many ENW GMs. Simply put:

When something enters the imagined space, it needs to be actionable by one participant, another participant, or all participants.

Given that, I don't think its any coincidence that my GMing history is overwhelmingly Gamism and Narrativism with only a brief (and begrudging) foray into Simulationism from 99 to 04 with an FR 3.x game. I don't put things into the imagined space for them to be benign. I don't want to spend table time on benign things. I want to know what your hat looks like or what color your coat is or your particular PC's affectation only and unless it is actionable by a participant in play. It needs to be an essential component of situation-framing, of game/situation-state changing, of fleshing out essential decision-space, or of rendering fallout/consequence (inventorying hardship/cost). There are rare occasions where I will ask players something about their affectation or their countenance or their dress. When I do, I hope they know (and they should if they've been players in any of my games for any amount of time) that I'm asking them this for game-related purposes. I want to know this so I can frame a situation or change a situation-state or flesh out their decision-space or inventory and then render consequence/fallout. That is the pretext for my question and they should understand and answer according. That sort of focused, integrated answer makes it actionable for me as a GM to say next what I'm going to say...which the next thing I'm going to say needs to be actionable to them.

That makes introduction of content into the shared imagined space "real" to me; the magnitude/scope of actionable.

The more people say stuff that isn't actionable, the more rudderless the back-and-forth is, the less "real" the play is to me and the more its just wasted time. Its like a boxing match where the fighters just passively probe and circle on the outside rather than "close the damn distance, get in the pocket, and exchange." An easy example is something like Info Gathering phase in Blades in the Dark. If I'm asking you questions, I'm asking you to point me in the direction of "True North" where "True North" is what the hell Score are we going to do tonight? Don't just wander. Don't aimlessly explore. Have a goal...and pursue it. And communicate it to me, and the rest of the table, clearly with the utterances coming from your mouth.

That is "real" to me in TTRPGing. For others, its clear that "real" is having a four hour session of conflict-free, mechanics-free, freeplay and no combat in D&D; just players chatting about the internal workings of their PCs, delivering affectation and color, and musing or passively exploring. We hear that all the time. That is a virtue championed and signaled to the rest of the TTRPG world pretty routinely. I get that is "real" to a certain, unknowable size cohort of TTRPG players. That couldn't be less "real" to me. What I want is for everyone at the table to always and ever say things that are actionable, that decisively changes the situation-state and gamestate of play. Do it again. Then again. Then again. Until our game is done.

Based on this description alone, this sounds very mechanistic and soulless to me. And perhaps it is not so in practice, and I get the desire of most of the playtime being about something consequential, but I think certain amount of "flavour elements" are required (at least for me) for the game to feel immersive. It's like how a movie is more than the script, it is the cinemaphotography, characterisation and delivery that makes it to come alive.

 

[Manbearcat]

Based on this description alone, this sounds very mechanistic and soulless to me. And perhaps it is not so in practice, and I get the desire of most of the playtime being about something consequential, but I think certain amount of "flavour elements" are required (at least for me) for the game to feel immersive. It's like how a movie is more than the script, it is the cinemaphotography, characterisation and delivery that makes it to come alive.

I have no doubt, at all, that you (and several others that I could name) would not like being a player in the games I typically GM, but I suspect you would have loved the 3.x Forgotten Realms game I GMed from 99 to 04 (which...I abhored it...it was in service to friendship).

I don't think you would have an issue with the color or texture of play. When I describe situations, the situations certainly aren't bereft of color, mood, tone, texture, and metaphor/motiff-as guide. There is plenty of that. But the structure and the goal-directedness (and I'm not just talking about the superstructure of the game engines themselves, I'm also talking about the back-and-forth of conversation) of each moment of play would almost surely generate a pace, attached aesthetic, and cognitive space that you would almost surely find unpalatable.

You would not like being a player in a game I GM. I think pointed, clear conversations around these things are a net good precisely because they reveal mismatches like this. That is healthy. Meanwhile, I think the opposite (the either willful or unknowing act of mystifying process and obliterating the stark lines of distinguishing characteristics of various games and various play and the priorities that underwrite the play) is deeply harmful...and not just on a singular level.

 

[Autumnal]

I very much like “actionable” as a criterion. For years I’ve been telling people that they should try judging character backstories that way, and writing setting history that way: each item should lead to choices and actions in play. How will the character act differently because of this? What opportunities and challenges will characters face because of this? If you can’t pull out an in-play consequence, set it aside [*] Or change it so that it can matter to a session. So I am obviously ready to make it a matter of even more emphasis.

[*]: I’m a big fan of not throwing writing away that doesn’t yet have the relevance and focus it should, if I like the idea. So I have files of stuff I’d like to come back to and overhaul. Revising can do wonders.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Based on this description alone, this sounds very mechanistic and soulless to me. And perhaps it is not so in practice, and I get the desire of most of the playtime being about something consequential, but I think certain amount of "flavour elements" are required (at least for me) for the game to feel immersive. It's like how a movie is more than the script, it is the cinemaphotography, characterisation and delivery that makes it to come alive.

Sure, but sometimes it helps to just talk about the script, right? Of course we can talk about the end product as a culmination of many things, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the components individually, too.

It’d be cool if when that happened, people recognized it instead of asking about the other components.

Like, there are things that a GM does at the table that are meaningful besides providing descriptive flavor. Processes and decisions made and the reasons for them. These seem to be less focused on in these discussions than perhaps they should be.

It’d be nice for these conversations to get to a point like this and maybe provoke a couple of questions rather than a negative declaration about how the result is “likely” to be.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Sure, but sometimes it helps to just talk about the script, right? Of course we can talk about the end product as a culmination of many things, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the components individually, too.

It’d be cool if when that happened, people recognized it instead of asking about the other components.

Like, there are things that a GM does at the table that are meaningful besides providing descriptive flavor. Processes and decisions made and the reasons for them. These seem to be less focused on in these discussions than perhaps they should be.

It’d be nice for these conversations to get to a point like this and maybe provoke a couple of questions rather than a negative declaration about how the result is “likely” to be.

Well, like I said in my post, I get @Manbearcat's desire to focus the gametime on consequential to certain degree, there was just too much "and nothing else matters" vibe for me to be comfortable with the approach.

But I have noticed in many of these discussions here, with many different people with very different approaches, that some people just seem to have way more single track-mind about what they want from their gaming than me. Like, I often think, "yeah, I a bit of that certainly is beneficial" and they're "this and only this, everything else is an useless distraction!" And I don't just mean story now folks, some old school simulationists and others are similarly way too dogmatic for me.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well, like I said in my post, I get @Manbearcat's desire to focus the gametime on consequential to certain degree, there was just too much "and nothing else matters" vibe for me to be comfortable with the approach.

But I have noticed in many of these discussions here, with many different people with very different approaches, that some people just seem to have way more single track-mind about what they want from their gaming than me. Like, I often think, "yeah, I a bit of that certainly is beneficial" and they're "this and only this, everything else is an useless distraction!" And I don't just mean story now folks, some old school simulationists and others are similarly way too dogmatic for me.

Okay. Way to double down on assertions rather than asking questions.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Okay. Way to double down on assertions rather than asking questions.

I am not quite sure regarding what I should ne asking questions, beyond perhaps "why do you like what you like and not what I like," which is unlikely to go anywhere.

And it was not so much assertions about others, than thinking about my own position. I often feel I am at the same time half agreeing and half disagreeing with a lot of people.