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

[zakael19]

Connections from character creation are great- it gives the players something to have fun with. "hey we're cousins! We can make up and reference family gatherings etc."
But as the GM ( or player actually) the valuable and memorable stuff is what happens during the game.

But I'm also the kind of GM that will not use a character origin/backstory if it's longer than a paragraph. I won't remember it, and because it didn't happen in the game I won't think to incorporate it since I'm very improv-heavy. It just won't make its mark on my brain like stuff that actually happens during a session would.

This is where the narrative game cooperative character/setting building comes in, yeah? Like you, the usual character backstory stuff bounces off my brain unless I make an effort to grab it. In Stonetop / Homebrew world / Daggerheart / etc, that conversational back and forth with set questions for the GM to ask means you’re having a multi sided discussion about the character. Now I’m invested in the character because we’ve all built them together, spurring each other on and figuring out where things fit.

Stonetop “cheats” because all of the playbooks also have areas where they define the setting, so the GM has all these deep actionable links to drill down on. In my session prep, I jot down a handful of questions for the different characters based on what they’re likely to run into in the fiction to sustain the process - and then in the moment improv and IC flows naturally from what came before.

I’ve started using some of the techniques for my 5e/4e games and the player response has been immense. My personal experience right now is when you prompt with open ended questions about player drives and actions, you get better IC results when the subsequent exploration / RP comes up because it’s in their head already. Also it turns out a lot of people really like have genuine direct influence over the shape of narrative?

Quick example of the above: in my trial 4e game the players are rallying parties in a vale to fight off encroaching mercenaries. The fiction has been established that one character is from a small tribe of shifters in the neighboring forest. I asked them to tell me what that tribe would require for people to prove themselves, about some characters that’ll stand in their way, and then the rest of the party some additional worldbuilding stuff around that.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I’ve started using some of the techniques for my 5e/4e games and the player response has been immense. My personal experience right now is when you prompt with open ended questions about player drives and actions, you get better IC results when the subsequent exploration / RP comes up because it’s in their head already. Also it turns out a lot of people really like have genuine direct influence over the shape of narrative?

I've done the same in my One Ring 2e game, with similar benefits. When I asked my buddy questions about the short background he wrote up for his character, it helped us both clarify what the game was about so we weren't stumbling around aimlessly looking for premise as we played. The game's still a work in progress, but we've gotten some good results so far.

 

[Distracted DM]

This is where the narrative game cooperative character/setting building comes in, yeah? Like you, the usual character backstory stuff bounces off my brain unless I make an effort to grab it. In Stonetop / Homebrew world / Daggerheart / etc, that conversational back and forth with set questions for the GM to ask means you’re having a multi sided discussion about the character. Now I’m invested in the character because we’ve all built them together, spurring each other on and figuring out where things fit.

Stonetop “cheats” because all of the playbooks also have areas where they define the setting, so the GM has all these deep actionable links to drill down on. In my session prep, I jot down a handful of questions for the different characters based on what they’re likely to run into in the fiction to sustain the process - and then in the moment improv and IC flows naturally from what came before.

I’ve started using some of the techniques for my 5e/4e games and the player response has been immense. My personal experience right now is when you prompt with open ended questions about player drives and actions, you get better IC results when the subsequent exploration / RP comes up because it’s in their head already. Also it turns out a lot of people really like have genuine direct influence over the shape of narrative?

Quick example of the above: in my trial 4e game the players are rallying parties in a vale to fight off encroaching mercenaries. The fiction has been established that one character is from a small tribe of shifters in the neighboring forest. I asked them to tell me what that tribe would require for people to prove themselves, about some characters that’ll stand in their way, and then the rest of the party some additional worldbuilding stuff around that.

I think I have Stonetop but haven't read through it yet- I was briefly considering a PbtA game for a West Marches game, there was Stonetop and another one that had a 1e but was soon coming out with a 2e. Can't recall the name. I was interested in Dungeon World years ago and ran a couple sessions of it, that's where the interest in Stonetop etc. came from.
I like it when there are rules/mechanics in place for narrative stuff like that- it helps me out.

 

[zakael19]

I think I have Stonetop but haven't read through it yet- I was briefly considering a PbtA game for a West Marches game, there was Stonetop and another one that had a 1e but was soon coming out with a 2e. Can't recall the name. I was interested in Dungeon World years ago and ran a couple sessions of it, that's where the interest in Stonetop etc. came from.
I like it when there are rules/mechanics in place for narrative stuff like that- it helps me out.

Homebrew World is the one-shot/short campaign focused fork of Dungeon World the author of stonetop made on his journey towards a full PBTA writeup. It's kinda a middle group - less deeply setting entwined, has the customary generic playbooks, but tweaked enough to be more PBTA and less D&D. I'd like to play around with it some myself.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And I want to be clear, I don't think presestablishing connections or relationships at sessiosn zero is bad thing at all. It is very good thing. I just don't think it can replace creating and fleshing out the connections during play. So I don't see them as being in competition, I see them complementing each other.

I don't think anyone suggested it was an either/or choice. In my recent play it just started with some initial OOC work and proceeded on that basis. When we played 5e OTOH it was all just "well you're all a party, have fun!" You can make something work but the starting place is so barren! In neither 5e campaign, which were both pretty long, did my character really ever establish how he even knew the other PCs, really. I think that's typical, and we get past all that on day 1 of Stonetop, who's very premise gives that impetus.

 

[Pedantic]

I don't think anyone suggested it was an either/or choice. In my recent play it just started with some initial OOC work and proceeded on that basis. When we played 5e OTOH it was all just "well you're all a party, have fun!" You can make something work but the starting place is so barren! In neither 5e campaign, which were both pretty long, did my character really ever establish how he even knew the other PCs, really. I think that's typical, and we get past all that on day 1 of Stonetop, who's very premise gives that impetus.

Again, I think the real difference is time. I mean, no one is going to argue that setting up connections and tensions between PCs and the setting, (through any mechanism) isn't interesting. The distance between character beats being measured in "sessions of play," instead of "acts of resolution" is where I think the dividing line comes in.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't think anyone suggested it was an either/or choice.

Well, there were certain comments that deemed the sort of flavour RP that I think is good for establishing and deepening relationships as waste of time.

In my recent play it just started with some initial OOC work and proceeded on that basis. When we played 5e OTOH it was all just "well you're all a party, have fun!" You can make something work but the starting place is so barren! In neither 5e campaign, which were both pretty long, did my character really ever establish how he even knew the other PCs, really. I think that's typical, and we get past all that on day 1 of Stonetop, who's very premise gives that impetus.

What you mean it wasn't established? Like if they didn't know each other before the events of the game, presumably they met each other at some point during the game, so that' show they came to know each other...

 

[zakael19]

Well, there were certain comments that deemed the sort of flavour RP that I think is good for establishing and deepening relationships as waste of time.


What you mean it wasn't established? Like if they didn't know each other before the events of the game, presumably they met each other at some point during the game, so that' show they came to know each other...

Yes, some of us find "IC talking for the sake of talking" deeply tiresome, but that's a personal opinion. I have personally never encountered IC back and forth with little momentum that improved the game state, and is in fact the thing I run into most likely to result in players not involved pulling out their phones / zoning out.

For the latter, if you're not being deliberately obtuse about how many D&D style games roll out, you do the "your characters are together in a tavern, maybe we do a quick backstory intro, and the social contract for play is that you're agreeing to go. Now here's a DM fed quest, we're off!" Do some groups maybe spend more session 0 time co-building characters and stuff? Yeah for sure, but the system isn't helping.

The last 2 games I played in, the first was a very stereotypical "you all answered a notice for work, meeting in a tavern, here's the quest." The second was the first 3 met on a caravan heading to the town (Dungeons of Drakkehiem), and the two of us who came in for session 2 just folded in with a brief "you see each other across the room at the tavern, now kith." Note that for the latter especially, that had lots of ramifications on party cohesion (or lack thereof) - because there was no compatibility of drive or character priority.

For the last 5e game I started, I had 4/5 players figure out a reason why they were already known to each other; then figure out a reason why all 5 where at the present place and wanting to meeting the same person. That was at least stronger - but that was all on me the DM to figure out, and is still pretty barebones.

(note that 2 of the characters linked up "because I was almost dead and he saved me" and they've been referencing that level of trust ever since, despite never RPing it out...)

 

[Wolfpack48]

For the latter, if you're not being deliberately obtuse about how many D&D style games roll out, you do the "your characters are together in a tavern, maybe we do a quick backstory intro, and the social contract for play is that you're agreeing to go. Now here's a DM fed quest, we're off!" Do some groups maybe spend more session 0 time co-building characters and stuff? Yeah for sure, but the system isn't helping.

The last 2 games I played in, the first was a very stereotypical "you all answered a notice for work, meeting in a tavern, here's the quest." The second was the first 3 met on a caravan heading to the town (Dungeons of Drakkehiem), and the two of us who came in for session 2 just folded in with a brief "you see each other across the room at the tavern, now kith." Note that for the latter especially, that had lots of ramifications on party cohesion (or lack thereof) - because there was no compatibility of drive or character priority.

For the last 5e game I started, I had 4/5 players figure out a reason why they were already known to each other; then figure out a reason why all 5 where at the present place and wanting to meeting the same person. That was at least stronger - but that was all on me the DM to figure out, and is still pretty barebones.

(note that 2 of the characters linked up "because I was almost dead and he saved me" and they've been referencing that level of trust ever since, despite never RPing it out...)

There have been long threads just talking about better ways for characters to meet than 'at the tavern' or 'everyone answered the same ad.' Some first adventures are designed very specifically for pulling the party together for the first time and forming bonds. I'm not especially crazy about 'everyone is from the same village' either. Here's one I started not too long ago:

Name some of your best Party Origin methods

We all know the trope of "everyone meets at the inn" for Day 0 party formation, but have you seen better ways of playing this out? Or do you just write a backstory for the way everyone met? I like to actually play out how the party meets because it lets the group form bonds on their own and...

www.enworld.org

and...

D&D 5E - Let's Have A Thread of Veteran GM Advice

I may have even asked this here on ENW before - how do you onboard a new rules set into your brain so that the experience for the players is pretty ok? (not perfect, but pretty ok) Believe it or not, I build a player character, as if I were going to play in the campaign (I don't actually run it...

www.enworld.org

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well, there were certain comments that deemed the sort of flavour RP that I think is good for establishing and deepening relationships as waste of time.

I think that this kind of thing… back and forth discussion in character… can certainly lend some perspective on character relationships and history. I don’t think that goal is necessarily a waste of time. But there are some things that need to be considered.

What’s the banter accomplishing? Is it establishing new information? Or merely reinforcing things we already know? How many players does it involve? How much does this matter to the non-involved players? What else may be going on in the game that is demanding our attention?

All these things matter quite a bit, I think.

If something new is being established, then I’m more inclined to give such a scene more time. If not, thenI think it’s a case of short and to the point being best.

The more players involved, the better. Again, if it’s some new dynamic, then I think even the non-involved players are likely interested, but generally, the fewer players observing a scene rather than taking part in it, the better. The more players not involved, the quicker I prefer these scenes to move.

Also important is… what’s next? What are we putting off to expand this scene? Is it something urgent (meaning urgent to the players and the pace of the game more than to the characters)? Does pausing to give a scene like this more time disrupt the momentum of the game? Pacing is a part of GMing and knowing when to keep the pace brisk is important. Likewise, knowing when to take a more leisurely pace is key. Sometimes it makes absolute sense to do that.

Finally, what else may be going on at the same time? Can this PC to PC interaction take place while the characters are engaging in some kind of downtime action? Maybe replenishing gear or something similar. Maybe incorporate important or relevant NPCs into the scene and see what else may happen as a reault.

I don’t think there’s one right or wrong answer to any such situation. I think being a good GM means that you can consider all these factors and then push towards what you think is good for the game.