What is a "Narrative Mechanic"?

[Celebrim]

In your own words, not using jargon or other bespoke terminology. What, to you, qualifies as a "narrative mechanic"?

This is going to be hard because I don't know what counts as jargon.

A "narrative mechanic" is when the rules for adjudicating a situation in the game depend on the narrative rather than things internal and intrinsic to the imagined situation.

That's a bit hard to wrap your head around so let me break it down and I think I'm going to need a word that might strike some as jargon and that is "metagame".

So you have three levels of participation in the act of play - the imagined scenario, the game rules themselves, and then the way you approach the game or "the metagame". The metagame is what the players are thinking about achieving by playing the game. In a competitive game this might be their strategy for the game. In a cooperative social game like a typical RPG this could be a number of things but is often, at least in part, creating an exciting story.

I'm also going to eventually need to talk about the proposition and adjudication cycle in a formal way, so let's just define that now. RPGs have rules to deal with situations where the a participant in the game proposes to do something but the outcome of that proposition is uncertain. For example, in a typical game of make believe you might have a player propose, "Bang, I shot you!" and then another player propose, "No you didn't; you missed!". In order to keep the game going, we have to have some mechanism to adjudicate between these contrasting propositions. That method could be a lot of things, the range of which aren't particularly important to know now, but for example we could play rock-paper-scissors.

A "narrative mechanic" is a game rule that essentially says, "If the action would result in creating a better story, then it should be more likely to work." So far as I know, the first example of a "narrative mechanic" was in the game of Toon, which had a rule that said simply, "If it is funny, it happens." That is to say, the rules themselves said, "If the resolution of a proposition would result in achieving the goal of the game - humor - then that proposition just succeeds." The metagame here is directly impacting the game. Players want to laugh, and therefore all other rules should get out of the way for that goal.

It's not a particularly nuanced narrative mechanic, but it is one. I point this out mainly because I don't want the lack of nuance to be the distinguishing feature here. A more nuanced version of the above would be "If what the player proposed is funny, then they gain some advantage in adjudicating the proposition that makes it more likely to succeed."

All narrative mechanics are some version of that, just with differing degrees of subtlety. In a traditional RPG, the hero triumphs over the bad guy because he's strong, powerful, and has a cunning plan. If none of those things are true, well then the hero probably doesn't triumph. But in a narative RPG, the hero triumphs over the bad guy because he's the hero. Or conversely, maybe the game isn't rigged to tell that sort of story, so maybe the hero tragically fails because everything is meaningless and then you die. Or maybe love triumphs over all. When you have narrative mechanics, the game rules themselves are rigged in favor of these story elements. The game rules are themselves aware of what the game is supposed to be about and no intrinsic explanation is really needed. If the game is about "love triumphs over all", either because the designer said so or because a participant declared so when defining what the game is about, well then, "Because my love is threatened..." gives you advantage in the proposition.

That's what a "narrative mechanic" is.

 

[pemerton]

Rather than start a new thread, I will ask here as a tool to potentially differentiate and solidify:

How would you define a "gamist" mechanic?

How would you define a "simulation" mechanic?

There are no such mechanics. Goals of (or, if one prefers, approaches to) RPGing are not characterised by mechanics. They're characterised by the principles and expectations that shape the "moves" the participants make - for the GM, roughly, how they frame scenes and establish consequences, which includes but is not limited to the role of prep in this respect; and for players, how they declare actions for their PCs.

 

[Aldarc]

Rather than start a new thread, I will ask here as a tool to potentially differentiate and solidify:

How would you define a "gamist" mechanic?

How would you define a "simulation" mechanic?

I'm not sure if I would as I feel, much as with the case of "narrative mechanic," that doing so gives too much credence to any of these labels as meaningful or insightful labels with respect to (1) game theory and (2) game mechanics. IME, these labels tend to attract a lot of unnecessary factionalism as people start identifying with these play agendas as if they were members of feuding tribes at war.

 

[Reynard]

There are no such mechanics. Goals of (or, if one prefers, approaches to) RPGing are not characterised by mechanics. They're characterised by the principles and expectations that shape the "moves" the participants make - for the GM, roughly, how they frame scenes and establish consequences, which includes but is not limited to the role of prep in this respect; and for players, how they declare actions for their PCs.

I'm not sure if I would as I feel, much as with the case of "narrative mechanic," that doing so gives too much credence to any of these labels as meaningful or insightful labels with respect to (1) game theory and (2) game mechanics. IME, these labels tend to attract a lot of unnecessary factionalism as people start identifying with these play agendas as if they were members of feuding tribes at war.

I have been thinking about that post and I don't like it. I don't really want a GNS discussion. I was just struggling with language.

I guess my main problem is that I feel like narrative mechanics are rare, but some definitions in this thread suggest almost all mechanics are narrative to some degree in the context of an RPG. And that may be true, or true enough, but it's causing me some dissonance anyway.

 

[Committed Hero]

I infer that "narrative" means the players - as opposed to the GM - are adding detail to the game that falls largely their character's control.

And "mechanic" implies that the scope of these additions are limited or defined by the rules of the system.

 

[Umbran]

Popularity means nothing.

Popularity explains the design choice. It doesn't tell us if it is good or bad (because in an objective sense it is neither) but it gives us a rational reason for that choice to have been made.

If one is unhappy with the design, and complains about the design, then that gives context for that unhappiness. That is not "nothing".

 

[Celebrim]

ETA: I have been thinking about this since I posted it and I don't like it. I don't actually want this to be a GNS discussion but I am struggling with the right language. I'll leave this here for posterity but on reflection I am not happy with myself for turning the discussion in this direction.

Rather than start a new thread, I will ask here as a tool to potentially differentiate and solidify:

How would you define a "gamist" mechanic?

How would you define a "simulation" mechanic?

I've been glancing through the thread and I see a lot of people who have a vague sense of what a narrative mechanic is but not a concrete enough understanding of what such a mechanic is to explain it clearly. So they can often correctly identify a narrative mechanic, but not clearly explain why it is a narrative mechanic.

I also don't want to overly get into a GNS framework, though in my description above you can kind of see where I think the GNS framework actually came from and maybe also where I think it went wrong. I can define the other two categories (and in a little I will) but differing from the conclusions of GNS, I can imagine mechanics that are in intention none of those three things or in effect more than one of them. For example, in a "Wheel of Time" RPG, because the author put into the game universe an explanation for characters having plot armor then there would be in a well-constructed RPG of that setting a mechanic which was both narrativist and simulationist in its intention because there really existing in the setting something tangible and detectable that acted to ensure narrative conventions were adhered to such that the universe produced structured stories (and indeed, it is implied, variations on the same story over and over again).

A gamist mechanic is one that exists only for the sake of the game rules, to make them a better game, such as keeping the rules simple to the sake of ease and speed of play, or for maintaining balance between character concepts that might not be otherwise justifiable from the narrative or situation, or because it was simply just a good mechanic that created interesting choices in play for the player. Gamist mechanics are typically not interested in whether they are simulating something, or whether they are good for a story, but focus on just making the game rules themselves good, usually with a focus on aesthetics like challenge and competition and a certain extent fantasy (is it "cool"?).

A simulationist mechanic is one that takes the imagined situation as primary and attempts to define the other two layers on the basis of "What could be expected to happen here?" So it will take the more complex and finicky implementation of a rule over a simple one if the complex one produces a range of results that seem more believable to the designer/participant than the simple rule produces, at the expense of for example speed of play. It will tend to want to see narrative as emergent rather than defined by the mechanics - the winner of the battle is the one with the advantage in the battle, not the one with right on their side, or the scrappy underdog that the storyteller might prefer to win for narrative reasons. Luck will be simulated with real luck in the fortune, and not by using luck as an excuse for achieving a goal of play. If hero gets lucky, it's because the player got lucky with the dice, not because the luck is needed for the hero to save the day. Death is a strongly simulationist mechanic, especially when it depends on luck and not intention of the participant ("Do you accept death at this time?"), as it is neither good for the game nor generally good for the narrative.

Good games are in my experience a blend of these three goals and not purist for any one of them. That's because most participants in an RPG are engaging with multiple aesthetics of play and have some sort of preferred blend, and even where you have a participant with relatively pure and simple aesthetics of play, it's rare for the whole table to share the same aesthetic. Blended games with concessions to multiple areas therefore allow the game to be shared more equally by all the participants, with each getting something out of it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think the problem with "narrative mechanics" is that they seem to be being used as a snarl-word by people saying "I don't want this to happen" independently of what happens in actual games. And the people insisting that certain things are "narrative mechanics" are people who hate those games, don't want to play those games, and struggle to come up with any actual games that in actual play work the way they are saying that narrative mechanics work. Or games that have been actually popular in the past decade. (The two games I recall that use meta-currency in the indicated way for a "narrative mechanic" rather than tying them through means such as aspects to the game world) are Cinematic Unisystem and Cortex Classic, both about twenty years old at this point and, so far as I can tell, barely played.

Meanwhile the examples being given aren't so much narrative mechanics as "don't want to deal with that nonsense" mechanics. If you want a mechanic that is good for narrative it's either something that provides strong motivation (such as XP for GP - ironically also the textbook example of a gamist mechanic) or something that makes irrevocable and persistent changes that need to be continued with (such as Apocalypse World's "When life becomes untenable pick one of four options (each may be picked once only)" where one of those options is "change your playbook to another one").

And let's not go full GNS and bring Simulation into this. Simulationism was Ron Edwards talking about things he didn't like, didn't see the appeal of, and wouldn't deep dive. GNS is a manifesto for more and better narrative games - and we're so far beyond where we were when he was writing quarter of a century ago that it's ridiculous. Simulationism was never right and "narrative" games have gone way beyond anything we could have forseen when he was writing those essays as a reaction to Vampire: the Masquerade and the rest of the oWoD not delivering what they promised.

 

[payn]

I think the problem with "narrative mechanics" is that they seem to be being used as a snarl-word by people saying "I don't want this to happen" independently of what happens in actual games. And the people insisting that certain things are "narrative mechanics" are people who hate those games, don't want to play those games, and struggle to come up with any actual games that in actual play work the way they are saying that narrative mechanics work. Or games that have been actually popular in the past decade. (The two games I recall that use meta-currency in the indicated way for a "narrative mechanic" rather than tying them through means such as aspects to the game world) are Cinematic Unisystem and Cortex Classic, both about twenty years old at this point and, so far as I can tell, barely played.

Meanwhile the examples being given aren't so much narrative mechanics as "don't want to deal with that nonsense" mechanics. If you want a mechanic that is good for narrative it's either something that provides strong motivation (such as XP for GP - ironically also the textbook example of a gamist mechanic) or something that makes irrevocable and persistent changes that need to be continued with (such as Apocalypse World's "When life becomes untenable pick one of four options (each may be picked once only)" where one of those options is "change your playbook to another one").

And let's not go full GNS and bring Simulation into this. Simulationism was Ron Edwards talking about things he didn't like, didn't see the appeal of, and wouldn't deep dive. GNS is a manifesto for more and better narrative games - and we're so far beyond where we were when he was writing quarter of a century ago that it's ridiculous. Simulationism was never right and "narrative" games have gone way beyond anything we could have forseen when he was writing those essays as a reaction to Vampire: the Masquerade and the rest of the oWoD not delivering what they promised.

Well, I certainly am not one of the "dont want" folks. I think there is a distinction and its a concept I like to discuss in game design. I like many of these games and dont place any value judgement on the inclusion/exclusion of narrative mechanics. I understand some folks do not like these things, but im not understanding the idea that the invention of the concept was to disparage games that include them.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Well, I certainly am not one of the "dont want" folks. I think there is a distinction and its a concept I like to discuss in game design. I like many of these games and dont place any value judgement on the inclusion/exclusion of narrative mechanics. I understand some folks do not like these things, but im not understanding the idea that the invention of the concept was to disparage games that include them.

It wasn't narrative mechanics that were named to appease those who disliked them. It's storygames. But ignoring that the key distinction I'm making is between mechanics that are actively picked because they enhance the narrative (of which I've listed a couple of famous ones) and mechanics derided as "narrative mechanics" that are in practice pretty rare and are generally there to prevent things getting in the way.