What is a "Narrative Mechanic"?

[TwoSix]

So? They are still the assumed model for how all RPGs are categorized, and Edwards' creation of the Forge and his Fire & Brimstone rhetoric vilified an entire gaming style to the point where very few simulationist games have been developed in the last 20 years. That lack can be directly traced back to anti-simulation, pro-narrativist propaganda from Edwards and the Forge.

I think we're coming from different perspectives, considering the most popular TTRPG in the world by far (5e) is still strongly simulationist. And a ton of intellectual energy for new games is presently within the OSR/NSR communities, which are (very broadly) focused on emergent story from setting, not developed, PC focused story.

 

[TwoSix]

Pathfinder is a physics sim - and the entire OSR is post Edwards. And the reason they are less and less popular is computers do it better.

Agreed. One reason for the relative decline of simulationist TTRPGs is simply how good CRPGs are. The two biggest games of this year are Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur's Gate 3, both of which are popular precisely because they're simulationist sandboxes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

... are you kidding me? There have been lots of both genre and physics sims (two very different categories) and only one small corner of the internet cares about Edwards.

Pathfinder is a physics sim - and the entire OSR is post Edwards. And the reason they are less and less popular is computers do it better.

Pathfinder is gamist (because it cares a lot about challenge) and narrativist (because it cares a lot about telling a story). It does not do this the same way as, say, Apocalypse World, but the mountain of APs tell you that the game prioritizes story. I love the OSR, but its priorities focus on challenging players in a way consistent with old school sensibilities. Either game has some mechanics that can model a fantasy world, and the way OSR games do this is of course preferred personally, but doing so is not their mechanical priority. Games where that is the priority are vanishingly rare.

 

[TwoSix]

Pathfinder is gamist (because it cares a lot about challenge) and narrativist (because it cares a lot about telling a story). It does not do this the same way as, say, Apocalypse World, but the mountain of APs tell you that the game prioritizes story. I love the OSR, but its priorities focus on challenging players in a way consistent with old school sensibilities. Either game has some mechanics that can model a fantasy world, and the way OSR games do this is of course preferred personally, but doing so is not their mechanical priority. Games where that is the priority are vanishingly rare.

But....APs are fundamentally simulationist! (And a little gamist, too.) The focus of APs (certainly the Paizo APs) are on setting building and setting and challenge exploration, with little to no focus on PC needs.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But....APs are fundamentally simulationist! (And a little gamist, too.) The focus of APs (certainly the Paizo APs) are on setting building and setting and challenge exploration, with little to no focus on PC needs.

The focus of APs is telling a story. Setting building and challenge exploration are secondary to presenting that story.

 

[DammitVictor]

I'd argue that a narrative mechanic is any procedure within a game that bases the resolution-- of a conflict or a question-- on factors that are not intrinsic to actors/objects within the game world itself.

A Paladin who does more damage when smiting creatures who are more offensive to their moral code is still diegetic. A Rogue who is more likely to find hidden treasures because they are hungry for gold is diegetic, but a Rogue who finds X% more treasure or +Y items in a given hoard because they are hungry for gold is narrative. A character who has more willpower to burn because they have recently sated their vices is diegetic; a character who has more plot points because bad things keep happening to them is narrative.

The line's blurrier than our discourse accounts for. In my experience, it's difficult to add motivational forces to most tradtional "simulation" roleplaying games, but it is trivially easy to run a more "narrative" game as a strict simulation with a simple and practically self-enforcing table agreement to only use the game's narrative mechanics to simulate more ephemeral (but still diegetic) factors.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Pathfinder is gamist (because it cares a lot about challenge) and narrativist (because it cares a lot about telling a story). It does not do this the same way as, say, Apocalypse World, but the mountain of APs tell you that the game prioritizes story. I love the OSR, but its priorities focus on challenging players in a way consistent with old school sensibilities. Either game has some mechanics that can model a fantasy world, and the way OSR games do this is of course preferred personally, but doing so is not their mechanical priority. Games where that is the priority are vanishingly rare.

Remember V:tM is explicitly classed as Sim by Edwards - and those players cared about story (and there was yards of metaplot produced for that game). Although the players want stories from Pathfinder the system itself is S with vestiges of G. And Edwards was talking to the near absence of good N games; I don't think there's anything in Pathfinder that would have been that out of place in the 90s.

 

[TwoSix]

The focus of APs is telling a story. Setting building and challenge exploration are secondary to presenting that story.

And telling a story is not the purpose of narrativism. Centering the game around the dramatic needs of the PCs is.

If you haven't picked this up after literal years of discussing these topics on these forums, many of which you've been centrally involved in, I'm not sure what to tell you.

But if you think an AP is actually narrativist....

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Remember V:tM is explicitly classed as Sim by Edwards - and those players cared about story (and there was yards of metaplot produced for that game). Although the players want stories from Pathfinder the system itself is S with vestiges of G. And Edwards was talking to the near absence of good N games; I don't think there's anything in Pathfinder that would have been that out of place in the 90s.

Right. But this confusion is because Edwards’ definition of simulation is bonkers and lumps conflicting priorities in the same category.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'd argue that a narrative mechanic is any procedure within a game that bases the resolution-- of a conflict or a question-- on factors that are not intrinsic to actors/objects within the game world itself.

A Paladin who does more damage when smiting creatures who are more offensive to their moral code is still diegetic. A Rogue who is more likely to find hidden treasures because they are hungry for gold is diegetic, but a Rogue who finds X% more treasure or +Y items in a given hoard because they are hungry for gold is narrative. A character who has more willpower to burn because they have recently sated their vices is diegetic; a character who has more plot points because bad things keep happening to them is narrative.

The line's blurrier than our discourse accounts for. In my experience, it's difficult to add motivational forces to most tradtional "simulation" roleplaying games, but it is trivially easy to run a more "narrative" game as a strict simulation with a simple and practically self-enforcing table agreement to only use the game's narrative mechanics to simulate more ephemeral (but still diegetic) factors.

Honestly, the more I read about people trying to define Narrative in the way indicated by the OP (that is no more present in Apocalypse World than e.g. GURPS) the more I think that what's being talked about here are "Fudge Mechanics" (no relation to the game) - that is mechanics written to get from any A to any B with the designers not quite sure how to do it unambiguously so leaving it in the hands of player-facing metacurrency. (This is also a category I'd put hit points in).

Narrative games, especially ones written before 2012 just used fudge mechanics a lot more because writing games to lead to stories without pre-authoring the stories themselves is not an easy challenge.