What is a "Narrative Mechanic"?

[pemerton]

It affects the Rogue, though, and their ability to find the wealth that exists. The Rogue's hunger for gold should not make more wealth exist in the world to be found-- though what a wonderful world this would be, if wealthy billionaires actually worked that way!

Upthread you said 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."

Hunger for gold is a factor inherent to the rogue.

Now you seem to be adding some additional constraint - eg that the resolution only have regard to elements of the fiction that, in the fiction, matter causally to how the attempted thing would unfold. That is a much stronger constraint than the one I responded to!

 

[FrogReaver]

I fear you may be generalising quite a bit from one example!

Nah. You’ve spent a lot of time talking about the same type of mechanics in other games.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's not an assertion about what games contain. It's a conception of the point (or goal, or agenda) of play, as manifested over a session or so.

And I am very confident from experience that the distinction is not absurd. I mean, it dominates nearly every discussion about player vs GM roles, about worldbuilding, about alignments, about the role of gods and religion in FRPGing, about NPCs and social encounters, on these forums!

It just conflates unrelated things. People will hold differing views on the things you mentioned and they don’t consistently fall into a clear category for all of them.

 

[Reynard]

It affects the Rogue, though, and their ability to find the wealth that exists. The Rogue's hunger for gold should not make more wealth exist in the world to be found-- though what a wonderful world this would be, if wealthy billionaires actually worked that way!

Well, I mean, in our world the desire for wealth does actually create new wealth, for good or ill.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Blades in the Dark

What mechanics in Blades in the Dark would you categorize as non-diegetic?

 

[Umbran]

IMO. What you are calling adiegetic mechanics are what a good chunk of people here call narrative mechanics. I think your word choice is more descriptive and better. The reason adoiegetic mechanics are getting referred to as 'narrative' mechanics is because 'narrative games' often have orders of magnitude more adiegetic mechanics than D&D. So without having the 'adiegetic' as jargon, the best spur of the moment reference to that concept that gets mustered is 'narrative' mechanics - due to how much more often they appear in narrative games.

I can see a chunk of that, yes. Also, trying to listen to what's said, for many people the dislike is for adiegetic mechanics in general, no matter what the function of the mechanic may be.

And that's fine. I'm okay with folks who prefer all action to be driven by diegetic mechanics. But some of us are at the moment more interested in the function or result of the mechanic, rather than its form.

It is almost like some are discussing the handle on the tool, while others of us are trying to discuss whether the tool drives nails or cuts wood.

An interesting note of this as jargon - I am borrowing the word from its use in movies and media analysis - a "diegetic" sound effect is one the characters can hear. A gunshot, for example, is typically a diegetic sound. This as compared to say, the movie music soundtrack, which the characters cannot typically hear. And you can then talk about things that are usually one, but become the other, and the differing impact of that - like when the music behind a big romantic moment is playing on a jukebox in the story, as opposed to it being soundtrack for the audience.

 

[FrogReaver]

What mechanics in Blades in the Dark would you categorize as non-diegetic?

Inventory system
Flashbacks

Any ability that lets a player spend stress to use an ability. (Player facing Resource pools nearly always are non diegetic). *magic can be a notable exception as it can work in fiction exactly how the mechanics say.

Any ability where the player gets to define success - Basic play loop in Blades constantly does this. Characters in the fiction don’t get to define what success looks like. (Intent based mechanics tend to lean toward non diegetic - because fictional intent doesn’t impact what happens in the fiction).

 

[Micah Sweet]

OK. Why don't you post about it? Or similar RPGs. (Of which no edition of D&D is one!)

Not familiar enough with RM or RQ to speak with any authority on them. From what I've heard, and from my ancient memories of reading MERP, I would like it. Also, my preferred OSR, ACKS, generates too much controversy on this board for reasons having nothing to do with the game (the part that matters to me) for me to dare start a thread about it. Instead I just slip it in when I think its way of doing things is relevant to the discussion at hand.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They are both Arthurian RPGs. You can read a review of Prince Valiant here: I think it is spot-on.

EDIT: I also have a lot of actual play posts. You can find them by searching for "Prince Valiant" in the title with "pemerton" as the poster.

I've seen them, but I usually prefer a general impression and/or review than the voluminous and very specific actual play reports you favor.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have to admit, I never liked it, even back in the day, even when I was unaware of any alternative...
...I just get character ideas...

Or, hopes that they will, ayway...

I get character ideas too. If the dice and the system let me play them, I do. Otherwise I put it on the shelf and play a different idea, or come up with something on the spot based on what I'm given by the RNG. Plenty of characters in the sea.