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

Celebrim

Legend
So far, everyone's answer feels wrong to me. (Sorry.)

The problem with the term "narrative" is that in this context it has both an ordinary definition such as @MacDhomnuill and @soviet provide and it is also a term of art with a more specific technical meaning. People encounter the term in different contexts, and they try to understand what is meant by it, and they apply either inference or their commonsense understanding, and we end up with dozens of different competing definitions one of which @DEFCON 1 provides which represents a common feature of Nar games but is not their defining feature in my opinion.

To me the big take away for this is that if you are going to invent a new term of art don't do it in the same language that you are speaking. Borrow a term from Greek or Latin or make use of German's word agglutination to come up with a unique term lacking an obvious meaning to the reader. Don't just repurpose a well-known English word because you'll only create confusion.

Anyway, to me the defining feature of a narrative system is that resolution of a scene depends on the scenes context in the meta-fiction and not on the scenes context in the fiction. By this I mean how the scene plays out depends on where it is in the story and the story factors that go into it. In traditional play, you call out in fiction factors like, "We're flanking the target.", "I have a spear +1", "I'm on the high ground." or "I have proficiency with thieves' tools." in order to decide what happens next. All these are things the characters in the fiction observe. In a narrative game you call out features of the story that the players observe in order to decide what happens next. "Is this the first act?", "Is this the final act?", "My character is secretly in love with the victim!", "My character believes truth will always come out in the end!", "In the second act, the villain told us that we couldn't win because he had the high ground, but now we have the ground!". The goal is to have the resolution of the scene depend not on what is logical to happen in the scene, but what would be best for the story.

The definitive nar mechanic and one of the first ones in gaming comes from the game Toon, which had as a rule, "If it is funny, then it works." That's adjudicating the outcome of a scene based on an external story factor and not on the basis of the fictional positioning internal to the fiction.
 
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soviet

Hero
So far, everyone's answer feels wrong to me. (Sorry.)

The problem with the term "narrative" is that in this context it has both an ordinary definition such as @MacDhomnuill and @soviet provide and it is also a term of art with a more specific technical meaning. People encounter the term in different contexts, and they try to understand what is meant by it, and they apply either inference or their commonsense understanding, and we end up with dozens of different competing definitions one of which @DEFCON 1 provides which represents a common feature of Nar games but is not their defining feature in my opinion.

To me the big take away for this is that if you are going to invent a new term of art don't do it in the same language that you are speaking it. Borrow a term from Greek or Latin or make use of German's word agglutination to come up with a unique term lacking an obvious meaning to the reader. Don't just repurpose a well-known English word because you'll only create confusion.

Anyway, to me the defining feature of a narrative system is that resolution of a scene depends on the scenes context in the meta-fiction and not on the scenes context in the fiction. By this I mean how the scene plays out depends on where it is in the story and the story factors that go into it. In traditional play, you call out in fiction factors like, "We're flanking the target.", "I have a spear +1", "I'm on the high ground." or "I have proficiency with thieves' tools." in order to decide what happens next. All these are things the characters in the fiction observe. In a narrative game you call out features of the story that the players observe in order to decide what happens next. "Is this the first act?", "Is this the final act?", "My character is secretly in love with the victim!", "My character believes truth will always come out in the end!", "In the second act, the villain told us that we couldn't win because he had the high ground, but now we have the ground!". The goal is to have the resolution of the scene depend not on what is logical to happen in the scene, but what would be best for the story.

The definitive nar mechanic and one of the first ones in gaming comes from the game Toon, which had as a rule, "If it is funny, then it works." That's adjudicating the outcome of a scene based on an external story factor and not on the basis of the fictional positioning internal to the fiction.
But I think this is the issue with it. It allows people to tilt at this vague writer's room non-RPG without ever defining which games fall into it. It's a way of dismissing various types of games without engaging with how they really work in the specific.
 

thefutilist

Adventurer
The goal is to have the resolution of the scene depend not on what is logical to happen in the scene, but what would be best for the story.
This phrase used to really annoy me, as if stories aren't logical. Then I spoke to a lot of role-players and they all seem to hate stories, endlessly pick them apart and proclaim they're filled with things called plot holes. So maybe there's something to it...
 

For me the simplest way to designate something as a "narrative" game is to just check whether the game has a separate mechanical suite for combat, or if it uses the same exact mechanics for combat as it does everything else. D&D has its own suite of mechanics for combat, so it isn't. Champions has its own suite of mechanics for combat, so it isn't. FATE's mechanics are a single suite that can be used for arguments or obstacle courses or fist fights, so it is. And many other games have mechanics that don't presume combat is going to occur at all, so they are as well.
That's an interesting approach, but I'm not so sure if that is accurate. A system like Fate or Lancer are highly tactical in combat, but they also have extremely "narrative" systems for use outside of combat.
 

overgeeked

B/X Known World
This phrase used to really annoy me, as if stories aren't logical. Then I spoke to a lot of role-players and they all seem to hate stories, endlessly pick them apart and proclaim they're filled with things called plot holes. So maybe there's something to it...
Pretty much, yeah.

There's a similar sentiment in video games. "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." —Soren Johnson. I think a corollary of that would be, "Given the opportunity, gamers will optimize the drama out of a story."
 

MacDhomnuill

Explorer
For me the simplest way to designate something as a "narrative" game is to just check whether the game has a separate mechanical suite for combat, or if it uses the same exact mechanics for combat as it does everything else. D&D has its own suite of mechanics for combat, so it isn't. Champions has its own suite of mechanics for combat, so it isn't. FATE's mechanics are a single suite that can be used for arguments or obstacle courses or fist fights, so it is. And many other games have mechanics that don't presume combat is going to occur at all, so they are as well.
This is a pretty good way to identify the designers intent on play style, and as a bonus this definition would mean that Risus was the first Narative game to have been published (to my knowledge anyway). I do find it strange that "narrative" focused games are more or less defined by having very abstracted universal system mechanics.
 

overgeeked

B/X Known World
This is a pretty good way to identify the designers intent on play style, and as a bonus this definition would mean that Risus was the first Narative game to have been published (to my knowledge anyway). I do find it strange that "narrative" focused games are more or less defined by having very abstracted universal system mechanics.
To me, that's because if the goal is to produce a narrative during play, the game mechanics should allow us to play, effectively, in real time. That is, you should be able to get through a two-hour movie's worth of game in about two hours. Of course, a bit of extra time is allowed for food, bio breaks, a bit of table talk, decision making, etc. But if it takes you four six, ten hours or more because of things like detailed conflict resolution mechanics or combat mechanics, the game utterly fails as a narrative game. If the line "30 minutes of fun packed into four hours" can be applied to the game, it's clearly not a narrative game.
 

MacDhomnuill

Explorer
But I think this is the issue with it. It allows people to tilt at this vague writer's room non-RPG without ever defining which games fall into it. It's a way of dismissing various types of games without engaging with how they really work in the specific.
To be honest I think calling "narrative" games writer room games is a more accurate and less loaded nomenclature. I really don't like it when people, companies and groups try to change language in very unorganic ways to fit their desired meaning or in this case marketing. Narrative was originally used as a marketing term by the forge bros to describe how much better their games were than "traditional" or "trad" games. Trad was the negative term, Narrative was the positive. That seems to have switched as more people use narrative game as a way to describe something they are not interested in playing.
 

soviet

Hero
To be honest I think calling "narrative" games writer room games is a more accurate and less loaded nomenclature. I really don't like it when people, companies and groups try to change language in very unorganic ways to fit their desired meaning or in this case marketing. Narrative was originally used as a marketing term by the forge bros to describe how much better their games were than "traditional" or "trad" games. Trad was the negative term, Narrative was the positive. That seems to have switched as more people use narrative game as a way to describe something they are not interested in playing.
Please name some of these writers room narrative games.

Note that 'narrative games' is not a forge term.
 

overgeeked

B/X Known World
I'm going to offer up a different take.

A narrative game is one that will naturally produce a narrative when played. Here I'm using the standard, real-world, writers' definition of a narrative. It's a narrative game if, when you play it, you end up with a story that could be reformatted slightly to be a novel, a comic book, a TV series, a play, or a movie. If you have to add in tons of things like plot, theme, coherent story structure, etc...then it's not a narrative game. If you have to remove tons of things like redundant scenes, superfluous characters, dead air, side quests, dead ends, etc...then it's not a narrative game.

The two best examples we can look at are Record of Lodoss War and Critical Role. Compare the RoLW replays with the manga, anime, novels, etc that were produced later. Also compare the CR actual play with the comics, cartoon, novels, etc that were produced later. They both had to add in a whole lot and remove a whole lot more to beat their games into something like a story or narrative.

Things like Dimension 20 and Worlds Beyond Number likely come much, much closer to producing a narrative just from play, but that's down to the people involved all being professional improvisers and storytellers. They're professional storytellers who happen to be using an RPG to tell a story rather than gamers who are trying to produce a story from their game.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no games we'd recognize as tabletop RPGs that do that. Some games produce a nearly endless string of complications that must be dealt with, for example games that are PbtA and FitD. But that's not all you need for a narrative. Games like Fiasco try with a more formal scene and act structure, but it generally produces a separate narrative-like thing for each player rather than a single, unified narrative from the whole experience.

Most designers have things by the wrong end, I think. They're trying to add story elements to games, rather than adding game elements to creating stories. For me, doing that latter would get you far, far closer to making an actual narrative game.
 

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