There is plenty of this sort of thing in 4e modules too. I don't know any 5e AP except by reputation, but I'd be surprised if they don't have this sort of thing also.
It's very common for a module to present a situation that involves rising action across a moral line, and then to go on to present another situation that
only makes sense if a particular choice was made in the earlier situation. I've posted about this often, in recent years, in relation to Mark Rein*Hagen's Prince Valiant scenario "A Prodigal Son - in Chains". See, eg, these posts:
In
this thread I explain how I adapted the D&D 3E module Maiden Voyage to Burning Wheel. In that thread, I explain how I compressed two encounters with the ghost ship into one; in
these posts from another thread I elaborate on why I made that decision: it preserved player authorship of the conflict across the moral line.
By setting up some appropriate fictional background and context.
Some games will bring this with them: Dogs in the Vineyard, for instance; or 4e D&D without very much work. The original OA does as well.
Now if you wanted to say that "moral line" is a bit narrow, I'd agree. As I already posted upthread, the RPGing involving Aedhros is really more about an ethical line than a moral line. And as I've often posted over the past 15 years, The Dying Earth (Robin Laws's version), which Edwards correctly identifies as supporting narrativist play, pushes that idea of an "ethical line" even further: as
Edwards says, " its Situations are loaded with the requirement for satirical, judgmental input on the part of the players."
But starting with the idea of a
moral line is not bad, is not going to mislead, and some people don't really think the moral/ethical distinction is that important anyway.
Well, I don't know what you define as a moral line. I've given a couple of examples upthread. So has
@thefutilist. And the blog about the cook gives an example too, as I've indicated.
As I've posted upthread, the characters had been tasked by their village elders to find out the meaning of some ominous portents. They were travelling north looking for answers, which is how they had ended up in the dungeon.
The player of the scout character, as his character, chose expedience over duty. (Or, as he might put it, over
purported duty.) First he identified a way out, so that he was no longer lost in the dungeon. And then, when the PCs descended into the Vault of the Drow, he abandoned his fellows to steal the Dark Elves' gold while the others were slogging it out with the powerful Drow sorcerers and warriors.
When you say "how was the conflict established?", if you're asking how were scenes framed, I did that as GM. If you're asking where did the idea of ominous portents and the like came from, that was agreed by the group as part of the set-up of play:
I posted the "front" of the Scout PC sheet upthread. Here are the Milestones for that character, which I'd written up as part of prep:
Animal at Heart
1 XP when you use a SKINCHANGER power in human company.
3 XP when you follow your instincts even though it places a team member in serious risk.
10 XP when you either seek out help to control your animal nature, or abandon the trappings of humanity to fully embrace your animal heritage.
Wanderer
1 XP when you compare your current situation to some past event or place you have seen.
3 XP when you use a Transition Scene to prepare a strategy that draws upon your past experience.
10 XP when you either abandon the quest to resume your wanderings, or you are persuaded to cease your wanderings and settle down.
I can't recall enough of the details of the Runes scene to recall which milestones it might have triggered, but the decision to steal the gold probably hit the 3 XP for Animal at Heart and then the 10 XP for Wanderer.
So first, I did not say that setting/situation-oriented play
must hinge on rising action across a moral line. I said that it can.
There is a tendency to associate narrativist play with character-driven play. But it need not be. Character is only one possible source of rising action across a moral line. (Eg what depths will Aedhros sink to, to ensure that Alicia is able to recover in Thoth's workshop; what means will he resort to, to free himself and Alicia from the curse of Thoth; what might he sacrifice, to regain his position in the eyes of the other Elves, especially his father-in-law Thurandril?)
HeroWars is an example of a setting that establishes rising action across a moral line (the coming of the HeroWars, which will upend human communities: what role will the PCs play?). So is 4e D&D (the conflict between the Gods and the Primordials, which is apt to bring a Dusk War, and/or the perfection of the Lattice of Heaven: core law vs chaos stuff, again posing the question of what role the PCs will play).
Prince Valiant defaults to situation as a source of the rising action across a moral line. Here's a little scenario I wrote, that I hope illustrates the point:
In the simple version of the scenario, the moral line is correspondingly simple: will the PCs fight the dogs (or perhaps deal with them some other way?) to help a dying knight? In the more complicated version, the moral line is correspondingly more complicated, raising questions of duty, honour, honesty and the like.
1st level D&D characters, in most versions of the game, lack the capacity to meaningfully and deliberately impact the situations they find themselves in. Play is too close to being a lottery.
If you think that's not the case, fine. I have played 1st level narrativist AD&D, but (i) the PCs were a Duergar and a Svirfneblin from the original UA, and so had abilities above the typical 1st level AD&D PC, and (ii) were multi-classed thieves, and so had racial bonuses to thief abilities that made some of those abilities usable, and (iii) we were using a variant proficiency/skill system from the old magazine Australian Realms, which gave the PCs further capabilities that typical 1st level PC lack, and (iv) the game was an urban thief game, and so the combat mechanics were not invoked a great deal. I can't remember now how we did XP and levelling.
Back then, I wasn't really familiar with the idea of just starting at 3rd level, but that is probably what I would do these days. (And now that I'm typing this, maybe we started at 2nd level. It's nearly 30 years ago, so my memory is hazy.)
The idea of being "fit" characters can go the other way too. Obviously After the Battle is not a suitable scenario for narrativist play if the PCs are equivalent to (say) 10th level AD&D characters, as in that case the characters don't have to make a choice across a moral line: with no risk to themselves they can charm or tame or subdue or whatever the dogs, instantly heal the dying knight to full health, etc.
Neither I nor Eero Tuovinen
rule out any techniques. I talk about some focuses that are not ideal.
I am not posting a priori dogma. I'm posting analysis and conjecture based on experience (mine and others). Relevant to that is
this review of The Riddle of Steel:
The Riddle of Steel includes multiple text pieces regarding the thematic drive of the game, which I have paraphrased to the Premise: "What is worth killing for?" It also includes a tremendously detailed, in-game-causal combat system. My call is that we are looking at Narrativist-Simulationist hybrid design, with the latter in a distinctly subordinate/supportive role. This is a scary and difficult thing to do.
The first game to try it was RuneQuest. Realism, so-called, was supposed to be the foundation for heroic, mythic tale-creation. However, without metagame mechanics or any other mechanisms regarding protagonism, the realism-Sim took over, and RuneQuest became, essentially, a wargame at the individual level. The BRP (RuneQuest) system is right up there with AD&D and Champions in terms of its historical influence on other games, and no game design attempted to "power Narrativism with Simulationist combat" from the ground up again. I can even see dating the false dichotomy of "roll vs. role playing" back to this very moment in RPG history.
One functional solution to the problem, as illustrated for just about every Narrativist game out there, is to move combat mechanics very far into the metagame realm: Sorcerer, Castle Falkenstein, The Dying Earth, Zero, Orkworld, Hero Wars, and The Pool take that road to various distances, and it works. Until recently, I would have said these and similar designs presented the only functional solution from a Narrativism-first perspective.
However, The Riddle of Steel is like a guy waving his hand in the back of the room -"Scuse me, scuse me, what about that first road? I'm not ready to jettison that idea yet." It's as if someone stepped into The Chaosium in 1977, and said, "Hey, you know, if you don't put some kind of player-modulated personality mechanic in there, this game is going to be all about killing monsters and collecting Clacks." This didn't happen in 1977, and that's why RuneQuest play was often indeed all about those things. But it's happened now ...
So (for instance) if you think you can make a narrativist game work that centres logistics, go for it! The two closest examples I can think of (based on my experience) are Torchbearer 2e (but its logistical elements can tend to pull it away from narrativist play) and Prince Valiant (if you lean into the mass combat rules, which my play of it has) - but the logistics in Prince Valiant are pretty abstract! Even a casual wargamer is not going to find them satisfactory from a wargame perspective, and they (deliberately) centre the actions of the individual PCs.
This is not correct. I think that you are missing basic difference, which Tuovinen is getting at in the passage you're referring to, and which Edwards is getting at when
he says that
In Simulationist play, cause is the key, the imagined cosmos in action. The way these elements [Character, Setting, and Situation] tie together . . . are intended to produce "genre" in the general sense of the term, especially since the meaning or point is supposed to emerge without extra attention. . . . the relationship is supposed to turn out a certain way or set of ways, since what goes on "ought" to go on, based on internal logic instead of intrusive agenda.
Crucial to "simulationist" play is a type of fidelity to a prior conception. The "point" is already settled Whereas narrativist play is about
leaving the "point" open.
GM-adjudicated alignment in traditional D&D is a pretty clear, if perhaps rather crude, illustration. As I've already posted, Pendragon is another.
The relationship between rules and principles that govern framing, rules and principles that govern action declaration, and rules and principles that determine the consequences that flow from the resolution of declared actions, are going to vary from game to game. Different RPGs, including different RPGs intended to support narrativist play, will have different ways of organising these.
Compare, for instance, Apocalypse World's "moves snowball" with the "closed scene resolution" of a 4e D&D skill challenge.
And if the resolution of a declared action brings all the conflicts to an end, then we are done, in the sense that that conflict is spent and there will be no more rising action in respect of it. Whether that brings the game to an end, or whether we go on to a new scenario with new conflict, will depend on the details of the game and the preferences of the players. But just as one example, Prince Valiant is oriented toward episodic play in a way that (at least as I've played it) Burning Wheel is not.
The quote is from a bit of advice about game design. It is giving some advice to designers who want to design RPGs that will support narrativist play. Of course those designers will want their rules to support, and prompt, narrativist PRGing.
If you want to use a RPG to play narrativist, but it wasn't designed for that (eg AD&D; Fate; Pendragon; Rolemaster, etc, etc, etc), then you are going to have to look for ways to establish rising action across a moral line according to the authorship of the players. In this and other threads, I've posted a fair bit about how this can be done.
Some combination of ignoring and ignored.
