“Really narrative D&D” - a new RPG genre?

[jian]

OK, that’s a little facetious, I’ll admit.

I’m just interested to see that this seems to be something of a new genre, with Grimwild and Legend in the Mist being the obvious and popular examples. There’s at least one thread about each of these, and so I won’t rehash stuff from those here. Of these two contenders, Grimwild is more notably designed to model D&D character options, but LitM has recently produced a 5e conversion tool, so it’s a fair comparison.

Two other games that might fit this category are Chasing Adventure (a well put together D&D PbtA game, in my opinion) and even Monsters & Magic (which is more notably narrative for using an Effect system that gives you narrative bonuses the better you roll on your checks). And let’s not forget Dungeon World and all its spin-offs, such as Shepherds (which is more meant to model JRPG adventures in a Tales or Trails style).

I’ve been reading and summarising some of these recently and it’s quite interesting to see the routes they’ve taken to get to their play styles.

Grimwild starts from Forged in the Dark and has a quite complicated set of rules for challenges, clocks, tasks, resources, and other pools that looks quite clever. The rules include several examples in the monster descriptions (often set up as a short adventure in itself, for instance as you run away from a raging remorhaz among collapsing ice canyons) and adventure kits (mini adventure set ups, where you investigate a plague of goblins in a remote village or defend a keep against monster attacks).

Chasing Adventure takes a similar approach but with PbtA and fewer usable setups. Monsters and Magic probably is a bit too bare bones for my liking but it’s got some good stuff. I’ve only got the free pdfs for LitM so far so I don’t know what the main book has in this line.

What do you think? Are there common threads here? Can you learn from the other games while running one?

 

[overgeeked]

I think there are common threads, but most of them are narrative fantasy games, not “D&D but narrative.” The designers are smart enough to tie into or reference the super-massive black hole at the center of the RPG galaxy.

For example, LitM. It gives me zero “D&D but narrative” vibes. It’s a fantasy RPG. From my reading that’s the only throughline. The focus is away from combat, so goes in the opposite direction from D&D.

 

[Autumnal]

Arguably, “D&D but narrative” is the oldest genre of play that’s distinct from D&D as whatever TSR/WotC is doing at the moment. It emerged in the first few months of D&D being for sale, with various communities of connected people and campaigns taking various approaches to mechanics and character & setting development, but with broadly similar ambitions to capture the ambience of the fiction they enjoyed reading and writing. Every few years, it gets a fresh wave of interest and discussion, often by people who had no idea how much they’re in a tradition.

 

[jian]

I think there are common threads, but most of them are narrative fantasy games, not “D&D but narrative.” The designers are smart enough to tie into or reference the super-massive black hole at the center of the RPG galaxy.

For example, LitM. It gives me zero “D&D but narrative” vibes. It’s a fantasy RPG. From my reading that’s the only throughline. The focus is away from combat, so goes in the opposite direction from D&D.

As I said, I only included it (or rather, since I was going to talk about it anyway, called them narrative D&D) because it has a 5e conversion tool. I agree that from what I can see you could do any fantasy* with it, certainly not just D&D.

*Well all right, if we’re going to be slightly more accurate I don’t think you could do tall advancement fantasy such as a lot of modern xianxia or litRPG stuff with LitM, but that’s about it.

 

[aramis erak]

Arguably, “D&D but narrative” is the oldest genre of play that’s distinct from D&D as whatever TSR/WotC is doing at the moment. It emerged in the first few months of D&D being for sale, with various communities of connected people and campaigns taking various approaches to mechanics and character & setting development, but with broadly similar ambitions to capture the ambience of the fiction they enjoyed reading and writing. Every few years, it gets a fresh wave of interest and discussion, often by people who had no idea how much they’re in a tradition.

It's always darkly humorous. and a bit sad, to see some new would-be-designer think they've done something new to only be suddenly crushed when grogs list 3-30 different RPGs that did it 30 years prior...
and tragic when they double down and ignore the advice to actually see what's changed in the last 5/10/15/20/30/40 years.

 

[Aldarc]

Arguably, “D&D but narrative” is the oldest genre of play that’s distinct from D&D as whatever TSR/WotC is doing at the moment. It emerged in the first few months of D&D being for sale, with various communities of connected people and campaigns taking various approaches to mechanics and character & setting development, but with broadly similar ambitions to capture the ambience of the fiction they enjoyed reading and writing. Every few years, it gets a fresh wave of interest and discussion, often by people who had no idea how much they’re in a tradition.

"D&D but simulationist" is probably the other contender for oldest genre of play distinct from D&D.

 

[GMMichael]

I'll get back to you after I figure out how "D&D PbtA" works.

 

[Autumnal]

"D&D but simulationist" is probably the other contender for oldest genre of play distinct from D&D.

Oh, yes, good point. The two trends are siblings in mutant deviation.

 

[loverdrive]

As someone who made one (Swords under the Sun) and is playing/running Grimwild right now: I think they inherently suck.

D&D benefits a lot from having a separate combat minigame, because combat is fun. Brewing encounters is fun. Bashing together enemy statblocks is fun. Figuring out a strong build is fun. Using that build is fun. Excising combat by making it indistinguishable from non-combat leaves a gaping hole in the game that can't be filled within the bounds of adventuresque fantasy.

I'm bashing together a tactical combat subsystem for our Grimwild organized play right now to plug this gap and I legitimately want to cry, the system is so hostile to it, the asymmetry and lack of any sort of difficulty modifiers is kicking my ass.

 

[SteveC]

It's always darkly humorous. and a bit sad, to see some new would-be-designer think they've done something new to only be suddenly crushed when grogs list 3-30 different RPGs that did it 30 years prior...

I wrote about this in the Lee Gold thread, but as a kid I subscribed to Alarums and Excursions. There were discussions about this back in the 70s. It is strange but when other games came about, and D&D gradually changed over the years, it became more of the game I wanted to play. And games appeared that were what I really wanted. All because of these early discussions!