Their characters will die in the Tomb of Horrors and they'll like it, by gum!Everything that players want to do makes them 'Mary Sue'. Horse Apples.
Their characters will die in the Tomb of Horrors and they'll like it, by gum!Everything that players want to do makes them 'Mary Sue'. Horse Apples.
Right, it is perfectly possible to have narrativist play where the premise is not something internal to the PCs. I mean, that is usually the case to at least some degree. In BitD the whole setting itself has a pretty strong premise, and the PCs are essentially just reflections of that, with their own 'stuff' thrown into the mix and interacting with that. I think it's pretty easy to imagine games where it is even more like that. For instance a Narrativist Star Wars game might focus on the possibility of redemption, which seems to be a bit of a theme running through it. I could imagine a game where "can you defy your fate?" could be the central question, where the premise is "nobody can defy their fate!" and we play to find out if that is true or not. Now, the details of the fate would likely be largely up to the player of each character, but escaping it would obviously require success and probably have bitter costs associated with it. Maybe in the end what you learn is 'no, the cost of defying fate is too high, I won't do it!'Something I was thinking about in not calling that out in particular, is that the innovations have utility to (and are seen in) games where the heightened focus is on something other than character concept. Play of Forbidden Lands for example, does use flags for dark secrets, relationships, and pride, which matters to the structure and drives of the party, however it's distinctly sandboxey - the journey is a large focus of play. Immersion in character feels important, but not necessarily pushing hard on character concept. Attribute damage pushes things to a grittier, more dangerous feel, that works against that.
By 'narrative overlap' are you referring to your two sources of narrative (pre-determined and played I think is a succinct description of them, right?) I find it very hard to come to grips with any of this when it is all this very fuzzy set of concepts that are not accompanied by actual practice. This is what made The Forge so brilliant a place, they would just kick you right the heck out if you came in with nothing but WORDS, it had to be backed by actual play. I want to SEE in practice what this 'post-classical narratology' is saying about an actual transcript of play under a specific designated set of rules and procedures, and then iterations on play that test different possibilities. This is EXACTLY what you see in those old forums! The explosion of technique and advances in understanding of RPGs was not based in theorizing, the theorizing was used to explain what was actually observed in real play.Yep. So if you didn't have my commitments regarding the lusory-duality and ludonarrative, observing them to apply to all TTRPG, you could get away with that and maybe it would feel satisfactory. The arguments that matter to my position will be around those commitments. For example showing that post-classical narratology has it wrong and some TTRPG falls outside the narrative overlap.
Ah yes, trad (nevermind the incredibly high rate of misplay that I see) is always 'right' and anything which varies from the formula is wrong unless proven otherwise to your satisfaction. Feh!Since this is your effort it falls upon you to expand upon that from the start. What are those responsibilities? While you are at it please continue by including expectations & so on.
Well you are pushing for a playstyle that grants players additional power of control. That right there is a change and requires you to be clear about the responsibilities and expectations that go with those powers of control. Nearly every TTRPG devotes anywhere between a chapter or two up to a full book or more detailing & supporting the expectations responsibilities duties & so on for the GM's role because that GM role carries power & control that you are trying to assign to players. When you can't even admit that those newly empowered players should even have responsibilities & expectations alongside those newfound powers without first questioning the very idea it reeks of an effort to shield players with poor expectations.
Can the GM cheat though, if they've above the rules? To paraphrase Nixon, it's not illegal if you're the GM.
We have to understand GM as constrained in some way... but this was all laid out pages ago.
If they’re interested in running a trad game
I think there's a rather small minority of games where a GM is just blatantly uninterested in anything the players have to say, but I've experienced it once or twice, and pretty much anyone who's played for a while will have an anecdote (I won't name the very obvious EW posters who would clearly be models of such GMs, I think you can come up with at least one very obvious example yourself). However, I think there is a VAST middle ground where even fairly experienced GMs fail to take player's aims into proper consideration. I'd actually say that this is the case in the MAJORITY of trad play. In fact it actually forms a MAJOR THEME in the quest of gamers and designers to 'figure out' the RPG experience and 'make it better'. To relegate it all to just some 'horror story' that is implied to be largely fictitious doesn't strike me as very credible.The question is is how prevalent is it actually that GMs are like that?
Tetra might be floating an unreasonable assumption of neotrad people, but the thing is is that what I just quoted is also a rather uncharitable assumption thats levied at trad people.
Anecdotally, Ive never actually played with or even observed a GM that acted like this. And on the same token, I've also never seen the other side as Tetra posits with nightmare players who are every worst stereotype.
Part of why that is probably that my main group just isn't like that, and also that the people I've taught have perhaps just benefited from me being the one to get them into rpgs.
Either way, it still makes me question the overall point and whether or not this is actually a matter of producing a new kind of game, or if we're just assuming a new game will somehow prevent bad actors from ruining the experience.
If the problems being solved only exist in any meaningful way on r/rpghorrorstories I just don't see the point.
However, I think there is a VAST middle ground where even fairly experienced GMs fail to take player's aims into proper consideration. I'd actually say that this is the case in the MAJORITY of trad play.
You did not attempt to answer the questions in the post you quoted and another poster has already pointed that out.Interesting point. What I've observed is GM authority stifling playing to find out what happens in relation to crux lusory-goals. I haven’t yet observed a single instance of the player malfeasance you describe. So working from what I know, I see GM repositioning as a high impact move.
I'm still working through my thoughts on compels.
On rereading I see significant claims in 270 that I don't agree with. The idea that neotrad play should be choreographed seems to be missing the point. It's the kind of design (or utilisation of the design) that I'm advising against. For example, why stitch attribute attrition into actions, spellcasting and combat, with harsh broken conditions, if in fact you mean to choreograph that?
So if you didn't have my commitments regarding the lusory-duality and ludonarrative, observing them to apply to all TTRPG, you could get away with that and maybe it would feel satisfactory. The arguments that matter to my position will be around those commitments. For example showing that post-classical narratology has it wrong and some TTRPG falls outside the narrative overlap.
As I understand @clearstream, "narrative overlap" refers to this:By 'narrative overlap' are you referring to your two sources of narrative (pre-determined and played I think is a succinct description of them, right?)
I have several times written that storygames are a sub-category of narrativist games. Hopefully, I have spelled out that I see the narrativist comprehension of the player duality (what I've called the lusory-duality) as crucial to ludonarrative, and that in agreement with post-classical narratology I place TTRPG into the narrative overlap of the game/narrative venn diagram. This absolutely preserves the distinct nature of storygames.
<snip>
In truth I am more placing storygames on a pedastal, by arguing that what those designers figured out - narrativism - matters to all TTRPG. This answers the question asked at the top of this post.