"Narrative Options" mechanical?

[Imaro]

EDIT: If we do accept that Rule Zero negates player power, then that would equally apply to narrative metagame mechanics. It would mean that a player using the original Come And Get It power for instance *doesn't* have any power over the game space beyond that possessed by his character, because any use of CAGI could be Rule Zero-ed.

Rule zero is always an option, and yes if the DM invokes it as far as CAGI is concerned it does negate the power over the game space said power gave the player... But that rule (the CAGI power) is specifically built to empower the player to change the narrative, finding a random rule that the DM forgot doesn't empower the player to change the narrative, depending on what the rule is it may not empower the player at all. I think you are confusing influencing the game and influencing the narrative. I don't think anyone is arguing against the fact that all players have the ability to influence the game, cheating is influencing the game... but it's the narrative we are speaking about.

 

[N'raac]

I think "narrative" is rather poorly defined.

At one extreme, the players can be said to "exert narrative control" when they choose to pursue some plot hooks and ignore others. Alternatively, it could be said they must be able to select the plot(s) which will exist in the game or they do not have narrative control. What, specifically, do we want the PC's to be able to influence if they are to be considered to have "narrative control"? How reliable must that influence be?

 

[Doug McCrae]

I think that the issue some rpg-ers have with metagame mechanics, such as hero points in James Bond 007, is precisely that they are mechanics. Players always exerted an influence on the game space beyond their characters' abilities, but it was mostly informal. Now metagame power has the extra weight of the rules behind it. That's the key difference, I think. It's the only difference I can see between the old and new forms of metagame power.

 

[sheadunne]

I think "narrative" is rather poorly defined.

Probably, but I'm sticking with my own definition I posted up thread

At one extreme, the players can be said to "exert narrative control" when they choose to pursue some plot hooks and ignore others. Alternatively, it could be said they must be able to select the plot(s) which will exist in the game or they do not have narrative control.

For me it's changing the narrative (the description presented by the DM). For me, ignoring or following plot hooks is not changing the narrative, but interacting with it. "You walk into a room with 3 orcs. We close the door and leave." For me isn't changing or control the narrative, but rather interacting with it, or in this case, refusing to interact with it. Now if it went something like, "You walk into a room with 3 orcs. No, they're not three orcs, they're really chickens," this would be changing the narrative.

What, specifically, do we want the PC's to be able to influence if they are to be considered to have "narrative control"? How reliable must that influence be?

Great question.

1) Depends on the class I guess. A rogue should be able to influence the narrative in different ways than a fighter or wizard or cleric. Since D&D is a class system, I think it's the best way to start, rather than developing narrative control that any player can use. These control bits can be tied to universal mechanics like skills or feats, but should only be able to be accessed by specific classes. Does that make sense?

2) I am perfectly fine with dice rolls determining whether the narrative is controlled or changed, as long as it's consistent and simple across all classes.

 

[Imaro]

I think "narrative" is rather poorly defined.

At one extreme, the players can be said to "exert narrative control" when they choose to pursue some plot hooks and ignore others. Alternatively, it could be said they must be able to select the plot(s) which will exist in the game or they do not have narrative control. What, specifically, do we want the PC's to be able to influence if they are to be considered to have "narrative control"? How reliable must that influence be?

Good post, and I agree it needs to be better defined than... "what some spells allow spellcasters do".

 

[Imaro]

I think that the issue some rpg-ers have with metagame mechanics, such as hero points in James Bond 007, is precisely that they are mechanics. Players always exerted an influence on the game space beyond their characters' abilities, but it was mostly informal. Now metagame power has the extra weight of the rules behind it. That's the key difference, I think. It's the only difference I can see between the old and new forms of metagame power.

Again I think you're missing the details. There is a world of difference between types of meta-game mechanics... A hero point that allows you to add a bonus to an attack/skill roll or increase your damage is totally different than a hero point that allows you to decide one of the bandit kings personal guards in the camp your party just infiltrated is actually... the party rogue at the exact moment the rest of the party get an audience with their leader and decide to attack him.

EDIT: This is one of the things that is starting to irk me about the D&D always had meta-game mechanics argument... it's lumping them all together when there are some pretty big differences between the narrative abilities being suggested here and something like hit points. Yeah they might both be meta-game mechanics but they function totally different in there effect on the game.

 

[Doug McCrae]

EDIT: This is one of the things that is starting to irk me about the D&D always had meta-game mechanics argument... it's lumping them all together when there are some pretty big differences between the narrative abilities being suggested here and something like hit points. Yeah they might both be meta-game mechanics but they function totally different in there effect on the game.

There's the issue of Fortune-in-the-Middle. Saving throws as described in 1e AD&D are explicitly FitM, and some approaches to 4e play are FitM too. As I understand it (and I might have this wrong as I'm not that up on narrativist play) the game mechanic that's in the middle of FitM can be used to support narrativist play, but it doesn't have to be. The game mechanic decides part of what happens in the game world. For many, probably most, players, what the mechanic describes - such as whether a saving throw succeeds or whether the Come And Get It maneuver works - is all that matters. My understanding is that for a narrativist, interpreting what that result means in the game world is an important part of play too - how does the hero escape, why do the antagonists rush forward to their doom?

The FitM approach doesn't necessarily give players metagame power, it depends on who has the power to interpret the mechanic. Maybe only the GM can interpret the results. I get the impression that Gary Gygax's concern is with justifying D&D's mechanics to critics, and giving D&D DMs some arguments to deploy against charges of lack of realism. FitM enables rpg participants to choose the most plausible interpretation of an abstract game mechanic, so it can be used for this purpose.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Ah, you see, I view it differently. The magic, for me, is that EVERYONE helps drive the bus. Or, at least, the potential is there. The problems arise when someone is left without useful ways to try to contribute to the journey.

Yes, everyone drives the flow of play together. The differences come in the form of attitudes concerning what is a "useful" method of contributing to that journey. If the game as seen as no more than the rules then the only thing qualifying as useful is what is mechanically defined and codified. It limits meaninful manipulation to button pressing pre-defined strings of code interacting with the matrix of the game as operating software. Rpgs run and played by humans don't have this limitation so accepting such contributions as the only useful ones fail to take full advantage of the medium.

So, rather than give something new to one player, you'll take something away from another player. That's your choice, of course, but I don't know that your wizard players will really find that a great solution.

Restricting or removing options in play will generally lead to more resentment than anything else. Its far better to establish limitations at the start of play or play a game in which the power gap isn't so pronounced.

For those players who won't engage, the job of the GM (as I see it) is to force them. So in a combat, if the wizard or rogue is hanging back and shirking, as GM you can have a lurker suddenly enter the battlefield and engage them! Or the enemy archers open fire on them. In other words, the player doesn't get to choose to keep out of the action - the GM can frame them in by dictating the NPCs' actions. The same thing applies in a social skill challenge - the duke, or guild lord, or whomever it is the PCs are talking to asks the dwarven fighter a question. Now the player has no choice but to engage!

This can be wrong in some situations. A thief might be weak in combat so he slinks in the shadows until finding a good opportunity to strike. " Punishing" him by springing extra monsters just to force participation is bad form. The whole point of classes with differing abilities is that they play differently. Would you force a cleric in a party of 5 to pick 20% of the locks to equalize participation? I wouldn't do that any more than I would force a thief to engage in melee. Class based systems in general, and D&D in particular rely on distinct strong archetypes. Forcing action contrary to intelligent play of an archetype is the negation of class differences.

And I don't see why D&D shouldn't be one such. After all, it started with a large number of them (XP, hp, saving throws).

Metagame mechanics and narrative mechanics are different animals. Actual play is not a narrative nor is it a story. As cool as it would be to have everything our characters do narrated by Morgan Freeman, it usually doesn't happen. The DM needs to narrate on occasion to describe elements of the game world but PCs never need to.

I agree with you about 2nd ed AD&D and Dragonlance, too, though I think Moldvay Basic also took a bit of a different approach to this from Gygaxian play, at least as it was written (maybe not how it was played). The play example in which the cleric (Sister Rebecca?) and Morgan Ironwolf argue about the propriety of killing prisoners, for instance, looks like it could easily arise within an Actor stance approach.

The dialogue between Sister Rebecca and morgan Ironwolf was used to illustrate the influence of alignment choice on player activity.

Let's remember that there's a difference between narrative and story. Narrative is used to describe the scene (there are three orcs in the room) and story is what happens during (a battle ensues, dice are rolled, story emerges). Martial characters can interact with the story but they don't have the capacity to change or even shape the narrative (they cannot say that the orc are really chickens and the room is really a giant pit), only the story that emerges (they can choose what actions to take to fight the orcs, talk to them, etc). Casters have the ability to change and shape the narrative (those orcs really are chickens) as well as interact with the story (burn, lightening, ray beams).

It's perfectly fine to want to limit narrative capacity to the DM and casters, D&D has traditionally done this, although I'm not sure it was done intentionally. For those who want balance, it's not between story abilities it's between narrative control abilities. These abilities do not have to do the same things, but what's wrong with the fighter saying, the orcs charge me because I'm wearing shiny armor and look threatening (narrative), and when they get into range I attack them (story)?

Another way to look at it is, narrative does not require dice rolls. It is a description. A fact if you will. The narrative can be determined randomly (wandering monsters for instance) but it's rare that the entire narrative will be determine randomly (the size of the room, the location, the creatures, the traps, etc). And from a player point of view, it doesn't matter. The narrative has been described by the DM and it's time to start making stories (unless you're a caster, then you have some resources to change that narrative if you don't like it).

Story is the result of dice rolls (rules) that interact with the narrative. Does the brave sir walter hit the orc? Does he survive the stab to the chest? Does the rogue manage to steal the gem or sneak past the ogre? All players can interact with the narrative to create the story, regardless of character abilities.

Anyway, carry onward.

Stories are what get created, embellished, and retold after the adventure is over. During actual play in a roleplaying game what happens during the course of a session is characters experiencing life. If the focus of play is to create stories together then you are playing a storytelling game.

 

[Alzrius]

1) Depends on the class I guess. A rogue should be able to influence the narrative in different ways than a fighter or wizard or cleric. Since D&D is a class system, I think it's the best way to start, rather than developing narrative control that any player can use. These control bits can be tied to universal mechanics like skills or feats, but should only be able to be accessed by specific classes. Does that make sense?

This seems problematic, though, simply because there will be more classes than the basic four archetypes of fighter, rogue, cleric, and wizard.

Now, we can safely say that a barbarian should be able to influence the narrative in ways more akin to a fighter than a wizard, but this has the effect of homogenizing the fighter and the barbarian, relying on things like mechanical (combat) class features to differentiate them, unless the designers can come up with a way to present different-but-thematically-similar methods for them to alter the (same type of) narrative.

That's without even getting into classes that don't seem to easily allow for classification, such as the bard.

 

[sheadunne]

This seems problematic, though, simply because there will be more classes than the basic four archetypes of fighter, rogue, cleric, and wizard.

Now, we can safely say that a barbarian should be able to influence the narrative in ways more akin to a fighter than a wizard, but this has the effect of homogenizing the fighter and the barbarian, relying on things like mechanical (combat) class features to differentiate them, unless the designers can come up with a way to present different-but-thematically-similar methods for them to alter the (same type of) narrative.

That's without even getting into classes that don't seem to easily allow for classification, such as the bard.

It is problematic. I find there's too much overlap between classes. I don't see that really going away. I had pretty good luck, from my own point of view, assigning feats to each class, rather than keep them general to anyone, but I would guarantee that some will have issue with assigning Power Attack as a Barbarian only feat. It's my preference though and if we keep everything general, we start getting away from having a class system to begin with.

I don't have any good answers, but it's the way I would start out. Where's the line between fighter and barbarian and try not to cross it with narrative abilities. The other option is to go the feats route and require BAB prerequisite mechanics to the narrative options, as some combat feats have.

Beats me though. The last thing I want is another thing to have to select when making characters and leveling up. I'd much rather narrative be included in existing abilities, feats, skills, spell, etc.