Narrative Space Options for non-spellcasters

[Umbran]

Unless, of course you didn't actually mean that?

I meant it, but not in that sense. I don't mean, "the player should see the advice on adventure design before he or she sees the mechanics". I mean that it should come first to those who are considering issues in design of a game. If you have such a problem, see if you can fix it with the most flexible and lightest-touch tool available first. If that still fails, then you bring out the wrenches and hammers and beat the mechanical systems into shape.

 

[Starfox]

Ok, as the Op I will step in here and say that this is the tread about possible new narrative options and how to implement them.

if you want to discuss the viability of this method, and say that it is not worthwhile to try and build narrative space into a game, you are free to do so and present your reason this is so - but please that that discussion elsewhere. It is not what this thread is about.

 

[Neonchameleon]

And none of the "new mechanics" have actually made it mainstream. Further, as seen up-thread, they are often disliked.

Tabletop roleplaying isn't mainstream and hasn't been for decades. Given that more than 10,000 people were prepared to put down an average of $40 each pre-publication for a game they knew would be available for free I'm calling Fate pretty mainstream by RPG standards. About as mainstream as an Apple as a desktop PC. (By comparison the recent Exalted v3 Kickstarter had fewer than half that number of people backing - and Exalted was the number 2 RPG for most of the last decade).

You are welcome to try. I can't imagine it being anything but a waste of time, but hey, your time. On the other hand, focussing on giving Fighters narrative options (no success so far) blinds you to the possibility of explicitly not giving them narrative options, which has been historically decently successful.

The big question is what sort of environment you're in. In 1e the wizard had to find and scavenge spells as loot - and the loot skewed towards the fighter. In 2e a specialist wizard could give up three schools to get (amongst other things) one spell per level - and the fighter absolutely kicked ass and took names in combat. An extra attack every odd numbered round? And a bonus to hit and damage? And a near monopoly on magic swords (remember Clerics couldn't wield them). Also in both editions the wizard went down like Jacques Cousteau if anyone actually reached them in combat.

Or in other words in 1e all the wizard's narrative control powers were given out by the DM. In 2e most of them were - and the fighter rocked hard at what they were supposed to do while the wizard could not set foot on the fighter's territory. In both those situations the fighter doesn't need metagame powers to keep up.

By having some characters be not-good at out-of-combat stuff and some characters not-good at combat, you (a) force module design to be more interesting (you'd see a lot less set-piece battles, and more plain "how do you get past this") and (b) make your whole game-balance problem much, much easier. It also forces players to play outside of their character's specialty, forcing creativity.

Agreed.

I'm honestly more worried about fighter/cleric and wizard/rogue balance than I am fighter/wizard. (Or more accurately if a wizard can duel with a fighter successfully, the game will be a wallbanger). This is why I'm as worried as I am about things like Tightrope Walking: DC 25 in the current playtest packet.

 

[Umbran]

And none of the "new mechanics" have actually made it mainstream.

Here's two little items you may have forgotten:

1) Becoming "mainstream" is not the only judge of quality in any genre of entertainment, or even a particularly good judge of quality. A lot of kinda crappy stuff is "mainstream". Domino's Pizza is mainstream.

2) There's really only one "mainstream" RPG - D&D (I am lumping all the variants in here). If it isn't in D&D, it isn't mainstream, and if it is in D&D, it is mainstream. Thus, as a criticism, it is kind of circular logic - You shouldn't try to use it in D&D, because it isn't mainstream. But wait, it *can't* be mainstream until it is used in D&D! Self fulfilling prophecy there. By that measure, the only mechanics we should ever use in D&D are the ones that have already been used. In fact, there shouldn't have been an AD&D, because it had mechanics that weren't "mainstream" D&D at the time.

So, really, toss the "mainstream". It isn't relevant.

You are welcome to try. I can't imagine it being anything but a waste of time, but hey, your time.

If I am welcome to try, why are you trying to tell us we shouldn't? That doesn't seem very "welcome" to me at all.

Right now, you're like a fan of Edition X, going into threads about Edition Y to tell folks how bad Edition Y is. If you think we are wasting time here, think about the waste of time it is to go about tearing other people down, rather than build up something cool of your own. Talk about non-constructive! Also, talk about rude!

How about you go try to find or create a thread in which you talk about stuff you do like, rather than stuff you don't, and let folks here have their discussion, please and thank you.

 

[Manbearcat]

It would be interesting if we could dissect what proportion of gamers predicate their design interests on designer modules and designer adventures. It seems that there is a decent cross-section of people who advocate positions based on the impact of those modules and pre-written adventures. I do not currently, nor ever have, considered what I want out of a ruleset (D&D or other) based on the potential impact to modules or pre-written adventures. I wonder how often this leads to cognitive dissonance on this board (when its not canvassed as the cornerstone, or at least a pillar, of someone's agenda).

Back to the subject. 5e should take a cue from its Trait portion of Background design and extend that. It was immediately my favorite part of the ruleset and appending those sorts of features to Fighters, Rogues, Rangers, et al would do the trick nicely. For instance, one of the character's in my 4e games is a Macgyver type and has a suite of powers that he puts to good use in non-combat conflict resolution. One of those is called "A Tool for Everything" where basically he has the narrative authority to come up with a tool (either something on the spot that he jury-rigs or something he's had in his pack for just such an occasion) that would be immediately useful to whatever is happening within the fiction (and roll the relevant check for his current panel in the Skill Challenge). The same goes for something like the Peerless Exploration Martial Practice (It reads basically exactly like a Background Trait with some codified mechanics to buff and resolve some potential conflicts) whereby an accomplished scout/outdoorsman can deftly accrue the knowledge of any bodies of water, suitable campsites, settlements, and ruins, as well as the presence or absence of hostile inhabitants in an extended area after a short period of reconnaissance; thus warding a campsite and cancelling any possibility of random encounters during travel (basically cueing transition scene a la Wizard Teleport). 5e could easily pull this off using the spirit of its Background Traits.

 

[Mike Eagling]

I don't mean, "the player should see the advice on adventure design before he or she sees the mechanics".

Well, no. Neither do I.

I mean that it should come first to those who are considering issues in design of a game. If you have such a problem, see if you can fix it with the most flexible and lightest-touch tool available first. If that still fails, then you bring out the wrenches and hammers and beat the mechanical systems into shape.

I see. I was instead viewing this in the context of your exchange with [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] earlier in the thread, in that some of this lack of narrative parity is perhaps a by-product of adventure design. Some proportion of players are homebrew adventure designers and so such design considerations are pertinent to them. My line of thinking was that if the tools for increasing class narrative effectiveness were made more prominent from the get-go it may go some way towards resolving the apparent disparity--at least in so far as it can be mitigated without mechanical changes.

if you want to discuss the viability of this method, and say that it is not worthwhile to try and build narrative space into a game, you are free to do so and present your reason this is so - but please that that discussion elsewhere. It is not what this thread is about.

I'm not claiming there's no room for mechanical changes, I'm just suggesting there are many ways to crack a nut.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] [MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION] [MENTION=6703609]Mike Eagling[/MENTION]
I recall a 2nd edition game I played with 2 other players, one played a fighter & the other a mage; both got equal screen time, were quite effective both in and out of combat, had interesting backgrounds which I drew upon, and it seemed there was plenty of "narrative space" for the fighter alongside the mage.

In some respects I think the "problem" is in the eye of the beholder.

But if you ditch the vague phrasing "narrative space" and instead focus on a specific elements - like noncombat abilities for non-spellcasters - that is something where there is a clear difference. Spellcasters get more options, period. If the goal of design is that all classes be more balanced in terms of their rules-defined noncombat options, then adventure design won't address it in D&D because essentially its a player choice issue.

After all, it's not DMs who are criticizing fighters as "lacking noncombat options", it's players, right?

 

[Mike Eagling]

In some respects I think the "problem" is in the eye of the beholder.

I think this is generally true for the reasons you state.

Having said that I've just noticed the badge attached to this thread title. I've come to this thread from the discussions about what people would like to see in DnDNext and I've been posting here with that in mind. I now realise perhaps this discussion is intended to be wider in scope than I had originally considered

@Starfox: having gone back over the thread, are you looking for things such as the 1e stronghold building systems mentioned by @Mishihari Lord back in post #26?

 

[pemerton]

It is worth noting that people have been trying to find narrative options for non-spellcasters in DnD for, um, decades, without any real success.

folks were not trying to find "narrative options" for non-spellcasters for D&D for decades. Folks have been doing many things, but looking at it as "narrative options" is a pretty new concept.

The earliest example I can think of, of doing something along the lines of trying to find "narrative options" for fighters, is a Dragon article by Katharine Kerr from the mid-80s (Mar 85, Dragon 95, pp 33ff) discussing the award of XP for non-combat activity, and trying to consider how the fighter can meaningfully participate in such activity, given that (in Gygaxian AD&D, at least) full XP awards depend upon playing to your class archetype:

What really counts in awarding experience points, then, is the struggle of the PCs to succeed in whatever task the scenario sets for them. The only reason that the experience-point system as it stands is so limited [to XP for treasure recovered and monsters defeated] is that it was designed to judge a very limited type of scenario —- the dungeon adventure or its above-ground equivalent. Our problem arises when the goals of the scenario have nothing to do with armed enemies and loot, but we can expand the basic principle of using the goals of the scenario as the basis of awarding points to cover a vast number of different kinds of game actions.

Before we do, however, there is one more aspect of the rules as they stand that we must consider, namely, that the PCs must use the skills of their particular character classes in completing the adventure. . . a PC who acts outside of his class or who doesn’t use the skills specific to his class is not entitled to a full share of the points awarded by the DM. . .

Let'’s again consider the example of the PC party attempting to rescue a friend from slavery. Since one of the stipulations of the scenario is that violence is forbidden, how can the fighter in the party pursue his major aim, which is to fight? In this and similar situations, we need to extend the concept of the major aim of each class to include staying in character and drawing upon the skills and background of the class. After all, a PC is much more than a mere chess piece limited to a single type of move.

In this example, a fighter could draw upon the skills of his class in many ways. If the party were gathering information from underworld types, the scowling presence of a well-armed fighting man would not only keep the party safe but help intimidate their sources and induce them to cooperate. Likewise, he could guard their goods from thieves, take care of any local bullies in the tavern, and generally threaten force in subtle ways to advance the party’s cause. As long as the player of the fighter PC worked to stay in character this way, the DM would certainly be justified in awarding the fighter a full share of experience points, even if he never drew his sword.​

I think this is quite thoughtful, but also suggests a pretty passive role for the fighter ("guard their goods from thieves", "threaten force in subtle ways").

I find it hard to envision a more active solution for the fighter that (i) preserves strong class siloes and (ii) does not involve metagame mechanics. Spellcasters have magic, which makes metagame abilities unnecessary. Thieves/rogues have the full range of skills - which, as per 4e (as an example), can be adjudicated in a way that puts them on a par with a lot of magic. But the fighter is not going to have either of these things (because then would be either a caster or a thief/rogue).

The 4e approach - of buiding core class features around combat, and then using skills and rituals, which are more flexibly accessed (if not completely classless), to handle non-combat - is an alternative, but establishes a fairly high minimum degree of focus on combat as an element of the game.

 

[Umbran]

It would be interesting if we could dissect what proportion of gamers predicate their design interests on designer modules and designer adventures.

That is an interesting and relevant question. I, personally, haven't used many published adventures, except back with 1e and Shadowrun (because, really, it takes some serious thought to come up with appropriate plot-twists for Shadowrun, and they did better than I could at the time I was running the game.).

But, yes, if you are considering making house-rules, and you use a lot of published adventures, the compatibility matters.

My line of thinking was that if the tools for increasing class narrative effectiveness were made more prominent from the get-go it may go some way towards resolving the apparent disparity...

Fair enough. I think the issue there is that introductory products imply new GMs. You can put in some information along these lines, sure, but it should be as basic and introductory as the rules-set.