IMO all RPG's create rising conflict, unless 'rising conflict' is being used as technical jargon.
I'm not sure that all do. For instance, some "cozy" RPGs seem to emphasise tea parties and the like.
Some dungeon crawls, also, don't really have any sustained rising conflict. Eg White Plume Mountain is more like a series of puzzles. There are very local moments of rising conflict - eg you take of your amour to get through the heat induction tunnel trap, and then get beaten up by the ghouls - but it's not sustained in any way. (And it does not cross a moral line.)
But the key to narrativist RPGing is rising conflict, or if you prefer rising action, across a moral line.
Is this saying the rising conflict is according to the authorship of the players? Or that something else is according to the authorship of the players?
To
requote,
If you're designing a Narrativist game, what you need are rules that create a) rising conflict b) across a moral line c) between fit characters d) according to the authorship of the players
There is plenty of RPGing that has rising conflict across a moral line, but not according the authorship of the players. The DL modules, played as written, are an example. So is the Planescape module Dead Gods. In these modules, played as written, it is the GM ("channelling" the module author) who establishes the conflict and what would count as its resolution: eg there is a
right thing for Tanis to do.
The example of GM-adjudicated alignment also illustrates the point.
This is why
Edwards says that
There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s)
To put it another way: RPGing where the players are expected to identify what they
should have their PCs do - either because the system tells them, say by awarding points for doing good things and taking them away for doing bad things; or because the GM tells them, say by revealing information to the PCs via play as to what is the right thing to do, or via a direct channel like enforcing alignment - is not narrativist play. Rather, it is play where "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". Whereas in narrativist play the whole point is for the players to inject their judgement, via the play of their characters. That is the "intrusive agenda".
It also seems to me like any RPG play can be described as 'all situations' being a step toward a climax or resolution of a conflict.
So here is what Baker says, following on from the passage I just re-quoted, about designing a RPG to support narrativist play:
Every new situation should be a step upward in that conflict, toward a climax and resolution.
Here is some RPGing that doesn't examplify this: I'm playing a FRPG, and the situation is that we're back in town healing and re-equpping, and an hour of table time is spent working out the details of recovery, inventory, purchases, etc. Spell points or spell slots are kept track of, gold piece balances are adjusted, time records are maintained, etc.
I've done plenty of that in AD&D play, and an absolute
ton of it in Rolemaster play. That is not a situation that is a step upward in a conflict across a moral line, towards climax and resolution.
When I ran a session of White Plume Mountain a few years ago, the players came to the frictionless floor room. They thought about it for a while, and then came up with a rope-and-pitons solution. That was not a situation that was a step upward in conflict, towards a climax and resolution.
It's quite a while now since I've rune the Slaver modules. But while they, overall, have the potential for rising action across a moral line, the modules are full of plenty of situations that are just there to be there: like in A2, where there is a room (I think a kitchen?) with wereboars in it, who throw their axes at any intruders. As presented, hat's not a step upward in conflict towards climax and resolution: it's just a fight.
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.
Normally the module needs a bit of reworking, mostly to get rid of prescribed consequences or evolutions in situation that prevent the players from escalating conflict across the moral line established by the module.
I'm not getting this part at all.
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:
One interesting feature of the Episodes in the Episode Book - which I have commented on more than once before - is that some are not well-conceived for conflict-resolution play, because they depend upon the GM breaking the connection between success/failure and win/lose in just the way Vincent Baker describes. The most egregious in this respect is Mark Rein-Hagen's "A Prodigal Son - in Chains" (pp 60-62), which contains such directions as "They [the PCs] need to capture and question Quink the hunchback and find out who he worked for" and "At this point you want Bryce to win over the Adventurers with his nobility of spirit despite his physical shortcomings" and "The Adventurers must now scour the forest to find Quink" and "Whatever happened, you need to have things end up with Bryce’s father, the duke, dead."
Here's an example, from the Prince Valiant Episode Book (pp 60-62; the author of the scenario is Mark Rein*Hagen):
You are hiking through the forest when you come across an abandoned hunting lodge, which is broken down and clearly hasn’t been used in many years. Exploring inside, you see a hunchback darting out of a secret passage in the fireplace and out the back door. The secret passage leads to a small dungeon where you hear clanking chains and eventually find a malnourished young boy locked in a cell. . . .
Get the Adventurers to sympathize with Bryce [the boy], despite him not being a warrior type. . . .
They need to capture and question Quink the hunchback and find out who he worked for, to find out who did this to Bryce. . . .
The Adventurers must now scour the forest to find Quink, for which they likely need a tracker or some trick (such as food as bait) to find the wily hunchback. Your goal here is to make them realize that he is truly terrified of the person who ordered him to care for Bryce in the dungeon, and cannot name them. But it is possible to get many other details out of him. At the same time, they can talk to Bryce while healing him back to health, which only takes 2-3 days. . . .
As soon as they enter the duchy, it is immediately obvious that there has been a peasant revolt of some kind. . .
In the distance, the Adventurers see the entire peasant army, numbering in the thousands, gathered outside the duke’s castle, parts of which are on fire, including the gatehouse. It appears they have come just in time to see the final storming of the castle. At this point the Adventurers’ actions can have a direct impact on the story. . . .
Whatever happened, you need to have things end up with Bryce’s father, the duke, dead. . . .
Bryce’s sister [Alia] is now left as the titular ruler of the castle . . . She receives the conquerors in the great hall (which is also the throne room), where she sits on the throne. One way or another, the Adventurers should be in attendance of this meeting, with Bryce trying to remain hidden from her. . . .
Which way things go should be greatly affected by what the Adventures do and say at this time. If you can somehow get them to take different sides without coming into direct conflict it would be perfect. . . . No matter what, however, before they leave the Throne Room, Bryce step out of the crowd and reveals himself. . . .
Unless the Adventurers step in, [the situation] quickly devolves into violence. Even if they do get involved, it ends in one single act of violence . . .
At this point you need to have things wind up with someone trying to kill someone else as a result of the heated argument over what to do. . . . but no matter what happens, Bryce throws himself in the way and takes the wound himself instead of them, and by so doing proves his true nobility. Try to arrange it that Bryce does not die, but you can leave it up to chance if you want. But as he lies there wounded, first the castle folk (or maybe the Adventurers) bow to him, then the yeoman, then the peasants.
What happens now is also mostly up to the Adventurers. Much of the peasant army will have left by now . . . If left up to Bryce, he would let Alia go, but that would be a mistake; she is an extremely capable and dangerous foe and would make trouble for years to come. The best solution would perhaps to have her become a nun, forcibly sworn to take the oath. Not matter what happens, if the Adventurers do not take Alia’s side in this, and she does not end up dead somehow, they will have an extremely capable and crafty enemy for life who will stop at nothing to take her revenge on them.
A group who plays this scenario as it is written is not playing to find out, because - as I hope the material I have quoted makes clear - all the major events of play are already set out: who the PCs will meet, what will be at stake in those encounters, what will happen to those NPCs, etc. There are many D&D modules that are broadly similar in this respect - two that come immediately to mind are Dead Gods (2nd ed AD&D) and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits (3E D&D).
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.
How does the table establish a moral line? Even a typical method would be acceptable here.
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.
I don't feel like we even define what a moral line is the same.
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.
Okay so in the runes example, what was the player established moral line, what was the conflict, how was that conflict established and what was the resolution of that conflict? It's been a while since I've read the original example, so if those details were there I apologize. I don't think they were though.
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:
After people chose their characters, and we voted on vikings over Japan, the next step was to work out some background. The PCs already had Distinctions and Milestones (that I'd written up, picking, choosing and revising from the Guide and various MHRP datafiles) but we needed some overall logic: and the swordthane needed a quest (one of his milestones) and the troll a puzzle (one of his milestones).
So it turned out like this: the Berserker (who has Religious Expert d8) had noticed an omen of trouble among the gods - strange patterns in the Northern Lights; and similar bad portents from the spirit world had led the normally solitary scout (Solitary Traveller distinction, and also Animal Spirit) to travel to the village to find companions; and the troll, a Dweller in the Mountain Roots, had also come to the surface to seek counsel and assistance in relation to the matter of the Dragon's Curse; and, realising a need for a mission, the village chieftain chose the noblest and most honourable swordthane of the village - the PC, naturally - to lead it.
And so the unlikely party of companions set out.
I'm not sure what the "official" practice is, but I tend to treat these briefing/start-up contexts as Transition Scenes, and so allow any player who wants to spend the initial Plot Point on a resource to do so.
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.
I'm not sure how setting/situation oriented play hinges on rising conflict across a moral line.
<snip>
This part doesn't make sense to me. Maybe you can elaborate.
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:
After the battle
Episode Type: Assistance
Begin with: As you crest the hill with the morning sun behind you, a sorry sight meets your eyes: a battle was fought here yesterday, and many dead bodies lie strewn across the ground, left unburned and unburied. Some of them are being mauled by war hounds, cruel dogs unleashed by one side upon the other. You hear a voice calling: one last knight is still alive!
Name: Sir Emmett
Situation: During the battle Sir Emmett was pulled from his horse by the dogs of war, and now he is dying. He wishes to be buried rather than eaten. Secret: if the Storyteller wishes, Sir Emmett can be a member of the winning side in the battle, Count Leal’s army. The master of hounds lost control of the frenzied dogs, and they attacked a knight on their own side. Sir Emmet was left behind because the dogs would not let anyone approach him, and in his state of collapse he was assumed to be dead.
Short Term Goal: Die with honour and dignity.
Long Term Goal: Go to a peaceful, eternal rest.
Planned Activity: Sir Emmett will ask the passing knights to keep him company as he dies, and then to bury him once he is dead.
Personality: Sir Emmett fought valiantly. He now wishes to be properly laid to rest. If the Storyteller is using the secret situation, Sir Emmett will be ashamed of Count Leal's use of the dogs and treatment of the dead, and will admit his participation only if encouraged or comforted or forced to confront the truth.
Special Effect: Inspire to Greatness (each Adventurer who helps Sir Emmett).
First scene: The arrival of the Adventurers will be poorly received by the war dogs. To get to Sir Emmett, the Adventurers will have to fight the hounds, or otherwise drive them away.
Second scene: When the Adventurers approach Sir Emmett, they will see that he is dying. Healing skill used against a Difficulty Factor of 4 can save his life. Otherwise he will ask the Adventurers to keep him company as he dies, and to bury him. To keep him calm as he dies is Presence + Fellowship against a Difficulty Factor of 2; if the Storyteller is using the secret situation, to persuade him to tell his story requires a throw against a Difficulty Factor of 3, with additional successes reducing the Difficulty Factor until all is revealed at zero. If Sir Emmett is in peace at the moment of his death, he will gift the ring that he wears to the Adventurer with the highest fame, as a token of thanks (+1 to Presence for the purposes of prestige and influence on Sir Emmett's manor and at Count Leal's court).
Third scene (if Sir Emmett dies): the Adventurers can bury him if they wish. If Sir Emmett is buried, the Adventurers will see a flash of light in the sky as his spirit passes on. (If the Storyteller is using the secret situation, this happens only if Sir Emmett has repented and come to terms with the wrongful conduct that he took part in.) Each Adventurer who assisted him gets one use of a limited Inspire to Greatness, adding two coins/dice to one future throw.
Further development: If the Adventurers wish to seek out Count Leal and his army who left the bodies of the dead to be eaten by dogs, they have several options: they may ask Sir Emmett for information before he dies; they may follow the tracks of the victorious army; or they may wait for the master of hounds to return to collect the dogs. The Storyteller will have to develop the details if necessary; but the Adventurers can be confident that any attempt to confront Count Leal will undoubtedly meet with a poor reception, doubly so if they are accompanied by a healed and still-living Sir Emmett, who will be ready to give Count Leal all the credit he is due.
Statistics: Dogs of war (two per Adventurer) Brawn 4, Presence 3, Brawling 4, combat total 9 with fangs (+1 weapon).
Sir Emmett (Fame 3,000) Brawn 4 (currently reduced to zero), Presence 3, Agility 1, Arms 3, Battle 2, Courtesie 1, Hunting 2, Jousting 1, Riding 2, combat total 10 with medium armour (+2) and sword (+1) or lance (+1; 11 with Riding).
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.
It's not clear why 1st level D&D PC's (excluding 4e) aren't competent and able to establish and resolve conflicts.
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.
This seems to focus on techniques and ruling out quite a few that aren't inherently contradictory with the definition.
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.
Narrativist gm and player principles also subject themselves to the material - they just leave open alot of material.
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.
It's also not clear to me why a success doesn't result in descalating the conflict instead of escalating it.
<snip>
Which seems to be the case for consequences in the typical success with consequence framework. I'm not sure how you count the consequences there as player authored.
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.
It's not clear why this escalation must be rules prompted as opposed to that being a single method of implementation.
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.
