RPG Play Style Model (Cinematic, Tactical, etc)

[overgeeked]

Cinematic can be used in a lot of different ways. To my mind, a narrative structure is cinematic when it is scripted and moves you from one big beat to another in a serial manner, like a movie does. The emergent narrative structure gives players choices around how the narrative unfolds, and tends to allow exploration of the game world.

You can play in an emergent style that produces a cinematic narrative structure. Some storygames are designed around that idea.

I'm not much of a fan of the "railroad" terminology because it is usually used in such a pejorative manner. Did you see this blog post by Travis Miller, by any chance? “Sandbox vs. Railroad” Is a False Dichotomy

Well, deservedly so. It’s bad practice. I’ve seen the article before, or one very similar to it. Not very persuasive.

 

[Reynard]

I think tactical largely means a grid with game artifacts that primarily change things on that grid and placement is highly important.

I think the opposite of that is pure theater of the mind with game artifacts that primarily change objects and character perspectives annd feelings and placement almost doesn’t matter.

I think "tactical" is more about choices. Those choices CAN be about positioning, but they don't have to be. Basically, for it to be tactical, there needs to be options and those options need to have pros and cons weighed by the tactician.

On the other side of the scale, "cinematic" still has choices and consequences, but they aren't built around anything other than what is cool. In the simplest example: a cinematic system rewards the guy charging the machine gun nest, while the tactical one rewards the guy sneaking up on it.

 

[Umbran]

And if your cinematic narrative doesn't feel like it naturally emerged, then you are doing it wrong.

Which is funny, in that in our real world, the narratives that emerge in our lives are rarely cinematic. The "natural emergence" usually must be carefully guided for it to end up being cinematic.

 

[Reynard]

Which is funny, in that in our real world, the narratives that emerge in our lives are rarely cinematic. The "natural emergence" usually must be carefully guided for it to end up being cinematic.

Moments that are dramatic, exciting, hilarious or powerful in hindsight are often absolutely terrifying in the moment.

 

[payn]

I immediately wondered what a "non-cinematic" and "non-tactical" RPG would look like.

I immediately think of Birthright and its domain play. It's more of a focus on strategy and events happening over a longer period of time. I have always played it like Diplomacy the RPG, which I know is not appealing to many a gamer.

 

[Wolfpack48]

Which is funny, in that in our real world, the narratives that emerge in our lives are rarely cinematic. The "natural emergence" usually must be carefully guided for it to end up being cinematic.

Right, which is why I like to think of a cinematic story as something that emerged after the fact. It's really hard to make something cinematic at the same time we are experiencing it because it involves editing and framing in the moment. Which, to me at least, is counter-immersive. Story to me is a retrospective experience.

 

[Celebrim]

Which is funny, in that in our real world, the narratives that emerge in our lives are rarely cinematic. The "natural emergence" usually must be carefully guided for it to end up being cinematic.

Yes, but real life is rarely as tidy as fiction needs to be. Humans prefer a certain structure that rarely has the sort of closure and ephinany actually observed in the real world, yet at the same time usually reject some events in a story as too improbable or illogical in context. Case studies could be movies like "Hidden Figures" and "Remember the Titans" which make great stories but have nothing to do with what actually happened.

There are of course ethical dilemmas in fictionalizing real history, especially events of historic significance, but when you are playing an RPG out it's all fiction. So yes, absolutely I'm all about the appearance of natural emergence with a good deal of carefully guiding things such that what naturally emerges meets the human definition of a good story.

If you read my writings about "Railroading" you'll see that I consider railroading something that is inherent and unavoidable in RPG play - dungeons are a sort of railroad in themselves for example - and the main thing that I recommend against is railroading that isn't naturalistic. If the players ever see the rails or see the rails as rails, you are doing it wrong.

 

[Autumnal]

I’d include cinematic and realistic/naturalistic along an axis from high human potential to low human potential.

The lower end has a low ceiling in terms of what’s possible for anyone, and generally comes with a mezzanine for the potential of adventurers or whatever sort of people the PCs are. In practice, the demonstrable super high end of human performance is often cut off - sufficiently unusual/unique deeds are outliers you can sacrifice, partly because the game world probably doesn’t have a population of billions.

The high end usually doesn’t include everything anyone ever claimed to do, but it includes a lot. It also can often include stuff the participants know only happens in our world via special effects - human potential goes above and beyond. PCs are more likely to be clowning around on the roof, too, or anywhere along the grand staircase from the usual up to what’s possible in that setting.

As a general thing, high-potential settings seem more likely to have gifts, blessings, and various means of allowing someone to exceed the standard ceiling, too. That’s not universal, “people on the rough circumstances can go way far” and “the meta gene, angels, gods, wizards, artificers, aliens, or whoever make it possible to act far beyond the abilities of mere mortals” are easy correlatives in attitude the sweep of potential. Not always, of course: there are interesting settings with high potential but a genuine ceiling that nobody human can breach, and a low ceiling that’s permeable in one or several ways. So, good generalization, not a law.

There’s no point in fighting the general usage, but in my heart “cinematic” is a term that we could apply to games in the style of The Seventh Seal, A Ghost Story, Arrival, and.La Dernier Combat. But I’m okay with it tending to signal play with high human potential.

I’d like to note that I wrote this whole post without using “empowerment”, because I really didn’t want to even touch the very complicated ways that can interact with setting concepts. I’ve seen what I would think of as player empowerment all along the line of human potential, and also examples of what I’d think of as disempowerment on the hoof ditto. It’s another dimension, for another time.

 

[Umbran]

You can still describe tactical combat (or any action, really) in a dramatic, cinematic voice. The referee and players can add a lot of flair to nearly any system, it doesn’t need to be embedded in the system itself.

Yes, you can use dramatic voice. But that is in no way the same as using dramatic resolution techniques/mechanics. Tactical-system in dramatic voice will have different play experience and results from dramatic resolution.

Basically, if your dramatic action isn't also your tactical action, then you are doing it wrong.

And this is where the difference arises. Tactical systems reward some activities, and generally penalize others. If the tactical actions that are successful/rewarded are not terribly dramatic, these things won't align.

 

[Umbran]

Humans prefer a certain structure that rarely has the sort of closure and ephinany actually observed in the real world,

Insofar as "closure" and epiphany are rarely observed in the real world at all, much less in any particular structure, you mean?

So yes, absolutely I'm all about the appearance of natural emergence with a good deal of carefully guiding things such that what naturally emerges meets the human definition of a good story.

I think the point we get to here is that there are systems that guide the development of the action and narrative into forms that meet the human definition of a good story, without pre-determining what the narrative developments will be in detail, and systems that do not have that tendency in and of themselves.

D&D, I'd say, is one of the latter. And then we see the conflicts between folks who are more interested in allowing its process to play out, good story or no, and those who are more interested in having the guidance applied by something outside the rules.