Semi-Rant: Maturity and dumbing down a game

[Mort]

I think one of the main problems here is that your examples of narrative play, don't have that much to do with the narrative style(excuse the long quote):

DM: The massive hulk of fur and claws rises on its hind legs to tower above all of you. It bellows a primal cry before it comes crashing back down to all four with an impact that jars your legs before hurtling forward towards you, teeth bared and mouth frothing.

Player 1: I spit on the ground and wipe my mouth with the back of my arm. I go to a side stance, clasping my battle axe in two hands like a club. My weight shifts back and forth from foot to foot as I sway with anticipation.

Player 2: My breath catches at the sight of the incoming beast. I swallow hard and brace my spear against the ground, leveling it at the creature's chest. My hands keep shaking but I tighten my grip to hide that and hope the others don't see it."

DM: The beast gallops towards you, a chaotic shapeless mass of hair and power and mean. It covers half the distance to you and now you can smell the stale dead of its previous kills. And then the world darkens as its huge shape comes between you and the morning sun, draping you in its shadow, and then its but an arm's lenght away..

Player 1: I brace my feet and twisting my hips and my back swing my hammer with everything I have letting out my own primal yell.

Player 2: I sidestep the beast as it comes close, my nerve breaking at the last minute, and jab at its side.

All of these may or may not be a narrative style - they are merely descriptive. Heck an over eager talisman player can utter these when playing talisman - doesn't make the game narrative.

Narrative generally means putting the story above the rules: the story is important enough that the rules can be sacrificed for it, if the dice say you (or the bad guy) die at an inappropriate moment- then fudge the dice.
Gamist on the other hand means that the rules do not trump the story - if the dice say you die, roll another character.

Both styles can be extremely descriptive, or not, depending on what the group likes.

That's why I think you are getting so many vehement responses. You've managed to insult both narratavist players and gamist players because your example (intentionally or not) stress descriptiveness and not play style.

 

[barsoomcore]

How do we decide what makes Shakespeare great? We analyze his technique, we compare him to his peers, we assess his influence over time, and we keep doing it over and over again. This is why Mozart will likely be considered great in another century while Lil' Kim is forgotten.

A game isn't art, though. It's a game, and it exists in order to entertain (unlike art, which can be argued to exist for half-a-dozen purposes, none quite so clearcut). Its "quality" is determined solely by how well it achieves that purpose. And what is considered entertaining can only be determined by the participants themselves. Noting that wanting a game to resemble art is just one sort of "entertaining" a game could be.

Taking art as your example only leads to folly. You're much better off using other games as your example. For example: is hockey an objectively better game than rugby? How could you possibly decide? How would you ever convince a hockey player that rugby is a better game?

The problem is that you can arbitrarily select a bunch of criteria and use those to "prove" that one game is better than another. But somebody else can just as arbitrarily select a different set of criteria and come up with a different result. There being an infinite number of potential criteria, we see the difficulty. Sure, you can say that one game is currently more popular than another, but those fashions come and go, which in itself suggests that finding objective criteria is problematic.

The fact that someone doesn't agree with an objective conclusion derived from qualitative data does nothing to invalidate the conclusion - it just means the someone refuses to accept the results since they don't jibe with personal experience.

Not when the conclusion is that one kind of game is better than another. The only meaningful judge of a quality of a game is the amount of fun it generates (where "fun" is defined by the participants alone). So in this case, yes it does. In fact, the only meaningful conclusion to be drawn is whether or not the game was fun, and the only source of that information comes from the participants -- so whether or not they agree is the ONLY thing that matters.

How can say to somebody that a game they're enjoying more than yours isn't as good? I mean, honestly, the very idea is silly.

Would you agree that we could look for common memes in different play styles?

Yep. It's called the meme of fun. That's not the problem. The problem is that different people define "fun" in different ways.

And you simply CANNOT be wrong about what you consider fun.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Like someone else mentioned before, Exalted encourages vivid descriptions of player character actions by actually making it easier to succeed at something if you describe it well.

But it is easy to port something like this to D&D. Just give a +1 to +3 circumstance bonus on any action that has been described well by the player, depending on how vivid it was. You might also consider giving an Action Point (see Unearthed Arcana/Eberron) for anyone who succeeds at an action he described at least at a +2 point level.

The problem is that it is often a lot of work describing the actions of your players - sooner or later, you run out of ideas and only state: "I attack him." Maybe a little incentive is all the players need...

 

[wedgeski]

Player 1: I spit on the ground and wipe my mouth with the back of my arm. I go to a side stance, clasping my battle axe in two hands like a club. My weight shifts back and forth from foot to foot as I sway with anticipation.

Player 2: My breath catches at the sight of the incoming beast. I swallow hard and brace my spear against the ground, leveling it at the creature's chest. My hands keep shaking but I tighten my grip to hide that and hope the others don't see it."

Well I don't know about anyone else but many of the guys/gals around my table would be looking at their watches and rolling their eyes at such hopelessly out-of-place melodrama. Your subsequent examples are much more in-line with what I would consider an acceptable level of narrative colour.

 

[The Shaman]

Taking art as your example only leads to folly. You're much better off using other games as your example. For example: is hockey an objectively better game than rugby? How could you possibly decide? How would you ever convince a hockey player that rugby is a better game?

This example is terminally flawed - we're not talking about how to play completely different sports/games, but rather whether or not there are best ways to play a particular sport/game.

Let's look at baseball as an example. My wife finds it puzzling that I can write a lineup card based solely on the players' positions. How do I know the leadoff hitter is likely to be the shortstop or center fielder? How do I know the guy hitting cleanup is probably a corner infielder? I explain to her that the attributes those players bring to their positions in the field often translate into batting position as well, such as mobility at the top of the order.

Why not put the best hitter first, then the next best hitter, and so on down the line, she'll ask? Because there is a strategy to hitting and scoring in baseball, one that's been tested and refined for scores of years in everything from little leagues to major leagues that says this is the best way to arrange your line up, these are the attributes needed from hitters in different parts of the batting order - and that more often than not those same attributes will reflect where a given hitter plays in the field.

Put another way, there's a reason very few catchers win the MVP award for drawing walks and stealing bases.

Roleplaying games are no different - there is a collective consciousness among gamers about what makes a game good or not. We see it in the principles enshrined in rules systems and in adventure, campaign, and setting design. This is gaming's "lineup card."

The problem is that you can arbitrarily select a bunch of criteria and use those to "prove" that one game is better than another. But somebody else can just as arbitrarily select a different set of criteria and come up with a different result. There being an infinite number of potential criteria, we see the difficulty. Sure, you can say that one game is currently more popular than another, but those fashions come and go, which in itself suggests that finding objective criteria is problematic.

No, it really isn't problematic at all, since it's not really all that arbitrary, particularly over a long period of time.

Criteria for what's fun may vary from gamer to gamer, but when you collect large numbers of those opinions trends emerge. Those trends, what I referred to earlier as the standard vernacular among gamers, develop over time and become enshrined as design principles - like dungeons that 'make sense' and campaign metaplots instead of "ten-by-ten room, one orc, one pie."

Put another way, you're focusing on phenomenology (N=1) as the bottom line while I'm suggesting that there are commonalities that develop over time in the larger population.

The only meaningful judge of a quality of a game is the amount of fun it generates (where "fun" is defined by the participants alone). So in this case, yes it does. In fact, the only meaningful conclusion to be drawn is whether or not the game was fun, and the only source of that information comes from the participants -- so whether or not they agree is the ONLY thing that matters.

How can say to somebody that a game they're enjoying more than yours isn't as good? I mean, honestly, the very idea is silly.

What I find silly is the idea that you believe the only way to judge quality is by fun.

A poorly written, poorly edited adventure with crappy artwork can still be fun for the players if the GM overcomes the limitations of the source material - it doens't change the fact that the writing is convoluted and strewn with errors, the editing slipshod, and the artwork childish. (And on the flip side, a boring adventure with great art and polished prose still sucks.)

And you simply CANNOT be wrong about what you consider fun.

James Whister would probably agree with you - I recall him quoted once as saying something along the lines of, "Don't say it is bad - rather, say you do not like it, for then no one can prove you wrong."

barsoomcore, I don't know if it's just a simple lack of understanding on your part, or if you're deliberately trying to twist my words, but nowhere have I suggested that anyone should sit in judgement of what is or isn't fun. Rather, I'm saying that as a community of gamers, we develop collective standards of what is considered good and desireable in roleplaying games.

A playstyle that encourages some measure of roleplaying is considered good among gamers -and you don't have to take my word for it. Crack open the core rules of just about any roleplaying game and you will find anywhere from a few paragraphs to several pages devoted to the what, why, and how of roleplaying by the participants.

 

[Dremmen]

Amen Brother

A playstyle that encourages some measure of roleplaying is considered good among gamers -and you don't have to take my word for it. Crack open the core rules of just about any roleplaying game and you will find anywhere from a few paragraphs to several pages devoted to the what, why, and how of roleplaying by the participants.

And that's why I'm trying to advocate the narrative style. Because I can't think of a way to interject a character's individuality without using some descriptors above and beyond "I hit him" " I attack" "I take a 5ft step and wait to get my att of opp", etc. The litmus test is if you could have just done those actions with any of the other player's character's and noone would have been the wiser. This tells you that you're not interjecting that PCs individuality into the game, just using him as a souless, faceless puppet. In another words - not playing his role if one was even developed to begin with. So narrate - to what degree and how often is really inconsequential and to the folks arguing that I used too much description in my example or that they only use narration at certain times - its all fine and good and I could not have possibly exemplefied every narrative style into my short example.
And I agree with Shaman 100% - I don't know how many times I have to say hack'n'slash is just as valid a game and just as fun. Its just not a roleplaying game. How can anyone argue otherwise when it has no role-playing involved? And if it has no role-playing involved, how can it be qualitatively equivalent to a narrative style that emphasizes role-playing when playing a ROLE PLAYING GAME.

 

[WayneLigon]

A game isn't art, though. It's a game, and it exists in order to entertain (unlike art, which can be argued to exist for half-a-dozen purposes, none quite so clearcut). Its "quality" is determined solely by how well it achieves that purpose. And what is considered entertaining can only be determined by the participants themselves. Noting that wanting a game to resemble art is just one sort of "entertaining" a game could be.

This, though, is what makes role-playing games unique among games: it's a combination between Game, Writing, and Acting. They are fundamentall different (or should be) from a game of Talisman, or Setters of Catan, or Monopoly.

Both Writing and Acting are indeed arts and thus RPGs can have the qualities and such we attribute to art including art's ability to enlighten and change minds, it's ability to explore the human condition, and it's ability to move and create emotion. It's rare that a session of any RPG can do these things because any art form depends on its artists. Most of us aren't artists, but most people can manage something artistic once in awhile. It's those little artistic moments that make the prep work worthwhile.

It's been my observation that groups who at least attempt and try for the 'RP' in 'RPG' stay together longer and take the hobby more seriously. They also as individuals tend to stay in the hobby longer instead of playing for a time and then moving on to something else to do.

 

[Maggan]

I don't know how many times I have to say hack'n'slash is just as valid a game and just as fun. Its just not a roleplaying game.

Well, that's your rub right there. Hack'n'slash is roleplaying to many people. Maybe not to you, but you don't really know enough about how other people are playing hack'n'slash to say that it's not roleplaying. And as long as you keep saying it, people will keep coming back to it.

If you were saying "hack'n'slash is valid and fun", no one would object.

But you're not saying that, you're saying "hack'n'slash is not roleplaying".

Seperate the two, and you'll see why people are reacting.

How can anyone argue otherwise when it has no role-playing involved? And if it has no role-playing involved, how can it be qualitatively equivalent to a narrative style that emphasizes role-playing when playing a ROLE PLAYING GAME.

Because hack'n'slash is not the same thing as "no roleplaying". I can go as far as to say that it's a style that often emphasises the playing part of roleplaying, but that it is entirely up to the group to decide how much roleplaying they want to add.

/M

 

[Pielorinho]

Dremmen, may I suggest that a term other than "role-playing" might serve you better? Technically speaking, as long as someone is taking on a role in a game in which they're plkaying, they're experiencing a role-playing game.

In the early nineties, a roommate gave me a book about Dungeons and Dragons which he loved, which revolutionized his experience with the hobby. It was written, I believe, in the early eighties, and it contained all sorts of advice for improving the game. For example, it recommended that you give your character a name, not just call him "Elf" or "Dwarf."

This was written years after the term roleplaying game was in wide use amongst D&D geeks, and yet it considered naming your character to be something that developed character, something that people wouldn't necessarily do if they weren't told to.

What you're talking about is certainly something I enjoy; recently, I've been enjoying playing with my character's religious taboos, and I happily roleplay his foulmouthed, impatient outspokenness even when it sabotages delicate negotiations. I would call something like this "character-focused gaming," in which the personality of each PC has an important effect on the story.

There's also what I think of as "spectacle-focused gaming," in which characters are broadly drawn and quick with the one-liners, and in which the spectacular scene is the center of the session (a fight on a burning zeppelin, a bad guy using Villain Time to make her apocalyptic speech uninterrupted).

There's also "mood-focused gaming," in which the DM uses lighting, sound effects, voice modulation, and so forth to establish a powerful mood, and the mood becomes the focus of the session. Call of Cthulhu is an excellent game for doing this.

And there's more. I've engaged in symbolic games, allegorical games (closely related), mystic theory games, oplitical games, and so forth.

Beer-and-pretzels gaming is tons of fun, where out-of-character comments are the norm, and nobody much cares about their character, and the point of the session is to allow the players to relax and hang out with their friends. It's still roleplaying--especially if they've gone so far as to give their characters names--but it's not character-focused, mood-focused, or spectacle-focused.

Daniel

 

[Belen]

I used to hold the same ideals as Dremmen. I thought that it was a more mature form of the game to immerse yourself into the character and setting. Alas, I was never able to fully achieve this state. I think that a narrative style is a very worthy form of playing the game. However, as my gaming philosophy matured over time, and the amount of time I had to appreciate the game lessoned, I came to value other qualities in the game.

A narrative style is just an awesome amount of work on both the players and DM. It requires a good amount of time and dedication to the game. Some, like me, would love to have the time to develop the game to this level. In fact, every time Shark posts about his game, I feel like a crap DM. However, I think most people try to find a happy medium in gaming. They like their roleplay, but keep it separate from the combat crunch, if this makes sense.

I do agree that 3.5 makes the combat crunch more central though and it makes it more difficult to narrate for all parties. It may make it near impossible because you almost have to sacrifice narration in order to keep up with all the various tactics and bonus' that fly about the game during combat. It has even make RP crunchy in that it calls for rolls that tend to break the flow of the game. The only way for a narrator to work well in this area is to ignore the rolls and add a bit of fiat, or roll for the players, which adds yet more work to the DM.

Let me know if I make any sense guys?

For the record, here is what I value in a "mature" gamer these days:

1.) Shows up on time and ready to play.
2.) Interacts with the rest of the players and the setting.
3.) Has in-game goals and desires.
4.) Treats players and DM with respect.
5.) Gives honest opinion about the direction of the game.