Should this be fixed

[LostSoul]

So are you saying that under narrativist play the participants negotiate a dimension of context that choices and consequences will always be measured against? So the statement "This game will explore the ramifications of falsehoods and trust" would signal that situations where the PCs choices regarding teling the truth and/or believng the statements of others would be watched more carefully and drive more consequence than other activities, but the choice-->consequence chain is otherwise intact?

Yep. I don't know if those actions will necessarily drive more consequences; sometimes the conflict posed by the context will be resolved, though usually, in my experience, that brings up a new and unexpected dimension of conflict.

 

[Raven Crowking]

and it can't be answered in-game.

I was with you up to this.

It most assuredly can be answered in-game.


RC

 

[pemerton]

But, as the OP's GM is apparently actually reading this thread, I reiterate: Going back to the original post, I'm not at all sure that anything Edwards has to say is relevant.

So, maybe the dwarf's player would prefer a different style of campaign play? Is it a more popular style? No. Would changing to that style be likely to make the GM better for her group as a whole? No.

Are you confusing your dwarf players? Hussar, in the post to which I replied, didn't say anything about the OP. He was talking about an episode from my game, involving a dwarf PC and the player of that PC, that I described upthread. And Edwards' account of narrativist play is relevant (in my view) to explaining the episode of play that Hussar was asking about.

Even when reading a first-person fictional narrative, the narrator should not be mistaken for the author, and the narrator's control over context and consequence should not be mistaken for the author's.

It follows from this that the players shouldn't be mistaken for the PCs. But this doesn't tell us that the players aren't authors.

The players are the authors of the PCs' intents; they are not the authors of the world, and do not get to pick and choose what consequences they wish to occur.

IMHO, once you (esp. as a GM) have decided what the end-point will be, the consequences of PC actions begin to sculpt toward that end-point, rather than flowing naturally from what has occurred. This actually removes agency from the players.

These two things are true to an extent. The first is not entirely true - in most RPGs, even fairly traditional ones, the players get to author things like the appearance of their PCs, their PCs' starting equipment (within certain limits), the colour of their PCs' clothes, the names and history of their PCs families, mentors etc (within certain limits), and various other background details.

But they don't mark any sort of necessary distinction between simulationist and narrativist play. In the episodes of play I've described upthread, involving a paladin and a demon, a dwarf and his former tormentors, and a wizard betraying his former allies and his home city, the players were not authors of the world and didn't get to pick and choose what consequences occur. And neither player nor GM had decided what any end-point would be - in each case, the choices of the players to have their PCs to act in certain ways were unknown to me until they were made in play, and I then had to resolve the consequences of those choices in the real time of play. This is what Robin Laws is talking about when he says (as quoted upthread) challenge the PCs (and their players) and they will challenge you.

Since we're just human and none of us know the full range of naturally-occurring consequences from any action, there's a wide range of believable ones.

I agree with this, and have stressed it repeatedly upthread. The contrast between simulationism and narrativism isn't about the believability of ingame consequences, but the concerns that shape the decision-making process about those consequences.

Do you have any more links that go a bit further in explaining narrativism? I read Ron Edwards on the subject years ago, and found him rather impenetrable.

So are you saying that under narrativist play the participants negotiate a dimension of context that choices and consequences will always be measured against?

For actual play examples of narrativist play (from my game) see posts upthread here (dealing with loyalty and betrayal), here (dealing with atonement - does the inflicter of suffering deserve suffering in return?) and here (dealing with revenge - how should one who was at the bottom respond to former tormentors now s/he is at the top?).

The last of those episodes is further analysed here. This last post also contains some of the highlights of Edwards' extracted out.

There's nothing esoteric or mysterious about these episodes of play. There need not be any "negotiation of a dimension of context that choices and consequences will always be measure against". There could be, I guess, but in my games it just emereges naturally out of play. In the paladin case, the context is introduced implicitly by the players' decision to play a paladin in a fantasy game. In the dwarf revenge case, the context was also generated by the players' backstory, which was put together in response to some very simple general instruction I gave to the players at the start of the game (give your PC at least one relationship/loyalty, and give your PC a reason to be ready to fight goblins). In the betrayal case, the context had emerged out of play, plus an understanding among the players (to which I was not privy at the time) that one of the PCs (a seer) would be taken out of the game because they didn't like the way that the divination mechanics played.

As a GM, all you have to do is not punish the players for the choices they make for their PCs. "Not punishing", here, does not mean letting the players decide what happens. As the blog to which LostSoul linked indicated, this can lead to problems if a player has to play both his/her PC and the antagonism to that PC. It means, at a minimum, not removing the players' ability to engage the gameworld via his/her PC in ways that s/he cares about - which often, but not always, means at least not killing the PC. Particularly if the game is meant to be an ongoing open-ended one of the classic campaign variety, the consequences should recognise the choice that the player has made for his/her PC, but build on or develop or respond to that in a way that opens up room for more responses (in the case of my dwarf, for example, having dealt with his tormentors by becoming their war leader, they were then led by him into death/injury at the hands of a behemoth - this doesn't invalidate the player's choice, or punish him for it, but it adds a new complication to it). (EDIT: What LostSoul said two posts upthread.)

And on the side of the players, all that is needed is an interest in thematic ideas rather than simply "winning" the game - and therefore a readiness to spend effort, in play, on thematic issues. In my experience, players who build rich backstories into their PCs, and who then try to bring those backstories into play - especially those who build clerics, paladins, political actors, etc (ie PCs whose hijinks naturally lead into thematically rich territory) - are often signalling an interest in this sort of play.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Are you confusing your dwarf players? Hussar, in the post to which I replied, didn't say anything about the OP.

I have no idea what is in Hussar's post.

 

[SSquirrel]

Backstab the crap out of the dwarf. Maybe his next character will listen to reason

 

[pemerton]

I have no idea what is in Hussar's post.

OK. Hussar was asking me about my interpretation of an episode of play in my game involving a dwarf PC. I answered his question. I quoted Edwards as part of that answer. And I'm still pretty sure that the Edwards I quoted was relevant - that is, relevant to my interpretation of the episode of play in my game upon which Hussar had asked me to elaborate.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

As a GM, all you have to do is not punish the players for the choices they make for their PCs. "Not punishing", here, does not mean letting the players decide what happens. As the blog to which LostSoul linked indicated, this can lead to problems if a player has to play both his/her PC and the antagonism to that PC. It means, at a minimum, not removing the players' ability to engage the gameworld via his/her PC in ways that s/he cares about - which often, but not always, means at least not killing the PC. Particularly if the game is meant to be an ongoing open-ended one of the classic campaign variety, the consequences should recognise the choice that the player has made for his/her PC, but build on or develop or respond to that in a way that opens up room for more responses (in the case of my dwarf, for example, having dealt with his tormentors by becoming their war leader, they were then led by him into death/injury at the hands of a behemoth - this doesn't invalidate the player's choice, or punish him for it, but it adds a new complication to it). (EDIT: What LostSoul said two posts upthread.)

And on the side of the players, all that is needed is an interest in thematic ideas rather than simply "winning" the game - and therefore a readiness to spend effort, in play, on thematic issues. In my experience, players who build rich backstories into their PCs, and who then try to bring those backstories into play - especially those who build clerics, paladins, political actors, etc (ie PCs whose hijinks naturally lead into thematically rich territory) - are often signalling an interest in this sort of play.

Which gets very difficult if the players are playing at cross-purposes or at least not agreed on accepting the same campaign style.

Rogue player has character kill goodie-two-shoes in town and other player characters turn him in. He wriggles free through GM intervention and can continue to engage the world through clandestine operations as a fugitive on the run a la The A Team, The Hulk, or The Fugitive. Other players want no part of that play style. Who wins?

• The GM could run the two separate campaigns in the same timeslot only by compromising the enjoyment of everyone.
• The GM could bend the suspension of disbelief at the table by ignoring the player choices, consequences, and current situation and have the murder and fallout be ignored by the environment.
• The GM could whisk all the characters somewhere far away with little hope to return where the PCs have to rely on one another to survive while sacrificing his and the rest of the group's attachment to the established milieu.
• The other players could roll their eyes and surrender their choices and have thier characters join the fugitive.
• The rogue player could be forced to not engage the game world with that character as the culture's justice is meted out.

At some point there has to be a reckoning between the group as to what sort of game is being played.

 

[Hussar]

That sounds an awful lot like 1) you really are exploring the PC's morality if you're looking into what drives the character and 2) by describing terrorism as extreme and then planning on presenting reactions to the terrorist act, aren't you doing exactly what you say we shouldn't be doing by defining terrorism as evil? Won't the players get the exact same impression as if they had already been told that terrorism, in the game world's objective morality, is evil? I'm not seeing a significant difference.

As far as how the fallout of the act affects the PCs on a personal level, you can get that with the act being objectively defined as evil as well as without that being done. So again, I'm not seeing a significant difference.

Extreme =/= evil. I don't think anyone would disagree that terrorist acts are extreme, but, there are loads of examples (most of which are against site policy to talk about, I'm sure you can think of a few) where extreme acts that are quite clearly acts of terrorism are not evil and are, in fact, historically lauded as acts of freedom from oppression.

If I objectively state that terrorism=evil, then all acts of terrorism become evil. Therefore, no act of violence by a civilian group against a government body is morally valid.

That's quite obviously not true.

 

[Hussar]

That's not how it works; it's very much about context-choice-consequence. Context highlights "problematic feature of human existence", the choices the players care about deal with those issues, and thus consequences will be in response to those choices.



1. The PCs will succeed in clearing out the Caves of Chaos, making the area safe for human habitation.

2. Do the monsters in the Caves of Chaos have the right to self-government (or even life!), given that these are "the Borderlands", civilization is encroaching on their territory, and that they engage in some pretty barbarous acts?

This, I think, nails it on the head. Particularly in light of some of the responses. If, during play, the clearing of the Caves of Chaos is the least likely outcome, then the campaign you have just highlighted here, LostSoul, will almost never come to light.

Thus, if you actually WANT to play Caves of Chaos as a Thematic narrative game, you're going to have to skip the actual clearing bits, and get to part 2. Because, in the thematic game, THAT'S where the game is.

 

[pemerton]

Nagol, I've got not doubt that the group has to be on the same page, more-or-less.

In my own group there's one play who's more interested in 4e as a gamist excercise than a thematic exercise, but happily the 4e mechanics (or, at least, the way we use them) mean that that player's pursuit of tactical victory neither impedes nor is impeded by the other players treating the tactical game as a vehicle for expressing theme. So I think a bit of accommodation can sometimes be possible.

There are two glosses that I would want to add to your post, though.

First, the idea of "GM intervention" I think is a little misleading. Very few games have a "justice system resolution table", so the conequences of a murderer being "turned in" are always up to the GM to determine. There is nothing distinctive about narrativist play in this respect - what is distinctive is the considerations that inform the GM's determination.

Second, I don't think that narrativist players are particularly prone to being disruptive or derailing games, or pose any extraordinary problem in terms of expectation management. Hardcore gamist players, for example, who focus on PC optimisation and who approach every ingame situation from a fiction-light pawn stance, are a well known issue for simulationist GURPS, HERO, 3E or even AD&D 2nd ed play.

And a certain sort of simulationist player, who wants to roleplay out every shopping expedition , for example, and who plays the character to the exclusion of engaging the situations the GM is presenting to the group, is disruptive of mainstream D&D play focused on simulation as a chassis for gamism, because this sort of simulationist player refuses to "step on up".

So I agree that some sort of mutuality in the group is important, but I don't think that simulationism provides any sort of privileged safe harbour. In fact, in my (admittedly limited) experience it is fairly easy for a narrativist player to drift a group in that direction - you keep following the GM's plot hooks, but treat the GM's storyline as simply a backdrop against which thematically driven PC-to-PC interaction takes place, which interactions in turn inform the way the group engages with the GM's storyline. This is perhaps not the most functional RPGing of all time (it depends a fair bit on how the GM responds). But at least in my experience, it is evidence against the notion of simulationism (or very exploration heavy gamism of the classic D&D variety) as a default approach to RPGing.