skeptic said:
Bill Slavicsek said that the DM is not a opponent but a storyteller* when writting 4E basic outlines for the designers.
*That's not nar, but sim
skeptic said:
That's true for some kind of simulationist play ("Purist for System" is the forge name) that many here describe as "sandbox" play.
However, when the DM write a story (module) and then "play it out" with the players, it's usually simulationist play. Same for any game that mainly attempt to re-create a given genre/theme.
Agreed with both (I made the reference to Purist for System and Sandbox upthread). There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding on this thread as to what Narrativist play (in the Forge sense of that term) involves.
apoptosis said:
Hey Peryton,
I think this is where I am having an issue....
Does increasing PC power (i dont mean necessarily power as in spell power or combat power) necessarily increase what we think of as narrativist agendas.
That is my disconnect and would love to hear support one-way or the other.
I can see how you would have an issue here. I think I might be working with a more expansive notion of narrativism than some other posters (including you, perhaps).
Let me assume, for the sake of exposition, that I am right about the ways in which 4e will increase player control (in character build, in action resolution, in the incidence of adversity, etc). Does this support narrativist play? In my view, it does for a certain somewhat narrow, but I think reasonably popular, set of themes. Broadly, these are the same themes that are explored in B-movies: themes of heroism, struggle, sacrifice, loyalty. Westerns, superhero comics, Jet Li movies from the early and mid 90s, etc, all explore these themes.
If you accept a key premise of all those genres, that nearly all conflict is to be resolved through physical violence, then I think 4e D&D can be a vehicle for exploring the themes I have identified above.
For example: I am playing a PC in a 4e game set in the canonical (treating W&M as canon) PoL setting. For the past couple of levels I have been purchasing my magic items from the Wizard Nicholas in the town of Polis. Then the GM tells me that, as I am leaving his shop one day, I notice a shady character (perhaps a hobgoblin in a cloak, I'm not sure) going down the alley to the back entrance to Nicholas's shop.
Now in standard D&D, as a player I have no way to control this situation: the relationship between Nicholas and the hobgoblin, and its relationship to the adventure, and whether or not the PCs get ambushed that night by a group of Hobgobling magic item smugglers, is also under the GM's control. Furthermore, the alignment rules already answer any moral questions that the circumstances described might give rise to. If I just turn my back and walk away, the GM might well hit me with an alignment purge.
But in 4e (at least as presented in W&M) I as a player get to choose whether or not I want to investigate the shady hobgoblin, and thus whether or not I want to trigger an adventure that raises loyalty (to Nicholas, to Polis) as a theme. The existence of social challenge mechanics also (speculatively, but hopefully) gives me a range of different ways of responding to that adventurer should I choose it - and there are remarks in W&M (I think around p 20) that suggest that it will be certain sorts of "grey area" creatures (they give dragons and hobgoblins as possible examples) who will be the main focus of the social challenge mechanics.
I'll ready concede that this is not the most high-powered narrativism of all time (either thematically or mechanically) but I think it is different from what D&D has offered in the past.
Another example, focusing just on combat: traditionally in D&D, once a character is in combat, all they can do is fight, flee or surrender. A player has no way of setting or changing the stakes of the combat. 4e, by introducing its sophisticated currency of actions coupled to complex suites of powers, seems apt to change this. If we assume, for example, that Second Wind is a once-per-encounter ability, then by using that ability a player is immediately raising the stakes of the encounter, by putting his or her PC's life on the line.
Now, that on its own would not help the game support narrativism if every combat produced a one-way-track with the use of Second Wind at the end of the line. But my feeling (or at least hope) is that the combat mechanics will be sophisticated enough (as a result of the gamist design imperatives that are driving them) that players will have a lot of room for their own decision-making in when and how to use their different powers and thereby affect what is at stake in the combat. And if you then accept the genre proposition put forward above, that in certain genres physical violence is a sort of metaphor for a whole lot of more subtle thematic combat (eg battles between the Hulk, Thunderbolt Ross and Bruce Banner are really explorations of the Freudian theory of Id vs Ego vs Super-ego) then these choices themselves constitute player-directed thematic exploration, development and resolution.
Again, not the most sophisticated narrativism of all time, but something different from what D&D has made room for in the past.
My thoughts on this are influenced to a degree by a lot of experience GMing Rolemaster. In his Simulationism essay Ron Edwards classifies RQ and RM both as Purist for System, and I can see why he does. But that classification ignores certain features of RM that are very different from RQ. First, it has very complex and highly metagamable character build rules (unlike RQ, which I think is rivalled only by classic Traveller for the simulationism of its character build rules), which rules give the players a lot of say over (i) the shape of those very important game elements, the PCs, and (ii) the action resolution tools they will have to hand (a range of skills, spells etc). This can lead RM into gamist territory, but also can foster a degree of low-key narrativism. Thus I have GMed games in which characters, by their ongoing patterns of development of various social skills, and the way the use of these skills has impacted on the gameworld, have explored themes to do with friendship, loyalty, social isolation, the pursuit of power and so on. This can't be done in RQ, because in RQ the player cannot simply allocate DPs to skills at each level and thus take his or her PC in new directions.
A second feature of RM is its combat rules: each round a player who's PC is in melee has to allocate some of his or her combat skill to attack, and some to defence. In the simulationist language of RM this is described as parrying a lot or a little, but again by locating a very meaningful player choice at the heart of melee combat (again, the main form of conflict resolution in a bog-standard fantasy RPG) it opens the door to gamism, but also (on occasions, at least) to a low-key narrativism, as the player gets to choose (at least in certain combats, in which the numbers in play don't simply mandate a single rational response) exactly what to put at stake in that combat, and how. (The range of choice here is increased once other mechanical options are brought into play, like decisions on whether or not to use and/or sustain Adrenal Moves.)
Obviously this is not TRoS, but it's not RQ either, in which the choice is simply one between Dodge skill and Parry skill and there is almost always a single rational mechanical choice.
A slightly long post, but I hope it illustrates what I have in mind.
EDIT: Just as high-concept simulatonism is different from purist-for-system simulationism, but (as long as we are working within the GNS framework) we really have no choice but to label them both simulationism, so there may well be approaches to play that are rather different, and yet which (as long as we are working within the GNS framework) we have no choice but to label narrativist. (In his Story Now essay, Ron Edwards has a table that classifies narrativist games along various dimensions, but the details currently escape me.)
The sort of narrativist play I am describing could be describe as virtually vanilla, in that (i) it does not have ultra-narrativist mechanics to support it but rather depends upon (ii) the absence of narrativist-destroying simulationist mechanics (such as alignment, personality disadvantages, etc) plus (iii) piggybacking on complex mechanics (character build, action resolution, world-building guidelines, etc), introduced originally for non-narrativist purposes, that create room for meaningful player choices.
Maybe "low concept" narrativism?
