Trying to Describe "Narrative-Style Gameplay" to a Current Player in Real-World Terms

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think some of this is also due to video games, which I touched on in my previous post. Think about games like Diablo and Skyrim and the like. They take the classic RPG conventions and concepts, and then use them in a new media. Almost by default, that media focuses more on action than any other element. And since video games are so much more popular than TTRPGs, there's been a return influence there... they're now influencing the games that inspired them.

So a lot of players have had this combat intense focus reinforced by video games, and then bring that mindset back to TTRPGs. It's influenced expectations and processes and design choices.

And I don't want to imply in any way that those games are "bad"... it's just about what the experience of play is expected to be and what the experience of play actually is. When I play Diablo, I expect to basically never stop killing things and getting loot and then killing more powerful things and getting even more loot. It's a fun game. It's not what I want out of my TTRPGs, though... so when a player approaches a game I GM with that expectation in mind, that's gonna likely cause an issue unless we work it out.

I have two players who, when we play other games, approach play very much along the expectations of the given game. But as soon as we play D&D, they absolutely approach it the way they do video games. It's all character builds and how to properly spec your character and so on. It's strange how they cannot seem to bring the open mindset they have with other games and apply it to D&D.

I always enjoy the moment with new gamers when they pause and say "... wait ... I can do ... anything?"

It paralyzes some folks, of course, but more often, it unleashes the inner chaos monster who no longer has to just choose which button to press.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I always enjoy the moment with new gamers when they pause and say "... wait ... I can do ... anything?"

It paralyzes some folks, of course, but more often, it unleashes the inner chaos monster who no longer has to just choose which button to press.

What's weird is that these are not new players in any sense of the word. These guys have been playing D&D since first edition. They've got decades of experience. However, they also play a TON of video games. One of them has stopped playing video games in the last couple of years because he's slowly lost his eyesight. I think for him, returning to RPGs has kind of helped replace the void left by video games... but he's very much carried over the mindset he has with CRPGs to TTRPGs.

The other player is so heavily into video games... it's his primary hobby, I'd say. So his ideas of "gaming" overall I think bleed over from video games. For whatever reason, he seems able to block that influence for games other than D&D.

It's odd.

 

[payn]

I always enjoy the moment with new gamers when they pause and say "... wait ... I can do ... anything?"

It paralyzes some folks, of course, but more often, it unleashes the inner chaos monster who no longer has to just choose which button to press.

Which is interesting for the player I mentioned earlier. If the rule book doesn't specifically tell them they can do it it, they feel like they cant do anything. Some of that I believe comes from feat design that makes it seem like you cant do something without paying a character building point on it.

Furthermore, I have had a few convos with folks about experience points. If the game doesn't inform them to do things, they wont do them. It seems bonkers to me to hear somebody say, "why would a rogue ever pick a lock if they are not awarded XP for it?" So, that mechanical breadcrumb trail is required just to get them to play the game. It's no wonder getting stuff is so hyper-focused on, its one tangible element present in every game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What's weird is that these are not new players in any sense of the word. These guys have been playing D&D since first edition. They've got decades of experience. However, they also play a TON of video games. One of them has stopped playing video games in the last couple of years because he's slowly lost his eyesight. I think for him, returning to RPGs has kind of helped replace the void left by video games... but he's very much carried over the mindset he has with CRPGs to TTRPGs.

The other player is so heavily into video games... it's his primary hobby, I'd say. So his ideas of "gaming" overall I think bleed over from video games. For whatever reason, he seems able to block that influence for games other than D&D.

It's odd.

I don't think that's all that odd. I think a lot of folks have a mental partition between "D&D and games clearly designed to closely resemble D&D" and "all other roleplaying games". I know I want things out of D&D-style play that I don't need out of other RPGs.

 

[Emberashh]

Has to be said there isn't an either/or between wanting to enjoy combat, and storytelling, nor between whatever vague stuff we've decided Narrative means.

Can also be said that the idea that a game can't be about multiple things at once is also bunk, and that its a weird, perverse DNDism to say an RPG needs a bunch of bespoke mechanics for it to be about story or narrative or premise or whatever.

These are still improv games, and improv does a lot of this naturally if you embrace it.

 

[aramis erak]

Has to be said there isn't an either/or between wanting to enjoy combat, and storytelling, nor between whatever vague stuff we've decided Narrative means.

Can also be said that the idea that a game can't be about multiple things at once is also bunk, and that its a weird, perverse DNDism to say an RPG needs a bunch of bespoke mechanics for it to be about story or narrative or premise or whatever.

These are still improv games, and improv does a lot of this naturally if you embrace it.

There is a natural tendency to engage with what has rules. For many, the improv mode is uncomfortable; for them, mechanics take even more importance, and what the game makes interesting is what they engage with.

This is why in Burning Empires and Burning Wheel, extended social conflicts are common - they're mechanically interesting, and generate sometimes amazing twists in story. They're a process.

Likewise, the social mechanics in The One Ring are as interesting as melee combat. And in my campaigns, players have embraced them.

Same story for Star Trek Adventures, Dune, and Mouse Guard. Albeit, Mouse Guard explicitly uses the same mechanics for social as it does for melee; Dune and STA, meanwhile, makes small changes to the base combat mechanic for social conflict; Dune also does Espionage and mass combat as tweaks of the same mechanic.

Dune's self consistent, plays well, but the differences for Espionage and for infiltration catch players off guard.

 

[Emberashh]

There is a natural tendency to engage with what has rules. For many, the improv mode is uncomfortable; for them, mechanics take even more importance, and what the game makes interesting is what they engage with.

This is why in Burning Empires and Burning Wheel, extended social conflicts are common - they're mechanically interesting, and generate sometimes amazing twists in story. They're a process.

Likewise, the social mechanics in The One Ring are as interesting as melee combat. And in my campaigns, players have embraced them.

Same story for Star Trek Adventures, Dune, and Mouse Guard. Albeit, Mouse Guard explicitly uses the same mechanics for social as it does for melee; Dune and STA, meanwhile, makes small changes to the base combat mechanic for social conflict; Dune also does Espionage and mass combat as tweaks of the same mechanic.

Dune's self consistent, plays well, but the differences for Espionage and for infiltration catch players off guard.

A lot of people haven't come to grips with their not actually liking RPGs, and it isn't helped by the fact that the entire hobby refuses to recognize they are all fundamentally improv games. Every. Single. One. From Braunstein to every 1 page pamphlet to every DND to every PBTA and so on.

If you're not comfortable with improv, there is no RPG that makes it better, because then it wouldn't be an RPG, and meanwhile the games that try just end up with blocking problems manifesting, which is how improv games breakdown, primarily through the plot railroads of traditional games or the thematic railroad of indie games, because they're deliberately designed to not integrate with improv properly, even though they cannot ever remove that aspect of the game.

Its not impossible to combine systems and improv, I've been exploring that in my own game's design, but it takes a lot more thought than just systematizing something, and especially so when its easily governed by improv directly. There's a reason social systems will often have people bouncing off of them unless they approach them purely mechanically; they're not designed to integrate with freeform improv but to replace it, and this is a form of blocking.

 

[Campbell]

Roleplaying games require dynamic creativity, fictional reasoning and the ability to think on your feet. That is an altogether different thing than saying all roleplaying games are based on "Improv Principles". I would argue that blocking is fundamental to the play experience of the vast majority of roleplaying games (traditional, OSR and indie).

The basic purpose of most mechanics is to resolve what happens when one participant tries to block an action of another in a way that does not rely on consensus. I try to do X, but it might not succeed and instead something else that I might not want to have happen might happen. That's what makes these games so exciting - the prospect that things might not go our way.

 

[kenada]

A lot of people haven't come to grips with their not actually liking RPGs, and it isn't helped by the fact that the entire hobby refuses to recognize they are all fundamentally improv games. Every. Single. One. From Braunstein to every 1 page pamphlet to every DND to every PBTA and so on.

If you're not comfortable with improv, there is no RPG that makes it better, because then it wouldn't be an RPG, and meanwhile the games that try just end up with blocking problems manifesting, which is how improv games breakdown, primarily through the plot railroads of traditional games or the thematic railroad of indie games, because they're deliberately designed to not integrate with improv properly, even though they cannot ever remove that aspect of the game.

Its not impossible to combine systems and improv, I've been exploring that in my own game's design, but it takes a lot more thought than just systematizing something, and especially so when its easily governed by improv directly. There's a reason social systems will often have people bouncing off of them unless they approach them purely mechanically; they're not designed to integrate with freeform improv but to replace it, and this is a form of blocking.

Given our past interactions on “improv game”, I’m not sure how fruitful this conversation will be, so if it’s not going to be, let’s let it drop, but I’m having trouble following you on blocking.

It seems to me that blocking is necessary to create gameplay. Without it, the GM always ends up having to accept what the players want. You mention a problem with creating gameplay dynamics in your thread on social systems, so it seems like you also see the issue. Maybe I just don’t understand what “blocking” means in this context.

For example, consider the following situation. The players are looking for information on local bandit attacks. They hear someone at the bar may know, so they go to the bar to find out, seeing them him at the counter.

Person 1: I walk over to the counter, greet the bartender, and order my usual. I turn to the man next to me and ask, “I hear you might know a way into the bandit camp.”​

Person 2: I don’t know you.​

In improv, that failure to accept the first person’s offer potentially kills the scene. However, in a role-playing game, there are game elements the players can use to overcome this obstacle. It doesn’t kill the scene. It’s an obstacle they can play the game to overcome.

For example, in 5e (2014 edition), they could assess the NPC’s BIFTs and appeal to them to make a Charisma (Persuasion) check to make a request for the information. In Blades in the Dark, they can try to Sway (probably at Risky/Limited). In Torchbearer, this might become a Convince conflict. There are plenty of different ways games operationalize this.

However, the important thing is that you can lose. Maybe the check fails, or you lose the conflict. The result is the NPC leaves or (worse) informs on the PCs to the bandits. To me, it seems like that risk of failure is the point. Otherwise, obstacles aren’t effectively obstacles. (Of course, it may be that I just don’t understand.)

 

[Emberashh]

That is an altogether different thing than saying all roleplaying games are based on "Improv Principles"

If a given game presents people the open ended question of "what do you do", its fundamentally integrated an improv game. There isn't a single game in the RPG space that doesn't do this.

I would argue that blocking is fundamental to the play experience of the vast majority of roleplaying games (traditional, OSR and indie).

Which is what I'm talking about when I say there's a problem with the space not recognizing that RPGs are fundamentally improv games. Blocking isn't a good thing, and its the root cause of every single issue in the hobby that people keep inventing new jargon for.

The basic purpose of most mechanics is to resolve what happens when one participant tries to block an action of another in a way that does not rely on consensus. I try to do X, but it might not succeed and instead something else that I might not want to have happen might happen. That's what makes these games so exciting - the prospect that things might not go our way.

Blocking isn't the same thing as failing at something you wanted to do.

The big thing about why blocking is such a perverse problem is that RPGs are three way improv experience. The GM, the Players, and the Rules are participants in it. You have to Yes,and the Rules and they, in turn, have to Yes,And you.

The possibility of failure is a part of that. Where it goes wrong is when the Rules completely prevent you from taking a reasonable action to begin with because they don't integrate the abilty to improvise properly, and if/when you end up with no organic way to move forward when that occurs. And most often, its usually the GM that begets failure as blocking, because they set an unreasonable requirement to force a specific outcome. (Eg, its all Railroading all the way down)

Failing forward is a generally good idea that goes towards addressing that, to be clear, but it goes wrong in what its called and how its implemented. The thematic railroad of indie games isn't any better, and the notion that its "failing" often is counterproductive in that it produces a really questionable gamefeel when people internalize that that occurence is them failing. Its not that fundamentally different, in effect, from people in traditional games who end up feeling like a moron because of what the dice say, and this is yet another example of why the failure to recognize is so perverse.

Blocking is at the heart of every common issue with these games.

It seems to me that blocking is necessary to create gameplay.

Not at all. Blocking is easily understood from the perspective of disruption. In a traditional improv game, we can observe how awkward a scene gets when a player inadvertently (or purposefully, as it were) blocks their fellow participants, and especially so if none of them have the skill to smooth over it as it happens and recover the momentum of the scene.

This manifests in RPGs as all those things I've pointed to before. Railroading, plot or thematic, the Failure/Moron effect, the "Writer's Room" of indie games, and so on. And indeed, from a game's perspective, Rule Zero is blocking, and one only needs to look at DND5E for an example of what happens when a game actually manages to block itself by being poorly designed. The Martial/Caster disparity and the Adventuring Day are such examples.

These all disrupt the gameplay and kill the momentum of the experience. Sometimes participants may just suffer these ill effects in silence, and naturally the game has no way to speak for itself unless the blocking was so egregious it just straight up breaks (ala 5e), but that doesn't mean blocking isn't bad or just part of the game.

For example, consider the following situation.

It's not clicking for you because the example is bad and isn't what blocking is. Person 2's response could be interpreted as a prompt for the speaker to explain more about themselves, establish rapport, or give a reason for why they should be listened to. It’s more of a conversational obstacle rather than an outright block, leaving room for further negotiation or engagement in the conversation.

The key distinction is that blocking implies an intentional barrier to interaction, whereas this situation is more about setting a condition or acknowledging a lack of familiarity that could lead to further conversation if addressed.

What would actually be blocking in this case is if the GM, at every attempt to interact with somebody, contrived a reason to deny it outright no matter how you approached it.

I'm inclined to point towards this particular amusing little video:


The DM's meltdown at the end was a great example of what blocking actually is, but given the intended nature of most DND Campaigns (ie, the expectation that there is a specific if open-ended plot to be pursued), the Players were actually blocking the DM in turn by never engaging the obvious plot hook (nevermind the things they did that isn't in the purview of their role as Players to begin with) and by not allowing to him to participate, and the game being what it is, doesn't give the DM any substantial means to account for all their improvised nonsense anyway, which inevitably leads to the meltdown.

People often watch that and see it as an indictment of huge tables, but really that wasn't the issue. It was a failure to respect the input of the three Participants in the improv game, and it doesn't really matter how many actual people occupy to the two human roles.

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Another thing that should be pointed out here, about the fact that RPGs are fundamentally improv games, is that they are not only improv games. Bespoke mechanical systems have been endemic to these games since the beginning, and this is why the Rules are a participant, and what I'm ultimately talking about when I refer to games not integrating improv and systems together properly.

If a game isn't designed with this integration in mind, it puts an undue burden on GMs and/or Players to have the improvisational skill to smooth over and work past blocking.

A better way forward, as I've argued, is just not doing this. Integrate the two properly, and prevent blocking from manifesting at all, at least on part of the Rules. Even in my game, a GM or a Player could still do it, but I make it a point that playgroups need to establish a specific Game Tone for themselves, so that there's an established boundary to where they can take the game through improv, and the game itself is designed to yes,and that choice whatever it may be.

Whether you go looney tunes wacky or game of thrones gritty grimdark or anything inbetween, the game isn't going to block you. Course, the caveat is that if you block the game, the game will break. No silently suffering game here, as its been designed with heavy integration between all of its elements.

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That all said, it does prove prudent to point out that at this point I don't actually call my games RPGs anymore anyway, given just how deeply entrenched all this baggage is (can't count how many times I've had people elsewhere straight up tell me I'm not making an RPG, so I just embraced it).

I call them Immersive Improv, which better describes what my games do and has been designed to provide for, which has been nice if only because I no longer have to concern myself with saddling the game with said baggage, but also because I've observed that change actually making the game click better for people coming from RPGs.

(Which all then just begets people who question why I bother coming into RPG spaces, which is just sad, rude, and incredibly gatekeepy. Yet more reason I generally consider these spaces worthless unless I just feel like getting into it or want eyes on the things Im doing)