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

[kenada]

Narrative improv is important in particular because thats the specific kind of Improv thats fundamental to RPGs, but my reference to other types was to illustrate that blocking is contextual. Whats blocking in a comedy skit isn't necessarily the same thing as blocking in a narrative experience or vice versa.

The issue I have with this is I don’t really care about the narrative aspect of RPGs. There was a thread a while ago that asked you to rank game, character, and story; and my ranking was something like “game > character >>>>>> story”.

My game is structured around the PCs’ pursuing and completing goals (individual, group, and campaign). That’s how they receive EXP. One could argue that goals provide a scaffolding for the narrative structure, but goals are picked by the players, and there’s nothing that requires them to pick goals that result in a coherent story (beyond causality being a thing).

The big thing about it always goes back to consent. If you're engaging in PVP you have to accept the possibility of fully losing, and embrace all that entails. I didn't end up going into it in my last post, but it was on my mind to point out that over in video game land, improv actually has some influence still, particularly when it comes to multiplayer games.

To not get too in the weeds of exploring that, I'll just note that, related to the question of PVP, there's a reason the idea of the angry competitive gamer became a thing, and its not strictly because of immaturity or sportsmanship, though those are certainly big factors.

Its that a lot of those people aren't actually consenting to the idea that they could lose.

The game that comes to mind when I think of PvP is Dogs in the Vineyard. In that game, conflicts are structured around a series of raises. As the conflict goes on, the stakes get higher. Eventually, they end in violence unless one of the parties withdraws. That’s also the only way to opt out. If you don’t want to be party to a conflict, you withdraw.

Oh they are, for sure. The idea behind what I call Interpretative Difficulty is that the cost of rolling low is Time, not failure, and that failure itself is generated through a separate mechanic that opens the possibility space to much more than just hard failure, but also supports its own opposite for rewarding especially high rolls.

In otherwords, the whole thing revolves around a greatly iterated upon Tension Pool, where the Pool can generate not just Complications, but Encounters and Boons, which if one remembers, also forms the basis of my Living World system and is how Time is tracked.

Meanwhile, the question of GM discretion is pretty core to why I've been talking about Game Tone, and having to adhere to Yes,And as the GM. The only reason the GM should be outright denying is in the egregious disregard of the groups chosen tone, but even then theres flexibility there.

I've talked before about my Events system for travel/exploration, where players receive prompts that they're free to interpret however, and inclined players could use them to substantially alter the gameworld, such as conjuring a huge pile of gold into a forest.

The GM in such cases has a lot of ways to handle something like that, it just depends on the context. If the player is just being a cynical dweeb who isn't respecting the spirit of the game, blocking is probably necessary to maintain the game tone, and this becomes a matter of addressing bad player behavior.

But, it might not be like that. The player might be earnestly interpreting their Event, and the game tone might not restrict such nonsensical things just happening, and this conjured pile of gold can be approached in a lot of fun ways through how the Events system is resolved. The GM could straight up say the gold has disappeared when the players go to investigate, but the ground clearly shows a huge indent where it sat. They could also say the gold morphs and shifts into a huge Mimic or a sleeping Dragon. The gold could carry a terrible curse. The gold might just be straight up fake and it was dumped in the forest.

If other players have Events, they could be combined. The gold may well be real, but when the party returns they stumble on the small but elite military outfit another player saw running through the forest loading it up, because their job was to recover it. Thats when they realize the bandits a third player overheard are hanging from the trees by the neck.

And so on. The idea behind Events is that the group is collaborating on the things they experience as they travel or explore, and the GM is explicitly a participant in that collaboration (as they are in all aspects of the game). Its everyones responsibility to maintain their Game Tone, so especially egregious abuses shouldn't be happening to begin with, but edge cases can be embraced, and the momentum of play can continue.

Those examples all open up to a variety of new adventures or events, which is the precise point of the system.

As a player, I don’t like having content authority beyond what my character knows or is about, so my game reflects that. If the players want to alter the game world, they have to go out and do stuff to it as their characters (e.g., the players in my game’s campaign are building up their settlement and are working on controlling the area around it).

However, I know it’s popular though to prompt players for stuff like that, so that’s cool if you can make it work in your game. It’s just not something I personally like. I remember playing a game at Origins where the DM asked me to describe how the monster I killed died, and my mind blanked.

 

[andreszarta]

That makes no sense to me. You can behave as if somebody else is doing a thing, but that doesn't mean they are doing the thing.

See Vince Baker's story about the smelly chamberlain.

Honestly, that whole post and subsequent thread really helped me grasp how crucial the Lumpley Principle is to our activity.

Granting and denying assent are things that we naturally do as part of the conversation we are having. That, I think, was one of the key observations that drove Vincent and people in his sphere to start designing around that fundamental aspect of human creative collaboration. And "around" also means "against" and "towards": It's about taking that as a feature of the medium in service of your game.

Here is a link to Smelly Chamberlain, if people still following this thread are curious.

 

[FrogReaver]

That makes no sense to me. You can behave as if somebody else is doing a thing, but that doesn't mean they are doing the thing.

See Vince Baker's story about the smelly chamberlain.

Typically in improv you are supposed to go along with the details other participants add.

 

[Emberashh]

As a player, I don’t like having content authority beyond what my character knows or is about, so my game reflects that.

Thats the purpose of prompts, and why you can just outright ignore them if you want.

In my experience, most people tend to come around to it once they see what they can do with them, even if they have that hang up, because even if you're the only person with an Event, you won't actually know how its going to play out, and this only becomes more unpredictable the more people have Events.

Events don't end with you merely declaring what you encountered, but after your entire group has engaged with it and Yes,And'd it. Its very much different from the idea of having players just arbitrarily come up with stuff about the world.

 

[Emberashh]

Typically in improv you are supposed to go along with the details other participants add.

In general yes, but not in the way you're suggesting, and definitely not in the context of the kind of improv being discussed vis a vis RPGs.

 

[andreszarta]

This is a purposeful diversion.

It strikes me as a bit of a funny linguistic misstep that we have decided to talk about 'blocking' in the improv sense to describe rejecting another player's input, especially in discussing RPG theory where we already have richer terms for the nuanced way players adapt and build on each other’s contributions and with robust and relevant literature behind these terms. Clinging to that usage of 'blocking' in the context of this post has felt very limiting and misleading to me personally, I think, because of the looming, more productive 'media' sense of the word, where 'blocking' refers to the purposeful orientation and positioning of actors and objects within a scene.

When it comes to describing narrative-style RPGs, we’re far better served by thinking of 'blocking' as a term for orientation—guiding focus and interaction—rather than obstruction. Especially today, in 2024, players who find themselves struggling with this style of play might benefit from realizing that these games are not simply stage 'improv' around a table. Effective narrativist play requires communication and an awareness of orientation in relation to fellow players and their gameable objects with positioning, rather than mimicking the dynamics of improv. Embracing this approach brings out the collaborative depth essential to narrativist games, recognizing that yes and, no but, granting assent, withholding assent, saying "maybe...let's roll", and all other possible arrangements of human creative collaboration collapse within as vectors of actionable play.

Like I said, funny linguistics.

 

[FrogReaver]

In general yes, but not in the way you're suggesting,

Elaborate? I shouldn't even have to ask.

and definitely not in the context of the kind of improv being discussed vis a vis RPGs.

I only see one path forward.

If you really view RPG improv and traditional improv as being different kinds, then I don't think it's actually that helpful to talk about RPG improv. It's the same trodden path of piggybacking off a real concept from another field and then drastically changing the meaning, which is just creating new jargon.

IMO the path forward is to recognize that there aren't different types of improv, but there are different methods/arrangements for determining what are valid declarations the participants in the improv can say. That's the difference you are seeing between Traditional Improv and RPG Improv.

 

[FrogReaver]

This is a purposeful diversion.

It strikes me as a bit of a funny linguistic misstep that we have decided to talk about 'blocking' in the improv sense to describe rejecting another player's input,

You didn't quote anyone so I'm not clear what this comment is actually directed at. I did talk about blocking though so maybe it's me. But what I was saying was that the mandatory acceptance of another player's input restricts what you can say. I thought it was fair to refer to that which one is restricted from saying as being 'blocked' from saying it. Maybe that's wrong?

When it comes to describing narrative-style RPGs, we’re far better served by thinking of 'blocking' as a term for orientation—guiding focus and interaction—rather than obstruction. Especially today, in 2024, players who find themselves struggling with this style of play might benefit from realizing that these games are not simply stage 'improv' around a table. Effective narrativist play requires communication and an awareness of orientation in relation to fellow players and their gameable objects with positioning, rather than mimicking the dynamics of improv. Embracing this approach brings out the collaborative depth essential to narrativist games, recognizing that yes and, no but, granting assent, withholding assent, saying "maybe...let's roll", and all other possible arrangements of human creative collaboration collapse within as vectors of actionable play.

Like I said, funny linguistics.

I think it's fair to view orientation and guiding focus as restrictions on what one can say. And if one takes the view that blocking is just restricting what one can say/do then that's blocking too.

IMO, the notion that blocking is a bad thing is what's off, it's an absolutely essential component.

 

[aramis erak]

You didn't quote anyone so I'm not clear what this comment is actually directed at. I did talk about blocking though so maybe it's me. But what I was saying was that the mandatory acceptance of another player's input restricts what you can say. I thought it was fair to refer to that which one is restricted from saying as being 'blocked' from saying it. Maybe that's wrong?

I think it's fair to view orientation and guiding focus as restrictions on what one can say. And if one takes the view that blocking is just restricting what one can say/do then that's blocking too.

From what I recall from the theater majors I used to hang out with, Blocking was a subset.
Blocking is, as I understand it, putting situations where the action prevents another from taking a reasonably likely action by either being out of genre or by explicitly limiting the other player's character, or by dictating actions of that other player.

Its the difference between "I Shoot at him" and "I blow his brains out." The first allows for a variety of responses, including, "But you missed," or "But the cigarette case stopped it.' The second blocks any of the various responses by requiring negation of the stated action, and results in the recipient having to either bow out, or narrate how being brainless is no impediment... which may be out of genre.
A verbal equivalent being something akin to, "I ignore you since you don't speak French and I don't speak Catalan." - doubly defining two things about the other player's character - it prevents communication in scene between the characters and it dictates that the other character can't do something important. Meanwhile, the non-blocking, "Pardon... Parlez-vous Français, si vou plait?" (do you speak french?), which invites the other guy to define if he can... It still limits things, but doesn't close off the venue - the other player can decide if it's appropriate for them to speak french. (and I've used most of my French skills on the above.)
It's a matter of degree and the limits of who gets to define what about the other.

It's likewise a good exercise to remind players to only narrate up to the point where the roll should happen in any game. "I run up and swing at him" is better than "I run up and chop off his head."... that latter can be negated by the die-roll. Or, "In hopes of aid, I present our previously described plan to the Duke" being superior to "I convince the Duke of the brilliance of our plan."... because it allows for a reaction to a failure or even a fumble or overkill.

 

[andreszarta]

You didn't quote anyone so I'm not clear what this comment is actually directed at.

Oh yeah, no. This was not a direct response to you. Like I said at the top of my response it was a brief diversion on the ongoing topic.

Honestly, it seems like what you call ‘blocking’ I call ‘constraints’, and it seems like we both mean the same thing. I also agree with you that it was something fair to bring up, no problem there .

It does occur to me that what’s complicated about using improv’s “blocking” in this context is what people have been reacting and alluding to already; the fact that it’s an undesirable quality in improv but very much a productive and actionable feature in the medium of RPGs.