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

[innerdude]

So coming back to this thread after not having had time to fully engage (work stress will do that to you).

First thing, I know Emberashh has stated repeatedly that he doesn't believe that PbtA as a whole presents a viable gameplay loop for what it actually says on the box (create narrative/dramatic tension as a byproduct of play). Though oddly, I seem to recall he does like Ironsworn, which is my primary, #1 go-to PbtA-adjacent system (frankly probably my favorite system at the moment).

I know Emberashh has also previously stated that attempting to create narrative-style play in RPGs goes against what RPG rule structures generally provide, which is that playing an RPG will create a "story" but not a "narrative."

Semantically I separate the two in a specific way. In fictional terms, the "story" is just the set of in-fiction events cognitively associated as a chronological sequence--- i.e., "We did this, and then we did this, and then we did that, and finally we did this! Isn't that cool?"

Narrative, on the other hand, is the deeper, more resonant emotional overlay/progression/character arc that goes along with "the story." Narrative is driven by an evolution of the character's emotional state / beliefs / actualization within the fiction, and that evolution can be described and qualified by a reader / player / GM who interacts within the ongoing fictional states.

In Emberashh's argument, if I'm remembering correctly, attempting to initiate a narrative component during the actual play loop is impossible without resorting to some contentious/disagreeable gameplay structures, primarily railroading and general GM fiat if memory serves. That could be railroading/fiat via premise, via "taking control of characters away from the players," via scene framing, via NPC reaction/interaction, etc.

Per Emberashh, without those contentious gameplay elements, true character arc / emotionally driven / thematically driven elements are almost certainly not going to arise, other than retroactively as the players reflect later on the "story".

I have some more thoughts on how Ironsworn tries to bridge this divide, but I'll have to come back to it.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm not sure if engaging with or giving any credence to arguments that mostly seem borne out of bad faith views towards non-traditional game systems and/or play styles is really worth the effort or time spent doing so.

 

[pemerton]

In Emberashh's argument, if I'm remembering correctly, attempting to initiate a narrative component during the actual play loop is impossible without resorting to some contentious/disagreeable gameplay structures, primarily railroading and general GM fiat if memory serves. That could be railroading/fiat via premise, via "taking control of characters away from the players," via scene framing, via NPC reaction/interaction, etc.

Per Emberashh, without those contentious gameplay elements, true character arc / emotionally driven / thematically driven elements are almost certainly not going to arise, other than retroactively as the players reflect later on the "story".

Because the first paragraph is false, the fact that the second paragraph follows from it doesn't matter.

 

[Manbearcat]

It needs to be said again and again that the idea of games (any of them) being "railroads via (the play-space constraints of) premise" is just such an absurd concept that it cannot be taken seriously and anyone who puts it forward is undermining their credibility as a thinker on the design and play of games (any of them). If you accept that absurd framing of "railroad via premise", what we are left with is the reductive position that only the most rudderless, wandering play featuring the most diffuse premise and the most infinite play-space is a non-railroad. Please. Just stop.

Railroading is not and cannot be about premise. Premise is "the lines necessary to play games at all." It is the "boundaries of the play-space, court/mat, etc" so to speak. Railroading is what happens between those lines, within that play-space. It is the frequency and magnitude of instances of Force (typically GM, but it could absolutely be player-side, possibly facilitated by system) whereby the possible outcomes and attendant trajectories of play (within that play-space that premise constructs) are sufficiently undermined/controlled such that "all roads lead to a participant-desired Rome". Consequently, "system's say" and the other participants (singular or plural) rights to play-derived, authentic outcomes and trajectory are subordinated.

You might as well complain that basketball is a railroad-fest because it doesn't allow for changing court dimensions and subbing in face-punching for basket-scoring.

---

All that being said, there is, in fact, a well-known concept of "Rug Pull" where GMs absolutely can railroad around premise. But it is a very different kettle of fish. It's when the participants have already agreed upon the constraints of a play-space (via premise) and suddenly, midway (for all values of "mid") through a game, the (pretty much exclusively) GM goes "HAHAHA, WE WERE PLAYING x RULESET FEATURING y PREMISE...NOT ANYMORE...SUDDENLY, n HAPPENS AND NOW RULESET AND PREMISE CHANGES." Everyone has some exposure to this. You're playing traditional fantasy D&D and something contrived happens to whisk you off to a no-PC attachment sci-fi setting and you're now playing post-apoc science fantasy with Gamma World or something. Or whatever.

Interestingly, probably the most potent protection against this is an actual agreed upon firm premise for play at the outset so a GM's ability to Rug Pull is completely shut down.

 

[aramis erak]

Interestingly, probably the most potent protection against this is an actual agreed upon firm premise for play at the outset so a GM's ability to Rug Pull is completely shut down.

In groups using traditional "It's the GM's game, you just play it"... the only incentive for the GM to not do so is that of the risk of players walking away. (Or, possibly, more hostile departures.) Nothing in the 70's games really locks into genre, save D&D's KTAATTS, and the 80's games doing so do so weakly, almost all with some form of Rule 0 wording...

In more modern (90's on), the idea of GM supremacy erodes, and the social contract of a group begins to hold impediments to Rug Pull... because the games tell the GM to adhere to group consensus - and new GMs who don't have older game experiences tended to be more consensus driven. Still, the Rug Pull was not killed... but the odds of walk away did seem to go up.

Many of the "storygame" movement's exemplars from 2000 on put final authority no longer on the GM, but upon democracy within the group overall. That is, a group vote is the final authority. The threat now arises of the group causing the GM to walk... by overruling his/her/their/xer/ðeir rugpull...

But most GMs approach all with a lens of their first RPG or four....

 

[Golden Bee]

You might as well complain that basketball is a railroad-fest because it doesn't allow for changing court dimensions and subbing in face-punching for basket-scoring.

Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball - NLSC Wiki

www.nba-live.com

 

[innerdude]

So coming back to this after a brief hiatus ---

I brought up Emberashh's prior claims because I wanted to evaluate them in light of a Vulture article I've shared here several times now, where the author looks at the video game and TV series The Last of Us with an eye to probing the tension between game and narrative.

The Last of Us Is Not a Video-Game Adaptation

HBO turned the story into unmissable television. So why does it feel like something’s missing?

www.vulture.com

"Here, we may rightly speak of interactivity: One may care about a character on television, but one must care for a character in a video game. In fact, The Last of Us suggested that care, by definition, means choosing to have no choice, holding onto another person so tightly their survival becomes an inescapable necessity.

"Of course, a TV show may treat these themes too, and the adaptation acquits itself admirably; the point is not that a video game, like other art forms, can show us something about love, but that love, at its most monstrous, can have the unyielding structure of a video game. This only a video game can teach."

This was the thing I wanted to bring up in relation to Ironsworn.

In Ironsworn, the key mechanic of swearing an Iron Vow goes hand in hand with the idea of choosing to have no choice so that a genuine character narrative can and will arise.

Mechanically, as a player, completing Vows is the only way you gain XP and advance your character. But in the game, the Vow mechanic is a striking, hard-coded way of forcing you as a player to care. To choose to have no choice.

If you're playing Ironsworn rules as written, once you've sworn a vow, you as a player cannot simply send your character off in a totally different direction without direct, negative effects. Your character literally suffers and becomes less mechanically effective when he or she breaks an Iron Vow.

The Iron Vow basically enforces the idea that this isn't a game of "hexcrawling" or "living world sandbox" where as a player you can simply change the idea of what you want to do on a whim. Iron Vows tether you to your character and your character's relationships with other characters (PC and NPC alike).

The exercise of performing the "Swear an Iron Vow" move should trigger some introspection on the player's part --- Why am I choosing to swear this Iron Vow versus another one? What has happened in play that has driven my character to this point? What does it say about how I'm interpreting my character's place in the game world? What does this particular Iron Vow say about what's important to my character?

You have to care about the character to engage with this mechanic. If not, you're missing one of the fundamental, core reasons to play Ironsworn in the first place.

So the question is, can you as a player, GM, and group collectively create a narrative if you aren't willing to embrace the idea of choosing to have no choice?

I think Eero Tuovinen talks about something similar here:

Observations on GNS Simulationism – Correspondence is about Diligence

www.arkenstonepublishing.net

"What I would like to offer as a modest alternative to old-fashioned railroading theory is that the purpose of the GM story hour is not to cheat and create an illusion of freedom; it is to exquisitely prepare nuanced literary material for intimate consideration. The strength of the railroading game structure is not in hiding the tracks, but rather in ensuring that those tracks travel through scenes worthy of spending some time in. You’re literally only bothering with the railroad tracks because you don’t want to waste time preparing complex content and then just have the other players skip it; it’s much better to take the track as a given and focus on how to make your content worth the trip.

"I’ve written about this in more detail elsewhere, but the key consideration is treating your game prep the same way an adventure video game does: your core strength is being able to prepare carefully, and the freedoms you give to the player are carefully constrained to ensure that you actually get to show off your stuff. It is still interactive, as the player has the primary control over the pace (how quickly you go over your material) and focus (what parts of your material are particularly observed) of play, even as the GM by definition holds primary content authority. The GM decides what play will be about, but the other players decide how they investigate that aboutness."
------

I think this is a similar process of choosing to have no choice as a player---if the point of "GM Story Hour" is to engage in something worthy of exploring the narrative, then the players have to agree to lose some components of choice so that the narrative beats arise.

I think the bigger problem you run into is that you get GM's who don't realize this is the case. The GM doesn't quite grasp that GM story hour, if you're going to do it at all, should be a tight, closely-wound narrative component that's worth telling and worth experiencing.

One final thought from the Vulture article:

"Gamers were so appalled by the clothing system of Cyberpunk 2077, in which combat bonuses could be reaped only by rocking truly hideous pieces of streetwear, that developer CD Projekt RED later added an option for players to stick with one acceptable outfit without falling behind in their armor class. But none of this had any effect on the game’s narrative, which despite its many branching plotlines, romance options, and endings was still just one story that could be told only a finite number of ways. There is a big difference, in other words, between mere customization and true narrative control — if such a thing even exists."

The contrast here is what draws me -- narrative control is NOT merely character customization.

More thoughts later.

 

[pemerton]

I think Eero Tuovinen talks about something similar here:

Observations on GNS Simulationism – Correspondence is about Diligence

www.arkenstonepublishing.net

"What I would like to offer as a modest alternative to old-fashioned railroading theory is that the purpose of the GM story hour is not to cheat and create an illusion of freedom; it is to exquisitely prepare nuanced literary material for intimate consideration. The strength of the railroading game structure is not in hiding the tracks, but rather in ensuring that those tracks travel through scenes worthy of spending some time in. You’re literally only bothering with the railroad tracks because you don’t want to waste time preparing complex content and then just have the other players skip it; it’s much better to take the track as a given and focus on how to make your content worth the trip.

"I’ve written about this in more detail elsewhere, but the key consideration is treating your game prep the same way an adventure video game does: your core strength is being able to prepare carefully, and the freedoms you give to the player are carefully constrained to ensure that you actually get to show off your stuff. It is still interactive, as the player has the primary control over the pace (how quickly you go over your material) and focus (what parts of your material are particularly observed) of play, even as the GM by definition holds primary content authority. The GM decides what play will be about, but the other players decide how they investigate that aboutness."

The paradigm of "GM story hour", as Tuovinen discusses it, is Tracy Hickman's DL modules.

Those are a long way from Apocalypse World. I would have assumed they're also a long way from Ironsworn.

So I don't think I'm following you.

narrative control is NOT merely character customization.

I'm not sure what "narrative control" is referring to, here. I'm most familiar to seeing that used to describe a player introducing elements into the fiction, especially (though not solely) by "director stance" proclamations:

In Director stance, a person determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters.​

But it seems like you might be using it a bit differently?

In any event, I was reminded of the following from Christopher Kubasik's Interactive Toolkit:

The rules and wargaming baggage of most roleplaying games lead to a certain kind of story: stories filled with ambitionless mercenaries who wait around in bars for employment; heroes who have no reason to get out of bed in the morning but for the vile plans of a someone they’ve never met; and stories that stop in mid-narrative for lengthy, tactical tactical-laden fights. In contrast to roleplaying, we’re discussing in this series Story Entertainments. These improvised stories are similar in nature to roleplaying games, but are driven by the emotions and personal goals of the characters and make combat a relatively small portion of the story’s content. The tales of a story entertainment are based not on the success of actions, but on the choice of actions; not the manipulation of rules, but the manipulation of narrative tools.

The primary tool is Character. Characters drive the narrative of all stories. However, many people mistake character for characterization.

Characterization is the look of a character, the description of his voice, the quirks of habit. Characterization creates the concrete detail of a character through the use of sensory detail and exposition. By “seeing” how a character looks, how he picks up his wine glass, by knowing he has a love of fine tobacco, the character becomes concrete to our imagination, even while remaining nothing more than black ink upon a white page.

But a person thus described is not a character. A character must do.

Character is action. That’s a rule of thumb for plays and movies, and is valid as well for roleplaying games and story entertainments. This means that the best way to reveal your character is not through on an esoteric monologue about pipe and tobacco delivered by your character, but through your character’s actions.

But what actions? Not every action is true to a character; it is not enough to haphazardly do things in the name of action. Instead, actions must grow from the roots of Goals. . . .

Clearly, every roleplaying session has something the characters want: a treasure, the kidnapped heiress, the destruction of a supply depot. These, in the context of story entertainments, are Objectives. Objectives are interchangeable. At best they are steps toward the goal, at worst they are busy-work, and thus not worth telling a story about.

What is worth telling a story about? Goals. Goals are an integral part of the character; they define who the character is. Without a goal a character has no reason to get out of bed in the morning. Or, should he stumble out of bed in order to get to his job at the toy factory, he still is not worth following. He is not a character. He is living out his life as person, but not the driving force of a story.

When a character overcomes obstacles and achieves an Objective, the story is over, but the character is still going. He is going until he achieves that Goal. For the purposes of roleplaying games, this is good news, because we like to keep our characters around for many stories. Give your character a large enough goal – avenging the death of your brother killed by the King of the Dark Dominion, and you’ll be able to play out several Objectives before your Goal is met. . . .

Characters Should Be Problem Magnets. To begin with, you need to allow your character to get into trouble in the pursuit of his or her Goal. Remember, this Goal matters so much it defines the character. Without it, your character would no longer be himself or herself. Because this Goal is so vital your character can indulge in all sorts of ridiculous, extraordinary, and even dangerous behavior in pursuit of this goal. We’re not looking for the characters who want what is safe and steady, who can rationalize their Goals out of existence because it might mean trouble. We want characters who throw themselves with wild abandon into their desires, dreams and passions!

Be surprising! Let your character’s passions and Goals drive him to actions that calmer men would not commit. . . .

As the designer of the character you shouldn’t simply depend on the Fifth Business (the “gamemaster” of a story entertainment) to provide you with trouble. You should look for trouble for your character. . . . in a story entertainment you’re not the passive passenger in the gamemaster’s roller coaster. You are a co-creator with the Fifth Business and the other players of a story.​

 

[gban007]

Hopefully this doesn't isn't too long that I'm necroing the thread, but in regards to the initial question, I've been thinking on this, and based on my (probably limited) understanding of narrative style gameplay, I'd put it as the difference between the Lord of the Rings books to the Lord of the Rings movies (and I love both to be clear). This comes in part down to a post I've been meaning to do around what I don't like about the movies, despite loving them as a whole, but a difference between the two is where the agency is being driven from.
In the books, a lot of it is driven by the world around them, history, and characters have come in with their backstory, and then tacked the world as it comes. They have agency in what they do when encountering the world, but a lot of what has occurred has occurred separate to them - the beacon fires have been lit, the Ents are making decision to march on Isengard. Aragorn has already determined / accepted that he will become king, just not sure of timing. When they try and go over Caradhras, it is the Mountain itself that defeats them. You have somewhat random events such as Tom rescuing them twice, and through him see bits of the world not that relevant to the plot (Tom, Farmer Maggot). Outside of viewer perspective, Sam, Merry and Pippin have already conspired to join Frodo in his journey. Theoden is keen to take on Saruman / the orcs until convinced to go to Helm's Deep as too many enemies to take on in the open. Only Sam knows Frodo is leaving the group and manages to go with him.
Contrast to the movie, where the characters are bringing more of the agency - the Ents don't march on Isengard without Merry / Pippin tricking Treebeard, the beacon fires are only lit thanks to Gandalf / Pippin. Faramir needs a lot more convincing to let Frodo / Sam go. Denethor is generally making decisions to make life harder for the main heroes, rather than trying to manage a touch situation as in the book (where he is generally wiser outside of issues as a parent - from memory people didn't think it was a bad choice in the book to try and retake Osgiliath to buy more time). Theoden needs to be swayed more by Aragorn to make decisions. Aragorn himself has to tackle whether he wants to be King, what it means. In the movie Aragorn, Merry and Pippin also see Frodo leaving, and make their own choices in allowing him to go.
To me, the first seems more trad in style, the second more narrative - where more of the conflict / scenes are centered on the characters, some events won't happen without the characters forcing it, with more focus on them reaching decision points as to what they want to do / how they choose to react.