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

[DEFCON 1]

This is a great insight. It is hard. As DM you want players to value those intangibles.

One way I've found, though I struggle like many, is to lay out subtle clues that the world is becoming aware of them. Suppose they go to a nearby town and enter the tavern. Then someone just asks, "Are you all the ones that slew the Gnoll King on the weathered heights?" Provide a little awe from the community.

There is also the other side of the coin where the players think they are world beaters at seventh level and have little regard for the niceties of diplomacy. This usually also requires a world like response.

The key I think is good narration and having a verisimilitudinous world. For example, a guide bringing the group to see the King after a successful quest on the King's behalf, their guide might whisper, "Oh that is Sir Trawnley, his armor is worth more than the Duchy of Unstol". You want to make your NPCs really good and you can provide information narratively via the NPC.

Still it is a delicate balancing act. You want the PCs to feel their growing respect.

I've toyed with a reputation score that only I kept. I might also have a list of allies and enemies. Maybe each one has a note on the strength of their feeling and why.

My personal way of letting my players know "out-of-game" of how the world is going to react to their characters "in-game" is to use the metaphor that I know sends some folks around here running for the hills... think of the game as a movie.

In almost all cases... if we all just imagine the situation the roleplaying game characters are in as a movie scene rather than a "game"... what would be the prototypical action and reaction from all the participants and characters in this scene? What would we expect to actually usually happen? And what is it that the players actually WANT to have happen, and thus how should they temper what it is that their PCs are doing?

In some RPGs it's easier, because they are literal games based on movies and TV shows-- Star Wars, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, James Bond, etc. So telling a player "If this was an actual Star Wars movie or tv show or novel... what would be the most logical action and reaction in the Star Wars realm to what you are having your PC do?" is probably easier for a player to perhaps get into the proper mindset for that style of game the GM is running. But for some RPGs that aren't tied to film or tv properties (like D&D)... the idea of treating what is happening in the game with the same internal logical story consistency of a tv show or movie is not a lot of player's first response. But bringing them gently along and giving indications of what "would normally happen if this was a movie" makes it easier. It'll still take time for them to evolve their thinking in that direction for this particular game... but one can get there eventually.

The most obvious scenario (in D&D especially) is meeting town guards. PCs do something or come upon something in the street... the town guard show up and inquire what is going on (with whatever personality traits the GM gives them). For a lot of players, their first reaction is "The guards are a roadblock to what we are trying to do! Kill the guards!" And it is at that point when I will step in with the gentle "If this was a movie... would the heroes of this story really attack these guards for just doing their jobs, no matter how gruff or pushy they might be? And how do you think the reactions of the rest of the town would be if the heroes did that? Do you think your characters would garner no reaction whatsoever and could just continue to go about their business?" And this is where they really start to grasp the whole "actions have consequences" thing, and by thinking of what they are doing in movie or story form... they can more easily put 2 and 2 together to figure out what the results of their choices will be.

 

[Umbran]

What is harder to get across as a GM, and harder for players to internalize if they are not used to it... is "in-game narrative progression". A character's "status" or "reputation" or "place" in the game world.

I will add that a character's in-game narrative progression isn't all about relationship with the larger world.

To use a personal example: I'm currently playing in a D&D game. My character started 1st level wizard, and second level I dipped into rogue to round out my concept. Now, I am looking at taking my second level of wizard, and have to pick a subclass.

I didn't walk into the game with a preconceived notion of subclasses for the character - in broad concept, he's got a colored past, but now would really want to settle down to become some village's sage - do a little research fiddling, make a potion or charm now and then. Nothing big. But circumstances and his intrinsic morality are pulling him into adventuring.

And, in in part due to the setting and circumstances, our fights don't typically happen in constrained spaces where I can hide behind the party fighter and paladin. So, every other session, I end up making death saves. It is starting to be a party joke.

Now, I'm about to get better somehow - I am levelling up. But I get to consider that in combination with his background, and what has happened in-game so far.

By what he wishes he were doing, he'd probably be Order of Scribes, but most of the abilities of that subclass don't really help him with what he is doing. I started looking at Abjurer and Diviner to give him some ways to protect himself. Then, the GM half-joking reminded me of Bladesinger.

That one matches his need (driving his AC up to keep from dying in fights), while also feeding the narrative that circumstances drive him away from what he really wants to do, and back toward his colored past - which makes it a role-playing hook the others just don't provide.

So, I get to align "getting better" with clear narrative progression and RP perspective. A trifecta!

 

[Umbran]

I think these posts demonstrate how difficult it is to marry mechanical power to the narrative in RPGs. Often, the narrative bit is left up to folks to decide, but has no real impact on the game. At least not like the tangible mechanical impact. If you take a bad feat, or place a stat bump ineffectively, you'll know in play. There isnt really any penalty in the narrative in many RPGs that inform you one way or the other if you are doing it correctly.

That's a D&D (and more traditional game) thing, because it retains a wargame basic structure, from before folks really considered "narrative" as something to play with.

If you instead look at something like FATE, you get into a game where narrative and mechanical power become far more tightly bound together. Many Cortex Prime and PBTA implementations also tie narrative and mechanical power more closely together than D&D does.

 

[payn]

My personal way of letting my players know "out-of-game" of how the world is going to react to their characters "in-game" is to use the metaphor that I know sends some folks around here running for the hills... think of the game as a movie.

In almost all cases... if we all just imagine the situation the roleplaying game characters are in as a movie scene rather than a "game"... what would be the prototypical action and reaction from all the participants and characters in this scene? What would we expect to actually usually happen? And what is it that the players actually WANT to have happen, and thus how should they temper what it is that their PCs are doing?

In some RPGs it's easier, because they are literal games based on movies and TV shows-- Star Wars, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, James Bond, etc. So telling a player "If this was an actual Star Wars movie or tv show or novel... what would be the most logical action and reaction in the Star Wars realm to what you are having your PC do?" is probably easier for a player to perhaps get into the proper mindset for that style of game the GM is running. But for some RPGs that aren't tied to film or tv properties (like D&D)... the idea of treating what is happening in the game with the same internal logical story consistency of a tv show or movie is not a lot of player's first response. But bringing them gently along and giving indications of what "would normally happen if this was a movie" makes it easier. It'll still take time for them to evolve their thinking in that direction for this particular game... but one can get there eventually.

The most obvious scenario (in D&D especially) is meeting town guards. PCs do something or come upon something in the street... the town guard show up and inquire what is going on (with whatever personality traits the GM gives them). For a lot of players, their first reaction is "The guards are a roadblock to what we are trying to do! Kill the guards!" And it is at that point when I will step in with the gentle "If this was a movie... would the heroes of this story really attack these guards for just doing their jobs, no matter how gruff or pushy they might be? And how do you think the reactions of the rest of the town would be if the heroes did that? Do you think your characters would garner no reaction whatsoever and could just continue to go about their business?" And this is where they really start to grasp the whole "actions have consequences" thing, and by thinking of what they are doing in movie or story form... they can more easily put 2 and 2 together to figure out what the results of their choices will be.

Generally, I agree with you. What really muddies the water is SW has more opinions on how it works than there are stars in the universe. It's a highly divisive IP to use. Though, yes RPG systems for much of their beginnings focused on providing a generic experience. D&D is fantasy, Traveller is Sci-Fi, GURPS is anything, etc... Eventually, designers started focusing more on a bespoke experience where the mechanics lean into the narrative aspects of the subject material. Those games are less confusing about how to do the right thing, narratively speaking, then traditionally presented.

Though, that doesnt stop the confusion. I had a convo with a gamer talking about his disappointment with Bladerunner RPG. Why was he disappointed? Becasue there wasn't enough weapon types and armor and that flying police cars were too fragile. The player was concerned about combat on massive scales. They didnt lean into the narrative aspects of having to do ones duties and maintaining their humanity. They were focused on playing BR as their generic RPG experiences informed them.

Some habits just die hard.

 

[MarkB]

It's worth noting that Star Wars characters do tend to have their own signature gear - Han Solo has his iconic blaster (and starship), Chewie has his bowcaster, Luke has his lightsaber and gets a new one when he loses it, Rey has her repurposed stick-thingy.

So even if they're not scrounging for cash to buy them, characters should have the opportunity to equip themselves with something beyond the generic and, in a longer-form narrative, to upgrade it.

Look at The Mandalorian. He upgrades his armour, gets better accessories, helps Ahsoka defeat a warlord and is given the beskar spear that she looted from her, then later trades it in to make armour for Grogu.

In the movies characters tend to stick with what they have a lot of the time, but in the longer-form stories they can gain and lose items and wealth, and it's not a terrible idea to provide some of this even if you don't want them just looting every corpse.

 

[payn]

It's worth noting that Star Wars characters do tend to have their own signature gear - Han Solo has his iconic blaster (and starship), Chewie has his bowcaster, Luke has his lightsaber and gets a new one when he loses it, Rey has her repurposed stick-thingy.

So even if they're not scrounging for cash to buy them, characters should have the opportunity to equip themselves with something beyond the generic and, in a longer-form narrative, to upgrade it.

Look at The Mandalorian. He upgrades his armour, gets better accessories, helps Ahsoka defeat a warlord and is given the beskar spear that she looted from her, then later trades it in to make armour for Grogu.

In the movies characters tend to stick with what they have a lot of the time, but in the longer-form stories they can gain and lose items and wealth, and it's not a terrible idea to provide some of this even if you don't want them just looting every corpse.

I think changing equipment once or twice is a bit different than Luke going through like 15 different lightsabers during his story. Part of that is the game portion of managing inventories and selling things. Video games exasperated the issue where you sell hundreds, thousands maybe even millions of items while playing a character. Thats not really narrative, thats appealing to the game part. I mean, how many villages need a dozen sets of goblin sized leather armor and daggers?

Back in my PF1 AP days, I know I started adding up the loot PCs would get and just have 1 goblin with a coin sack. I just got tired of the mountain of stuff and just simplified it down to cash unless it was an interesting magic item. 5E seems to have dialed way back and as I mentioned earlier its ruffled a few feathers. Some folks just expect that tedious inventory management portion of the game.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

What sparked our conversation last week was him getting hyper-focused (to an extreme degree) on how to make money so I can make my character better.

One common style I observed in the Old Days of D&D was of very rapid leveling up until the characters reached the Levels That Didn't Suck, at which point the emphasis and player goals moved away from "make my character better" as a top priority.

It sounds to me like your player wants very badly to play a character who is Awesome, and is trying to do the FFG/Star Wars equivalent of rapidly leveling up to a Level That Doesn't Suck in order to get the Awesome character he wants to play. My suggestion would be to let your player start with a character who already is Awesome, and to let that character be Awesome in the game (rather than, say, a desperately scrambling underdog, the sort who in read-only fiction only survives & succeeds because the Author is on his side.) In exchange, the player accepts that any improvement to his character will be glacially slow to non-existent.

Now if your game demands that the PCs always be desperate underdogs making desperate choices and always having to struggle with challenges above their weight class "because that's what make a Good Story" with no room for Awesome player characters being Awesome, then maybe your game is just not for that player.

 

[Emerikol]

My personal way of letting my players know "out-of-game" of how the world is going to react to their characters "in-game" is to use the metaphor that I know sends some folks around here running for the hills... think of the game as a movie.

When I first read this I thought you were insisting on a neo-trad approach (or OC whatever). I realized as you were using it that you just reminded the PCs of where the stood on certain things like good and evil. I've done similar things but I don't think I compared it to a movie. Still it is a good idea if that way of applying the idea works.

The most obvious scenario (in D&D especially) is meeting town guards. PCs do something or come upon something in the street... the town guard show up and inquire what is going on (with whatever personality traits the GM gives them). For a lot of players, their first reaction is "The guards are a roadblock to what we are trying to do! Kill the guards!" And it is at that point when I will step in with the gentle "If this was a movie... would the heroes of this story really attack these guards for just doing their jobs, no matter how gruff or pushy they might be? And how do you think the reactions of the rest of the town would be if the heroes did that? Do you think your characters would garner no reaction whatsoever and could just continue to go about their business?" And this is where they really start to grasp the whole "actions have consequences" thing, and by thinking of what they are doing in movie or story form... they can more easily put 2 and 2 together to figure out what the results of their choices will be.

In my campaigns, even if they can't put 2 and 2 together, they learn from the consequences. Being an outlaw is no fun. Having a high bounty on your head is not fun. Having every two bit "good" adventuring group trying to run you to ground for the reward can be a drag. I also never played the everyone is 0 level approach so town guards were not trivial adversaries until the group was above 7th.

 

[Aldarc]

You should pay attention to how few people, overall, participate in those threads. They are aggressively dense with jargon, as are the blog posts that discuss the core concepts. There is zero interest in bringing in new people to talk about these issues. It's insiders talking to insiders inside the clubhouse.

Even relatively straightforward ideas like "in-world" and "out of world" gets stupid terms like "Doylest" laid on top of them, just to make sure that outsiders don't participate.

It's an aggressively gatekeeping scene, intended to keep filthy casuals out of these spaces.

If there was a desire to make this a broader RPG community discussion, the jargon would get translated into normal English immediately and there'd be a movement within the community to not use the jargon terms. Instead, exactly the opposite happens.

I can't say that I agree with your fairly unfair characterization of these threads, Whizbang Dustyboots. I do agree that these threads can become dense, but they rarely start out that way. Often the jargon doesn't really come out until the "[translations] into normal English" fail simply because there are fundamental disagreements about games and game analysis. I do believe that there are genuine attempts to bring new people into these sort of discussions. Moreover, as it is a discussion, people are free to ask questions. And while you may characterize the use of jargon as "aggresively gatekeeping scene," I would say that there is also a contingent of peope who regularly show up, like moths attracted to the flame, to regularly derail such discussions into the ground. But I guess those people aren't gatekeepers, right?

But much as pemerton says, I think that a basic reason such threads get comparatively few participants is simply that most people aren't that interested in game analysis. There is no shame in that. Most people are content to post and ask questions about 5e mechanics or GMing, which tend to be the more popular threads.

 

[Aldarc]

A big part of what you're running into is that your players (and honestly, most players in the greater context of the hobby, as far as I've ever been able to tell) prefer to roleplay by being aligned with the character emotionally-- Han never meant to get caught up in the story of star wars, he did want to do his smuggler thing, and your players want to feel that fantasy, the one that Star Wars references but doesn't depict because the almighty plot swooped in, they want to start from that context.

They might be willing to do a Star Wars plot, but they want to start from the position of Han Solo and what he wants at the beginning of the story and develop into it organically by existing within the context of the universe-- and the context of the universe is the lore of Star Wars, rather than the plot structure of the movies.

The goal of 'getting better stuff' is a place where their character's interest aligns with something that means something to them personally, because they can feel 'better stuff' in their ability to solve problems like 'those stromtroopers over there' in the same way that Han can feel the way making upgrades to millenium falcon or picking up a new model of blaster can help him get out of trouble, even if the movie doesn't focus on that.

If they get involved in A New Hope, they want it to be because they too, wanted what Obi-Wan was paying to pay off their debt to Jabba the Hutt, the debt they incurred to get something cool, and then meet the princess and the jedi and decide they don't want to abandon these people, even once they get the chance. They want to feel like Han Solo, not George Lucas, and you're asking them to feel like George Lucas-- someone who is interested in Han Solo's life only insofar as it gets him into the plot.

And this feels like you are telling me (or more appropriately @innerdude) that we are feeling like George Lucas and not Han when we play narrative-style games and that we are not doing so in a way in which we are aligned with the characters emotionally. I hope you can understand how unintentionally insulting this can be.