Vincent Baker on narrativist RPGing, then and now

[pemerton]

For me, probably the most important "gap" between what Baker says, and discussion I often see about "narrative" RPGing, is that narrativist RPGing has relatively little to do with how the game is played on the player side. It's mostly about how things are done on the GM side: how scenes are framed, and how consequences are established.

Framing, in conjunction with PC build, is what creates the starting point rising conflict across a moral line; and consequences are how the pressure increases, and conflicts are resolved (or not).

I think that how the player invests themselves in their character is pretty different. It's a much more active process than the equivalent that's sometimes the case in other games where the players can have a grand time sitting back and letting the game come to them, so to speak. That doesn't work so well in a game like Apocalypse World.

Over the past few days I've been prompted to think a bit more about this.

When I think of "sitting back and letting the game come to them" RPGing, the first thing I think of is AP-ish, quest giver-ish play. The second thing I think of is a type of dungeon-y play, but one that doesn't require a lot of planning and challenging operational play. And these two things can overlap.

Narrativist play, as characterised by Baker, isn't like either of those. There's no AP - nobody plans how things will turn out; things unfold "according to the authorship of the players".

There can be play that is demanding on the players that is not narrativist play. High intensity "beat the dungeon" or tactical combat play can be pretty demanding - players need to understand their resources suites and PC capabilities pretty well, and make sensible and sometimes inspired decisions on top of that.

An approach that expect the players to onboard a whole lot of setting and/or situation that is authored by the GM independently of the players and their PCs can also be pretty demanding. Like following a complex storyline in any other medium, the players have to learn their way around and through this fiction that is being presented to them.

It can sometimes be tricky to characterise the focus of narrativist play, and the manner in which it's demanding. It's not just the rising conflict, or the pressure. It's the moral line - the conflict arising out of passionate commitments that not only exist in the fiction, but that in the "meta" are what the GM keeps coming back to in framing and consequence. Or, at least, that's what I'm thinking at the moment.

 

[Fenris-77]

Over the past few days I've been prompted to think a bit more about this.

When I think of "sitting back and letting the game come to them" RPGing, the first thing I think of is AP-ish, quest giver-ish play. The second thing I think of is a type of dungeon-y play, but one that doesn't require a lot of planning and challenging operational play. And these two things can overlap.

Narrativist play, as characterised by Baker, isn't like either of those. There's no AP - nobody plans how things will turn out; things unfold "according to the authorship of the players".

There can be play that is demanding on the players that is not narrativist play. High intensity "beat the dungeon" or tactical combat play can be pretty demanding - players need to understand their resources suites and PC capabilities pretty well, and make sensible and sometimes inspired decisions on top of that.

An approach that expect the players to onboard a whole lot of setting and/or situation that is authored by the GM independently of the players and their PCs can also be pretty demanding. Like following a complex storyline in any other medium, the players have to learn their way around and through this fiction that is being presented to them.

It can sometimes be tricky to characterise the focus of narrativist play, and the manner in which it's demanding. It's not just the rising conflict, or the pressure. It's the moral line - the conflict arising out of passionate commitments that not only exist in the fiction, but that in the "meta" are what the GM keeps coming back to in framing and consequence. Or, at least, that's what I'm thinking at the moment.

I agree with you, but I think we need to be careful to keep player habits separate from best practices for a given style. I've played in very traditional dungeon crawlers where everyone is highly invested and PbtA games where everyone was sitting back (ouch). I only bring this up to head off a tangent where people argue about how committed their table is etc etc.

I don't think that, for example, traditional dungeon crawling mitigates for any specific kind of play vis a vis the characters and what you identify (usefully) as a moral dimension. Rather it mitigates for a certain kind of tactical thinking in terms of exploration and resource management. Some newer OSR-adjacent game layer on that moral dimension of course and more character driven and focused concerns. The impetus in the former case for action by the player comes from without - from the environment. I think this can reasonably by indexed to a play style that allows things to come to you. Very (very) generally, of course.

Baker wanted something different (as did other designers, Rein-Hagen for example, Baker wasn't the first on the ground there). Baker wanted more of the impetus for action to come from what the characters believed and what they cared most deeply about. We might call this impetus from within. In this case the player has to actively engage with their character's inner mental, ethical, and moral dimension to answer the call to action. One aspect of PbtA's design that was perhaps better than Vampire's was the extent to which the GM is incentivized or even forced to also engage with some aspects of the character's inner lives. For example, by providing opportunities for the players to meet certain experience beats, or by finding ways to include various character backstory elements (like friends and enemies).

I can clearly see how this might lead us to describe how different games use the character and character mechanics as a rubric for interacting with the setting. I think taking the next step to describing play at the table level, with both GM and player sides of the conversation accounted for is a little bit more complicated as there we need to account for a significantly larger set of mechanics and design elements.

 

[Campbell]

I mean the game can come to you in Apocalypse World too, but some players won't appreciate the pressure of PC-NPC-PC triangles or threats coming to them or being put in the spotlight. I have run the game with players that normally sit back and let others take initiative and some thrive and others do not.

 

[Fenris-77]

I mean the game can come to you in Apocalypse World too, but some players won't appreciate the pressure of PC-NPC-PC triangles or threats coming to them or being put in the spotlight. I have run the game with players that normally sit back and let others take initiative and some thrive and others do not.

This is also completely accurate. I think we'd be better thinking of this as a spectrum of play rather a binary set of some kind.

 

[Umbran]

This is also completely accurate. I think we'd be better thinking of this as a spectrum of play rather a binary set of some kind.

And then there's the matter of considering it separately as a matter of game design, table execution, and individual player action.

As in, the perfect scenario is that the game is designed for it, the table is executing it in that mode, and all players are equally engaged. But there's also a case where the game really isn't designed for it, but the table executes anyway (as pemerton suggests), and players are each engaged in it to varying degrees.

 

[Fenris-77]

And then there's the matter of considering it separately as a matter of game design, table execution, and individual player action.

As in, the perfect scenario is that the game is designed for it, the table is executing it in that mode, and all players are equally engaged. But there's also a case where the game really isn't designed for it, but the table executes anyway (as pemerton suggests), and players are each engaged in it to varying degrees.

Yup, 100%. I got into that bit in my longer response over the one you quote.