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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9833518" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here is something Vincent Baker wrote a bit more than twenty years ago <<a href="http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">lumpley games: Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore</a>>:After setup, what a game's rules do is control how you resolve one situation into the next. If you're designing a Narrativist game, what you need are rules that create a) rising conflict b) across a moral line c) between fit characters d) according to the authorship of the players. Every new situation should be a step upward in that conflict, toward a climax and resolution. Your rules need to provoke the players, collaboratively, into escalating the conflict, until it can't escalate no more. Character creation in a Narrativist game might work by creating characters who, in some key way, have nowhere else to go. Life o' Crime, the rpg: create a character who owes somebody more money than he can repay. Setting in a Narrativist game might work by applying pressure to that key point in the characters. Life o' Crime: there's recession, few jobs, no way up or out, but worse class difference than ever before anywhere. You see wealth but no opportunity. Situation in a Narrativist game works by increasing the pressure. Life o' Crime: Someone depends on your character to bring home groceries and pay rent. Someone else has just been evicted and is facing homelessness. Someone else asks you if you know where to get drugs. Someone else just got beaten by the authorities. Someone else just got beaten by the guy you owe money to. Someone else offers to cut you in on a job. Someone else wants the whole take for himself. Someone else knew you'd never amount to anything. Someone else can't be trusted. Someone else can be. System in a Narrativist game works, again, by resolving one situation into the next. Life o' Crime: what do you do? How does it work out for you? Does it a) hurt? b) give you breathing room? c) piss someone else off? d) hurt someone else? and/or e) set you back? How does it increase the pressure? Remember the moral line defined by your Premise, and remember that the players are the authors! And Color permeates a Narrativist game same as any other. Life o' Crime: is it Thatcher's England? Victoria's England? Shakespeare's England? Bush's US? Hoover's US? Colonial Massachussetts? Mars? The Kingdom of Thringbora? The details change, but the core of character situated in setting - the fit characters locked into conflict defined by a moral line - doesn't.And here's something he wrote about 9 months ago <<a href="https://lumpley.games/2025/04/07/revisiting-gns/" target="_blank">Revisiting GNS – lumpley games</a>>:Here’s the dynamic that narrativism refers to: <ol style="margin-left: 20px"> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The PCs have vision, self-interests, best interests, passion, an ideological commitment: something they want and care about. Lajos Egri says “passionate.”</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Their passions put them in conflict with others — other PCs or other NPCs, it doesn’t matter. Their passions oppose others’, threaten others’ interests, provoke others into passionate reaction.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Both the PCs and their counterparts are equipped to pursue their passions in conflict. Egri says “fit.” They’re physically equipped, emotionally equipped, morally equipped; they have skills, tools, initiative, stamina, followthrough, staying power.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Nobody pre-plans how it’s going to turn out. The characters are passionate, conflicted, and fit; now turn them loose. Play to let them pursue their passions. Play to find out how far they go, how they escalate, who comes out on top, who compromises, what they win, what it costs, what they prioritize, what they abandon. The only way to know how it plays out, is to play it out!</li> </ol> That’s narrativism, nothing else.In the more recent passage, rather than rising conflict across a moral line we have passionate characters whose passions place them into conflict with, and provokes passionate reaction, from others. That's pretty similar, but a bit more "relaxed" about what might underlie interesting conflict. Fit characters, without pre-authorship/pre-planning, remain the same.I think it's interesting that his thinking about this has remained so consistent over two decades of designing RPGs.</blockquote>

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