What is a "Narrative Mechanic"?

[Umbran]

The first paragraph is moderately narrative, as the character takes no specific action to imitate any of these people.

What are you calling "take an action"? Because, "the character is presumed to have donned a disguise" reads to me as including the action of donning a disguise. Is "donning a disguise" not specific enough? How much more information needs to be added to "donning a disguise" to make it an action the character takes?

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, there's another word for that, that I already used - "diegetic". Mechanics that operate through means that are in the imaginary world are "diegetic", and if the means are not in-story, they are "adiegetic" or "non-diegetic".

The problem I have with your distinction is that when someone talks about liking a "narrative game", the thing they like is typically not that many of the mechanics are adiegetic. That may be true, but is not relevant to their like - what they typically like is more that the game overall has more direct focus on generating satisfying narratives and/or has useful ways of passing around narrative control.

One can make a game that is focused on tactical combat, has a ton of adegetic mechanics, and nobody would laud it as a "narrative game".

So, I submit that your approach to the distinction of narrative/not-narrative is at odds with other typical uses of the word "narrative" in the RPG space. Not that you can't use any collection of letters any way you darned well please, but in terms of making matters clear to other people who play games, it seems a poor choice.

I would definitely see a game focused on tactical combat while using adegetic mechanics as a narrative game. Combat is a narrative too, and the focus on it or lack thereof do not a narrative game make.

The use of those kind of mechanics with significant, even core emphasis is what makes a game "narrative". Since using mechanics to explicitly generate satisfying narrative and/or share narrative control requires using adegetic mechanics, games with this as a focus are, by my definition, narrative games. Using such mechanics for combat makes no difference.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Which does beg the question . . . .

Which is the cooler time travel device + mentor?

DeLorean + Christopher Lloyd / Doc Brown, or Phone Booth + George Carlin / Rufus?

Always going to be preference of course, but my money's on Doc Brown.

 

[Pedantic]

What is an abstraction but something that deals with an idea. What is a narrative? A spoken or written account of connected events. Surely, the two definitions are connected since, in D&D we are talking about ideas but it's all how we connect ideas to create a story.

The story is different if you use Stealth to find the missing person vs Survival. And it's the player who decides what skills they want their character to use. They, therefore, are controlling the narrative. In that particular example, the player would choose the appropriate skills, tell the DM how they want to use them and the DM would narrate success or failure - but that narration is strongly influenced by the players choice.

Yeah, I would agree this kind of thing is best understood as a narrative mechanic, specifically because it elides mapping specific character actions to the resulting gamestate. X successes before Y failures as a mechanic necessarily means that the game state cannot be known precisely after each given roll, and that causality can't be mapped back to a specific action. Any time you're stringing several actions together before resolving them you're bound to muddle up causality, and that's going to be more pronounced the longer the time scale involved.

You could tell a story in retrospect about the decisions the character must have made to get to the outcome, but you can't map each decision to a mechanical expression going forward in time.

 

[payn]

Which does beg the question . . . .

Which is the cooler time travel device + mentor?

DeLorean + Christopher Lloyd / Doc Brown, or Phone Booth + George Carlin / Rufus?

Neither, its the quantum leap accelerator and Al + Ziggy.

 

[Pedantic]

What are you calling "take an action"? Because, "the character is presumed to have donned a disguise" reads to me as including the action of donning a disguise. Is "donning a disguise" not specific enough? How much more information needs to be added to "donning a disguise" to make it an action the character takes?

A character can't don a non-specific disguise. There is no quantum maid/butler/chauffeur costume: the mechanic is modeling the character researching and casing a scenario thus that they don the correct disguise, and the player in the moment chooses which disguise is correct.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, I would agree this kind of thing is best understood as a narrative mechanic, specifically because it elides mapping specific character actions to the resulting gamestate. X successes before Y failures as a mechanic necessarily means that the game state cannot be known precisely after each given roll, and that causality can't be mapped back to a specific action. Any time you're stringing several actions together before resolving them you're bound to muddle up causality, and that's going to be more pronounced the longer the time scale involved.

You could tell a story in retrospect about the decisions the character must have made to get to the outcome, but you can't map each decision to a mechanical expression going forward in time.

So for you granularity is connected to narrativity?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well, I guess I'll disagree in turn. That economy is entirely controlled by the DM. I don't think it's accurate to say that it's either triggered or spent by the player. Sure, the players kill stuff and collect treasure but they have no say in the XP that gets doled out in return (at all).

I agree it's controlled by the GM (though some games may have rules about what's supposed to be doled out when it comes to treasure), but I think it has a significant impact on the narrative of play. Rewarding one behavior over another is going to steer the way the game goes.

My phrasing may have been sloppy; I said it was less obvious because it's not something the players trigger.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think it depends on the ability. Is it a magic item that does it and the PC knows it recharges at dawn? Then it's not a narrative mechanic, per se. But if it's a metacurrency-type ability that the PC doesn't really know about and it's up to the player to deploy, then I'd argue it's a narrative mechanic because the player is using it to pick the point in the narrative where the PC has an unbeatable skill check.

What about something like the Lucky feat from 5e? It represents something, and it's something of which the character may be aware... and may actually be a universal force in the setting...

That makes every vancian spell, use of ki and second wind a "narrative" ability and I don't think that is what the word means.

I mean, there's an argument that is exactly what narrative ability should mean.

The lampshade of magic is what makes things non-narrative, because it becomes a quality of the character in the game world.

PF1 had something similar with the Well-Prepared feat. An awesome feat for low-level adventurers.

Well-Prepared – d20PFSRD

www.d20pfsrd.com

So this is an example that strikes me as odd because it is a quality of the character... it has a lampshade akin to the one we apply to spells.

Yet many folks would classify this as a narrative mechanic, but would not do so for spells.

Let's look at the kinds of mechanics that add something to fiction that wasn't there before.

Look at the game Spire: The City Must Fall for a bunch of good examples of these kinds of things. Here are just a few class abilities that are in the game:

CUT A DEAL. You know anyone who’s anyone...
Once per session, set up a meet with an NPC who can acquire you pretty much anything available in Spire. It won’t be free, though, and odds are they’ll want a favour or a cut too.

SURPRISE INFILTRATION. Nothing can keep you out.
Once per session, insert yourself into a situation where you are not currently present, so long as there’s some conceivable way you could get in there.

LAY OF THE LAND. You are a trained hunter, and others would do well to heed your words.
When you enter a dangerous situation, you can name up to three features or opportunities that your allies can take advantage of. The first time you or an ally uses an opportunity, they roll with mastery (for example: cover with a good view of the battlefield, an exit, a badly-guarded door, a stack of barrels, etc).

DRAW A CROWD. You can pull together a crowd at a moment’s notice.
Once per session, you can draw a crowd to you in a matter of minutes. People will stop what they’re doing, so long as it isn’t life-or-death, and listen to what you have to say.

PUBCRAWLER. You bear an encyclopedic knowledge of where to get drunk.
Once per game, name a nearby bar, pub or inn where you know the landlord (whether they like you or not is up to the GM).

Each of the above are starting abilities for a class. Some have others, and they can all gain additional ones as they advance. The game gives a lot of power to the players, but all of it is based on the characters... none of it is purely a non-diegetic ability.

 

[billd91]

What about something like the Lucky feat from 5e? It represents something, and it's something of which the character may be aware... and may actually be a universal force in the setting...

By my understanding, narrative mechanic. How exactly does one deliberately activate their luck? Do they clench harder? The PC may be aware they're luckier than the average Joe, but the deliberate use of it and ability to pick the right moment is in the player's hands.