What makes an TTRPG a "Narrative Game" (Daggerheart Discussion)

[Aldarc]

From my understanding as this has been discussed before - including with a number of the same people - but... Story Now =! No Myth. Like we could probably create a basic XY-axis graph with Myth Level on one axis and Story When on the other.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

From my understanding as this has been discussed before - including with a number of the same people - but... Story Now =! No Myth.

Yes, but it often goes with it. Also, it was the specific distinction @pemerton was referring to and which I responded to.

 

[soviet]

Not talking about flashbacks. I'm talking about existence of objective pre-existing game reality, vs one which is determined on the fly. I.e. myth vs. no myth.

Remind me, when someone with a sword attacks my character in D&D, what does the hit point damage represent?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Remind me, when someone with a sword attacks my character in D&D, what does the hit point damage represent?

If you ask me, it represents being physically hurt. Not sure what this has to do with anything though.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Sure. And one impact of this that in my experience it makes things more chaotic and unpredictable. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a thing.

Oh, indeed. I'm not saying that nar games are always best.

And it makes some people play more cautiously. I noticed in the Blades, people might be hesitant to try to do a thing, because even though fictional positioning is such that causally nothing bad apart lack of success could follow, by the mechanics bad things can still happen.

This ties in with @pemerton earlier mentioning "fear of failure" and is partly a difference between players, partly one between GMs and the degree they punish or even reward failure. Some players love critical failures in D&D, others hate them (which is why I make them opt-in, offering a reroll at the risk of a crit fail). And the biggest groups of turtles I've ever seen have been old school gamers, for a reason.

 

[soviet]

If you ask me, it represents being physically hurt. Not sure what this has to do with anything though.

I'm trying to show that even D&D doesn't always have a direct representation between the action and the consequences.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm trying to show that even D&D doesn't always have a direct representation between the action and the consequences.

That it is abstract doesn't mean it is not direct. Getting hit by a sword and thus being hurt is pretty direct, even though the exact nature of hurt was left a bit vague.

 

[Manbearcat]

Or alternatively it empowers the players to make impactful decisions with real meaning as the fictional reality their characters inhabit is not an amorphous mutable mess.

And that's a bit flippant, I and I genuinely see the other side too, but it is also true. In Blades you don't need to make concrete plans for your actions, but you also really cannot make concrete plans as there is no concrete reality to begin with.

Like you, I don't mean to be flippant here...but if "there is no concrete reality (with the caveat that there is no reality in any game) to begin with" in your Blades game, then people at the table don't know what they're supposed to be doing. I don't know who and how many (whether its just the GM or the GM and some players or all players), but I do know that saying "you can't plan at all in Blades" and you can't/don't concretize a Score in such a way to make strategic and tactical decisions?

I'm sorry, that is fundamentally not understanding how the game works and is just ignoring so much of the game's engine/features which govern the running and the playing of it. This feels a little bit like when I brought up the Social Interaction module of D&D 5e back in late 2015 (year after release) and commented on how it looks to be cribbed from Apocalypse World and the silence from ENW was absolutely deafening. The whole site, in unison was all "huh...what is that?" When I explained it, everyone was all "hmmmm...that is interesting...never saw that section...well, no one reads the DMG anyway and no one would run that social minigame anyway!"

1) The setting is concretized via all of its default information and the various statistics (Scale, Range, Tier, Magnitude, locations, Faction HQs/Leadership/Assets etc, each District's value for Wealth/Safety & Security/Criminal Influence/Occult Influence and Fortune Rolls around these) in the books that you either (a) lean into/rely upon or (b) transparently change in the course of play.

2) A session's Score should be plenty concretized/fleshed-out (location dynamics, obstacle/threats dynamics, opposition roster dynamics, any starting Mission/Racing/Tug-of-War/Faction Clocks that structure/govern the Score....all of which lean on that 1) above) in the course of the Info Gathering/Free Play phase and then post Engagement Roll where the situation is framed and opening Position/obstacle 1 is going to follow-on and be constrained by game statistics, action resolution machinery, Clocks, enforced fidelity to and transparency around Win Con. The potential constellation of consequences looming around the Score should be fairly well understood if not outright known and any given consequence (or multiple consequences) for an Action Roll (and subsequent Resistance Roll) should be telegraphed to inform player decision-making.

Yes, there is going to be a little bit of grey area with Devil's Bargains and Flashbacks and a possible cascade of multiple (non-Resisted...which is stupendously rare) 1-3 Action Roll Consequences bringing in some wild cards for dynamic fiction/gamestate. But its not even close to just a pile of wild cards and mutable fiction/wobbly gamestate. Its like a potential few wild cards (and plenty to most of those are either Resisted outright or they're wholly in the hands of the players via accepting/proposing/resolving Consequences, Devil's Bargains, and Flashbacks...so the "wild-carditude" is almost wholly mediated through the players and system) in any given Score.

If your game of Blades is or feels like a complete ass-pull without any player-facing fiction providing borders/parameters + without reliance upon and integration with FitD's significant statistical/keyword arrays and procedures + without table-facing Clock tech governing resolution? Then something has gone wrong.

Like here is a quick example I can jot down right now:

The Crew determines they want the Duskvol Times to run a story indicting an Enemy Faction (lets say the Lampblacks). Here is a quick and easy schematic that could come about via established play, game statistics, and info gathering/free play.

* Inkrakes: Tier 2, HQ Charterhall (W4, S&S4, CI0, OI0), Faction = Allied with Bluecoats and friendly with Lampblacks and Lord Scurlock while negative with The Crew, Editor-in-Chief Gabby Byrnes (Master Threat, leader, connected, cunning, reckless), Assets include Scale 1 Bluecoat (including Expert Threat leader) patrolling perimeter and 2nd floor halls of Area/Scale 4 building and Skilled Threat Hull (tough, shields, protocol) that mans front desk security.

* Structure is ancient and the haunted canals (Mag 1/Scale 2 Hollows) beneath lead to the first foundation of the building, long-sense closed, that features a dumbwaiter shaft to the 2nd floor (egress hatch into the building soldered).

* The spirt that animates the Hull is Gabby Byrnes ex-lover (the Lampblack's former leader who suddenly disappeared without a trace), who was going to leave her, so she killed them and forever chained them to her via the Hull. It hates Gabby but it can't overcome its protocol by itself.

Then you have whatever Score archetype the players choose, the detail, any further assets they employ, maybe a bit more Free Play/Info Gathering beyond what generated the above (which might include actual Action Rolls with risk if they push too hard for stuff) and whatever Clocks get generated (value and type) based on how they approach things.

If Scores aren't being concretized, if framed situations/obstacles aren't well-rendered and given specific parameters (relying upon game statistics/keywords) when introduced? Then yeah...I guess both the game layer and the setting will feel like an amorphous pile of goo where folks are making uninformed decisions upon a substrate of shifting sand? That would suck. But that is in defiance of the agenda/principles/best practices and the beefy, robust game engine that Blades in the Dark relies upon.

 

[Wolfpack48]

This is inaccurate. None of those are actual failure states. Every single one starts with "you succeeded". They are all "success-with-consequences" - a 7-9 result in a PbtA, not a 6-. And not one of them is given to you by the system; every single one is patched in there by the GM in a trad RPG.

But you were asking about a system independent package of narrativist tools? "Fail Forward" (which you are outlining) is narrativist advice that came out of The Forge in the early-mid 2000s before they worked out how to embed them in mechanics.

I was doing this in AD&D back in the 80s, never heard of Forge until here. But then I started playing in 1977 and am a thinking human being. Maybe it was a Dragon or Different Worlds article that mentioned something in passing when talking about making stat tests. In any case, I don't need a system to come up with any of these.

 

[KYRON45]

Can anyone point me to a thread where people discuss minute semantic distinctions?