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

[clearstream]

Platonism is controversial in the context of logic or mathematics.

It doesn't get off the ground as a theory of fiction. What sort of underwear was Holmes wearing when Watson first met him? There is no answer to this question. Conan Doyle never wrote it down, and never said anything that entail or even tends to imply any particular answer.

Certainly and deservedly controversial. Some platonists hold that Holmes exists as an abstract object, in which case there perhaps is an answer to your question, even if we don't happen to know it. Just in the same way that there may be mathematical identities that we are or were at some time not able to describe completely. The next highest prime, for example, the set of primes that haven't been calculated... and analogously Holmes' underwear.

I'm a fictionalist in outlook. Even though I sometimes wonder how seriously one ought to take platonism, there is an ongoing debate such as between Brock and others like Friedell. For some it seems hard to dislodge an intuition that our ability to construct meaningful sentences about imaginary things requires those things to exist. "3 is prime" being perhaps one you would be thinking of, but equally "Sherlock Holmes is a consulting detective".

Bottom line however, I'm with you in feeling that "it doesn’t get off the ground as a theory of fiction". For one thing, even if there were real non-physical, causally inert objects (3, Holmes) additional theory (theories of maths, theories of fiction) would be needed to know what to do with them. The whole idea just invites a healthy application of Ocaams Razor.

Were I a platonist, I could be in just the way you imply (believing 3 real, but Holmes not), but I could alternatively believe both 3 and Holmes real (and some say they do). It's interesting to reflect on precisely why intuitions about the former may differ from the latter.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@Crimson Longinus, I already posed that the play of RPGs involves pretending - though I note that @Old Fezziwig says that it needn't be about pretending certain things are real, and that's an interesting claim.

My point is that pretending things and imagining things doesn't make them real. That's it.

I'm not disputing that certain sentences may entail or suggest certain other sentences - eg if there are two Orcs, and two Orcs join them, then there are now four Orcs; if I'm thinking of a beach then that means there's sea nearby - but of course part of the magic of pretending is that we can pretend that certain entailment rules don't hold. For instance, we can pretend we are in a dreamworld where basic facts about physical endurance of Orcs over time don't obtain; and so maybe when the second two Orcs join the first two Orcs, now that means that I'm in a forest looking down on the domain of some Ogres.

But these "associations of ideas" don't mean that the things we're imagining exist. There are no Orcs; no wharves of Hardby; no lands with floating mountains; etc. We don't perceive them; we don't move through them in our bodies; we don't learn about them by way of inquiry.

And all this is fundamental to RPG play. You and @thefutilist discusses a scene involving a PC on a motorbike, who sees a bus with people and loot on board. In the fiction, the PC hears the bus; sees the people, faces against the glass; smells the fumes; feels her heart beat speed up as she aims her weapon (or not - maybe she's so hardened that no emotion grips her - that might be an interesting detail). At the table, though, we have two people talking to one another. They see one another, and some bits of paper, and some dice. They hear words being spoken. Maybe the smell the potato gems that someone heated up for snacks.

In the fiction, the bike is travelling smoothly, or the road is bumpy, or there is no road - just a gravel flat that the PC is travelling across. At the table, no one knows because no one has thought about it or said anything about it. Maybe the GM introduces that into the fiction as a consequence - something goes wrong with the player's plan, the GM narrates them coming off their bike, the Harm move is rolled, it indicates extra harm, and the GM narrates the extra harm as resulting from the PC sliding at speed across the gravel of the flat.

We can't make any progress on talking about how this stuff is done by using the language of "discovery of an objective fact". It's not an objective fact if the GM made it up just now - whether "it" is the gravel, or the bus, or the fumes, or the faces against the glass, or whatever other bit of the fiction "it" is.

This is again one of these pointless and exhausting semantic quagmires you're fond of. As you obviously know that no one though that fictional worlds are real in physical sense, it should be apparent that what is meant by their objective realness is that there are facts about them one can learn, just like we can learn facts about Holmes or Caesar by reading about them. That this sort of indirectly experienced reality has lower "resolution" than our directly experienced phenomenal reality should be equally obvious.

 

[clearstream]

This is again one of these pointless and exhausting semantic quagmires you're fond of. As you obviously know that no one though that fictional worlds are real in physical sense, it should be apparent that what is meant by their objective realness is that there are facts about them one can learn, just like we can learn facts about Holmes or Caesar by reading about them. That this sort of indirectly experienced reality has lower "resolution" than our directly experienced phenomenal reality should be equally obvious.

One way to qualify what is fictionally "real", is whether it feels external to me.

I would then regard elements of fiction objectively "real" (to me) just so long as they are decided by someone or some process external to me. Then as you say, there would be facts that I can learn about those objects: they're true just because the person or processes appointed to determine them did so... with the additional qualifier that they must be external to me. And so I can make enquiries about them.

What actually is real is of course not the fictional object, but the decider of facts about that object. That the decide is external to me results in the object not being determined by me, which I can pretend to appreciate in the way I experience real (no quotes) objects like tables and chairs.

As I've said elsewhere, some folk can divide their mind and do this for themselves. Querying imaginary objects of their own proposing, and being surprised by the answers. But I think the above more reliable.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Much of the linearity that folks don’t like in ttrpg’s are inherent in computer game design. It’s really hard to devise a sandbox as a computer game, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to play in one anyway.

You're looking for the two overlapping subgenres "Open world" and "immersive sim". Or perhaps you aren't... The NPCs frequently lack depth, but the world itself as a sand box is an old old thing for crpgs.

I’d much rather the two mediums just took their own paths. Maybe I’m just an “old man yelling at clouds,” but I’m preferring people interactions to devices these days.

I am not joking when I say that D&D is the father, grandfather, and boyfriend of CRPGs. It's that incestuous. But there is a lot more people, effort, and money on the computer side and they are definitely worth looking at.

 

[Wolfpack48]

First, I note that I’m 58 and have been playing computer games since learning Star Trek on Dad’s PDP-8 on weekends. I have ghastly quantities of hours on various Civ games, World of Warcraft, and like that.

I find games like the PbtA family less like any computer games I’ve played or watched than more mainstreams RPGs. I’m not at my best at the moment and am not wording very well. But the size and shape of the units of action that comprise moves supports roleplaying very well for me.

Some of it is that relatively large chunks, closer to conflict than task resolution, is freeing to my creativity. The less atomistically I have to think about things being done, the more I can think about the situation as a person would, folding together motives and methods more organically. Some of it is other stuff I’m not thinking of right now. But the experience is real, in any event.

Thanks for taking a less antagonistic tone on this. I'm 59 and much the same, played Pong when it first hit the arcades, and Zork when it appeared on the Apple II and of course WoW, Skyrim, Myst and many other games. I can definitely agree with the part I bolded. For all the things you mention -- if the approach actually frees creativity or even boosts the group to play the characters they want, or pushes a more free-flow game session, or encourages human interaction and relationships, I am all for it. I think it's in the shaping/framing/narrowing aspects I am wary of, and especially if I have to do a bunch of rolling or testing or translating jargon before things I would just naturally do. I am perfectly fine with a roll to "seal the deal" after doing freeform things. I want the game to mold to and enhance our style of play rather than constrain or funnel the course of play. If it feels like I am hitting guardrails, I start to bounce off the system.

The other piece of it is story progression. Most computer games are linear, though there are some exceptions. However, I've rarely seen a computer game handle simply letting a setting be open with "stuff to do" well. Sandbox MMOs (Ultima Online, maybe? Star Wars Galaxies?) try this, but the experience of tabletop is so much better. First, in that there are other humans sitting around a table (or VTT), and second, there are subtle nuances and shadow imaginings humans can project that are infinitely more interesting than anything a computer can do (knock on wood for the inevitable AI discussion to follow). Even an open-ended game like Skyrim has standardized quest beginnings and ends, and you rapidly use up those options until you go mod the game. Whereas in a TTRPG you can tailor the world infinitely as you progress with human beings constantly shaping what we experience together. You don't feel like you're trapped inside the machine. We should be looking to the human experience, not binary and "learned" experience of computers to inform our game designs. Yes, we all "optimize our builds" (lol, such a tech phrase), but in reality we are simply making our lives better, surviving in dangerous world, exploring, seeking and discovering.

 

[Wolfpack48]

You're looking for the two overlapping subgenres "Open world" and "immersive sim". Or perhaps you aren't... The NPCs frequently lack depth, but the world itself as a sand box is an old old thing for crpgs.

Oh, I know. I guess I'm saying an open world isn't really good without an immersive sim. And that there are no better immersive sims than human beings.

I am not joking when I say that D&D is the father, grandfather, and boyfriend of CRPGs. It's that incestuous. But there is a lot more people, effort, and money on the computer side and they are definitely worth looking at.

Yup. I knew that when Wizardry came out on floppy disk lol. We've been trying a LONG TIME to make CRPGs as immersive and open and subtle as TTRPGs. And there's certainly more money in CRPGs, no doubt about it. But we've been doing this long enough now, that I THINK (I could be wrong) I am starting to see (1) folks in the CRPG industry (still) trying to understand the subtleties of human actions and behavior and story in TTRPGs OR (2) folks in the TTRPG industry looking to CRPG models, THEN attempting to apply CRPG methodology to TTRPGs. D&D 4e is probably an example of this, which is why I think folks bounced off of it so hard.

 

[zakael19]

I hope I’m wrong, I really do. I think my fear is of systemizing the roleplay itself. The improvising and play acting a character. I know some folks don’t like that improv aspect of roleplaying so may be systematizing that. Not saying it’s bad in general, just personal preference to freeform play the character without guardrails.

Of the various players in my games (the preponderance of which are <30), the ones who are most likely to simply want to free-form RP/play act/do deep OC play with no mechanics or plot affected are the young ones who are playing CRPGs constantly as well. That sort of classical collaborative storytelling is as alive and well today as it was pre-RPG as a concept in the 70s, and indeed absolutely thrives on the internet with the game-playing generations.

I'm starting a game of Stonetop (narrative game, DW/PBTA fork) on Sunday. We had our first session last Sunday. Two players are barely over 20, both are super active in the modern indie TTRPG scene over on itch.io and stuff, and couldn't be more excited to hang their character development off the premise and mechanics of the world and game in a way that deepens roleplaying because there's consequence.

 

[kenada]

Pretty sure “beat the game” and “winning the game” were all coined with the advent of computers and arcade games.

According to The Elusive Shift, people were talking and worrying about it from the beginning.

The wargaming community had long since learned that different players might prefer different levels of realism or playability when they sat down to game around the same table. In 1970, Gary Gygax ascribed to his Chainmail coauthor Jeff Perren a distinction between the attitudes of two types of players he called “warriors” and “gamers,” where “warriors seek to duplicate actual conditions of battle” to emphasize realism and “gamers are willing to twist realism any which way if a fun game results” (DB 3). Proposed player typologies along these or similar lines recurred in wargaming literature of the era. A few months later Steve Thornton advanced a more nuanced three-type model. Thornton spoke most warmly of the first type, those “fun wargamers who play just for enjoyment and who like non-complex, unambiguous rules that are quick to use” (WN 106). These he first contrasts with “‘simulators’ who try to re-enact battle conditions to the Nth degree,” and then least favorably with “competitors,” who “only play to win, invariably wrangling over the rules.” Commentators who adopted Thornton’s typology quickly recognized how divergent expectations could lead to unsatisfying outcomes at the table. Fred Vietmeyer observed, “For an Avalon Hill box game competitor to be engrossed in simulation of uniforms, flags, dioramas, etc., may be for him a waste of time.” A corollary is that “a simulator’s interest simply cannot be held with the simple games” favored by those emphasizing playability above all else. For Vietmeyer, the key to avoiding conflict was to embrace relativism and accept that players could come to the table with different incentives: “For one type of player to place his own viewpoint as superior to another’s hobby enjoyment is simply being too egocentric. The recognition that players could be sorted into buckets by the properties they want out of games thus became part of the theoretical apparatus of wargaming inherited by the earliest adopters of D&D.​

Excerpt From
The Elusive Shift
Jon Peterson

The Elusive Shift

Arts & Entertainment · 2020

books.apple.com

This material may be protected by copyright.

 

[Wolfpack48]

According to The Elusive Shift, people were talking and worrying about it from the beginning.

The wargaming community had long since learned that different players might prefer different levels of realism or playability when they sat down to game around the same table. In 1970, Gary Gygax ascribed to his Chainmail coauthor Jeff Perren a distinction between the attitudes of two types of players he called “warriors” and “gamers,” where “warriors seek to duplicate actual conditions of battle” to emphasize realism and “gamers are willing to twist realism any which way if a fun game results” (DB 3). Proposed player typologies along these or similar lines recurred in wargaming literature of the era. A few months later Steve Thornton advanced a more nuanced three-type model. Thornton spoke most warmly of the first type, those “fun wargamers who play just for enjoyment and who like non-complex, unambiguous rules that are quick to use” (WN 106). These he first contrasts with “‘simulators’ who try to re-enact battle conditions to the Nth degree,” and then least favorably with “competitors,” who “only play to win, invariably wrangling over the rules.” Commentators who adopted Thornton’s typology quickly recognized how divergent expectations could lead to unsatisfying outcomes at the table. Fred Vietmeyer observed, “For an Avalon Hill box game competitor to be engrossed in simulation of uniforms, flags, dioramas, etc., may be for him a waste of time.” A corollary is that “a simulator’s interest simply cannot be held with the simple games” favored by those emphasizing playability above all else. For Vietmeyer, the key to avoiding conflict was to embrace relativism and accept that players could come to the table with different incentives: “For one type of player to place his own viewpoint as superior to another’s hobby enjoyment is simply being too egocentric. The recognition that players could be sorted into buckets by the properties they want out of games thus became part of the theoretical apparatus of wargaming inherited by the earliest adopters of D&D.​

Excerpt From
The Elusive Shift
Jon Peterson

The Elusive Shift

Arts & Entertainment · 2020

books.apple.com

This material may be protected by copyright.

That's great, and happy to be corrected there! I've been meaning to pick up that book -- still wading through Playing at the World, and very cool to hear about the concern in the primordial days. Of course different people will get different kinds of fun out of the games -- I personally lean into the fun wargamers/simulators model, but I don't begrudge anyone playing competitively (though I will quickly bow out of a table full of them).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Of the various players in my games (the preponderance of which are <30), the ones who are most likely to simply want to free-form RP/play act/do deep OC play with no mechanics or plot affected are the young ones who are playing CRPGs constantly as well. That sort of classical collaborative storytelling is as alive and well today as it was pre-RPG as a concept in the 70s, and indeed absolutely thrives on the internet with the game-playing generations.

I'm starting a game of Stonetop (narrative game, DW/PBTA fork) on Sunday. We had our first session last Sunday. Two players are barely over 20, both are super active in the modern indie TTRPG scene over on itch.io and stuff, and couldn't be more excited to hang their character development off the premise and mechanics of the world and game in a way that deepens roleplaying because there's consequence.

So do you see Stonetop as a close analog of freeform collaborative storytelling?