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

[FrogReaver]

So maybe a solid start for defining a “narrative” game, or at least whatever Daggerheart is meant to be, is a game that expects (or maybe even requires?) that player choice matters in a fundamental way? That it should not (or maybe even cannot?) be ignored?

Most d&d sandboxes seem to meet that definition.

….Unless you mean something closer to player character creation choices cannot be ignored.

 

[pemerton]

And if that's how they want to play, then that's a valid option for them.

OK? Did anyone say otherwise?

I don't think the game engine needs to prevent playing in that way.

<snip>

It is about communication, so that everyone is playing the same game.

It's not just about communication. It's also about game design. If I want to play a player-driven RPG, I will choose a system - a mixture of mechanics, principles, etc - that support that.

 

[pemerton]

If Marvel Comics were real, all superheroes would be absolute evil, the lowest of the low. Imagine fighting Doctor Doom in space with your genius level IQ and your billion dollar supertech and then quietly walking past homeless people and pro-democracy marches on the way back to your mansion.

I've posted about this before:

For my part, my models for FRPGing tend to be JRRT and Arthurian romance, REH and similar S&S tropes, Wuxia films, and (to a lesser extent) Ursula Le Guin. None of these really presents a world that works like the real one: they present worlds in which some expected tropes are present, but there's no attempt to actually create a working conception of a viable human society.

I think superhero comics (not the Watchmen, but the ones that the Watchmen is critiquing) are another good example of this approach: if we as readers ask why Storm spends her time fighting Magneto and Doctor Doom rather than remedying droughts and floods that threaten thousands or even millions of lives, we're missing the point of the story. Similarly, if in a typical FRPG context we expect the clerics to use their abilities to stop plagues, and the druids to use their abilities to ensure harvests, and the wizards to use their abilities to power machines, the world is going to quickly stop looking like any of the ones I mentioned above!

Super heroes are contrivance all the way down: whether that be the secret identities, or the supervillains, or the fact that Storm spends her time using her powers to fight Arcade and Dr Doom rather than responding to droughts and famines. Something like Watchmen, or Miracle Man, is an exception but that's what makes those works distinctive.

Storm as a character is obviously good, and in alignment-as-personality-descriptor probably NG, but if we ask the question why is she wasting her powers fighting Doom an Magneto rather than trying to end famine, flood, etc then there is no coherent answer to be given within the fiction. That's why we have to not ask the question, and just embrace the fiction's tropes and disconnect from those aspects of reality.

It's one reason why I am very wary of appeals to "realism* in RPG design or the authorship of fiction.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yeah, sounds reasonable to me. But from this it also follows that one can choose to play D&D narrativisticly.

I think that some effort can be made to do so, yes. I don’t think the game, as written, is all that suited to it. I’d go so far as to say there are inherent elements that actively work against it.

You talk in terms of storytelling, but certainly you also understand that stories are not non stop conflict? That there are slower moments, discussions that establish the personalities and relationships of characters etc. And all this is also part of a good story.

When we think of stories and how they’re told, we have to consider the medium of their telling. So if you make a movie, you have to think of your story in scenes and about how to convey the ideas visually. When you’re telling a story as a novel, you can rely on description and narration more heavily. And so on.

When you’re crafting a story with an RPG… let’s just think of it that way for now for the sake of discussion, though there are many people who would fight tooth and nail against that very idea… you have to consider your story in terms of what is satisfying game play. Barring a game that consists of professional entertainers like Critical Role or the Glass Cannon Network, the performance element of a game is likely not up to par to justify that being the focus. You have to use the play of the game to help propel the fiction. So the more you can maintain that momentum… the more the game moves… the better off you’ll be.

I mean it is literally telling these things to the participants. You tell that you're a friend with such and such, instead of showing it with roleplaying interaction with said friend.

Establishing a fact isn’t really the important part of this, I don’t think. If two PCs are established to have an important bond… siblings, childhood friends, significant others, whatever… once established, how do you then show the importance?

If it’s merely in character interaction that displays it but nothing more, is that all that meaningful? What if we compare that to play where that importance is tested in some way? When it’s put on the line? What do the characters do then? How does that play out? What do we learn about these characters?

Like I said earlier, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with something that’s just about portrayal and nothing more. But does that show the characters’ connection more meaningfully than a scene where that connection is the actual focus? Where it’s tested in some way?

And to connect this back to the origin of the thread, this sort of heavy and involved combat system is something DH shares with D&D, albeit they work rather differently. So should that count against DH being narrative?

In what way? I’ve looked through the DH playtest, but I’ve not yet played it, so I can’t really say for sure. I think a lot of the design elements give the players a lot of advocacy for their characters. I think the player principles and the GMing principles provided in the book really support a more narrativistic approach.

I can’t yet say exactly how play feels, but it’s possible something plays differently than it reads. Or that I’ve missed some bits that work against that style… but I don’t know what those may be.

 

[pemerton]

The main reason I wouldn’t is that I dislike a lot of the sub systems, I dislike the way magic is handled and it looks like it would be hard to give combat any kind of thematic weight.

I think you could give combat thematic weight well enough, but yeah, it is rather involved and crunchy system that expects certain level of tactical play, so if that's not what one is interested about it might feel like a distraction.

When combat generates pressure for expedient play rather than thematic play, and when it has little scope for the player to reveal or establish stakes, then it will push against narrativistic RPGing.

In Rolemaster, melee combat allows the players to set stakes - by choosing the balance of offence and defence - but ranged combat (archery) doesn't. This makes archer builds less suitable for narrativistic play.

Magic being a toggle on/off is another thing that pushes against narrativist RPGing. Again, this creates pressure towards Gygaxian-style spell load out management, rather than staking meaningful things in action declarations.

I will add: this is not theorycraft. This is experience of playing AD&D, Rolemaster, 4e D&D and Burning Wheel (all sub-stystem rich, mechanically "heavy" systems).

 

[Autumnal]

Right on, @pemerton - I realized only gradually, but realism is never what I seek in gaming (with a caveat below), and like you, I end up disbelieving most claims about its importance to other people’s play. Not that I think they’re lying - I don’t see much of that all in tabletop gaming exchanges except in very specific contexts - but that they’ve latched into parts of play and a label and glued them together. I often think of the moment in the GURPS Cops development discussions out the sound and loudness of gunshots in various contexts. An experienced defense attorney weighed in with her experience on the range, in actual crime scenes, and in re-enactments during trials. The regulars talked right over her. They had acoustic and ballistic models into which her evidence didn’t fit, so it wasn’t considered relevant. I see that a lot.

There are some aspects of reality that do matter very much to me. (This is below.). In particular, aspects of psychology. As someone with both mental illness and other illness that has neurological and endocrinal consequences, I’m thinking about the insides of heads, mine and others’, a lot. More than I’d choose. But there it is. One of the reasons systems like Pendragon and Storyteller appealed to me early on is that they had provisions for people to go right off their chump be overwhelmed by passions stronger than reason. That’s true to my sense both of their genres and of reality. Systems in which characters are always controlled by reason and deliberated choice just feel fake to me.

And like that. Realism isn’t very realistic to me.

 

[pemerton]

Here’s a simple scenario through which to analyse combat.

Nice example.

From my experience, I think that MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, Prince Valiant and 4e D&D (at least by mid-Heroic) all - in different ways - allow for your scenario. Burning Wheel too, I think, though I think it's less obvious on first reading how to do it. AD&D and Rolemaster less so.

 

[pemerton]

Most d&d sandboxes seem to meet that definition.

….Unless you mean something closer to player character creation choices cannot be ignored.

Given that a D&D sandbox is close to the opposite of what @hawkeyefan has in mind - and is much closer to @soviet's example of "the setting is real, the PCs are just passing through" - I think you have misunderstood what is meant. (I don't think it's necessarily PC creation choices, either, though those might be a factor. It's about the players contributing significantly to stakes and themes.)

When we think of stories and how they’re told, we have to consider the medium of their telling. So if you make a movie, you have to think of your story in scenes and about how to convey the ideas visually. When you’re telling a story as a novel, you can rely on description and narration more heavily. And so on.

When you’re crafting a story with an RPG… let’s just think of it that way for now for the sake of discussion, though there are many people who would fight tooth and nail against that very idea… you have to consider your story in terms of what is satisfying game play. Barring a game that consists of professional entertainers like Critical Role or the Glass Cannon Network, the performance element of a game is likely not up to par to justify that being the focus. You have to use the play of the game to help propel the fiction. So the more you can maintain that momentum… the more the game moves… the better off you’ll be.

Yes, yes, yes!

RPGs are a distinctive medium. In their typical (mainstream) play, one person is establishing a scene/situation, and another one or more persons are describing what key characters do in that scene/situation, and there is a shared process of working out what happens as a result. Of course this medium can be used for wargame-y or puzzle-solving play (a la Gygax); but when we're talking about stories we're looking at how this medium might be used to that end.

Provoking action declarations and engaging the resolution system is the obvious way. If the core resolution system and the framing system are the same (ie "GM decides" - see DL, Dead Gods, much CoC, etc for typical examples) then the main method of player direction over fictional events will be low- or no-stakes actions where the GM doesn't get involved and the players sort it out themselves. In my experience this creates something like "two games" - the among-the-PCs game and the deal-with-the-GM's-stuff game.

An alternative is a different core resolution system, which removes the "two games" syndrome and integrates player direction with the momentum of play.

 

[pemerton]

And to connect this back to the origin of the thread, this sort of heavy and involved combat system is something DH shares with D&D, albeit they work rather differently. So should that count against DH being narrative?

It depends entirely on how the combat system works.

4e D&D's combat system is heavy and involved, and is part of its narrativist machinery.

 

[FrogReaver]

Given that a D&D sandbox is close to the opposite of what @hawkeyefan has in mind - and is much closer to @soviet's example of "the setting is real, the PCs are just passing through" - I think you have misunderstood what is meant. (I don't think it's necessarily PC creation choices, either, though those might be a factor. It's about the players contributing significantly to stakes and themes.)

I’m no mind reader. I can only respond to what is written. In d&d sandboxes player choices really do matter in a fundamental way. They cannot be ignored.

That’s what @hawkeye’s definition was.