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

[FrogReaver]

It means that the choices made by players shape play in a meaningful way. And more so, they must do so. Play cannot proceed without that.

The problem is, this is true of every rpg ever. It’s like the main point of them.

 

[zakael19]

The problem is, this is true of every rpg ever. It’s like the main point of them.

Only if you’re abstracting to “the player’s choice to exist in the game” levels of “choice.” But 85 pages later it’s clear that some people here don’t see a meaningful distinction between what systems set up to facilitate or demand play driven by player ideation and those which merely allow it by side effect or begrudgingly.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Okay so removing the blindly constraint. So if the players choose to go to the underdark, that sounds to me like a player decision that places the campaign in the underdark. A player decision that has such impact seems to fundamentally matter, at least on the surface.

It matters to the content of the fiction (which NPCs we're likely to encounter in which environment, etc.) but not to the nature (whichever it is, we're still engaging with the DM's prepared material).

Do you see why I assumed blindly making a choice was your initial intent? Because if we don’t, I don’t see how the above isn’t a fundamental choice that matters.

Because it's still just telling us what GM prepared material we're engaging with.

I think this is one place that I’m also not doing good at explaining. I wouldn’t refer to a hexcrawl as a sandbox. I would simply refer to it as a hexcrawl. When I say sandbox I mean something different. Typically a world with defined factions, with enough blanks where factions make moves alongside the PCs.

*I realize this is a narrower subset of sandbox than perhaps what it traditionally meant.

I'm not seeing how what you're describing can't be a hexcrawl. Think of the Isle of Dread, or the jungles of Chult in Tomb of Annihilation, or Hot Springs Island in The Dark of Hot Springs Island... these are hexcrawl sandboxes.

There may be other subsets... pointcrawls or what have you... but they still work the same.

Then some elaboration on what you did mean would be helpful.

I didn't introduce the idea of myth to the discussion, so I'm not sure how to comment on it. I don't think there's anything that prevents myth in a story now game. Look at the examples people have brought up. Blades in the Dark has a setting, Stonetop has a setting, Spire has a setting, Burning Wheel doesn't offer one by default, but states that there are tons of settings out there and you can use any of them.

It's not about not having myth so much as how that myth is used.

So in what I mean by sandbox that’s not really how it works. That’s probably a good part of the disconnect.

Probably! I'm not sure what kind of sandbox you're talking about or how it differs from the examples I've provided. Can you offer an example?

Okay. That’s helpful. Just to ensure I’m not confused, By nature you mean it’s nature in the sense of being designed with or without input from players?

Yes.

This may very well be true in a trad sandbox, but I think there’s a mechanism that makes it untrue for the kind of sandbox I mean. But focused is a rather broad and generic word - so you probably mean focused in some particular way? So before I commit I’d be curious about focused in what way?

Focused on player decisions and choices, beginning with character creation. So you can't just run Isle of Dread or a similar sandbox with this kind of play. You have to actively incorporate the elements that the players have brought up or included in their character creation.

I’m not trying to prove you wrong. I’m trying to get to what you actually mean.

I can in my own words, but it’s obvious we aren’t using the same language. So I don’t think introducing alternate terms and definitions is going to help. At best we just start arguing over terms then. IMO.

Other than sandbox, I'm not really using any strange terms, or alternate meanings of common words.

I don’t know that it does in what you call a trad sandbox.

In the kind of sandbox I mean there’s a mechanism that works something like this. So if the PC backstory is, I want to kill my brothers killer, the PCs can focus their play on trying to do identify, find, and kill that man.

Consider the difference between a movie about such a theme and a procedural tv series containing such a theme. The movie is much more direct and to the point - which seems to match your notion of narrative play, but the procedural series still gets thise same elements and gets to resolution, it just typically does so over many episodes where the basic procedure is usually at the forefront and the elements about the brothers killer slowly drip in. This analogy highlights to me the differences well in sandbox as I mean and narrative play.

back to rpgs - Unless you mean focus to the exclusion of all else, then it seems obvious that the sandbox player initiated the idea of killing their brothers killer drove play toward that by asking NPCs they meet about him. Eventually the DM bites on that hook and provides additional details which then lets the process repeat until the player finally encounters their brothers killer.

Again, I don't know what kind of sandbox you're talking about, or how the GM in that game would bring it about. Are there any formalized processes or mechanics for doing so? Or is it all just agreement between the players and GM?

And exactly what is done by the GM to incorporate the players' choices? To use your example, does the GM simply say that one of the NPCs in Chult is the brother's killer and then run Tomb of Annihilation with that change included? Or is there more to it?

 

[hawkeyefan]

The problem is, this is true of every rpg ever. It’s like the main point of them.

If you quoted the rest of that section of my post, perhaps you'd have a better understanding of what I'm saying.

We can take any characters we like and run them through The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, right? Their backgrounds don't matter in any fundamental way except perhaps as flavor or as reasons for the decisions the players make. But the "story" of that module is not the story of the PCs. It can be anyone's story.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I’m not Crimson, but I think exploring just what needs to be true in d&d 5e for ‘player driven play’ to happen would be helpful.

Sure. What would you think would need to happen in a 5e game for it to be considered player driven?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Why? Why is this needed? It seems incredibly mechanistic way of looking at things. I just do not recognise that this is necessary. The Blades game I'm playing in has this, but it is no more player driven than my D&D game.

Then it's likely being run in a way that's a bit off to what the book describes.

Who picks your scores? Who decides what kind of score and what goals you have for a score?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Because I don't understand how it facilitates it. I simply have not seen it happening, and it is not clear to me how it should.
I am not even saying that you cannot be right, but if that's the case, then I'd like to understand the hows.

And I don't think my table is any sort of amazing. It is good, but I'd think it is pretty basic. I also don't think our Blades game is somehow terrible. But I just do not see the difference these different mechanics are supposed to produce.

So let's start off with a very basic difference between Blades and D&D.

When you decide you want to have your character do something, who decides what skill/stat/action to use?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Then it's likely being run in a way that's a bit off to what the book describes.

Who picks your scores? Who decides what kind of score and what goals you have for a score?

The players usually do, though sometimes there are external developments that sort of push things in certain direction. This is similar to my D&D, though I think the latter happens somewhat more in D&D. (I don't think it needs to, but I like dynamism that unfolding events the characters need to react to cause.) However, in D&D the scope of what the characters can choose to pursue is much wider, and the potential sessions that may ensue from player choices differ from each other much more than they do in the Blades. Blades is thematically very focused and structurally formulaic, so it limits a lot what sort of things can happen in the game and how they happen.

So let's start off with a very basic difference between Blades and D&D.

When you decide you want to have your character do something, who decides what skill/stat/action to use?

De jure in Blades the player decides and in D&D the GM does, but de facto the fictional positioning dictates it most of the time in both.

The only reason why there is more agonising over this in Blades is because the skills are intentionally overlapping and confusing (which I find very annoying.) But then you of course just use the best trait you can justify applying to the situation. And if the GM doesn't like your justifications, they can let that affect the effect of the roll. Also I am not sure what RAW happens in Blades if the player makes completely absurd skill choice.

 

[pemerton]

So if the players choose to go to the underdark, that sounds to me like a player decision that places the campaign in the underdark. A player decision that has such impact seems to fundamentally matter, at least on the surface.

How does it fundamentally matter?

I mean, it changes the scenery. But how does the campaign happening in the Underdark fundamentally shape what is at stake, what the premises and their thematic resolutions are, etc?

I'm not saying that there is no answer to the above - 4e has an answer, for instance - but I don't know what your answer is.

It sure helps that Gandalf is one of the most powerful and respected people in the setting, which the characters in the example probably weren't. Also, whilst he challenged Theoden's judgement, he didn't challenge his position. There also were other obvious things in the fictional positioning that helped these things go the way they did. (Though the scene in the movie version where Gandalf literally assaults Denethor and everyone is fine with it is still ludicrous to me.)

I am very willing to let my players to try crazy stuff, doesn't mean they will always succeed. And yeah, obviously this is something that could happen in a game given the right circumstance, but some (which I assume to be) low to medium ranking unknown just shouting at the king's face that he is bad and should get lost probably is not gonna be it.

At least from my point of view, the topic of this conversation is can the players establish what is at stake in a scene? and can they push a scene in a particular thematic direction?

So if the GM has established fiction - eg an unshakeable tyrant, unswervingly loyal servitors, the PCs as "unknowns" to whom no one will listen, etc - then all that tells me is that the answer to my questions is "No". The players can't establish what is at stake in the scene - the GM will do that - and the players can't push the scene in a particular thematic direction - the GM has decided that's off the table.

I also don't understand what this has to do with "they will always succeed". No one is talking about auto-success. The game I've repeatedly referenced - Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, Torchbearer 2e, Prince Valiant, 4e D&D, Agon 2e, etc - all use dice to determine whether or not the PCs succeed at actions where meaningful things are at stake. My point about the post I linked to is that the GM is in control of stakes, theme and outcomes. Hence it is an example where the players do not contribute to those things. It is an example of the sort of RPGing whose existence you seemed to query.

The GM determines what exists in the world, the player determines the actions of their characters. These together create the fictional positioning that helps us determine what happens. Also, why are those actions GM centred if it is the players who initiate them? What would not be GM centred? The player directly dictating the external reality of the setting? That's not their job.

If the player can have their PCs only find sympathisers if the GM decides to introduce such NPCs into the fiction; if, more generally, the success of a declared action depends upon stuff the GM is imagining that is secret from the player; then we have GM-driven play.

These, again, would be examples of the sort of RPGing whose existence you seemed to query, and that contrast with what I am describing and what I took @soviet and @hawkeyefan to be referring to in their posts upthread.

Well, most people don't care whether their D&D is narrativist or not, and having participated in many of these discussions, I still do not know what it actually takes to qualify. It seems that every time it is pointed out how other games have the listed qualities goalpost shifting to show how it doesn't really count commences...

<snip>

How couldn't you do this in D&D? The meaningful difference I see is that it seems this game the player can decide whether the character can die in combat, but as this is not something the character could actually decide, puts us more into collaborative storytelling style rather than immersing to the viewpoint of the character style. Which BTW is my issue with a lot of the narrativist mechanics. I can play that way, but I don't prefer it.

But I don't think the impact of Golin challenging Megloss relies on that. In D&D he would risk death by default by initiating combat, the pathos is in why the player chooses to do it, rather the exact mechanics.

The only person asserting, in this thread, that narrativist 5e D&D is impossible is you.

But it's obviously harder than in Torchbearer. 5e D&D has no analogue to putting your life on the line. It has no analogue to channelling your Avenging Grudges Nature. The mechanical elements of combat resolution push the focus of play away from these thematically significant matters, into the question of who wins initiative, what's the AC, who has how many hp remaining - none of which are thematically significant matters. A (very rough) analogue in film would be to replace the actual Death Star duel between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan with a documentary describing the fencing manoeuvres and the physics of light-sabres: we might have an account of the same events, but we wouldn't have an emotionally-laden story.

No, it was @thefutilist to whom I was responding.

But @thefutilist said nothing about "crunch", or combat, being an obstacle to narrativist play. What thefutilist said is that

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. As opposed to say GURPS, which I could see working well, or HERO system, or cyberpunk 2020. To be ultra contrarian, I might choose 5E over Dungeon World. I’d want to hack both games heavily and I think I could hack 5E combat easier than I could hack Dungeon World combat. Although if I was forced to play out of the box I’d go for Dungeon World.

And I've just given some reasons why it is hard to give combat thematic weight in 5e D&D. thefutilist also gave an example in post 718.

My example was from Torchbearer: the mere fact that the player can choose to initiate a Drive Off conflict, or a Kill conflict, where only the latter puts death on the line, already changes the way in which combat can be given dramatic weight. Other features of the system - in particular, the way consequences are established - add to that. 5e doesn't have them. I mean, to the best of my understanding 5e doesn't even allow - in any remotely straightforward way - for a combat result in which the PC wins, but their magic blade is shattered.

in D&D the players cannot use mechanics to acausally summon sympathisers or towers. I get why being able to do that would give the player more control, but it also is something a lot of people don't want to have.

Here, as often seems to happen in these threads, we have a demonstration of ignorance of the actual systems used in games that permit the players to set stakes and that don't invite the GM to unilaterally determine consequences. As if the only options are either GM decides unilaterally or player authors unilaterally, without declaring an action for their PC.

Whereas I've referred to actual mechanics from actual games: Streetwise from Classic Traveller (1977 - not a radical indie game!) and Circles from Burning Wheel and Torchbearer. Both work by the player declaring an action (roughly, I look around for such-and-such a sort of person) and then the GM setting a difficulty in accordance with the guidelines, and then the dice being rolled.

Now the next response presumably will be The GM can just set a difficulty of impossible. To which my response is, If the GM ignores the rulebooks and just decides to unilaterally decide what is at stake and what the outcomes are, then sure. No rulebook can stop a table from playing a GM-driven RPG. I'm simply pointing out that alternatives are possible, and have been contemplated by RPGers for at least 47 years.

 

[pemerton]

It seems that I have many times observed that narrativism (at least as defined by some people) seems to require giving the players meta level acausal control of parts of the setting. Then those people deny that this is the case. But when we examine actual examples, it turns out the difference still boils down to that in one way or another.

Not remotely.

The player declares an action: I stab the Orc. Dice are rolled to find out what happens next. (The earliest RPG I know to use this rule is 1974 D&D, via its combat system.)

The player declares an action: I look around for a sympathiser. Dice are roll to find out what happens next. (The earliest RPG I know to use this rule is 1977 Traveller, via its Streetwise skill.)

Neither is "meta level acausal". Both involve the player declaring an action, and dice being rolled to see what happens next and whether the action succeeds.

Now, at some tables the GM is allowed to decide that the Orc is invulnerable, or lucky, or whatever, and hence can't be killed by the attempt at stabbing. (I believe the DL modules use a version of this for some NPCs.)

And similarly, at some tables the GM is allowed to decided that there are no sympathisers, and that everyone is fanatically loyal to the NPC, and hence the attempt to find sympathisers is doomed to failure. (I believe, from your posts, that your table uses a version of this rule.)

Those are GM-driven approaches to play. They are very popular, but obviously not the only approaches, given that RPGs from 1974 and 1977 canvassed other possibilities.

I think the players can control the nature of the play via the actions of their characters.

If the GM has decided, unilaterally and in advance, that every attempt to find sympathisers will fail, or that any attempt to overthrow the Mad Tyrant in his throne room will fail, then the players can't control the nature of play via the actions of their PCs (to try and find sympathisers; to try and overthrow the Mad Tyrant in his throne room).

That's the whole point of what I'm saying!

Narrativist play doesn't depend upon "meta level acausal", but it does depend upon the players being able to establish stakes, and upon the fact that - when they do so - the GM doesn't just get to decide the consequences by unilaterally deciding what happens next. 1974 D&D and 1977 Traveller won't yield narrativist RPGing without a bit of addition to what the rulebooks say (both games have rulebooks that are silent on some crucial processes of play), but they have mechanical systems that at least point us in its general direction.