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

[FrogReaver]

You say you've played BitD - its rulebook tells you one answer.

In BitD the player doesn’t unilaterallly set the stakes. That’s kind of my whole point.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

We had an example not too far upthread:
In this case, it was not "boring" or "easy mode", but "realism":

So whilst I don't think usually downscaling the outcomes from those what the players expected is needed there are some situation in which it is. And I don't know a single game where this is not the case. And in situation where the exact thing the players want to achieve is impossible in one go, if possible, it is good idea to give them progress towards it.

Are you genuinely arguing that this is not commonly the case in almost every RPG? That the players can just ask literally anything and the GM must allow them to roll for it? Because I just don't think this is the case. In earlier Ironsworn (IIRC) example we saw this was not the case. It is not the case in Blades, I doubt it is the case in Burning Wheel either, but please don't make me find the PDF.

And simply from narrative sense being able to get anything with one roll is obviously undesirable. If this tyrant is the main enemy, overthrowing of which the players are invested in, then just marching to them and telling them to abdicate, and they do, would not be a very good story. Gimli just shattering the One Ring with his axe because he mistakenly though that he could would not be a good story. And if the dramatic angle of your character is that their brother is missing, then just finding the brother drinking in a nearby tavern via a circle check would not be a good story.

You're again erected this sort of absolutist dogmatic objection that doesn't actually correspond to the reality. The thing you protest exist in practically every game in one form or another.

 

[pemerton]

All of them are assemblages of exactly the sort I described.

No. The events of play are not assemblages of anything, any more than any other story is an assemblage of elements.

However, it's not important to me that you understand this. You asked, I answered. Read more on post-classical narratology. I'm morally certain there are folk who are better at explaining these concepts than I am.

I don't really need to read more on post-classical narratology. I'm a professional philosopher. I have published work on philosophy of language. I also know what supervenience is: I don't work in philosophy of mind, but I've got a fairly good grasp of where the field was up to about 30 years ago, when supervenience and functionalist models of the mind were all the rage.

As I posted, the first example of ergodic literature I thought of was a Choose Your Own Adventure, and lo and behold there it is on the Wikipedia page. I understand what the concept is.

But the concepts of ludonarrative and ergodic literature are applicable only to railroads - eg CYOA, video games, perhaps the DL modules. It's also plausible to say, in these cases, that the story supervenes on the assemblages, in that the assemblages might change - eg a new image is incorporated into the video game, or a new pathway is incorporated into the CYOA, but the story doesn't change.

There is no supervenience on assemblages in the case of non-railroad RPGing. The story of Aedhros hoping to find a helpful necromancer to save the dying Alicia, and him instead seeing Thoth step out from his secret workshop exit onto the docks, doesn't supervene on any assemblages. It was created, by a joint effort, by my friend and me, prompted by a mixture of prior fiction, Circles check results, and our own wild imaginations.

There are vastly many stories that supervene on Burning Wheel, once you take into account too the signifiers each player contributes to the set in play at their table.

Without meaning to be rude, I'm not sure that you know what supervenience means when used in a philosophical context.

To say that A supervenes on B means that there can be no change in A without a change in B; but that the reverse does not hold, that is, that (certain) changes in B may occur without a change in A. The concept is used most often to explain physicalist but non-identity accounts of the dependence of the mental on the physical: that is, the claim is that there can be no change in mental states without a change in physical states, but that multiple different physical states can instantiate the same mental state. The claim is normally associated with functional accounts of the mind, because the same functional state (A) can be instantiated by different physical states (B).

To say that a story supervenes on certain assemblages means to say that the assemblages determine the story, but that the assemblages might change and yet determine the same story. Above, I gave a simple example of how this might occur.

Stories that are created when playing Burning Wheel don't supervene on any assemblages. They are created by the RPGers, using the rules of Burning Wheel together with certain fiction inspired by or derived from Burning Wheel.

story exists not just in the rendering of what happens, but in how the rendering is experienced by readers. Hence the reader's traversal in my description.

I don't really know what this means. But I note that, if it is true, it is as true of the reader of "ordinary" literature as or ergodic literature.

 

[thefutilist]

It really is the player haggling with the GM about stoybeats, rather than the character haggling with the duke about a deal. The former pair can agree that the duke's daughter will not be killed by unknown third party before the meeting, the latter cannot.

Note that everything innerdude stated about stake setting is inimical to what I want from a role-playing game. There is a strand of Narrativist play born from those ideas and it’s usually this strand that people point to when they talk about a writers room approach and so on.


I’ll illustrate the way I’d do it, although the example is going to be a little contrived. Also note there’s lot of superficial similarities. Assume we’re playing Sorcerer and I’m the GM.


Player: I want to meet the Princess alone, would it be a faux pas to ask the King for that as my reward for wining the duel?

Me: I don’t know about alone, alone. You could ask for a date or whatever the mediaeval equivalent is called. Maybe a walk in the gardens and there would be a chaperone walking a distance behind you.

Player: Fine. So let’s see if I win this duel.

We roll and the player wins. He approaches the King.

Me as the King: My noble knight, what is thy reward?

Player: My Lord, I ask merely for a date with your daughter, a walk in the gardens mayhap.

I think about the Kings priorities. Maybe I’ve established him (off-screen) as being really status obsessed.

Me as the King: I admire your ardore good knight but it takes more than winning a tournament to court a princess. Maybe perform such deeds as make you worthy of being a lord and thence ask again. (and the court as a whole chuckles)

Player: Ah, my lord, I was dependant upon your beneficent. It was foolish of me.

Me: Wait, that’s really going to make the king angry with you.

Player: Yeah but I’m showing him up in front of the court, kind of forcing his hand.

Me: (I think about the Kings priorities.) Yeah that makes sense. So it’s a conflict then. Will your words embarrasses the king enough for him to relent or is he going to hold fast. Also if you fail, things will go badly for you. And either way you’ve made an enemy of him.

Player: I’m ok with that.

We roll and the player wins.

Me: There’s a shocked gasp from the court and the King turns red. He says in a strained tone. ‘well never let it be said that I am not beneficent, you shall have your walk in the gardens’

Me: look at my prep and see that this night is the night I’ve written down that the assassin murders the princess.

Me: so next day as you’re preparing for your garden stroll. There’s a scream. The princess has been murdered in the night.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Okay, so the players pick the scores. Sometimes something may become more pressing than other concerns, and so it gets priority. That sounds pretty standard.

What kind of scores are you choosing and why? Can you give an example?

Well, we are Shadows, so it is mostly some sort of robbery or property related heists. Though recently we bit of a gang far effectively forced on us. Some of the "robberies" also were not primarily about property but framing a rival gang for a thing.

We have burgled warehouses and casinos, infiltrated into a noble lady's masquerade ball and stole her famous necklace. Stuff like that.

The actions intentionally overlap to give some leeway. I find there's little agonizing over it if you follow the principles of play. It takes some getting used to, but it's not like there aren't similar things in D&D and other games.

Do you think this gives the players some freedom to interpret the fiction and decide what they can do? More so when compared to a system where the GM declares what skill or action pertains?

No not really. It is about trying to remember what the confusing skills are actually supposed to do. Then you use the best of which you can justify. Also, as there is a lot of "can used for this, but X might be better" which I think is instruction of the GM that using suboptimal skill might have a weaker effect or something. So then we agonise is it better to use one "which might be better" even if you have worse trait in it. It doesn't increase agency, it just makes choosing a skill unnecessarily complicated. I also don't know what is supposed to happen if the player chooses to use completely inappropriate skill. I don't think that should fly, so it is probably prevented somehow.

I think that "just common crap related to being a criminal" hints that the GM isn't incorporating all these elements the way that he could.

How often do your friends/rivals come up? What about the factions that you selected at the start of play that are allied with your crew, or enemies of your crew? What about your contact? Do you have a web of NPCs about whom you care at all?

Friends and rivals do pop up, and allied and rival factions affect things. We recently killed a rival of one PC and a rival of another has been involved in quite a bit of stuff and the PC is plotting their downfall. Though I don't think rivals of all the characters have yet been involved. Mine hasn't. But I don't think this is anything unusual for this game. We've dealt with rivals and friends of the characters in my D&D too. It is true that in the Blades the same NPCs and factions keep popping up more, but I think that is mainly due the setup being confined to one city, rather than wandering all over the continent and often exploring new places like the character in my D&D game do.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Note that everything innerdude stated about stake setting is inimical to what I want from a role-playing game. There is a strand of Narrativist play born from those ideas and it’s usually this strand that people point to when they talk about a writers room approach and so on.


I’ll illustrate the way I’d do it, although the example is going to be a little contrived. Also note there’s lot of superficial similarities. Assume we’re playing Sorcerer and I’m the GM.


Player: I want to meet the Princess alone, would it be a faux pas to ask the King for that as my reward for wining the duel?

Me: I don’t know about alone, alone. You could ask for a date or whatever the mediaeval equivalent is called. Maybe a walk in the gardens and there would be a chaperone walking a distance behind you.

Player: Fine. So let’s see if I win this duel.

We roll and the player wins. He approaches the King.

Me as the King: My noble knight, what is thy reward?

Player: My Lord, I ask merely for a date with your daughter, a walk in the gardens mayhap.

I think about the Kings priorities. Maybe I’ve established him (off-screen) as being really status obsessed.

Me as the King: I admire your ardore good knight but it takes more than winning a tournament to court a princess. Maybe perform such deeds as make you worthy of being a lord and thence ask again. (and the court as a whole chuckles)

Player: Ah, my lord, I was dependant upon your beneficent. It was foolish of me.

Me: Wait, that’s really going to make the king angry with you.

Player: Yeah but I’m showing him up in front of the court, kind of forcing his hand.

Me: (I think about the Kings priorities.) Yeah that makes sense. So it’s a conflict then. Will your words embarrasses the king enough for him to relent or is he going to hold fast. Also if you fail, things will go badly for you. And either way you’ve made an enemy of him.

Player: I’m ok with that.

We roll and the player wins.

Me: There’s a shocked gasp from the court and the King turns red. He says in a strained tone. ‘well never let it be said that I am not beneficent, you shall have your walk in the gardens’

Me: look at my prep and see that this night is the night I’ve written down that the assassin murders the princess.

Me: so next day as you’re preparing for your garden stroll. There’s a scream. The princess has been murdered in the night.

I mean this sounds fine to me, but I remain perplexed about whether this is supposed to be narrativism, and if so, how, as it doesn't seem substantially different than how I'd handle it in D&D or other trad game.

 

[clearstream]

No. The events of play are not assemblages of anything, any more than any other story is an assemblage of elements.

I don't really need to read more on post-classical narratology. I'm a professional philosopher. I have published work on philosophy of language. I also know what supervenience is: I don't work in philosophy of mind, but I've got a fairly good grasp of where the field was up to about 30 years ago, when supervenience and functionalist models of the mind were all the rage.

As I posted, the first example of ergodic literature I thought of was a Choose Your Own Adventure, and lo and behold there it is on the Wikipedia page. I understand what the concept is.

But the concepts of ludonarrative and ergodic literature are applicable only to railroads - eg CYOA, video games, perhaps the DL modules. It's also plausible to say, in these cases, that the story supervenes on the assemblages, in that the assemblages might change - eg a new image is incorporated into the video game, or a new pathway is incorporated into the CYOA, but the story doesn't change.

First, don't conflate ergodic literature with ludonarrative. If you understand ludonarrative to be applicable only to railroads, then I haven't explained it well enough and you haven't grasped what I have said with the meaning intended.

When a player interacts with a game, they experience their interaction, they have awareness of the history of their interactions, they render their interaction in some form (an utterance, the repositioning of pieces, description), other players may experience that rendering, and thus it becomes something that they might interact with. The game-as-artifact, as I have said before is a tool for fabricating that play, and so ordinarily it too contributes a tailored set of signifiers (including dynamic signifiers).

A history of interactions can be copied out and form a linear story. A reader can read that story and follow what is going on. This is not ludonarrative. And as you've pointed out in the past, the "story" copied out from an arbitrary game might not present us with anything up to the standard of a piece of dramatic literature.

Ludonarrative exists in the intentional assembling and traversing (playing with) of signifiers, and the ongoing experience of that traversal. Between the covers of a book may be a complete narrative, but the record of a single traversal of a ludonarrative cannot completely describe it. One reason being that the player both authors (contributes, organises and renders traversals of signifiers) and audiences (experiences signifiers contributed, organised and rendered by others.)

There is no supervenience on assemblages in the case of non-railroad RPGing. The story of Aedhros hoping to find a helpful necromancer to save the dying Alicia, and him instead seeing Thoth step out from his secret workshop exit onto the docks, doesn't supervene on any assemblages. It was created, by a joint effort, by my friend and me, prompted by a mixture of prior fiction, Circles check results, and our own wild imaginations.

Without meaning to be rude, I'm not sure that you know what supervenience means when used in a philosophical context.

To say that A supervenes on B means that there can be no change in A without a change in B; but that the reverse does not hold, that is, that (certain) changes in B may occur without a change in A. The concept is used most often to explain physicalist but non-identity accounts of the dependence of the mental on the physical: that is, the claim is that there can be no change in mental states without a change in physical states, but that multiple different physical states can instantiate the same mental state. The claim is normally associated with functional accounts of the mind, because the same functional state (A) can be instantiated by different physical states (B).

To say that a story supervenes on certain assemblages means to say that the assemblages determine the story, but that the assemblages might change and yet determine the same story. Above, I gave a simple example of how this might occur.

The bolded part is mistaken. If the assemblage changes the story changes, and one must include the player in the ludonarrative assemblage (just I suppose as one must include actors in a play.) Realising they needed to be included inspired and enabled "narrativism". This meets the no A change without a B change requirement of supervenience. (And also happens to be one reason why I'm sceptical of the same game being played by differing cohorts.)

Stories that are created when playing Burning Wheel don't supervene on any assemblages. They are created by the RPGers, using the rules of Burning Wheel together with certain fiction inspired by or derived from Burning Wheel.

Again, you're excluding players from the assemblage. Remember they are author and audience. They're part of the play. Their interactions are rendered for other players, and so in return. Concluding, it seems I haven't been at all clear that players are part of the assemblage (ironic, given we've just spent hundreds of posts talking about whether and how they must be).

 

[pemerton]

You have seen or linked the video of the interview yourself, either earlier here or in another thread.

I've watched that video. I don't recall Edwards saying that his account was "moronic". Can you tell me where he says that?

Is it right that you want to reserve the word for the motives or desires of player characters?

No. Stakes doesn't refer to any character's motives or desire. It refers to a possible event (a change, an acquisition, etc) that bears upon - as either tending to contradict or to satisfy - some characters' motives or desires. Eg the hardholder doesn't want the holding to collapse, but there is some threat that has a tendency, desire or inclination to undermine the holding. What is at stake is Will the holding be undermined?

 

[pemerton]

This seems to place player driven play in most RPG contexts on a spectrum. That is anything short of all key moments being decided by the GM in advance and unilaterally contains at least some player driven play.

I think spectrums are vastly over-used as tools of analysis.

For instance, when it's cold outside I can put on a scarf, or not. And I can put on a beanie, or not. It doesn't follow that there's a bare-scarf-beanie spectrum!

You seem to be saying that sometimes play can be driven by the GM, and sometimes by the players. I personally have my doubts about this, because my experience is that if a game has tools (formal or informal) that permit players to drive play, and if it's understood at the table that the players can use those tools, then the players will use those tools.

And I don't think this is just about player energy or inclination, either. I think it's about a systemic tendency. Once the players set what is at stake, then the consequences of the actions they declare for their PCs pertain to those stakes - resolving them, establishing new player-determined stakes, whatever. And so then the next bundle of actions the players declare for their PCs still pertain to player-determined stakes. The process goes on in a virtuous circle, with no obvious point for the GM to intrude with their favoured conception of what should be at stake.

 

[zakael19]

Hell, well written narrativist play guides often include examples where the player & GM understanding of what’s at stake / risk in a scene differ, and how you work through adjusting action declarations (or understandings) as a result!

That sort of player centered “here’s what am doing, why I’m doing it, what I’m willing to risk, and what I hope to accomplish in fictional end state” baked into the system and directives to GMs is key, yeah? Like, the difference between a 10+ on a PBTA social skill and a D&D one is that the PBTA will tell the player and the DM exactly the sort of positive outcome you’re going to get, whereas in D&D it’s conditional on the GM.