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

[AbdulAlhazred]

Certainly, at least in principle, we could have detailed description of the words, gestures, how the components are used, and the mental steps the caster goes though, that would be "canonical" to that fictional setting, and which would help people to imagine it consistently. It just isn't something we generally bother with. I could imagine such appearing in some novel about a wizard learning magic though. I think Le Guin's Earthsea went quite a bit in detail how spellcasting happens and how it feels, though it has been decades since I read those so I could be wrong. In any case, in theory it seems perfectly doable, it just generally isn't worth the effort.

We don't do that because it isn't relevant to the actual goal of play, which is not to imagine things as they actually are, or could be, but to simply imagine happenings that logically cohere enough to present a narrative we can use. Then we get into agenda. Now, maybe there's a group someplace who's desires, and thus agenda, is 'imagining genuine magic' or something for whom there's value in spelling such things out (pun intended). However, I really doubt conventional TTRPGs are going to be a very appropriate vehicle for that. I'd think some version of LARP, or something, would be more amenable.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

We don't do that because it isn't relevant to the actual goal of play, which is not to imagine things as they actually are, or could be, but to simply imagine happenings that logically cohere enough to present a narrative we can use. Then we get into agenda. Now, maybe there's a group someplace who's desires, and thus agenda, is 'imagining genuine magic' or something for whom there's value in spelling such things out (pun intended). However, I really doubt conventional TTRPGs are going to be a very appropriate vehicle for that. I'd think some version of LARP, or something, would be more amenable.

No I think part of the goal is to imagine the fictional world, it is just that sometimes we need to sacrifice "resolution" for practicality.

And I think that in some sort of game about discovering magic detailed and immersive descriptions of how it feels to wield magic would be very helpful. And I am really no seeing drastic differences between LARPs and tabletop games in this regard, it is just that the latter relies more on verbal ques for conveying information about the world.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No I think part of the goal is to imagine the fictional world, it is just that sometimes we need to sacrifice "resolution" for practicality.

And I think that in some sort of game about discovering magic detailed and immersive descriptions of how it feels to wield magic would be very helpful. And I am really no seeing drastic differences between LARPs and tabletop games in this regard, it is just that the latter relies more on verbal ques for conveying information about the world.

I think LARP is much more focused on the gritty details of how it feels to do X, whatever X is. You are ACTUALLY play-acting doing it, going through the motions, and thus 'feeling it' in a way that TTRPG doesn't normally achieve. I mean, I did re-enactment stuff, not really LARP, back in the day, but it also involves a lot of the same elements, RP, representing or reproducing things not present in the 'here and now', etc. In fact, in some ways, I think it is more intense than LARP because there generally isn't such a clear boundary between IC play and OOC 'real life'.

Anyway, that was a bit of a digression, but my point is, imagining some sort of exact appropriate words, because you are actually going to have to say them, is a lot more of a LARP thing, and getting the feeling of 'actually casting a spell' is a lot more likely to work in live action than purely in people's heads at a table where you're much more likely to simply imagine "and I say some magical phrases."

 

[Aldarc]

Certainly, at least in principle, we could have detailed description of the words, gestures, how the components are used, and the mental steps the caster goes though, that would be "canonical" to that fictional setting, and which would help people to imagine it consistently. It just isn't something we generally bother with. I could imagine such appearing in some novel about a wizard learning magic though. I think Le Guin's Earthsea went quite a bit in detail how spellcasting happens and how it feels, though it has been decades since I read those so I could be wrong. In any case, in theory it seems perfectly doable, it just generally isn't worth the effort.

In some ways, Le Guin's "magic system," which is probably a description she herself would loathe applied to her works, is probably something more akin to a soft magic system. We have some basic principles for how it works: i.e., true names, humans can't lie in the Old Speech, natural balance, etc. However, it's still pretty loose as a magic system that mostly exists in service to the needs of the author's story.

IMHO, there is not a sort of commodification or obsession with the technical workings of magic in Earthsea as you find in books from Robert Jordan or Brandon Sanderson apart from how magic expresses the themes of Le Guin's stories: e.g., natural balance, self-discovery, life vs. resisting death, feminism, etc.

I kinda feel like there is a fair amount of authors in post-D&D fantasy lit who approach magic as if they were engineers, and a fair amount of that magic also involves blasting as if they were playing wargames. In contrast, I would say that Le Guin approaches magic in Earthsea as a philosopher, teacher, or sage interested in teaching the Tao/Dao.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I agree with @Aldarc, Earthsea magic is a philosophical tool, not a technical system. She does establish a few very basic rules, but it is easy to see how this is not a technical system by simply trying to imagine the construction of some magical effect and then how would Earthsea handle it? There's no answer! I mean, we might conclude that a magic of great effect would require great effort, and especially potent symbolism, and be very difficult to accomplish, but beyond that sort of general statement there's nothing much.

I'd contrast that with something like 'Master of Five Magics' where actual RULES are laid down by Hardy and you can literally sort out which rules would be invoked in order to achieve certain types of effects (it is still not going to tell you the most minute details of the process though).

I would say D&D doesn't even rise to the level of attempting EITHER of these things. It has some fairly arbitrary 'schools' and hand waves that there are gestures and vocalizations, and once in a while a spell description hints at principles like sympathy or contagion from magical theories, but it doesn't take any of that very seriously.

 

[clearstream]

I kinda feel like there is a fair amount of authors in post-D&D fantasy lit who approach magic as if they were engineers, and a fair amount of that magic also involves blasting as if they were playing wargames. In contrast, I would say that Le Guin approaches magic in Earthsea as a philosopher, teacher, or sage interested in teaching the Tao/Dao.

I feel like Le Guin sites her magic in words, which maps to the act of writing itself. Bringing the land out of the sea with one word, giving it form, and reforming it, with others. It ties closely to what has been discussed over the last few pages of this thread: the relationship of signifiers to signified. As an aside, the College of Naming Incantations in SPIs DragonQuest attempted to work naming into a TTRPG system. Another attempt was Truenamer in Tome of Magic for D&D 3e. Both seem to anchor around a notion of naming as power to find, call and control, although namers in DQ also have a special power to counter spells.

D&D has from the start had a technological (or as you say, engineering) approach to magic. One might not like the dressing, but it is ignoring the game texts to say that it does not have rules for what you can do, how you can do it, and its effects.

When it comes to pretending that something false is true, I feel like one has to admit the reality of the signifier. When I refer to a golden mountain, one thing I am confident about is that the signifier has mental and (here) digital standing. Shared norms about gold and mountains mean that with less confidence I know that features of what you and I picture to be signified have probabilities of correspondence. Such features include ideas about what one may do with, to or on a golden mountain.

Some arguments appear to some extent to ask me to commit to polarities, slippery slopes or binaries. All or nothing. While experienced play with signifiers whose signified I am able to form and sustain pretences about and share those with others occurs where it can. It tolerates and has means to repair ambiguities.

I may not be able to imagine something eleven dimensional, but just because I can't imagine something eleven dimensional doesn't mean that I can't imagine something I'm familiar with, like a blue enamel cup. I observe TTRPG conversations occurring in a space of signifiers that are normally imaginable. Referring to the point made up thread about authority, I feel there is a significant element of being queryable. Signifiers in play aren't static... we add to them what we need. "How high is the mountain" "1000 feet" "Does anything live on it?" "Lichen" and so on. I keep coming back to my earlier proposal

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.

And to me this in some way contrasts with authority. There's an idea that you could own all rights to say things about mountains in our game, but this can be analyzed further. Broken into "exclusive right to describe" and "the job of describing". I can serve other players by accepting the job of describing without that being an exclusive authority thing. Or I can own the thing (my character is a great example) and no one else is allowed to describe that thing. I can even move between the job of describing (for myself) and the job of working with what was described.

Finally (for this post!) I feel that our experience of the world itself is not a firm one. In pretending something false is true, I am not straying so far from pretending that places I've never been, never seen pictured, read only as a name on a map, exist. I'm not straying so far from the fact that I must rely on my senses, seeing in twilight a creature crouching in the shadows... that is not really there. The world is not so substantial and our pretend world not so insubstantial, as to prevent me imagining one is the other.

 

[pemerton]

IMHO, there is not a sort of commodification or obsession with the technical workings of magic in Earthsea as you find in books from Robert Jordan or Brandon Sanderson apart from how magic expresses the themes of Le Guin's stories: e.g., natural balance, self-discovery, life vs. resisting death, feminism, etc.

I kinda feel like there is a fair amount of authors in post-D&D fantasy lit who approach magic as if they were engineers, and a fair amount of that magic also involves blasting as if they were playing wargames. In contrast, I would say that Le Guin approaches magic in Earthsea as a philosopher, teacher, or sage interested in teaching the Tao/Dao.

Yes, I'm glad someone posted this!

 

[pemerton]

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.

I feel that our experience of the world itself is not a firm one. In pretending something false is true, I am not straying so far from pretending that places I've never been, never seen pictured, read only as a name on a map, exist. I'm not straying so far from the fact that I must rely on my senses, seeing in twilight a creature crouching in the shadows... that is not really there. The world is not so substantial and our pretend world not so insubstantial, as to prevent me imagining one is the other.

I have a friend who, when she doesn't like the end to a film or a book, imagines that it was otherwise - as she wishes it were.

Now when it comes to facts, such a practice would be an error. EG, an exile may wish that things in their homeland were otherwise; but unless they are delusional, they are not going to actually form a belief contrary to the facts. And if they wish to change things, then its probably essential to have beliefs that conform to the facts.

But my friend is not delusional, or making any sort of epistemic error. Her practice might be gauche, or contrary to accepted practices of appreciation and criticism. But she is not making a cognitive error - she is just choosing to imagine something different from what the writer of the book, or creators of the film, intended her to imagine via their work.

The illusion of objectivity/externality might be part of the experience of RPGing. But just as the stage magician needs to know that, and how, they are performing their trick; so the RPG designer and/or critic needs to understand what is actually happening at the table. In my view, this is also quite helpful for the GM. I mean, in Apocalypse World, when the GM misdirects, they are not playing a trick on themself.

 

[clearstream]

I have a friend who, when she doesn't like the end to a film or a book, imagines that it was otherwise - as she wishes it were.

Now when it comes to facts, such a practice would be an error. EG, an exile may wish that things in their homeland were otherwise; but unless they are delusional, they are not going to actually form a belief contrary to the facts. And if they wish to change things, then its probably essential to have beliefs that conform to the facts.

But my friend is not delusional, or making any sort of epistemic error. Her practice might be gauche, or contrary to accepted practices of appreciation and criticism. But she is not making a cognitive error - she is just choosing to imagine something different from what the writer of the book, or creators of the film, intended her to imagine via their work.

The illusion of objectivity/externality might be part of the experience of RPGing. But just as the stage magician needs to know that, and how, they are performing their trick; so the RPG designer and/or critic needs to understand what is actually happening at the table. In my view, this is also quite helpful for the GM. I mean, in Apocalypse World, when the GM misdirects, they are not playing a trick on themself.

Something that makes me think about is your earlier comment on authority. Say the author comes round for tea and on this occasion, seeing as they have travelled so very far, your friend concedes them authority over the ending of their book.

So long as that concession is in place, it seems that even were she to privately wish it otherwise, for the time being she accepts that it is not. The imaginary facts are externally controlled, making them more like real facts than imaginary facts that are under the imaginer's control.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Something that makes me think about is your earlier comment on authority. Say the author comes round for tea and on this occasion, seeing as they have travelled so very far, your friend concedes them authority over the ending of their book.

So long as that concession is in place, it seems that even were she to privately wish it otherwise, for the time being she accepts that it is not. The imaginary facts are externally controlled, making them more like real facts than imaginary facts that are under the imaginer's control.

I don't understand. Both imaginings can exist at once. The reader in @pemerton's example can indeed hold both in mind at once! Interactive shared fictional media of the sort which RPGs fall into is a bit different, being performative in nature. While we can each hold different views and orientations to play, at some level our imaginations must agree in the Shared Imagined Space, else the process of play will break down. This might even be a test for what constitutes an RPG, at least typical ones.