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

[pemerton]

I'm pushing against your 'landscape' concept, which is describing, mathematically, a continuum of possible game elements, which implies they can simply be juxtaposed and you could then assign a 'coordinate' in your landscape to each one like it has X amount of A, Y amount of B, etc. It is much more accurate to portray games instead as being like, say, watches. Sure, there are MANY arrangements which could function, but only specific discrete arrangements of gears will make a watch, all the other random assortments of gears which happen to mesh, or variations in the size of the different gears, leads to non-functional or misfunctional outcomes.

Well, the notion that a RPG is a point in some "coordinate space" defined by "does it use aspects?", "does it use fortune in the middle?", "does it use map-and-key" etc is just hopeless. And nothing more useful will come from this notion by making the coordinates "rankings of degree" rather than on/off toggles.

As you say, that's just not how a RPG works. The successful analysis of how RPGs work has already been achieved - by Edwards and Baker - and so I don't know why we would need to reinvent that particular wheel.

I don't think these sorts of analogization, yours or mine, are really worth much. Play of specific games, and the specific experiences garnered from that play is fundamentally the only useful standard. Again, as I have said before, this was the 'Forge Rule', you HAD TO talk about actual play, or Ron et al would just kick you off the forum. It was a powerful rule, instead of the EnWorld 20 years of endless kvetching about this or that spherical cow, an entire genre of games arose out of that discussion in a matter of 4 or 5 years, and most modern RPG design still references those ideas heavily.

100% this.

This also relates to my post upthread in reply to @Crimson Longinus: if you read Edwards's essays, or a game like DitV or AW or BW, and find nothing of interest that you're not already finding in your (non-4e) D&D rulebooks, then I conjecture - tentatively at least - that you're not especially interested in "narrativist" play. I infer that you probably are playing, and are happy playing, in a high concept sim appproach.

 

[pemerton]

Were there no continuum, it would not be possible to recognise DW as similar to B/X. There'd be no such continuum to compare along.

Similarity judgements don't depend upon continuums. Similarity is simply about resemblance of things in certain respects, and this may often be in virtue of having some identical properties.

Eg: I can judge that a cat is similar to a dog (both are quadruped, mammalian carnivores), or to an octopus (both tend towards being solitary creatures). But there is no cat-dog continuum, nor a cat-octopus continuum.

 

[pemerton]

then what would?

The existence of an actual spectrum - a range of properties that vary in some continuous respect. Obviously colour is the paradigm.

But we can talk about the degree to which (say) the claw of a hammer, a pair of pliers or a magnet might be helpful for some task (say, getting a stuck nail out of a bit of timber). That doesn't mean that there is a hammer-pliers-magnet spectrum!

 

[pemerton]

I’m a bit less interested in where we are today and more interested in all the different ways I can arrange the building blocks and the implications of those arrangements.

To me it seems odd to speculate about what might be in a particular domain of creative design, without also being reasonably interested in learning about what is.

 

[pemerton]

For what it’s worth, I struggle to see how 4e really pushes hard toward narrativist play.

It focuses on player-authored quests. It uses the scene as the basic unit of play and resolution. The default setting establishes a moral line - law (order and stasis) vs chaos (life and change) - and then instantiates that across a whole raft of setting elements. And players incorporate those elements into their PC builds and their play, and then establish rising conflicts across that moral line.

A perennial challenge for narrativist D&D play has been the lack of a non-combat resolution system, other than map-and-kay, that doesn't just boil down to the GM deciding what happens next. 4e solves this problem via the skill challenge (which is an adaptation of extended contests from systems like Prince Valiant, Maelstrom Storytelling, and probably best-known HeroWars/Quest).

 

[clearstream]

Similarity judgements don't depend upon continuums. Similarity is simply about resemblance of things in certain respects, and this may often be in virtue of having some identical properties.

Eg: I can judge that a cat is similar to a dog (both are quadruped, mammalian carnivores), or to an octopus (both tend towards being solitary creatures). But there is no cat-dog continuum, nor a cat-octopus continuum.

All possible quadruped, mammalian carnivores forms a continuum. On Earth, in this epoch, we observe dogs and cats as instances - examples that happened to evolve and for a time persist - of that continuum. They have a common ancestor, were further evidence needed.

 

[clearstream]

I have no idea what you are positing to be a binary. Like, how can intensity be a binary? Intensity of necessity admits of degree, as far as I can tell.

I can live with small steps. Yes, intensity would admit of degree.

 

[pemerton]

@Crimson Longinus the 2nd to last paragraph I quoted above likens narrativist play to authors writing a novel or screenwriters and film. An observation you’ve made before that Ron Edward’s appears to agree with here.

The likening is this: like the authors of those other works, at what Edwards calls the creative moment, the RPG participants have something they want to say. An idea they want to express.

For instance, I mentioned upthread already Golin's player putting together a pool of dice including Avenging Grudges Nature, and initiating a kill conflict against Megloss. He has something to say: Gerda deserves to be avenged; Megloss thus deserves to die.

This is rising conflict across a moral line.

Note that the play of White Plume Mountain will not produce this sort of decision-making and expression of ideas. Nor, as best I'm familiar with, will play of The Sunless Citadel - except maybe for the Meepo encounter?

 

[pemerton]

All possible quadruped, mammalian carnivores forms a continuum.

This is not true. I mean, even before we worry about what constitutes a possible quadruped mammalian carnivore (biochemistry? physiology? ecology?), how would we place them on a continuum? What continuum do a thylacine, a dog and a wolverine all sit on?

 

[clearstream]

This is not true. I mean, even before we worry about what constitutes a possible quadruped mammalian carnivore (biochemistry? physiology? ecology?), how would we place them on a continuum? What continuum do a thylacine, a dog and a wolverine all sit on?

We're digressing, but I suppose you accept the the theory of evolution?