What makes an TTRPG a "Narrative Game" (Apocalypse World Discussion)

[Wolfpack48]

The Moves are the game. Also, DW is just different than the mainstream of PbtA games.

I freely admit I slice the pie a little different. The Big Model / GNS doesn't really admit that "narrative" is a thing. It doesn't even mention story as something involved in Exploration. "Developing a story" is a Creative Agenda in The Big Model, which suggests simulationist and gamist games don't have a relationship with story-making. Which would be factually untrue. As I said, Story Now I believe is something present in all fully-formed RPGs, to a greater or lesser extent. The fact that some players may have a greater or less conscious awareness of these principles in an RPG doesn't make "story through exploration" an aspect of specifically narrativist play. How else would story even show up in a "simulationist" experience?

So, not needing the model, I generally don't need the vocabulary, and I tend to avoid the vocabulary in favor of clear language that is understood by people not indoctrinated in the Model. "Narrativist" is a word I don't ever use except when engaging in the Model, and in that case, to criticize the deficiencies I see in it. IMO, Edwards didn't succeed at encapsulating Gamist because he largely did not understand the experiences or motivations of people who wanted to play with the game pieces more.

In my view, because PbtA games tend to veer straight into making "moving parts" out of techniques, PbtA games have a lot of features that are very accessible to gamist play; writing playbooks is the work of someone who really likes writing games, as games. A typical PbtA game has plenty of moving parts that can be employed by someone wanting to play strategically. They also model beats, tropes, and other aspects of their genre; in fact, a PbtA game doesn't exist outself the genre it simulates. They are designed for Story Now by emergently creating actual events, and not just mimicking some kind of structure. Saying a PbtA game is, by design, "narrativist," is automatically just not true. It looks, feels, and smells like something that could easily be called "abashed" and if it's narrativist in play, it's by drifting.

A "narrative" game is not a bunch of die rolls, tables, dials, wheels, and cards. It's a game that exists mostly between the decisions predicated by those things. It is primarily fictive, not mechanistic.

PbtA is pretty darn mechanistic. It is narrative mainly by dint of rewarding play on beats, by using somewhat freeform resolution, and not necesarrily focused on quantitive "competitive" or challenge-based play, but on playing the results. But it's not heavily any of of those things. It's far less narrative than many other formats I've played. In many ways, it offers the structure of one of those hybrid solo RPG / CYOA things, but with the benefit of a game master and multiplayer. You make choices, you roll on a table, some level of favor, disfavor, or overwhelming favor occurs.

It's clearly inspired by the Story Now premise, but in my eyes, it's pretty clearly a hybrid format game that blends Story Now with let's-let-the-dice-decide, I'm-having-a-moment-as-my-PC, and outright cheetoh-ism.

Our typical style is (agnostic of the system):

Describe the action I am taking >
(Optional) Roleplay/(bad) acting if I am interreacting with someone >
Determine what skill/rule/characteristic is in play for the situation at hand >
Roll test against the skill/rule/characteristic to determine the outcome

This has always felt natural and simple for our table (minimal feedback loops) with lots of room for freeform expression. "GNS" has never entered into it.

If you wanted to make things more character/party goal or motive oriented, you could simply do:

Determine what goal is in play for the situation at hand >
Describe the action I am taking based on the goal >
(Optional) Roleplay/(bad) acting if I am interreacting with someone >
Determine what skill/rule/characteristic is in play for the situation at hand >
Roll test against the skill/rule/characteristic to determine the outcome

 

[pemerton]

The Big Model / GNS doesn't really admit that "narrative" is a thing. It doesn't even mention story as something involved in Exploration. "Developing a story" is a Creative Agenda in The Big Model, which suggests simulationist and gamist games don't have a relationship with story-making. Which would be factually untrue.

That's probably why the Big Model doesn't suggest what you say it suggests. Here is the relevant passage from Edwards' essay:

Long ago, I concluded that "story" as a role-playing term was standing in for several different processes and goals, some of which were incompatible. Here's the terms-breakdown I'll be using from now on.

All role-playing necessarily produces a sequence of imaginary events. Go ahead and role-play, and write down what happened to the characters, where they went, and what they did. I'll call that event-summary the "transcript." But some transcripts have, as Pooh might put it, a "little something," specifically a theme: a judgmental point, perceivable as a certain charge they generate for the listener or reader. If a transcript has one (or rather, if it does that), I'll call it a story.

Let's say that the following transcript, which also happens to be a story, arose from one or more sessions of role-playing.

Lord Gyrax rules over a realm in which a big dragon has begun to ravage the countryside. The lord prepares himself to deal with it, perhaps trying to settle some internal strife among his followers or allies. He also meets this beautiful, mysterious woman named Javenne who aids him at times, and they develop a romance. Then he learns that she and the dragon are one and the same, as she's been cursed to become a dragon periodically in a kind of Ladyhawke situation, and he must decide whether to kill her. Meanwhile, she struggles to control the curse, using her dragon-powers to quell an uprising in the realm led by a traitorous ally. Eventually he goes to the Underworld instead and confronts the god who cursed her, and trades his youth to the god to lift the curse. He returns, and the curse is detached from her, but still rampaging around as a dragon. So they slay the dragon together, and return as a couple, still united although he's now all old, to his home.

The real question: after reading the transcript and recognizing it as a story, what can be said about the Creative Agenda that was involved during the role-playing? The answer is, absolutely nothing. We don't know whether people played it Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist, or any combination of the three. A story can be produced through any Creative Agenda. The mere presence of story as the product of role-playing is not a GNS-based issue.​

"Story now" has nothing to do with whether or not the play of the game results in a story. It's about what is expressed and experienced in the play of the game itself.

PbtA games have a lot of features that are very accessible to gamist play; writing playbooks is the work of someone who really likes writing games, as games.

"Story now" is an account of one creative goal/agenda a group might have in playing a RPG. The best "story now"-oriented RPGs (Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel, in my view) have been written by great game designers - Vincent Baker and Luke Crane.

"Gamist play", at least as used by Edwards, means oriented towards competition. I don't think either system is especially well-designed for that, but as Edwards says in the video that @lesser Than linked to, people can bend any RPG towards any goal that they like. I'm sure there are some groups somewhere who play gamist Burning Wheel (probably using Beliefs more as quest goals than statements of personal conviction; and not using Mouldbreaker as a source of artha).

Saying a PbtA game is, by design, "narrativist," is automatically just not true. It looks, feels, and smells like something that could easily be called "abashed" and if it's narrativist in play, it's by drifting.

<snip>

It's clearly inspired by the Story Now premise, but in my eyes, it's pretty clearly a hybrid format game that blends Story Now with let's-let-the-dice-decide, I'm-having-a-moment-as-my-PC, and outright cheetoh-ism.

Here is Vincent Baker, on p 288 of the AW rulebook:

The entire game design follows from “Narrativism: Story Now” by Ron Edwards.​

Apocalypse World is a vehicle designed for "story now"/"narrativist" play, and is clearly a very suitable vehicle for it.

So what really is STORY NOW, if S category was such a mess?

"Story now", as a goal of RPGing, means that the the participants address, during and by the play of the game, some sort of thematic premise.

Now one way to address a thematic premise is to write a book about it. Another is to give a lecture on it. But "story now" means doing so by playing a RPG.

The core of playing a RPG is the sharing of an unfolding fiction. At least some of the participants (all but the GM, in a traditional structure) contribute to the unfolding of the fiction by "controlling" one or more characters within the fiction, declaring actions for them. And one or more of the participants (the GM, in a traditional structure) has the job of establishing/presenting situations in which those characters find themselves. There is also a system of some sort for working out what happens when those characters are declared to do things.

In "story now" play, the way the characters are detailed, the way the situations are detailed, and the way "what happens next" is worked out, are all oriented towards the addressing of a thematic premise by the game participants. In a standard players/GM set-up, the GM uses their role in establishing the situation to provoke/incite some sort of thematically relevant action declaration; the players say what their characters do, having regard to their character details, which will be such as to draw them into thematically charged situations and actions; and the system will deliver a "what next" that reveals something that bears upon the thematic premise.

In AW, the premise at issue is human relationships (especially conflict, but also community and trust) in circumstances of scarcity. The design of the playbooks, of the player-side moves, and of the principles that govern the GM-side moves, all conspire to bring this premise to the fore in both situations presented by the GM, and what happens next when the players have their PCs do things.

In BW, there is no particular premise built into the game - the players build the thematic premises as part of building their PCs - but given that it is a FRPG it is oriented towards premises that fantasy fiction (whether Tolkienesque, or S&S) is good for addressing. It is not a PbtA game, and uses a different sort of resolution framework ("intent + task", "say 'yes' or roll the dice", and "let it ride") together with a different set of principles that govern the GM in presenting scenes, to make sure that the player-established premises are to the fore in play.

You can see that there is no particular connection between "story now" play and the production of a story. What story now play involves is the use of RPG play - a distinct way of imagining and creating fiction - for the authorial purpose of addressing a premise via that imagined fiction. The audience who get to enjoy the addressing of the premise are the game participants themselves.

 

[kenada]

I apologize.

Nah, it’s fine. I thought it was an interesting interview.

 

[kenada]

"Gamist play", at least as used by Edwards, means oriented towards competition. I don't think either system is especially well-designed for that, but as Edwards says in the video that @lesser Than linked to, people can bend any RPG towards any goal that they like. I'm sure there are some groups somewhere who play gamist Burning Wheel (probably using Beliefs more as quest goals than statements of personal conviction; and not using Mouldbreaker as a source of artha).

Incidentally, the video prompted me to check out Adept Play, and I saw that Ron posted recently about a session of “gamist play”. Details of the session itself are light, but there’s some interesting commentary at the end.

Setting it out there – Adept Play

adeptplay.com

 

[Wolfpack48]

Incidentally, the video prompted me to check out Adept Play, and I saw that Ron posted recently about a session of “gamist play”. Details of the session itself are light, but there’s some interesting commentary at the end.

Setting it out there – Adept Play

adeptplay.com

That's a really interesting site, lots of good content. I'll be rooting around in there for awhile I think...

 

[LesserThan]

Thanks for the link. But where does he say it was a mistake, or that he regrets it?

It has been over a year since I watched the video.
Where he starts arguing with his previous self over specific words?

Where it all started arguements and divided gamers?

The outcome was not what he wanted when GNS and the Forge glossary got into the public.

But, many people already expected of the Forge then, what people expect of Reddit now.

 

[LesserThan]

people can bend any RPG towards any goal that they like

This is both the largest boon and bane of TRPGs. Why Critical Role and PBTA games, and many other get flak and split the hobby.

When people bend something at home, it hurts no one. When they do it in public, it is like putting ketchup on a hot dog in NYC.

Which goes back to why I felt he regretted that his classification of parts, GNS, became the weapon used to bludgeon each other in gaming for 2 decades.

Now people want to call "story games", not rpgs... many are not and should be called by another type, but that is never accepted. AW, not not a TRPG, not not a story game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The Moves are the game. Also, DW is just different than the mainstream of PbtA games.

I freely admit I slice the pie a little different. The Big Model / GNS doesn't really admit that "narrative" is a thing. It doesn't even mention story as something involved in Exploration. "Developing a story" is a Creative Agenda in The Big Model, which suggests simulationist and gamist games don't have a relationship with story-making. Which would be factually untrue. As I said, Story Now I believe is something present in all fully-formed RPGs, to a greater or lesser extent. The fact that some players may have a greater or less conscious awareness of these principles in an RPG doesn't make "story through exploration" an aspect of specifically narrativist play. How else would story even show up in a "simulationist" experience?

So, not needing the model, I generally don't need the vocabulary, and I tend to avoid the vocabulary in favor of clear language that is understood by people not indoctrinated in the Model. "Narrativist" is a word I don't ever use except when engaging in the Model, and in that case, to criticize the deficiencies I see in it. IMO, Edwards didn't succeed at encapsulating Gamist because he largely did not understand the experiences or motivations of people who wanted to play with the game pieces more.

In my view, because PbtA games tend to veer straight into making "moving parts" out of techniques, PbtA games have a lot of features that are very accessible to gamist play; writing playbooks is the work of someone who really likes writing games, as games. A typical PbtA game has plenty of moving parts that can be employed by someone wanting to play strategically. They also model beats, tropes, and other aspects of their genre; in fact, a PbtA game doesn't exist outself the genre it simulates. They are designed for Story Now by emergently creating actual events, and not just mimicking some kind of structure. Saying a PbtA game is, by design, "narrativist," is automatically just not true. It looks, feels, and smells like something that could easily be called "abashed" and if it's narrativist in play, it's by drifting.

A "narrative" game is not a bunch of die rolls, tables, dials, wheels, and cards. It's a game that exists mostly between the decisions predicated by those things. It is primarily fictive, not mechanistic.

PbtA is pretty darn mechanistic. It is narrative mainly by dint of rewarding play on beats, by using somewhat freeform resolution, and not necesarrily focused on quantitive "competitive" or challenge-based play, but on playing the results. But it's not heavily any of of those things. It's far less narrative than many other formats I've played. In many ways, it offers the structure of one of those hybrid solo RPG / CYOA things, but with the benefit of a game master and multiplayer. You make choices, you roll on a table, some level of favor, disfavor, or overwhelming favor occurs.

It's clearly inspired by the Story Now premise, but in my eyes, it's pretty clearly a hybrid format game that blends Story Now with let's-let-the-dice-decide, I'm-having-a-moment-as-my-PC, and outright cheetoh-ism.

I have a different perspective, but I will just observe that I don't think anyone subscribes to an idea as weird as "only Narrativist gaming is creating a narrative" or something like that. We're far past the point of understanding the basic lay of the land. This is about agendas, what people focus on, what their primary priorities are, AS THEY PLAY. So, actually it's meaningless to talk about 'narrative games' except as played, and then RE's analytical techniques become highly useful! I understand he has some critiques of certain PbtA games later in the video. I want to get a look at that before I get into a long debate about them. However I think you're going to find that actual play experience is the acid test of what does what, and I don't know if we have really reached a point where we can discuss that yet. Or else we'd need to back up and ditch all the theory talk and just analyze actual play.

 

[Emberashh]

This is both the largest boon and bane of TRPGs. Why Critical Role and PBTA games, and many other get flak and split the hobby.

When people bend something at home, it hurts no one. When they do it in public, it is like putting ketchup on a hot dog in NYC.

Which goes back to why I felt he regretted that his classification of parts, GNS, became the weapon used to bludgeon each other in gaming for 2 decades.

Now people want to call "story games", not rpgs... many are not and should be called by another type, but that is never accepted. AW, not not a TRPG, not not a story game.

Ive been pretty adamant in my perspective that every single RPG that has existed in tabletop has at its core a narrative improv game, that doesn't really change in how it works from game to game.

From that perspective, the idea of story games or whatever not being RPGs, or in some circles, not even games, tends to fall flat. What those sorts are pointing to, in my opinion, is that these particular games, in terms of what they add beyond the core improv gameloop, are very shallow.

Even the more complex games in this type like Ironsworn or Blades in the Dark aren't really all that deep mechanically. And this isn't a bad thing on its own, but it does make it clear why many people will find the games so lacking, particularly if we also take to the perspective that what these kinds of games do narratively aren't actually novel or exclusive to them.

As these games main claim to fame is their narrative elements, if one feels that those elements were already present in say DND or GURPs or what have you, then what these games have to give beyond that is gonna feel pretty anemic.

That issue is part and parcel to why I think there's such a focus on not classifying PBTA as a system, because these games need the explicit and focused thematics in order to be more substantial, and as such theres never going to be a true generic version of these games.

If we take something like the general progenitor Apocalypse World, and strip it bare of its themes and aesthetics down to the pure mechanics, there isn't much there. A non-descript narrative improv game, the Move mechanics, and basically nothing else.

That's not much, and while something like FKR exists and can work well, its a niche of a game within a niche of games for a reason.

So PBTA style games need to put a lot of effort and thought into the thematic and aesthetic elements, because otherwise the underlying mechanics aren't going to make for a compelling game.

Thats the biggest lesson I learned from these games upon understanding this perspective on them, and is why I abandoned the idea of bothering with a generic version of my own system, as well as not going out of my way to address mother may i's with what people might do with the game.

 

[Aldarc]

This is both the largest boon and bane of TRPGs. Why Critical Role and PBTA games, and many other get flak and split the hobby.

When people bend something at home, it hurts no one. When they do it in public, it is like putting ketchup on a hot dog in NYC.

Which goes back to why I felt he regretted that his classification of parts, GNS, became the weapon used to bludgeon each other in gaming for 2 decades.

Now people want to call "story games", not rpgs... many are not and should be called by another type, but that is never accepted. AW, not not a TRPG, not not a story game.

I certainly have my own biases with my perception, but I have mostly experienced a lot of the bludgeoning from Simulationists bashing other games and playstyles that weren't "sufficiently simulationist enough" for the self-proclaimed Simulationists.