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

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, that would be jarring. The latter also isn't at all what I mean when I say that some situations can be morally clear cut. It is not that there is some external judging that is forced upon the players, it is just that some situations are such that whilst in theory the players could choose another moral path, they're unlikely to do so.

And here's where I think things can be discussed. The later, a situation in which there's one simple obvious morally correct answer, could generate CONFLICT, but it won't be interesting in Narrativist terms. That is, if gnolls are simply evil slathering demon-worshippers who have no redeeming features whatsoever and threaten to wipe out civilization entirely and ultimately destroy the world, then there's nothing morally interesting about fighting them. Heck, you find some gnoll babies, you just kill 'em! There's no Narrativist nothing here.

So, what we see is that such an agenda, such a style of play, does require a certain kind of handling. I'm not saying you can't have those gnolls in, say, a Dungeon World game, but they'd simply represent a 'force of nature', something that might precipitate morally charged situations "Do I rescue my family or go warn the town to close the gates before the gnolls arrive?" However, the morally unambiguous parts are not the point, not the premise, which might be "sometimes bad things happen to good people" or whatever.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I’m not sceptical that it happened. Just surprised because the inertia of trad play and especially D&D play tends to override what a system is doing.

Although. This could very well be an artefact of the play culture I grew up with (White Wolf). I’m surprised (although less so) when people find N through Burning Wheel and Sorcerer. I mostly assume there needs to be a period of introspective de-conditioning to get N irregardless of system. For role-players anyway. Non role-players introduced to an N system can often do it casually and easily.

Yes and no...

I started running 4e for @Gilladian and primarily a couple of other people. 2 of those three played a LOT of 3.5e (and actually STILL play that, though there was a foray into 5e for a while). Yes, at first our game was pretty trad/neo-trad-ish I guess. I mean there was a setting, I created stuff for the PCs to do, etc. They did create moderately to fairly elaborate backstories, and I presented plot trajectories that related to those, I didn't have even at first, any firm idea of an overarching plot/story. So, pretty quickly my laziness drove me to prep less and less systematically. It took a while, like a couple of years of playing that campaign, but certain key points came:

Right at the start I created a scenario where the level 1 PCs had to deal with a Carrion Crawler (a level 7 elite monster IIRC). They tried fighting it, that didn't work! They started trying different things, but I noted that my explanations of what worked or didn't work (based on their checks in the SC I spontaneously started running for this) were heavily constrained by the details of the setting that I'd established at the start (IE the dungeon map and notes). While I didn't quite put it all together then in 2008, reflecting on that encounter was one of the things that lead me to think about more dynamic and less pre-authored scenarios.

So, it went on like that. I guess that's the 'adaptation' or 'reprogramming' or whatever. I had never read any of the Forge stuff or played anything like Sorcerer at that time. I didn't pay a lot of attention to general RPG happenings in the 10 years or so up to that point. If I had, I think I'd have 'got it' fairly quickly. Once I ran into stuff that some of the posters in this thread posted about GNS and whatnot, and when I ran into Dungeon World after it came out, then it all really logically fell together and made sense. I'm just not clever enough to have come up with the ideas Ron and Co did on my own.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Alternatively, one could say that although it took awhile to understand it, play is and has always been about ludonarrative. It's play iff it's about ludonarrative, and not otherwise. Ludonarrativism says that the only way storyline can develop in play is if it is about the premises developed by players. Otherwise it is storyline imposed on top of play, and thus (in that respect) not play at all. The thesis then is that 1. unpacks into multiple further modes of play.

So, pure gamist dungeon crawl isn't a game at all, eh? I think there's something wrong here...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Been traveling so a bit behind on the thread but this seems easy enough to comment on.

if GNS is about goals of play and the N describes play with the goal of narrativist play, then it seems contradictory to assert that:

‘it is a general model of the structure and process of RPG play in any given moment of play’

Goals of play does not equal structure and process of RPG play in any given moment. This is probably what most of my confusion stems from.

That wasn't what I heard him say, or what @pemerton stated. The Big Model is a general model of RPG play in any given moment of play, describing the elements of that play. GNS describes aesthetic goals of play, they are not the same thing. GNS =/= Big Model. They are both talking about PLAY (which is actually all that Edwards generally talks about, though he has reflected on what his ideas of play and goals say about game design, obviously). However, they each describe different things, and arguably 'S' is no longer asserted by him to be a specific thing that can be aspired to without some kind of reference to either gamist or narrativist agenda, I guess. I'm not sure I entirely follow with Edwards on that point, but I'm certainly not going to argue with him about what his opinions are or should be!

 

[FrogReaver]

That wasn't what I heard him say, or what @pemerton stated. The Big Model is a general model of RPG play in any given moment of play, describing the elements of that play. GNS describes aesthetic goals of play, they are not the same thing. GNS =/= Big Model. They are both talking about PLAY (which is actually all that Edwards generally talks about, though he has reflected on what his ideas of play and goals say about game design, obviously). However, they each describe different things, and arguably 'S' is no longer asserted by him to be a specific thing that can be aspired to without some kind of reference to either gamist or narrativist agenda, I guess. I'm not sure I entirely follow with Edwards on that point, but I'm certainly not going to argue with him about what his opinions are or should be!

I see. Thought big model was a reference to gns.

 

[clearstream]

So, pure gamist dungeon crawl isn't a game at all, eh? I think there's something wrong here...

Ah, the gotchas of the medium (of forum posts). That should read

Alternatively, one could say that although it took awhile to understand it, play [of TTRPG's that have any concern for story] is and has always been about ludonarrative. It's play [of that sort of TTRPG] iff it's about ludonarrative. Ludonarrativism says that the only way storyline can develop in [as] play is if it is about the premises developed by players. Otherwise it is storyline imposed on top of play, and thus (in that respect) not play at all. The thesis then is that 1. unpacks into multiple further modes of play.​

So obviously one can have play of other games such as roshambo without supposing that it's within the game/narrative overlap. Recollect that I was developing a strawman around

1. [TTRPG] Play [that] adopts and pursues premises developed by players
2. [TTRPG] Play [that] adopts and pursues storyline ideas

I was speaking to the topics of this thread... but I should have spelt that out. It's possible that a dungeon crawl has some sort of interest in story, once we get away from assuming Western tradition dramatic structures; just as some forms or facets of poetry are counted narrative.

 

[clearstream]

I see. Thought big model was a reference to gns.

I-Ron-ically, as that was a misapprehension Edwards was aiming to dispel in the interview!

 

[pemerton]

I think a better mathematical model than a continuous space (avoiding technical math here) would be something like a directed graph. Now, you can then evaluate the games and kind of position them near or far based on how you perceive their play, or your play of them, to be similar or different. That won't produce a neat graph though where all the things you like are both clustered in 'preference space' AND fall on the same part of the graph! I mean, OK, the two may even correspond a reasonable amount due to a 'school effect' (IE people who participated in the Forge and developed games based on or influenced by AW, so a lot of Narrativist preference space may also cluster close to AW on the 'got bits from' graph).

Right. On your proposed graph Burning Wheel will be related to the RQ/RM approach to design (long skill lists, derived attributes, "realistic" combat, etc) but also to Prince Valiant and HeroWars/Quest (both simple and extended contests, intent as a key factor in resolution, early approximations to "say 'yes' or roll the dice") and will also have some innovations of its own ("let it ride).

So (i) the graph will be complex, and (ii) it will not put BW and DW in the same neighbourhood, even though we can predict at least some overlap in their fan base, and probably more than the overlap between BW fans and RQ fans.

(I mean, maybe your new TV borrows some clever bit of design that was first used in a bit of high-end hospital equipment. That doesn't mean that you, as a TV watcher, are suddenly going to go out and buy some sort of body-function monitor just because it bears some technical resemblance to your TV.)

I want to keep reinforcing this, even within a play style preference, like Narrativist, there are just things that have no intermediates. I don't see how you can take PbtA and mix it with 4e and get something halfway in between. I mean, I went through this exercise, trust me, and it just doesn't really work. HoML has some ideas that reflect experiences with PbtA and such, but it is still pretty much built around a 4e-like chasis, you just can't mush together moves and skill challenges! There's no halfway point between those!

Yes, I said the same thing upthread. Even with games that are likely fairly close on the imagined graph, there may be no intermediaries. I gave RQ and RM as one example: either attack and defence are rolled separately, or are allocated by the player from a common pool. The presence or absence of that player choice is a fundamental difference between the way the two games resolve melee.

RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha has Passions.

My understanding is that this is a fairly recent publication. I was talking about the classic version of the game, which went through various iterations in the 1980s. Apologies if that was not clear.

Although intriguingly something like Passions first appear on the NPC record form for Griffin Mountain, (c) 1981 in the edition I am looking at, and thus four years before Pendragon was published.

I'm finding it hard to parse out your meaning. Did you mean that adding Passions to the main text of RQ is a tremendous change? It can be, depending on how a group use them.

I don't have a copy of Griffin Mountain. But personality guidelines for NPCs - which (presumably) the GM is expected to adhere to in playing those NPCs - is not the same as Passions for PCs. Pendragon's Traits and Passions act as constraints on (and also generate incentives for) the players' play of their PC.

This is a tremendous change to how players play their PCs. It was recognised as such when Pendragon was published. It is still widely regarded as a big deal now, as best I can tell.

(I don't know what the contemporary RQ text says about Passions, or how they are to be used. But if it tells the players of the game to use them in the same fashion that they are used in Pendragon, then yes, that is a big change. If they are presented as an optional sub-system, then players of the game are being presented with an option to make a big change in how they play compared to "default" RQ.)

The many, many game texts riffing off one another and drifting are themselves proof.

I am talking about RPG systems - ie actual procedures and techniques of play - not RPG texts. So is @AbdulAlhazred in what I have quoted in this post.

I don't know what you mean by talking about game texts "drifting". But RPG text have riffed off each other since the first RPGs were designed. This doesn't show that for any two arbitrary RPGs, there are arbitrarily many intermediate forms.

 

[pemerton]

if GNS is about goals of play and the N describes play with the goal of narrativist play, then it seems contradictory to assert that:

‘it is a general model of the structure and process of RPG play in any given moment of play’

Goals of play does not equal structure and process of RPG play in any given moment. This is probably what most of my confusion stems from.

"The Big Model" is a general model of the structure and processes of RPG play in any given moment of play.

The model posits that, to begin with, there is a group of people getting together to do this thing - that is, to imagine together with the predominant or crucial mode of that imagining being from the perspective of a character in the fiction. This is "social contract".

They then "need" to establish certain things to make this go: they need an imagined place (setting) with imagined characters, and there needs to be something that will prompt those characters to "go" (situation). And there needs to be a way or ways of making the fiction change (system).

There are then various techniques that can be used to establish these various necessary things: for instance, and just as one illustration, changes to the fiction might be established by talking or stipulation (Edwards follows Tweet in calling this "drama" resolution), or by rolling dice or drawing cards ("fortune" resolution), or by straightforward derivation from stats ("karma" resolution - an example is from the 3E D&D rulebook (I think) where it says that an arm wrestle is resolved not by rolling dice, but just by comparing the STR of the two arm wrestlers).

So at any given moment of play, and in any episode of play, it is possible to consider how social contract is establishing a setting, characters, situation and system. And what the system is, and what techniques are being used. Etc.

It is also possible to ask, Why are they doing this together? - as in, What goal are they collectively aiming at in this shared, intellectual, imaginative endeavour?. GNS is a regimented collection of possible answers to that question.

 

[pemerton]

S no longer exists as an aesthetic aim of play.

Edwards expressed doubt that it is an aesthetic aim of play. As it happens, I don't agree with him.