Madprofessor, I agree with you. In fact, if we look at Call of Cthulhu ( which is about as simulationist as it gets by my way of thinking), you can find advice to the effect that the PCs should keep in correspondence with associates at home ad they engage in their globe trotting campaigns and that these associates might then step in in the event of a TPK. I think that this is a nice concrete example of the kind of thing I am talking about. If you have this sort of narrative failsafe in place, the temptation to fudge things to avoid a TPK becomes much smaller (and what is fudging other than overriding the terms of simulation in favor of your preferred narrative?) and you are able to maintain a continuity of events which can actually make forthcoming developments MORE powerful. You just raised the stakes narrativelt while keeping the integrity if the simulation intact. You didn't 'author' drama; you directly derived it from what could have potentially ended the campaign entirely. And I think it works even better if the replacement characters have been previously introduced to the campaign in earlier sessions and relationships edtablished.

I also actually agree with the post a bit further up (quoting is a bitch on mobile, sorry) about avoiding actual use of game rules and mechanics where possible and only using them where it really matters. A well role played conversation can be very narratively powerful; a persuasion roll? Not so much. Though salting played out conversations with social skill roles at critical junctures can also be very effective I think.

But I absolutely disagree with those saying something isn't a narrative until after it has been experienced, and that it is impossible to employ narrative principles in a game or aim for narrative effects without railroading.

Quote from: Bren;881501That sounds like a great narrative for the single, surviving NPC mule tender to tell the next group of PCs. Now they may be warned and afraid or challenged and inspired. I wonder what will happen next?

I was thinking it would be an awesome set up for the children of the PCs, years later.  

Quote from: Manzanaro;881493But again, what I am asking about isn't "How do you get an experience from rules of simulation that will make a good story later" but "how do you get an experience that makes for a good narrative AS IT IS HAPPENING". If you don't want to call the experience of game events a narrative, call it what you want. But certainly we can describe this experience in terms we would use for the narrative of a book or movie or any other narrative form. A game can be compelling, tedious, immersive, dramatic, anticlimactic, etc.

Now we may indeed plow into a game without the slightest thought towards the qualities of the narrative emerging from play, but that doesn't have much bearing on what I am asking about in the OP.

Dervish mentions immersion as a desirable quality. I totally agree (which is probably surprising if you were assuming my use of the word "narrative" meant I would be spouting a bunch of GNS nonsense). But are you immersed the same way if you are the GM? If not how do you foster player immersion and then use that to draw out a good narrative? As the GM you are their interface with the world. Do you draw them into events? Do you plop down a map and ask where they want to go? Do you just observe as they roleplay amongst themselves aimlessly and hope something interesting develops?

This discussion isn't intended as a trap or an arena for confrontation. It's about ways to run a game that make players FEEL like they are in a book while still retaining the freedom and unpredictability of simulation. No plot railroads. No protagonist immunity. No reliance on narrative conventions of genre as means of determination over riding the rules of simulation.

1. Interesting setting - The characters have lots to do, lots to choose from.
2. Interesting NPCs - Whatever they decide to do, there are people who they can interact with that seem actual personalities, not stereotypes or cliches.
3. Interesting Enemies - Gangsters, cultists, corporations, nobles, people who have their own agendas, own resources and probably will conflict with the PCs at some point.
4. Pull no punches - They play their PCs, you play the world.  Play it straight and play it hard.

If you have that and just turn the PCs loose, they won't disappoint.

Set up an interesting situation, then let the dynamics play out. If anyone wants to make up a narrative afterward, that's his own business and quite a separate matter; what I'm concerned with is a game to play!

Quote from: Manzanaro;881461... I think that, generally speaking, most players would prefer that their game sessions end up telling a good interesting story, rather than, say, just producing a dull series of events completely lacking in drama or any of the other qualities that draw people to fiction. ...

The good interesting story, as in good interesting stories about real life, come from someone with skill in [editing/embellishing/lying/storytelling] cherry-picking elements along a thread with thematic elements, and telling them in interesting ways.

A GM and players can and should do some of this. Examples:

* The protagonists are chosen by the players picking/generating/rolling-up their PCs.

* The GM should probably choose to develop stuff in the world that relates to the PCs and their interests, that will give them things to do and care about and so on.

* The themes are chosen by what the players and GM are interested in, consciously or not.

* The GM and players should probably abbreviate/simplify/handwave/ignore things they don't care about, instead of playing out things no one actually cares about at all, though different players care about different things to different degrees. Not, "Wait, my character really needs to poop now. Where looks like a good place to go?" four times a day in game time.

What makes a fun/interesting game to play is often not the same thing that exactly makes a good story to tell verbatim. That's where storytelling skills come in.

Some games try to make the mechanics be like a "good story"... and I think that's interesting, but I mostly don't want to play that, personally.

Quote from: Manzanaro;881504But I absolutely disagree with those saying something isn't a narrative until after it has been experienced, and that it is impossible to employ narrative principles in a game or aim for narrative effects without railroading.

Okay.

In order to have a compelling narrative prospectively, do you not need to know at what points the tension or mystery escalates? Do you not need to know how the sequence of events terminates? If you do, how do you allow for the most player freedom of choice possible?

An assumption that I have is that my "ideal narrative" about the adventure is not necessarily what my players have, either individually or in aggregate. Thus, I cannot concretely plan when to increase tension, since I am not truly sure what will be the most satisfying to my players. An example of this are traps and puzzles where the players either can find the "obvious" solution, and improvise an alternate solution that I adjudicate as equivalent. These alternate solutions may obviate time pressure, diminishment of resources, or other ideas I had to increase the tension towards the dramatic end of the adventure.

I have found that what my players find most satisfying is not a particular adventure, but the ebb and flow of the campaign. There are a number of adventures that strike a high note, others that end up being merely foundational to that goal. Without that variation, the joys of the great triumphs are diminished. They are, in fact, enhanced in large part because they do not know when they will occur.

That said, I do think that there are methods for improving the retrospective narrative flow. But, in a game where you depend on dice for uncertainty, player choice and agency is very important. And, part of player agency is the freedom to make sub-optimal or poor decisions. In order for those choices to have value, consequences that would lead to a poor narrative must be an option.

(In my version of D&D, for example, many spells that are Total Win / Nothing Happens have been adjusted to Big Advantage / Something Happened. There are other things, but they are very system dependent. I have no comment on diceless systems.)

Quote from: CRKrueger;8815291. Interesting setting - The characters have lots to do, lots to choose from.
2. Interesting NPCs - Whatever they decide to do, there are people who they can interact with that seem actual personalities, not stereotypes or cliches.
3. Interesting Enemies - Gangsters, cultists, corporations, nobles, people who have their own agendas, own resources and probably will conflict with the PCs at some point.
4. Pull no punches - They play their PCs, you play the world.  Play it straight and play it hard.

If you have that and just turn the PCs loose, they won't disappoint.

Okay. I agree with pretty much all of this, other than pull no punches. I feel it is generally good to give players a chance to react, so I am not likely to put them in a situation where they get shot in the head by a sniper they never even see (or similar) even when it might be totally appropriate by the terms of the setting and situation.

So now, given all this stuff in place, how do you go about communicating it to the players? A big exposition dump at the start of the game? Or do you gradually weave these things into the emerging narrative of play? Or do you tend to play in settings where these elements are already familiar to your players? Would you agree that there are ways to introduce all of these elements that are more or less succesful? And that principles of narrative like suspense and drama can be effectively employed in how these elements interact with the players?

Quote from: Baron Opal;881535Okay.

In order to have a compelling narrative prospectively, do you not need to know at what points the tension or mystery escalates? Do you not need to know how the sequence of events terminates?

I would say absolutely not. I mean drama and suspense basically STEM from uncertainty. But from uncertainty that sustains interest and leaves you feeling invested in the outcome.

This is why I don't tend to care much for games in which narrative conventions are baked into the rules, like I would say is the case with most Fate derivatives for example.

Good points in the remainder of your post, thanks. In particular, I heartily endorse suboptimal play, and a game structure that doesn't make such play a sure death sentence. And I certainly don't equate suboptimal outcomes from a character's perspective to a suboptimal narrative.

Quote from: ManzanaroSo now, given all this stuff in place, how do you go about communicating it to the players?

For me, I give the players 3 blatant, up-front hooks so that they have something to do presently. After the first adventure, they should have interacted with the world enough that they can start making independent choices.

If the world is interesting enough, then opportunities should present themselves.

To me, "play it straight and play it hard" means that actions have consequences and there is no fudging of dice. If that means a sniper, so be it. However, there will be an opportunity for the players to discover that they are being very irritating to someone who has a sniper on call. The players can then decide if they are going to move forward, or change tack. I would think that one option would be more compelling narratively than the other, but that's up to the players to pursue.

Quote from: Manzanaro;881537Okay. I agree with pretty much all of this, other than pull no punches. I feel it is generally good to give players a chance to react, so I am not likely to put them in a situation where they get shot in the head by a sniper they never even see (or similar) even when it might be totally appropriate by the terms of the setting and situation.

So now, given all this stuff in place, how do you go about communicating it to the players? A big exposition dump at the start of the game? Or do you gradually weave these things into the emerging narrative of play? Or do you tend to play in settings where these elements are already familiar to your players? Would you agree that there are ways to introduce all of these elements that are more or less succesful? And that principles of narrative like suspense and drama can be effectively employed in how these elements interact with the players?

If the players don't know much about the setting, they learn a decent amount of it through chargen, enough to get them up and running and relatively aware of stuff their PC should know.

The rest, just happens in play.  I don't push it, plan it, or force it.  They play the characters, I play the world, and all the excitement, suspense, fear, joy, whatever you want comes from that interaction.

In my experience, the absolute worst way to get drama and suspense is by trying to introduce it manually.  Let it come organically from play, and you won't need to even think about it anymore.

...
In fact, I am more interested in re-playing forced narratives as simulation games, than I am in watching forced narrative. I dislike forced narratives in fiction and films. But I'm often curious what would happen if we set up their situations and then played them out realistically, both for the parody aspect, and to demonstrate how screwed up some forced narratives are, and because I think they make interesting scenarios sometimes.

Examples:

Fury Road. I've written before how I'd actually like to play that out with realistic simulation rules, mainly to watch all the flashy techniques be useless, and have it all end in a quick wreck.

James Bond. I think it's interesting to take some Bond films and the like as scenarios, and then give the players super agents but have realistic cause & effect, and see if they can get anywhere and how it plays out.

The Force Awakens. That film has so many holes for me that it seems to me come out if you ask gamers what they would do given freedom in a situation. e.g.:

* You are the naming committee for the new splinter faction of the Galactic Empire, or for Leia's organization dedicated to eradicating it. What do you choose to name them? Surely NOT The New Order, the The Prime Directive, The First Order, nor The Resistance, eh?

* You are ordered to capture a droid's databanks on a desert planet, with the forces of a Star Destroyer available.

* Ok, someone screwed up capturing the droid. You're now in charge of getting the droid from a forest planet with a cantina on it. Again, you have a full Star Destroyer. What do you do? Then oh look, you found a girl in the woods instead - do you leave? Then, oh look, Princess Leia herself and a few X-Wings show up - do you stay and destroy them, or chicken out and leave with the girl, still not having found that droid?

* You are Imperial commander know the location of the Resistance base, which has a strength of about 12 X-Wings. You have at least one full Star Destroyer at your command. Do you attack the base, or wait to build an entire-planet-sized Death Star thing first?

* You are Resistance commander and you know the emotional-teenager-led ex-Imperial faction are taking years to build a giant planet-sized Death-Star-wanna-be-plus base/weapon/thing. Do you wait for them to finish it and start blowing up star systems, or do you try to take it out first?

* You are Han Solo, and you finally found the Milennium Falcon. What is the chance you are sloppy enough to let others board your ship and get the jump on you from two directions?

* You are Han Solo, and you know the Falcon is being tracked from anywhere in the whole freakin' galaxy. Do you decide to fly it straight to your friends' cantina and then walk far away from the ship and engage in long conversations?

* Oh, that brought a Star Destroyer to come blow the shit out of everything, but you somehow survived because the GM is a pussy and just wants to capture a girl and run away? What do you do next? Fly the trackable Falcon right to the Resistance HQ again, even though it apparently can directly blast any planet in the entire galaxy from across the galaxy?

* You are Han Solo, and Ben/Darth-Wannabe is standing in the most exposed position possible. You're on a mission to blow up the planet which is about to succeed, with 12 X-Wings trying not to die in a constant 45-minute-long battle with a planet's worth of TIE fighters overhead, somehow not all getting destroyed (?), waiting to blow up the whole planet. What do you do? Do you go out there where you will be completely exposed and subject to capture, making your pals wait? Do you trust Ben/Darth-Wannabe enough to let him point a light sabre at you? Probably so, if you want to get the F*&% out of this brain-dead campaign without offending your retarded pal JJ the GM.

* You are Po Dameron, leading the assault on Starkiller Base. Here are your 12 X-Wings, and here's the hex map. Here come unlimited TIE fighters. Can you survive for 45 minutes in combat with them, and then make a torpedo run on the base?

And back to the main thread topic, I would then enjoy retelling any of these stories, by re-forming them as stories. Having the gameplay take the form of a story would be weird to me, and might, I think, lead to re-generating the nonsense plots that annoy me in the first place.

Quote from: CRKrueger;881542If the players don't know much about the setting, they learn a decent amount of it through chargen, enough to get them up and running and relatively aware of stuff their PC should know.

The rest, just happens in play.  I don't push it, plan it, or force it.  They play the characters, I play the world, and all the excitement, suspense, fear, joy, whatever you want comes from that interaction.

In my experience, the absolute worst way to get drama and suspense is by trying to introduce it manually.  Let it come organically from play, and you won't need to even think about it anymore.

I do think there is a big difference between trying to force suspense or drama as opposed to recognizing latent or emergent suspense and drama and playing them up effectively.

As a side note that I think relates to a lot of comments in this thread? I personally feel like the best fiction aspires to a sense of simulationism in that the less apparent the governing narrative principles are, the less artificial the fiction will feel. So a simulationist RPG is even one further up in that there are no narrative principles when it comes to CAUSALITY. But that doesn't mean that narrative techniques can't be valuable in terms of presenting the results of the simulation and getting the most out of the events of play. Like, my NPCs might be super awesome in terms of depth and dramatic motive, but if I am unable to communicate this in the course of the narrative of play? They may as well be nameless mooks or cardboard cutouts.

Quote from: Manzanaro;881504But I absolutely disagree with those saying something isn't a narrative until after it has been experienced, and that it is impossible to employ narrative principles in a game or aim for narrative effects without railroading.

I really doubt that anyone has claimed we can't have "narrative effects" without railroading. "Narrative effects" suggests to me the style in which one uses the linguistic and visual media: evocative description, characterizing dialog, pacing, etc.

What you can't get without railroading -- or at least 'fudging', if you care to distinguish that as a less severe category -- is an assurance that events will unfold according to a plot, yielding a well crafted tale.

The key to maximizing dramatically satisfying outcomes is to make the situation so interesting that almost any course of events will be dramatically satisfying.

The key to making this a big problem is to get hung up instead on deciding in advance that you must have "victory for the heroes" or some other narrow criterion, that anything else must be counted as dramatically unsatisfying. If you're doing that, then a healthy recognition of reality is that what you want is not the kind of game implied by reference to the traditional RPG form, and probably not much of a game at all.

Quote from: Phillip;881545I really doubt that anyone has claimed we can't have "narrative effects" without railroading. "Narrative effects" suggests to me the style in which one uses the linguistic and visual media: evocative description, characterizing dialog, pacing, etc.

What you can't get without railroading -- or at least 'fudging', if you care to distinguish that as a less severe category -- is an assurance that events will unfold according to a plot, yielding a well crafted tale.

Which is why I have been trying to dispell the assumption that what I am talking about is using an RPG as a medium to convey some preordained plot as a well crafted tale. What I am talking about is working expressly with the results of a simulation in a manner that makes it FEEL like a well crafted tale.