Quote from: Emperor Norton;805421People talk about how anticlimactic it is if they go down too easy, but I still remember the game where...

We still retell the story in Call of Cthulhu when Tex one-shotted the big bad in Shadows of Yog Sothoth.

Spoiler

Tex, a six-shooter wearing PC from (where else) Texas decided to accept the invitation to dinner from Baron Hauptmann. Dinner was at his creepy old castle in Transylvania. Did I mention that Tex was none too bright. Well Tex, accompanied by Reverend Thomas "Once again it is time to joust with the forces of Darkness" Pentacle, go up to the castle for dinner and the Baron Drugs their food. As Tex starts to feel woozy from the effects of the drug he quick draws his trusty six shooter and (after a couple of awesome rolls) plugs the Baron right between the eyes killing him deader than a doornail. Good news right!

Wrong. The Baron's spirit possed the body of one of his loyal Romani retainers. This was an inferior shell to his previous form plus he wasn't ready to make a change, plus his secret was now revealed so he had to leave the castle - flapping away on the back of a Byahkee. Oh, yeah, and he left our two characters tied up down in the castle dungeon with his other loyal retainer who had orders to torture us to death.

But we all recall the amazing shot.

Uh, Bren, re: bennies... what do you think I'm suggesting as 'a little big of narrative mechanics'?

Heh. That's exactly what I like, and why.

Quote from: Will;805459Uh, Bren, re: bennies... what do you think I'm suggesting as 'a little big of narrative mechanics'?

Heh. That's exactly what I like, and why.

No idea what you were suggesting. It sounded like you just hated not hitting the ogre. Which in many systems with bennies is something that will still occur if you roll bad. Bennies just up the odds you will hit or give you a very limited number of chances to automatically succeed. Bennies aren't designed to prevent you from spending 10 rounds killing an ogre instead of the 2 rounds you might prefer unless killing the ogre really matters. Which seems to apply to your nemesis example, but not your ogre example.

Also, bennies were only one of the three options I listed. And in many games that have bennies, using a benny simply doesn't guarantee you won't wiff. Personally I don't consider the 1983 Mayfair Games James Bond 007 game a narrative RPG but it most assuredly includes bennies. It was the first game I read which did include bennies.

Quote from: Bren;805468Also, bennies were only one of the three options I listed. And in many games that have bennies, using a benny simply doesn't guarantee you won't wiff. Personally I don't consider the 1983 Mayfair Games James Bond 007 game a narrative RPG but it most assuredly includes bennies. It was the first game I read which did include bennies.

I think Bennies are narrative in nature, in that they don't directly equate to an ability from the PC's perspective. So the player spends them from the perspective of a narrator or author, even if to a very limited extent.

And I agree with you that most people wouldn't consider an RPG to be narrative due to a single such narrative mechanic. But that was sort of Will's original point. Narrative mechanics have been used to a limited extent in traditional RPGs for some time to help round out the odd rough edge.

The structure of bennies is typically narrative -- player wants to push the normal rule results when it matters to the player.

And yeah, Skywalker gets me.

My view is that narrative mechanics is another form of metagaming which is the one of the few ways to cheat at tabletop roleplaying.

Everything that been attempted with narrative mechanics can be handled with either a player or the referee stepping out of game and go "You know, what do you guys think of this?". If the group comes to a consensus on the idea then go for it. You don't need to pussy foot around with points, dice, or gadgets to make this happen.

What on the referee needs to realize that the details of a particular encounter or in-game locale is based on a filter. The filter being what important or interesting in the referee's judgement. And sometimes the referees doesn't make the right call or things have changed with individual players from the last session.

If a player or players finds what going on boring then the referee needs to think about what he knows about the players and their characters. Then find a another set of details that they would find interesting. What happens doesn't have to be probable only possible.  Although too many coincidences occurring in succession has it own problems.

It is a bit of an art but the general idea to be aware of what going on and to keep fine tuning things to keep up with the players. The referee needs to let go of the idea that the campaign has to proceed in a particular direction.

Last, if the character is suffering negative consequences , like repeatably missing with a succession of 5's when fighting a ogre, or a result of bad plan by the player. Then that how the die rolls so to speak. Without the risk the reward isn't much of an reward.

The games I have greatly enjoyed that treated story fall more comfortably into old categories than into the present rpg-spinoff storygame one.

Tales of  the Arabian Nights combined boardgame and paragraph-game conventions. Like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, it departed from most paragraph games by not being focused on combat. The unusual storytelling aspect was a variant option in which players could win additional points by improvising brief (2-minute, iirc) stories on which the other players voted. Otherwise, it was just a matter of the paragraph text (which was unusual only in the quality of wriiting).

The card play in Dark Cults had a strategic game aspect but served mainly as a springboard for imagination: What story can we tell about this picture? The players were in two teams (Life and Death) with unabashedly authorial positions, no confusion with role-playing. In short, it was just a little twist on the age-old informal practice of collaborative story-telling.

Prince Valiant was a pretty traditonal (and mechanically simple) rpg with optional elaborations that allowed players some "narrative control" powers (Inspire Lust, Escape Enemies, or suchlike) or even - with the main GM's approval - temporarily to take over GMing.

Estar, like every other thing in gaming, you don't have to have mechanics. But like everything else, it can be handy to have mechanics, so people know what to expect and don't have to debate each time.

And yeah, you can just deal with what dice give you. I just have often found that a bit disappointing.

The techniques suggested in Prince Valiant were very simple, and put the game immediately back into world-situation mode (what the Dungeon World guys call "the fiction"). What I don't like about a lot of so-called narrative-focus games is that they seem to me really focused on the abstraction instead of narrative.

In a fight in old D&D, we quickly toss dice and get hit point results: abstraction done and done. Want to describe the action in more substantial terms? Just do it! If you care who does it, establish table conventions.

If we're going to spend more time on the abstraction, I want it to model something - as opposed to being a "narrative control decider" made complicated to be interesting for its own distracting sake.

Even if it's supposedly modeling something, a "too cute" novelty that draws attention to itself (a subjective matter, of  course) irks me. TSR put out a "Saga System" Marvel Heroes game that I could never bring myself to play. Fate Cards, Trumps, Edge, etc. - forget it!

Quote from: Will;805496Estar, like every other thing in gaming, you don't have to have mechanics. But like everything else, it can be handy to have mechanics, so people know what to expect and don't have to debate each time.

What you missed about my comments is that there are mechanics. The mechanics of good communication as applied to tabletop roleplaying sessions. It not as sexy as spending fate points but overall it is more flexible and applies to a broader variety of situations.

To be fair, the good communication skills that are normally taught are useful but not entirely applicable to tabletop roleplaying. A referee needs to learn to how tweak the various techniques so that effective communication results.

And it something that die rolls or counting points can't fix because you can't turn good communication into a game. Either it happens or it doesn't.

Quote from: Will;805496And yeah, you can just deal with what dice give you. I just have often found that a bit disappointing.

It has been my observation when that occurs it because the referee is not doing his job of presenting the setting.

I had some players as recently as two months ago suffer some very negative consequences that wasn't death. One of them what a player who was experienced with my games and was OK because he need that while the situation sucked he had options.

The other didn't, wanted to tear up his character sheet and so on. I sat down with and pointed out everything thing, he encountered that he could use to turn the situation to his advantage.  And because I established that I was the type of referee who focuses on what the players want to do. He knew that if he pursued these options that I would follow up on them. And he calmed down and showed up at the next session.

There are other referees who ran into similar situations, this was at a game store with multiple campaigns going on, and it didn't get handled so well.

The only time I find my techniques not working if the player wants to cheat, metagame or has specifics that I like to call "victory conditions". I had player bail out of a Champions game because he just could not get it into his head that Kinetics super powers didn't work the way he wanted them to work. That what he wanted was vastly overpowered compared to what was available to the other players. That he could get there but for now he was at a lower level ability inline with the other characters of the campaign.

Quote from: Skywalker;805482I think Bennies are narrative in nature, in that they don't directly equate to an ability from the PC's perspective. So the player spends them from the perspective of a narrator or author, even if to a very limited extent.

And I agree with you that most people wouldn't consider an RPG to be narrative due to a single such narrative mechanic. But that was sort of Will's original point. Narrative mechanics have been used to a limited extent in traditional RPGs for some time to help round out the odd rough edge.

OK. I think it is not quite that simple, which is why I mentioned games that are fairly traditional in design like James Bond and WEG Star Wars as examples of bennies.

Bennies that are used to create things in universe are different than bennies that allow a reroll or a bonus die. The former are clearly operating on an authorial (or narrative) level rather than a character level. The latter can be operated on a character level. I toss in a benny when my character wants to succeed really bad. That's a character, not an author decision analogous to a character choosing to cast a spell or use a potion to increase their chance of success.

For some types of bennies there is even an in-universe analog to the benny, i.e. Force Points in Star Wars correspond to strength in the Force and as such are resources the character can decide in universe to access. But you should already know that Skywalker.

Quote from: Will;805486The structure of bennies is typically narrative -- player wants to push the normal rule results when it matters to the player.

That's a way to use bennies, but as I mentioned it is not the only way or a required way to use bennies. Star Wars Force Points being one of the best counter examples.

To me, disappointment in the dice matters when (as happened in GURPS and Rolemaster) it destroys after minutes of total play - in the first game-second of peril - a character that took hours to generate. In that case, I would not mind a referee setting aside that outcome. But I don't feel the situation is improved by needing to "spend Fate Points" or jump through some other such hoop to get that consideration.

Quote from: Bren;805508OK. I think it is not quite that simple, which is why I mentioned games that are fairly traditional in design like James Bond and WEG Star Wars as examples of bennies.

I agree that there are different types of "bennies" and Force points are a good example of one with an in-character perspective.

Your first post didn't appear to demonstrate that you understood that, or that you got what Will was saying. Hence my clarification

My group and I grew up on WoD games primarily, given we were teenagers in the 90's. They were certainly more "Narrative" to us than say, 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons, but still very traditional.

Story games just never really worked for us, the occasional story game mechanic would be fine, but in the end, while my players were interested in the "Stories" taking place within the game...they were also very interested in the actual "Game" mechanic... and Story games seem to get away from that by focusing so much on the meta-game side of things.

My group and I have fallen in love with Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition though. I never thought I could love a class based game so much, but right now it's what I want to run for the forseeable future.

It's made me look into some OSR games as well. I got Stars Without Number and Silent Legions (From the Kickstarter) and worked on converting them to 5th edition (Was exactly difficult) now I can get my Lovecraftian Horror Kick and Space Sci Fi Kick from classic rules too... and they just seem so much better than any of the old complicated story aspected games I use to associate with this sorta thing...

Something about the simplicity of the mechanics falls away and just lets the players and GM focus on the story going on.

It's why I didn't like Savage Worlds and Marvel Heroic and games of that sort. Takes me right out of the game at hand.