Quote from: Arminius;861846To address the OP, if the following don't define Narrativist games, they're strong markers:

• Conflict resolution
• Dissociated mechanics
• Somewhat as a corollary of the previous two: "Say yes or roll the dice"
• Also, related to the diss. mech., and as others have said, a requirement that players take an authorial stance toward the game rather than acting through in-character POV
• Aggressive scene-framing ("Get to the Conflict"/"Escalate, escalate, escalate!")
• Underpinning this: articulated themes and "character issues" that inform the scene-framing ("Kickers" leading to "Bangs")

The more of these there are, the more narrativist/story-gamey the game is.

Good summary and description. Worth quoting in full.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;861728nDervish: You are telling a story -- or at least part of the story -- of your character disarming the bomb while your character is disarming the bomb. These two things are not mutually exclusive in the slightest, and how closely you identify with your character during the process doesn't change this.

You appear to have missed the point of my bomb technician example.  I wasn't talking about someone's character disarming a bomb.  I was talking about a real, live, honest-to-god, human being made of flesh and blood and bone, whose job happens to involve working with explosives and who, as he is in the actual act of physically disarming a genuine bomb which will potentially blow up and kill him for realz describes what he sees and what he's doing as he does it in the real world, not an imaginary game world.  Do you consider him to be telling a story?  I do not.

Or, for an example closer to home, I'm currently in the process of learning to drive a manual transmission.  One day last week, I downshifted and, as I did so, I said to my co-pilot, "Feeling a bit sluggish.  Suppose I'll downshift."  Do you consider that to have been telling him a story?  I do not.  I'm telling you a story about it now, but, when I did it, I was downshifting, not telling a story about downshifting.  Whether I gave a spoken description of my actions (or the reasons for them) or not has no bearing on that.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;861728Also, I honestly don't see how a story could possibly not be produced during play -- once anything happens, a story exists. It might not be a good story. It might not be a full story. It may or may not become such things as time goes on. But these are issues of quality and completeness, not existence.

Yes, I agree, and I don't think I've encountered anyone who doesn't.  A story is always produced as a byproduct of play, even if that story is merely "Alice said X and then Bob said Y and then..."

Where I disagree is that I do not believe that this means that playing the game is necessarily the same thing as telling a story.

I think I've seen like three basic patterns of play.

1)  GM: "This is the situation.  What do you do?"
Player: "I do thing!"
GM: "Okay, the situation is now this.  What do you do?"

2) Player:  "This thing happens!"
Other player: "Then this thing happens!"
Third player: "Then this other thing happens!"

3) Player: "I move my piece according to these rules."
Other player: "I move my piece according to these other rules."

These are the pure, extreme versions of each, and I think in most games we end up switching between two or more of these patterns to some extent.

It seems to me that traditional RPGs mix the first and the third together.  I'd go so far as saying that the original "munchkin" dichotomy was (at least partially) between people pushing their games further along that axis towards the third pattern.

The thing that seems to define narrative games is that they include some level of the second interaction.  Now, personally, I don't see why that makes them "not roleplaying" any more than some elements of the third type of interaction, but that's me.

Quote from: robiswrong;8619161)  GM: "This is the situation.  What do you do?"
Player: "I do thing!"
GM: "Okay, the situation is now this.  What do you do?"

2) Player:  "This thing happens!"
Other player: "Then this thing happens!"
Third player: "Then this other thing happens!"

3) Player: "I move my piece according to these rules."
Other player: "I move my piece according to these other rules."


These are the pure, extreme versions of each, and I think in most games we end up switching between two or more of these patterns to some extent.

It seems to me that traditional RPGs mix the first and the third together.  I'd go so far as saying that the original "munchkin" dichotomy was (at least partially) between people pushing their games further along that axis towards the third pattern.

With the caveat that you intentionally used extreme examples, those seem like three different (and reasonable) ways to look at RPGs. A radar chart would be a good way to represent and compare different play styles or game designs.  

(Delete two of the axes and re-label the other three axes with the three examples above.)

QuoteThe thing that seems to define narrative games is that they include some level of the second interaction.

Yes. That sounds correct.

QuoteNow, personally, I don't see why that makes them "not roleplaying" any more than some elements of the third type of interaction, but that's me.

I think that is viewpoint of most people in this and the related threads. Certainly the inclusion of #2 doesn't make a game "not roleplaying" unless the game is exclusively #2, i.e. the participants are only operating exclusively in an authorial mode.

On the other hand GeekEclectic certainly seems to claim that every utterance in an RPG, including,

QuotePlayer: "I do thing!"

is telling a story, which as nDervish pointed out, is an extremely broad and unusual definition of what telling a story means. I'd say it is so broad as to be an extremely silly and useless definition.

Quote from: Bren;861926On the other hand GeekEclectic certainly seems to claim that every utterance in an RPG, including,  is telling a story, which as nDervish pointed out, is an extremely broad and unusual definition of what telling a story means. I'd say it is so broad as to be an extremely silly and useless definition.

That's certainly not what I was claiming, or at least not what I meant to claim. Perhaps I was unclear. My point was that, no matter how in character you are, what you have your character do contributes to the overall story that is produced by any RPG tautologically. Once things happen, there's a story to tell. Or a story that was already told, depending on how you look at it, I suppose.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;861947That's certainly not what I was claiming, or at least not what I meant to claim. Perhaps I was unclear. My point was that, no matter how in character you are, what you have your character do contributes to the overall story that is produced by any RPG tautologically. Once things happen, there's a story to tell. Or a story that was already told, depending on how you look at it, I suppose.

I played hockey last night.  We could tell a story about my hockey game, but the goal of it was not to create a story, and playing hockey is not telling a story.

I think that there's two interesting statements that can be made.

1) You can tell a story about the events in any RPG

2) The goal of all RPGs is to tell a story

I agree with the first.  However, I don't see that as significant, as I think it's a case of the larger statement "you can tell a story about anything".

I disagree with the second.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;861947That's certainly not what I was claiming, or at least not what I meant to claim. Perhaps I was unclear. My point was that, no matter how in character you are, what you have your character do contributes to the overall story that is produced by any RPG tautologically. Once things happen, there's a story to tell. Or a story that was already told, depending on how you look at it, I suppose.

If you are really only saying that "you can tell a story about anything" than I am still misunderstanding you. It seemed to me you were saying and claiming more than that.

It seemed that one point was that all RPGs generate a story in the trivial or tautological sense that any sequence of events retold after the events is technically a story. And one can tell a story about anything that has happened. I think we all agree on that point.

But here it seemed to me that you went farther than a tautological sense of "one can tell a story about anything that has happened":

Quote from: GeekEclectic;861728nDervish: You are telling a story -- or at least part of the story -- of your character disarming the bomb while your character is disarming the bomb.

Now first, nDervish wasn't talking about a character in an RPG, but a real bomb disposal technician. Let's pass over that as nDervish already covered that in a post of their own.

For the sake of discussion let's pretend that we are talking about a player describing what their character is attempting to do in the game world. You seem to be saying that at the point that the player describes an attempted action like "I cut the green wire" that this, right in the instant of speech, is somehow telling a story. I don't agree and here's why.

It is no more a story than a chess player saying "Pawn to King's Rook Seven" is telling a story. Both those utterances are directives that indicate what action is to be attempted or performed in the game by the character or piece that the player controls in the game. In chess the rules are very strict and there is no referee or GM, so when a player states what move they are making, so long as it is a legitimate move (e.g. you can't move "Pawn to King's Griffon Thirteen" and your Rook can't move diagonally) the outcome is simply and mechanistically determined to the point that the result of all moves is easily, clearly, and unambiguously determined. Therefore the command to make the move and a description of the move made and the result of attempting the move are identical and are always congruent. Such is not always the case in RPGs.

In an RPG, utterances of this sort are not always simply and mechanistically determined because the game world is much more complex and open, e.g. the GM might say, "You try to cut the green wire, but for some reason the wire is too tough to cut through" or "You start to cut the green wire, but as soon as your wire cutters make contact, a huge bolt of electricity arcs from the wire to your cutters to your hand and you take 6d6 damage" or "You start to cut the wire, but soldier next to you grabs the cutters and struggles to wrest them away from you; make a STR vs STR roll." Only once the PC actually cuts the green wire does, "I cut the green wire" or "Bren cuts the green wire" become an instantiated event and thus become part of the story of what happened in the game world. At the point that the result happens one can now talk about what happened and thus tell a story about that.

Telling a story, of any kind, is an assertive act.  It is its own creation different from the event which it is depicting.

Living life contains assertive acts, which in and of themselves are not a telling, or a creation, merely an event which occurred.  Afterwards, a separate distinct assertive act may be undertaken to create and tell a story about those events.

Roleplaying a character does not create story, it automatically creates historical events.  A story may be created, either IC or OOC after the fact by either the character, through roleplaying, or the player, outside of the game.

Narrative roleplaying is doing two assertive acts simultaneously.  The character is living its life creating events, but the player is also engaging in a creative act of specifically narrating a story at the same time.

You don't need rules for this.  Playing any RPG, you could switch between IC and OOC to make your character act plausibly, but also be thematically and dramatically important.

A Narrative game is one where the mechanics themselves allow you the means to make your narrative intent manifest.  Sure I can have my character do something because it's dramatically important, but in a Narrative game, I can ensure it succeeds, thus steering the narrative.

You could have played Braunstein in a narrative way with an eye towards roleplaying, that didn't make Braunstein a narrative rpg.  With many newer games, it's impossible to play them RAW without the narrative elements, and some those narrative elements cannot be easily removed.

That's why I stand by my contention that some people have always roleplayed with a narrative meta-layer or genre-filter or whatever the hell you want to call it.

When you have always roleplayed doing two things at once, ie. roleplaying with an eye to creating story, then it's kind of hard to believe someone else telling you that they, most certainly, do not do that.  Such a person may even seem to your perspective, to be brain-damaged or delusional.

Quote from: Phillip;861660EVENTS are always making, though we may prefer to spend our time in ways that involve more swordplay, sorcery and monsters than Jerry pretending to be Jerry.

As with real lives, that doesn't mean we're trying to tell a story, and people who DO want that will quickly agree that we're not scratching their itch.

Yup, can't disagree with this or the rest of the arguments. Not my intention to argue that everyone is consciously trying to tell a story as they  play. I may have misread people's arguments here and thought it was being argued that story wasn't a result of rpg play.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;861963I may have misread people's arguments here and thought it was being argued that story wasn't a result of rpg play.

The argument is that story is a direct result of the conscious act of creating a story, and that act alone.

Story can be an indirect result of ANYTHING, period, because a story can be told about anything...after the fact.  That doesn't, ever, make it the point, focus, or intent of the original act.

RPG play*.  Creating stories. Two completely different things.  Some have always seen them as integral to each other, others have not.  It makes discussions...difficult.

*Insert Fishing, Motorcycling, or Catching Black Widow Spiders in Your Garage for RPG play and the same is true.

Quote from: CRKrueger;861964The argument is that story is a direct result of the conscious act of creating a story, and that act alone.

Story can be an indirect result of ANYTHING, period, because a story can be told about anything...after the fact.  That doesn't, ever, make it the point, focus, or intent of the original act.

RPG play*.  Creating stories. Two completely different things.  Some have always seen them as integral to each other, others have not.  It makes discussions...difficult.

*Insert Fishing, Motorcycling, or Catching Black Widow Spiders in Your Garage for RPG play and the same is true.

I'm with you.

I don't really like the "all RPGs tell stories!" logic.  Because for it to be true, it's really just a narrow case of "all things tell stories!" which is equally true, and not useful.

Honestly, it just feels like a rhetorical device to prove that all RPGs are 'storygames'.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;861947Once things happen, there's a story to tell. Or a story that was already told, depending on how you look at it, I suppose.

There's a key distinction between:

1) Doing something about which a story can be told later; and
2) Telling a story

RPGs, with their associated mechanics, largely do the former. Storytelling games, with their narrative control mechanics, are largely about adjudicating the latter.

Quote from: Arminius;861841Phillip, they once wrote over on the Forge, "Scratch a Narrativist and you'll find a Gamist."

For whatever it's worth.

It seems confused when all the card-playing, dice-picking, etc., is just another way of establishing that Brick Boy beats the snot out of Booger Man, which is just what we'd be doing in any toy-soldier game -- except that it has LESS to do with anything we could tell an interesting story about than we'd get with similarly complicated procedures in a 'trad' game.

It's like the 'Eurogame' boardgame ethos applied to RPGs, but usually without the same elegance in abstract game design.

If drama were really the focus, then that's what players would be playing for, what their game powers would be for, NOT simply or even necessarily to "win the contest" for their figure.

The tendency to identify with the interests of 'my' figure -- essential to role-playing -- may be intrinsically a significant hindrance for story telling, but certainly the game could be designed to give incentives to play one's hand in more dramatically interesting ways.

Quote from: TristramEvans;861825I do at the least recall in the MHR rulebook, about halfway through, there was a section where it said something to the effect of "here's a break in the rules during play, this might be a good chance to get some roleplaying in". To which I, perhaps even outloud, responded "Its suppose to be a roeplaying game, why am I not roleplaying the whole time?"

That might be a case of different meanings. Some folks reserve the term "role-playing" for periods of characters just talking, as opposed to doing stuff (such as fighting) that invokes formal rules.