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What makes a game "Narrativist" (or a Story game or are they different things in your opinion?) to you? Do you consider it a binary situation or is there a spectrum between "traditional" and narrativist? And what would you consider narrativist mechanics?

Quote from: Nexus;860051What makes a game "Narrativist" (or a Story game or are they different things in your opinion?) to you?

I would say that they aren't the same thing necessarily.

Story game is a nebulous category that covers a variety of games. Some of them I would argue are definitely proper tabletop RPGs, such as the various Cortex Plus games. And some I would concede are not, such as Fiasco and Dread(the one with Jenga). At this point, I find the designation so fuzzy as to be almost entirely useless.

Narrativist mechanics, on the other hand . . . I'm not entirely sure. They seem to be the kind of thing you know when you see. And while story games are more likely to have them(and more of them), it's not unheard of for some more traditional games, like Pendragon, to make use of them in some ways. Here are a few examples of things I believe fall under the "narrativist" category.

Sharing the GM role: This can be done in a variety of ways, and to different degrees, but it involves giving more than one person authority over aspects of the game traditonally controlled entirely by a single GM. On the light side, which you'll see even in a number of otherwise pretty traditional games, are points that allow the players to add minor details or change outcomes. Unisystem games have them. Savage Worlds has them. Fantasy Craft has them, sort of. Fate games often have them. etc. Near the middle, you might have rotating GM roles, which allow all players to have a turn being a player, but also require everyone participating to be willing and able to be a GM. And then at the far end, things can get wonky.

Focusing on non-standard stats: In most traditional games, the stats considered most important(and sometimes the only stats you have) are tied to your base ability, specific skills your character possesses, and perhaps various powers if it's a game with magic, superpowers, or the like. Some games like to focus elsewhere by giving you stats related to entirely different things. Cortex Plus Dramatic has Values and Relationships. Burning Wheel has . . . I forget what they're called, but basically important goals that give you a bonus to your roll if you can illustrate how that goal is relevant to your current action. I'd say both of these examples are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. C+D still has distinctions(skills and attributes) and powers. And so does Burning Wheel. I've seen games that eschew traditional stats altogether, but haven't played any myself. That's weird even by my standards.

Group setting creation: If the GM role is shared in some way, every player is often allowed to add to the setting; in such cases, there are usually limits in place to keep a single person from dominating. I saw one game meant to let you play LotR-style "fellowships" on epic quests, and each player had to be a different race. After the game starts, that person is allowed to answer questions about their race and have their answer be authoritative in the setting. Some games, like various Fate games, have a process that the group engages in prior to, or as part of, their first session. Fate Core has the GM establish the basic setting, then has the players work on their backstories simultaneously so as to work their characters into both the setting and into the backgrounds of at least a couple other PCs, but afterward it's run pretty traditionally w/ a single GM. Dresden Files allows the players to work together to build the city where their adventures will take place.

And I hate to even say this, because even I'm disgusted by the idea, but it would be dishonest not to include . . .

Forcing a Narrative/Ensuring a Story Mechanics: The only game with something like this that I can tolerate is Fiasco, and that's only because all that's determined prior to a scene is whether the character will fail or succeed. The details are left up to the players in the scene. I think of Fiasco as more of an improv exercise where you're given a loose guideline and then have to work with others to act out a scene that fits, but it's definitely not a proper tabletop RPG in my opinion. I've seen other games that do something similar, but with stricter criteria(such as dividing the session into "acts" and giving each act a theme to be catered to). And I've seen games that claim to be about storytelling as opposed to those other RPGs, but which are written by people who don't seem to understand that it's not possible to play an RPG, regardless of the specific mechanics, and not end up with a story at the end. That just strikes me as a bit pretentious.

My opinion there -- and I'm pretty sure I'm right -- is that the story/narrative is simply what you end up with as a result of playing. It is an unavoidable result that naturally comes from play, and needs no special mechanics to "make it happen."

QuoteDo you consider it a binary situation or is there a spectrum between "traditional" and narrativist? And what would you consider narrativist mechanics?

Definitely a spectrum, and see above.

Def: one of the players sucks or has ro be high to contribute anything interesting.

background: shadow of yesterday sessions. Idk it'been a minute

You don't define such games, they define your game.

Narrativist/Story Games all boil down to one thing. Everyone sitting around the table trade off being the person telling the story.

The rules structure of a particular Story Game may restrict which areas and which character or characters you may focus on while it is your turn being the person telling the story. The rules also set up how the role of being the person telling the story gets transferred from one player to another.

That is basically it.

This is why I agree with the assertion they are NOT Role Playing Games. They are their own thing.

Quote from: One Horse Town;860089You don't define such games, they define your game.

This is axiom of truth that underscores GeekEclectic's post. These mechanics can define your gaming experience if you let them.

I have fairly mature players. So when I'm running Savage Worlds or Edge of the Empire or Fantasy Craft, these mechanics have been fairly fun, mainly because I will veto the shit out of anything ridiculous.

But my games tend to be "serious" with a dash of swashbuckling, so these mechanics can often be good to progress things in interesting directions. YMMV

It's a matter of emphasis in intent, with a spectrum of how much that's weighted.

Before D&D, simulation games often involved an element of role-playing; the "role-playing game" category recognized that here it was not secondary but was the main thing. The most common shift away from that is back toward a "war game" in which r.p. is secondary.

A more recently prominent shift is toward prioritizing the telling of a story. There's a very important distinction here between an affair in which the GM is basically telling the story to the players (a la the Dragonlance Saga in the 1980s), and one in which the players themselves are significantly the authors (which is what's usually the subject in "story first" circles today).

A story involves characters, and to some extent even a sole author tends to see things from their perspectives. However, the author is also concerned to shape the narrative according to dramatic concerns such as theme and a satisfying plot structure. Lately, the influence of visual media such as television and video games tends to make what "looks cool" an important consideration as well.

Quote from: Nexus;860051What makes a game "Narrativist" (or a Story game or are they different things in your opinion?) to you? Do you consider it a binary situation or is there a spectrum between "traditional" and narrativist? And what would you consider narrativist mechanics?

These words are just tokens that evoke a cluster of ideas, which is different for different people.  Some games have more of these things, some have less.  Trying to draw a sharp distinction is a waste of time; it makes way more sense to talk about specific features of the game's mechanics, its play advice, the group's play style, and so on.

So, if you imagine a hypothetical game where players choose plausible characters in a plausible situation, the GM moderates PC intents and world events trying to make things plausible and as naturalistic as possible, and the game is played out in real time - you'll most likely get a session that bores everyone to tears.

Game play invariably makes concessions from this. If we only play once a week for three hours, we make all manner of contrived decisions to try to make the session interesting. We contrive the choices our PCs make (perhaps to be a thrill-seeker rather than someone who longs for the cobbler's life), we contrive the environment (so the wilderness is stocked to a ridiculous density with novel and interesting challenges and treasures), we manipulate the pacing (so we resolve a day's travel in the wilderness in a few minutes, but zoom in for impromptu dialogue, investigating tracks, or a fight) to focus on the more interesting content.

One thing I find is that a game is more likely to be considered a story game the more attention it draws to this contrivances.

Pacing for example - striking camp, setting off for a day's trek through the forest, rolling a random encounter and finding wolf tracks, investigating.  There's a clear discontinuity in pacing. But if you go so far as to call the investigation of wolf tracks a scene, then you've invoked story-telling language. The resulting play style might be identical to games that don't refer to 'scenes', but you've moved into story land in terms of your game's associations.

Some games, of course, hang mechanics on scenes, doubling down on this language. Bleeding in Burning Wheel Gold, for example (which is super deadly), progresses in scenes. Now you can't ignore the story language, it's part of how you have to think about bleeding.

Another example is choosing a campaign.  Most groups hem and haw about what they want to play next, who the characters are and the sorts of challenges the characters will face. When you sit down to play Shadowrun, for instance, there's a definite well-worn path of who's likely to be in the party and who they're likely to be shooting at or running from.  If a game makes this explicitly part of the setup, however, (like Fiasco does), then it calls explicit attention to player authorship of the world, so again the association is increased.

Players often do quite a bit of worldbuilding in their character backstories, for instance, and GMs quite often ask players things about their characters long after play has started. Players often lobby for continued and expanded relevance of their backstories (e.g. "Say, GM, I'm from this town, do I recognize some of these peasants?").  When this gets encoded in the rules (e.g. BW's circles mechanic) then the whiff of story increases, even if it's just encoding a totally normal play occurrence.

Now, again, I'll underscore that I'm not saying all differences between games are cosmetic, some games hang mechanics on these explicitly named concepts.  (Some do a little, some do a lot, making a spectrum.)

The other is the GM's description of his or her rationale for making certain choices. In some moments, the GM might be making choices without regard for how interesting the outcome is to anyone present, only 'what would happen.'  Sometimes GMs take player suggestions because, Steve's right, it would be hilarious if Wazard's hand got stuck in that portable hole.  Sometimes GMs skip past stuff to move things along, "Okay, guys, just buy whatever you want from the equipment list while you're in town." Sometimes GMs make choices differently because it's the beginning or end of the session, or based on a gut feel about what would happen to the party if they made this or that choice.

Some games, groups, or play styles embrace using poetic or story logic for what would happen next.  (Like, a thug who shot out the tires of his last victim getting a flat tire on his way home, because that's funny or whatever.)  Games that do this a lot tend to become self-referential; concepts and themes recur as participants try to bring it to a satisfying conclusion that ties up loose ends (or leaves them poignantly unresolved), like a movie might.

Thing is, people basically suck at explaining/understanding their own decision-making processes (though we're great at coming up with post hoc stories about that fit the evidence we choose to remember), so I don't put much stock in our ability to quantify our biases when about how we make GM decisions.

There certainly are huge stylistic differences, but I suspect it's a broad, fuzzy spectrum, and that most people who believe they're clinging to principled heuristics are talking out their ass.

Now, I know there are folks that disagree on the next point, but I think pacing is a big one.  A lot of more story- or character-focused games I've played seem to consciously be trying to skip to the key moments of significant plot or character developments.

Rather than letting them emerge organically over a longer period of more naturalistic play, the games, pacing is an explicit ingredient in the GM choice of resolution options. D&D's 'take 20' a mild example of this - we decide ahead of time that searching for secret doors for an hour is going to be boring, so we have a mechanic that lets us skip that. Some are much more pronounced, like games that have scene economies (both Fiasco and Burning Empires, for instance, have limits on the number of scenes of various types that players can initiate).

I don't have much to add, because I think the definition of "narrativist" changes from web-forum to web-forum too much to allow people to talk about the same thing much of the time, but I'll say that I find fuseboy's post really well-thought out and interesting.

From the horse's mouth (none other than the father of the OSR, Ron Edwards):

QuoteStory Now

Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be addressed in the process of role-playing. "Address" means:

Establishing the issue's Explorative expressions in the game-world, "fixing" them into imaginary place.

Developing the issue as a source of continued conflict, perhaps changing any number of things about it, such as which side is being taken by a given character, or providing more depth to why the antagonistic side of the issue exists at all.

Resolving the issue through the decisions of the players of the protagonists, as well as various features and constraints of the circumstances.

Can it really be that easy? Yes, Narrativism is that easy. The Now refers to the people, during actual play, focusing their imagination to create those emotional moments of decision-making and action, and paying attention to one another as they do it. To do that, they relate to "the story" very much as authors do for novels, as playwrights do for plays, and screenwriters do for film at the creative moment or moments. Think of the Now as meaning, "in the moment," or "engaged in doing it," in terms of input and emotional feedback among one another. The Now also means "get to it," in which "it" refers to any Explorative element or combination of elements that increases the enjoyment of that issue I'm talking about.

There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s). Story Now has a great deal in common with Step On Up, particularly in the social expectation to contribute, but in this case the real people's attention is directed toward one another's insights toward the issue, rather than toward strategy and guts.

That quote from Ron really nails it:

QuoteTo do that, they relate to "the story" very much as authors do for novels, as playwrights do for plays, and screenwriters do for film at the creative moment or moments.

In other words, there is a conscious awareness that something is being created, live, at the table, and this part is key: not only through the act of roleplaying, but also through the act of authorship.

Is is that simple, yeah it is.  In a traditional roleplaying game, your job is to roleplay your character.  In a narrative roleplaying game, your job is to roleplay your character and author the emerging story.  So if your game contains mechanics that allow the player, not the character, to influence events through something other than character-driven choices, then you have a narrative game.

Any game can be played in a narrative fashion, all it requires is a mindset of the players to have an agenda and decision process that is not their characters and focused on making a good story.

Many narrative games, however, cannot be played in a non-narrative manner, or I should say, in an in-character immersive manner, because the game mechanics require you to make decisions from a point of view outside the character.  Some games make these mechanics optional or easily removed, in others they are baked into the fundamental mechanics.

A metric fuckton of Sturm und Drang has been expended on this site over the debate as to whether a roleplaying game that requires you through non-optional mechanics to not roleplay should be classified differently.

Storygames, on the other hand, are first and foremost about the story, and the mechanics are usually some form of method used to determine authorship.  The reason Apocalypse World set the Storygames world on fire was it brought roleplaying back to Storygames.  Sure, it's chock full of narrative mechanics, but many of them are meant to be used while playing the character, instead of being completely divorced from the character.

Goddamn you CRKrueger. Now you made me think.

I don't think Ron's own Sorcerer game has authorship mechanics of that sort it it is considered narrativist ( I think). You can still act as your character, and through your character in service of the story.

Maybe it is in the essay, but I've  read Ron say somewhere that narrativist play is about hard choices addressing the premise. If I can find the quote, I'll link it.

Quote from: tenbones;860182Goddamn you CRKrueger. Now you made me think.

:hatsoff:

I agree with some of what Fuseboy wrote above.  But "contrivances" as he puts it, can be done for many different reasons.

WFRP1 had Fate Points.  However, the conceit was that the characters were special, recognized by the Gods as people who could affect things in the war vs. chaos and so were harder to kill.  They could only be used to escape death, so the player really didn't have any options as to choose when to use them or not.  They weren't a resource that fueled any point economy.  If your character went out foiling cultists attempts to destroy the world, you probably used them up and got them refilled through incredibly important actions.  As written, it is an OOC mechanic, but can easily be made completely IC by having the GM keep tracks of Fate Points assigned and used, thus with no knowledge of how many Fate Points left to use, the player can not make choices based on that fact.

Shadowrun 1-3 had Karma Points, which functioned like experience, but also could be placed in a Karma Pool, which allowed for a pretty complete set of standard Luck Point perks.  Rerolls, guarantee success, etc...  However, is Karma a narrative mechanic divorced from the setting?  We can argue this I guess, but the answer is NO.  If you look at how magic works in Shadowrun and what originally was a sister system set in the past, Earthdawn, and you look at certain things done by ancient beings that existed in both systems (the Harlequin adventures) then you see that Karma is a "thing" in the world, some form of cosmic ephemera that all "Name-giver" species have.  Shadowrun 4-5 - completely different animal.

Moving on from Karma, there's a difference between what happens in a Shadowrun game, or a GURPS game based on Heat, and Fiasco.  In Shadowrun, you run into the same types of people because that's the type of work you do.  You need someone who can kill things, both up close, personal and silent as well as full-blown mil-spec rock and roll.  You need a computer guy.  You need a security guy.  You need someone who can perform certain magical offense, defense and utility.  You need a face guy.  But, you may not need them all at the same time.  The nature of what you're doing determines what you need.

If someone is playing a "Cyberpunk genre" game, then you need a Case and a Molly because "That's What Cyberpunk Genre Means".  That's the whole point of Fiasco, we begin from the first principles of "We're about to kind of roleplay through a Cohen Brothers movie."  The genre-aware narrative metalayer is there from the getgo.  Which is kind of necessary for a one-shot party game, not so much for a long-term roleplaying campaign.

If someone is playing in my Shadowrun campaign, they might have started as a Shadowrunner in Seattle, but are now an underground rocker living in LA fighting against Aztlan.  Or they're a shadow mechanic/gunsmith, doing custom work for gangers, runners, mercs, and corpers alike.  Or they run a club/heavy duty shadowrunner hostel out in the Redmond Barrens, with enough connections to keep the Corp Council from dropping a Thor Shot on them...barely.  You can do anything you want, and the world will respond in a way that makes sense for that world, which has an emergent history different from all other Shadowrun campaigns.  There is no "you're the {genre role here}".

Pacing contrivances are pretty common, but they usually arise from an abstraction of the math to keep everyone sane...or they are there to fit a narrative construct.

• Take 10 and 20 is there simply to prevent the "I roll until I make it." and shortcut the process.
• WFRP3 clearly separates scenes in the modules with mechanically defined rest breaks in order to construct and deliver a narrative experience.
• Shadowrun Lifestyles aren't pacing, but a generic abstraction for the purposes of math and preventing having to make a "20xx Price Guide for Everything That Exists."
• Shadowrun contacts are an OOC mechanical abstraction of personal relationships.  To what degree the player and GM use the mechanics of Contacts as opposed to the player simply interacting is dependent on game version.
• RQ6 has a Luck Point mechanic which is not solidly tied to setting like WFRP1 Fate Points or SR Karma, and a Passions system which is more of a personality mechanic that isn't tied to the setting like Earthdawn's were but also aren't as mechanically supported and narratively focused like The Riddle of Steel.  Based on everything you know about me, you might say "How can you like RQ6?  Well, I can play with or without Luck Points and Passions and use them exactly how I see fit and all the core task resolution mechanics aren't affected at all.

Bundling every abstraction from minute-by-minute play into "contrivance" or every type of mechanic other than pure task resolution as "narrativium" is easy shorthand, but it masks the true purpose and intent behind the mechanic, which is important in the more specific discussion of why those games use those mechanics and why or why not, players and GMs chose to play those games based on those mechanics.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860191I agree with some of what Fuseboy wrote above.  But "contrivances" as he puts it, can be done for many different reasons.

I think we're using the words slightly differently, so bear with me.  I'm going to set aside for a minute mechanics that let players control the world (which I agree are worthwhile distinction).

Let me refer specifically to the free-form decisions that the participants make - what personality should I play, how should my dude react to that, would Mr. Boss send his goon after the party, if so, when would they kick in their door, etc.

By 'contrived', I mean that the participants are unconsciously making these decisions to support an artificially narrow slice of the human experience within the setting, for example with a sustained, abnormally high level of excitement and conflict.  (Both in terms of the character's life and in terms of the moments that we choose to focus on.)

We're so good at cooperating in this way that we do it without thinking about it. It becomes second nature, so instinctive that we can actually tell ourselves that we're just playing our characters in a naturalistic way.

And yet, when I look at the multi-year D&D campaigns that somehow never take a two month detour through cooking school, or helping the villagers plough the fields for six sessions of a difficult autumn (however much our characters are supposedly) or a nine-session respite from monster attacks .. it seems like we had to be nudging it into that groove all along.

The fact that we have special words for it (e.g. 'genre', 'fast paced') doesn't make it less contrived, only a familiar, subliminal contrivance.  (Which is fine, obtrusive contrivances seem .. contrived!)  In fact, the whole idea of a role-playing game's 'genre' is to help us all tacitly contrive in the same manner without having to talk about it during play.

'Contrived' sounds like a pejorative, I just mean that it wouldn't happen without a lot of collaboration from the folks around the table.  The genre- and pacing-aware metalayer is there, merely invisible.

Again, I'm not talking about narration-sharing mechanics, I think that's clearly a separate category.  But when someone tries to claim that they're playing their character in a fundamentally distinct way than someone playing out a Fiasco scene, I think that's a pretty tough claim to prove.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860178Any game can be played in a narrative fashion, all it requires is a mindset of the players to have an agenda and decision process that is not their characters and focused on making a good story.

Many narrative games, however, cannot be played in a non-narrative manner, or I should say, in an in-character immersive manner, because the game mechanics require you to make decisions from a point of view outside the character.  Some games make these mechanics optional or easily removed, in others they are baked into the fundamental mechanics.

I think that is a key difference for me. The 'narrative' games feel like their rules force me into a relatively narrow playstyle... whereas with 'traditional' games I feel free to dip in and out of various styles.
I really don't need rules to reinforce what most 'narrative' games are trying to pull off. I was in a BRP game over the weekend that was every bit as 'narrative' as a person could want (I think, maybe)... but there were no extra rules in place... it's just how the group ran with it (it was actually a lot hammier and metagamey than I usually prefer).

Quote from: Simlasa;860229I think that is a key difference for me. The 'narrative' games feel like their rules force me into a relatively narrow playstyle... whereas with 'traditional' games I feel free to dip in and out of various styles.

To me most Narrative Games read either like a DiY toolkit or a Adventure Path/Campaign Setting then a RPG proper. The mechanic for the most part consist of cute dice tricks rather than a representation of the odds of how often various actions succeed or event occur in the setting.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;860174From the horse's mouth (none other than the father of the OSR, Ron Edwards):

Well that's a whole lot of words that in a rather unclear way say nothing. It's ironic that a guy who was so interested in story was so bad at writing prose.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860178In a traditional roleplaying game, your job is to roleplay your character.  In a narrative roleplaying game, your job is to roleplay your character and author the emerging story.  So if your game contains mechanics that allow the player, not the character, to influence events through something other than character-driven choices, then you have a narrative game.

CRKrueger, on the other hand, I find quite clear.

Quote from: fuseboy;860220By 'contrived', I mean that the participants are unconsciously making these decisions to support an artificially narrow slice of the human experience within the setting, for example with a sustained, abnormally high level of excitement and conflict.  (Both in terms of the character's life and in terms of the moments that we choose to focus on.)

We're so good at cooperating in this way that we do it without thinking about it. It becomes second nature, so instinctive that we can actually tell ourselves that we're just playing our characters in a naturalistic way.

And yet, when I look at the multi-year D&D campaigns that somehow never take a two month detour through cooking school, or helping the villagers plough the fields for six sessions of a difficult autumn (however much our characters are supposedly) or a nine-session respite from monster attacks .. it seems like we had to be nudging it into that groove all along.

I think that you underestimate the level of conscious choice in most, if not all, of the decisions that you label as unconscious.

Of course people usually choose to play a character who is a thrill seeker or a rebel or is plagued with wanderlust. Because we consciously choose to play an adventurous game, not a mundane game. Because most of us live mostly mundane lives and when we roleplay we want something a little different. If we didn't we probably wouldn't have time to roleplay as we'd be spending every waking hour founding a Fortune 500 company or climbing Everest without a guide or sailing pirate infested waters for the thrill. The notion that anyone is making the choice to play exciting characters in an exciting setting unconsciously seems rather difficult to support. We all know we are choosing exciting characters over dull characters don't we?

I think you are also underestimating or ignoring games like Runequest that include players running ordinary (for their world) characters. Sure my Runequest barbarian can cast spells, but so can everyone else in his culture and so can almost everyone else on the planet. So in terms of the Runequest world, he’s normal, even ordinary. And the BRP Viking campaign does include the farmer PCs planting crops. Though we obviously don't play that out on a minute by minute basis.

Time gets compressed or expanded to serve the needs of play. Pendragon uses the pacing mechanic of one adventure per game year, to allow time to pass quickly enough for generational play. That was a conscious design decision that is explicitly talked about in the rules. And when we played Star Wars, even though the game didn't require it, we included down time for our characters because a years-long game that runs like 24 the whole time seemed silly to us. We figured even our adrenaline junky PCs needed a break. So we consciously included downtime for the characters. Some of which was played out with the exciting drama of cooking a meal, going on a date, hanging out at a favorite bar, sailing on a nice day, going to the beach, or shopping. Again, we all know we are choosing this pace and I think we all know why we are choosing the pace we choose. Don't we?

Quote from: fuseboy;860220But when someone tries to claim that they're playing their character in a fundamentally distinct way than someone playing out a Fiasco scene, I think that's a pretty tough claim to prove.

Why?

Someone came up with Fiasco to do something different, right? If everyone was doing the exact same thing unconsciously there'd be no need to invent Fiasco. And there certainly seems to me to be an obvious difference between someone consciously fitting character choices to a predetermined outcome and finding out the outcome based on (mostly) unfettered character-based choices (conscious or unconscious). And when I choose for my character to do something for non-character based reasons,* I’m aware that I am doing that as I’m doing that. Or so it seems to me. And I’m certain that disproving that I am aware of the decisions I’m making when I make those decisions would be really tough to do.


* Like to meet a time constraint, or to let someone else have some more spotlight time for their PC, or because I think that one choice that my character might choose could lead to a TPK and another choice that my character also might choose won’t do that. I’m aware of those reasons when I make my choices. Aren’t most people?

Quote from: Nexus;860051What makes a game "Narrativist" (or a Story game or are they different things in your opinion?) to you? Do you consider it a binary situation or is there a spectrum between "traditional" and narrativist? And what would you consider narrativist mechanics?

I prefer to call them storytelling games (STGs). Storytelling games are defined by narrative control mechanics: The mechanics of the game are either about determining who controls a particular chunk of the narrative or they're actually about determining the outcome of a particular narrative chunk.

This can be contrasted to roleplaying games, which feature associated mechanics -- i.e., the mechanical choices you're making are directly associated with the choices made by your character. (Thus, the act of playing a roleplaying game is, in fact, the playing of a role.)

Neither of these are purity tests. You can drop some narrative control mechanics (like Karma Points) into an RPG and people are still going to recognize it as an RPG. You can drop some associated mechanics into an STG and it's still going to play as an STG. (Although STG fans are generally more flexible on this point because the actions of a particular character is, in fact, one form of narrative control.)

Roleplaying Games vs. Storytelling Games (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/6517/roleplaying-games/roleplaying-games-vs-storytelling-games)

Quote from: Bren;860259I think that you underestimate the level of conscious choice in most, if not all, of the decisions that you label as unconscious.

Yes, I concede the point.

What I'm trying to establish is that 'playing my character' for their inherent truth is only one part of traditional play, there's an ongoing process of constraining the character's choices and evolution (consciously, unconsciously, habitually, whatever) to support the genre, pacing, etc.  I think we're on the same page about this.

Quote from: Bren;860259And when I choose for my character to do something for non-character based reasons ... Like to meet a time constraint, or to let someone else have some more spotlight time for their PC, or because I think that one choice that my character might choose could lead to a TPK and another choice that my character also might choose won't do that.

This is a good list, and I think if we noodled on it a bit, we'd find half a dozen other items to add to it.

Quote from: Bren;860259And there certainly seems to me to be an obvious difference between someone consciously fitting character choices to a predetermined outcome and finding out the outcome based on (mostly) unfettered character-based choices (conscious or unconscious).

To talk about Fiasco specifically for a moment, I notice a few different things going on when I'm involved in a scene. I'm advocating for what I think the character wants, and I'm sometimes choosing to portray someone with very different decision-making habits than my own (which is usually a conscious effort).

At some point during the scene, the audience will tell me whether I get what I want.  I'm not sure this is materially different than rolling the dice to see whether I hit and being told I fail.  Now, there's a little bit of time between the audience choice and the scene having definitively rendered the failure.  Like I might be at the vet's office, struggling with the vet to force him to give me narcotics; I'm then told I fail.

In D&D, I might just let the dice stand and narrate nothing (since the mechanical implications of a miss are pretty clear). The GM might narrate the failure, and I've also seen players get into it and describe what it looks like as their PC fumbles (or blushes, or drops the glass vase, or whatever).  I see what happens in Fiasco as the same type of failure-narrating activity, just in a greater quantity - I might shove the table aside threateningly, accost the vet, grab him by the lapels, say a line of dialogue, but then state that I slip on a spilled urine sample (at which point the vet player might take over, narrating hauling me out of the back door and tossing me into the alley or whatever).

Now, I'm not trying to minimize that this doesn't feel weird to some players, there are lots of players that don't ever describe aspects of their characters failing.  I'm just trying to establish that "role-playing" is made of up lots of different kinds of statements, and that many weird-seeming games just have them in different proportions, rather than being a materially different kind of role-playing.

The games most strongly self-identified as narrative seem to focus on theme in the literary sense. Creating a character with a particular internal conflict defines what the game is about (or one thing, since there are usually multiple player-characters). Any "victory condition" in a scenario is a distant second in importance to exploring that theme. There is no winning or losing in that process, though there may be a criterion of completion (as a dramatic story has a climax and denoument).

This exploration of a character's values is I think an aspect of role-playing that is often done without especial "narrative game" techniques. What those techniques facilitate is shaping the external world to correspond to the internal agon, ensuring that events stay to the point of that exploration rather than sidetracking or prematurely aborting it.

Note that theme is not identical with a preconceived plot. To be most interesting, the questions should not have settled answers at the start of play.

The same techniques, though, can be used to set up anything as most important, not necessarily theme in that highbrow sense. They can create a situation tailored instead for advantage in pursuing an external victory condition.

Since that objective is of negligible importance in the designer's intended context, the rigging can be so powerful that it effectively ensures victory. Then the challenge that many of us consider the essence of a game is diluted to the point that what's left is just an exercise in wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Another consideration is that de-prioritizing simulation of the external world can greatly simplify the abstraction. A factor such as "hardened mercenary" or "needy and manipulative waif" can stand in for a host of game stats. Going further, mechanical modeling of all sorts of situations can be reduced to a rule for determining who has "narrative authority" in the case at hand.

Original D&D and T&T were already pretty lightweight, leaving a lot to the participants' judgment. The GM's power as final arbiter included the freedom to let others have their say and delegate decisions. In my experience, the "social contract" has commonly brought in a lot of collaboration even if it's not always formal. People's opinions on what's plausible or entertaining have normally shaped the adjudication of events.

A  relationship of trust and good communication among the players and GM can thus do what might otherwise require many pages of formal rules.

I've seen a tendency for players in their first few years to seek ever more elaborate abstractions, then go in the opposite direction. Players very experienced not only with the game form but with each other often go notably free form even if they have, e.g., a stack of RoleMaster or GURPS books at hand.

It does not follow that their priorities are otherwise in line with "story game" ones. They might find some handbooks designed with the latter in mind convenient, since they are accustomed to ignoring 'rules' that don't fit their game (however essential the handbook authors might think them).

As CRKrueger says, contrivances can be made for many reasons. Two players may have different reasons for doing the same thing, neither of which is what the mechanic's designer had in mind.

Besides how things may be meant to call attention to themselves, there's the matter of what we're used to. Before ever encountering an RPG, we've probably learned that games tend to have peculiar and arbitrary rules. If something is fun simply as a game, we may get so used to it that however it theoretically conflicts with role-playing matters little to us in practice.

When something is not what we're used to as "the way to play an RPG" then it can loom large even if there's a reasonable argument that it's not remarkably further from role-playing than what we are used to. It may be to others one of the innocuous things they take for granted from formative experience.

What really matters is how it affects the experience of the person in question. As the proverb goes, one man's meat is another man's poison.

Which is which is a live and potentially consternating question when strangers get together. A group of individuals who have been playing together for years is more likely to have a common understanding that doesn't need (and may not easily reduce to) formal statement as a philosophy.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860191WFRP1 had Fate Points.  ... As written, it is an OOC mechanic, but can easily be made completely IC by having the GM keep tracks of Fate Points assigned and used, thus with no knowledge of how many Fate Points left to use, the player can not make choices based on that fact.

Actually, all it takes to make it IC is simply not to pretend that the character does not possess the information. If a dude can ask, "Lo, god o'mine, how many lives have I got left?" and get the answer, then there's no 'OOC' issue to start with.

In any case, it's just the same as Hit Points in games such as D&D. I reckon most people take for granted player knowledge of their own characters' HP, regardless of whether this is stipulated in the handbook.

If people decided that a Cleric should not know that he can cast so many spells of given levels, then that decision would create an OOC issue if it were further decided to let the player know. Most people do not choose to create that problem, preferring instead to assume that character knowledge matches player knowledge.

Quote from: Bren;860259Someone came up with Fiasco to do something different, right? If everyone was doing the exact same thing unconsciously there'd be no need to invent Fiasco.

That makes sense to me. I'm not acquainted with Fiasco -- and I am acquainted with the periodic phenomenon of supposedly revolutionary game innovations that turn out to be reinventing a previous wheel -- but it does stand to reason that more than one somebody has found something distinctive there.

Quote from: fuseboy;860305I'm just trying to establish that "role-playing" is made of up lots of different kinds of statements, and that many weird-seeming games just have them in different proportions, rather than being a materially different kind of role-playing.

Well, what's actually going on in someone's head as they are doing something they call roleplaying and comparing that to what's going on in other people's heads as they do what they call roleplaying is difficult.  

I can only tell you the pattern I've seen.

Player who enjoys narrative roleplaying: Nah, there's no difference.
Player who does not enjoy narrative roleplaying: Um, yeah there is.

Make of that what you will.  

What I make of it is that some people, as I argued in the Roleplay thread always have a metalayer when they roleplay and enjoy integrating it actively, where as others seek to make that metalayer fade into the background as much as possible.

Task resolution, "Mechanics as Physics" rule systems seek only to determine success or failure of character's intent. There is no active engagement of the knowledge that we are playing a game, no interfacing with that meta-layer. But, heavy levels of abstraction (like Hit Points for a lot of people) make ignoring that meta-knowledge difficult.

Conflict resolution, bennie economies, narrative mechanics, genre conventions, all actively make use of the knowledge that we are playing a game, they engage directly with that meta-layer.

If what you desire while roleplaying is not to engage with that meta-layer at all, then yes, they are two very different things.

Quote from: fuseboy;860305What I'm trying to establish is that 'playing my character' for their inherent truth is only one part of traditional play, there's an ongoing process of constraining the character's choices and evolution (consciously, unconsciously, habitually, whatever) to support the genre, pacing, etc.  I think we're on the same page about this.

We're at least in the same section. ;)

QuoteThis is a good list, and I think if we noodled on it a bit, we'd find half a dozen other items to add to it.

We could, but to what purpose?

QuoteTo talk about Fiasco specifically for a moment, I notice a few different things going on when I'm involved in a scene. I'm advocating for what I think the character wants, and I'm sometimes choosing to portray someone with very different decision-making habits than my own (which is usually a conscious effort).

Advocating for the PC sounds very different to me than playing the PC. More like what goes on within a group of script writers who are collaboratively writing a script. While I agree that advocating for one's character occasionally happens during traditional RPGs, it is usually a briefer, more simple, and sometimes less overt process and it is clearly a different activity than playing one's character. Advocating to a group for one's PC is probably as close to deciding what kind of pizza to order as it is to playing your character - which is to say it's not the same thing at all.

QuoteNow, I'm not trying to minimize that this doesn't feel weird to some players, there are lots of players that don't ever describe aspects of their characters failing.  I'm just trying to establish that "role-playing" is made of up lots of different kinds of statements, and that many weird-seeming games just have them in different proportions, rather than being a materially different kind of role-playing.

I think that for some players describing how their character fails does seem like a narrative device. When I fail in real life, typically I don't decide how or in what manner I fail. The universe does that for me. So I think some players prefer the GM to take on the role of the universe and answer that question. So describing how one's PC fails feels unnatural to them.

And then there are some players who really dislike having their PC fail - especially at things they want their PC to be good at. So narrating how they fail focuses extra attention on the perceived incompetence of their PC and that is uncomfortable for those players.

As a player, I like narrating unusual failure nearly as much as I like narrating  unusual success. Sometimes more. I recall one example from a Star Trek game I played in back in the mid 1990s. One of my bridge crew characters was a Vulcan Science Officer who had a very high Sensors ability. He failed his roll in a situation that the GM, in hindsight, probably would have preferred not to have asked for a roll. Personally I didn't like the idea of that character failing to detect something with the ships sensors based on human error - after all he's not human. So without missing a beat,  I said, "Commander, I cannot detect the away team. This area of the planet posses unusual mineral deposits that are interfering with our sensors."

Now it was clear at the time that I was stepping into an authorial role. Since I was a co-GM in that game, it wasn't a particularly jarring action and I tried to make the creation as small as possible to get the effect I wanted by limiting the mineral deposits to "this area of the planet." And of course the GM could have overruled me had my little insertion messed with her setup.

Quote from: Phillip;860308In any case, it's just the same as Hit Points in games such as D&D. I reckon most people take for granted player knowledge of their own characters' HP, regardless of whether this is stipulated in the handbook.

Back when we first played OD&D we did consider having the GM both PC and NPC hit points and providing a general idea of their status, like just a scratch, slightly damaged, half damaged, very damaged, and nearly dead. We scrapped the idea as too complicated for the gain, but I have heard of other groups who have used a similar method. I agree that it's not the usual method of play though.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860323Player who enjoys narrative roleplaying: Nah, there's no difference.
Player who does not enjoy narrative roleplaying: Um, yeah there is.

Again, I find myself in the middle. I do enjoy narrative roleplaying (sometimes and to some extent), but the two are clearly different things with qualitatively different experiences.

Currently I have one player in our group who usually prefers not to know things that her character doesn't know. She finds that sort of OOC knowledge hard to manage. I have a couple of players who are pretty good at managing  OOC knowledge and keeping it (mostly) separate from the decisions they make as their PC. And I have one player who enjoys having the OOC knowledge and is just fine making "bad" decisions because the PC doesn't know what she knows.

In general, I think it is easier to introduce people to playing an RPG if they only need to focus on what their character knows and does than to have them constantly switching between taking on the the role of writer, director, and actor. And as you say, there are people who really prefer to be the character and to treat the character and the world as an imaginary reality.

Quote from: Phillip;860308In any case, it's just the same as Hit Points in games such as D&D. I reckon most people take for granted player knowledge of their own characters' HP, regardless of whether this is stipulated in the handbook.

Back when we first played OD&D we did consider having the GM both PC and NPC hit points and providing a general idea of their status, like just a scratch, slightly damaged, half damaged, very damaged, and nearly dead. We scrapped the idea as too complicated for the gain, but I have heard of other groups who have used a similar method. I agree that it's not the usual method of play though.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860323Player who enjoys narrative roleplaying: Nah, there's no difference.
Player who does not enjoy narrative roleplaying: Um, yeah there is.

Again, I find myself in the middle. I do enjoy narrative roleplaying (sometimes and to some extent), but the two are clearly different things with qualitatively different experiences.

Currently I have one player in our group who usually prefers not to know things that her character doesn't know. She finds that sort of OOC knowledge hard to manage. I have a couple of players who are pretty good at managing  OOC knowledge and keeping it (mostly) separate from the decisions they make as their PC. And I have one player who enjoys having the OOC knowledge and is just fine making "bad" decisions because the PC doesn't know what she knows.

In general, I think it is easier to introduce people to playing an RPG if they only need to focus on what their character knows and does than to have them constantly switching between taking on the the role of writer, director, and actor. And as you say, there are people who really prefer to be the character and to treat the character and the world as an imaginary reality.

Quote from: Bren;860349Back when we first played OD&D we did consider having the GM both PC and NPC hit points and providing a general idea of their status, like just a scratch, slightly damaged, half damaged, very damaged, and nearly dead. We scrapped the idea as too complicated for the gain, but I have heard of other groups who have used a similar method. I agree that it's not the usual method of play though.

Its the norm at any table where only the DM knows for certain the players HP. Seen it a few times here and there since at least the late 80s.

Moving from the theoretical to how discussions usually go,

If you like "narrative" games, any game you like you will find "narrativist" elements in.

If you don't like "narrative" games, any game you like you will be able to prove has no "narrative" elements in it.

Quote from: Omega;860366Its the norm at any table where only the DM knows for certain the players HP. Seen it a few times here and there since at least the late 80s.

It's the norm where it's the norm, eh? :p

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;860426Moving from the theoretical to how discussions usually go,

If you like "narrative" games, any game you like you will find "narrativist" elements in.

If you don't like "narrative" games, any game you like you will be able to prove has no "narrative" elements in it.

Baloney. You can speak for yourself, but not for everyone else.

Quote from: Phillip;860428Baloney. You can speak for yourself, but not for everyone else.

I speak from 10 years of watching people argue over this.  When the day ends, 99% of the time that's what it boils down to.

Quote from: Phillip;860427It's the norm where it's the norm, eh? :p

0.1% of the time it happens 100% of the time.

Quote from: Phillip;860428

QuoteIf you don't like "narrative" games, any game you like you will be able to prove has no "narrative" elements in it.

Baloney. You can speak for yourself, but not for everyone else.

What he's describing is behavior that occurs whenever you have people pushing  for some sort of absolute purity test when they aren't actually willing to live with the consequences of applying that purity test: They come up with all kinds of rationalizations for why things that obviously violate their purity test aren't "really" violations.

This isn't limited to RPG discussions. For example, I was talking to someone the other day who declared that any film which fails the Bechdel Test is misogynstic. I offered the counterexample of Gravity and I was told that the film "really" passed the Bechdel Test because Sandra Bullock's character is in an "unspoken dialogue" with her dead daughter.

Similarly, when it comes to purity-test RPG discussions the most typical get-out-of-purity-free dodge is to toss out some house rules to rewrite the game until it passes your purity test. You might not believe that this sort of thing happens, but there really are threads out there where will people will try to explain why a Karma Point mechanic in their favorite game isn't REALLY the same thing as an identical Karma Point mechanic in a game they don't care for.

(Yes, that was snark.)

Quote from: Justin Alexander;860446You might not believe that this sort of thing happens, but there really are threads out there where will people will try to explain why a Karma Point mechanic in their favorite game isn't REALLY the same thing as an identical Karma Point mechanic in a game they don't care for.

(Yes, that was snark.)

Justin snarky? Nah, really?

Seriously though, are you really contending that the use of Karma or Edge is the same in all 5 versions of Shadowrun or do you know it's really not, which is that why you're being uncharacteristically vague and non-specific, leaving a drive-by instead of an argument?  Or is the "identical Karma Point mechanic" referring to something else?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;860434I speak from 10 years of watching people argue over this.  When the day ends, 99% of the time that's what it boils down to.

If that's what anyone in this thread is specifically doing, than say so.

Well, I am in a position to know myself, what games I like, and what I'm inclined to say about them.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860466If that's what anyone in this thread is specifically doing, than say so.

The OP was asking my opinion, and my opinion is that most of the time it is an undefined term or poorly defined term that people use to either praise or damn a game.

Quote from: Phillip;860427It's the norm where it's the norm, eh? :p

No. Its the norm where the PCs dont know their HP.

Quote from: Omega;860562No. Its the norm where the PCs dont know their HP.

That makes more sense than what you wrote before.

Re: "Theme" and "StoryNow"

Note that while the Storygaming (as in the forum name) definition has been trotted out, there is a very peculiar intent that has not been mentioned. This peculiar intent was driving a LOT of the "Narrativist's" efforts.

The peculiar intent:
To use the method of roleplaying to elucidate moral responses from the players. That is what is "fun" and "story" and "theme" for Ron and the gang. Getting the people around the table to reveal something about their morality.
Note also, that the morality plays (pun intended) they were/are interested in are very firmly those of white middle-class/petit-bourgois origins, i.e. vulgar-Freudian schlock.

Ok, here are some more quotes from the father of the OSR:

Narrativism Essay (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html)

QuoteNarrativist Premises focus on producing Theme via events during play. Theme is defined as a value-judgment or point that may be inferred from the in-game events. My thoughts on Narrativist Premise are derived from the book The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, specifically his emphasis on the questions that arise from human conundrums and passions of all sorts.

QuoteNarrativist Premises vary regarding their origins: character-driven Premise vs. setting-driven Premise, for instance. They also vary a great deal in terms of unpredictable "shifts" of events during play. The key to Narrativist Premises is that they are moral or ethical questions that engage the players' interest. The "answer" to this Premise (Theme) is produced via play and the decisions of the participants, not by pre-planning.

QuoteA possible Narrativist development of the "vampire" initial Premise, with a strong character emphasis, might be, Is it right to sustain one's immortality by killing others? When might the justification break down?

Another, with a strong setting emphasis, might be, Vampires are divided between ruthlessly exploiting and lovingly nurturing living people, and which side are you on?

I'm still saying the same thing. But now, I've returned to my earlier usage; it's the only meaning for the term "Premise" in my model.

That bit about moral and ethical content is merely one of those personalized clincher-phrasings that some people find helpful. It helps to distinguish a Premise from "my guy fought a dragon, so that's a conflict, so that's a Premise" thinking. However, if these terms bug you, then say, "problematic human issue" instead.

Egri presents his Premises as flat statements, and I state them as questions. Using the question form isn't changing anything about what Egri is saying. Premise must pose a question to the real people, creator and audience alike. The fictional character's belief in something like "Freedom is worth any price" is already an implicit question: "Is it really? Even when [insert Situation]?" Otherwise it will fail to engage anyone.

what's narrativist about zero rpg (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?PHPSESSID=44c625ecb399e21eaef1fc589c3a6398&topic=27567.0;wap2)

QuoteAll that shit about Plot Points, narration, funky counters you trade around, anything like that, whatever, that people describe variously as "Forge games" or (ugh) "story games" and so on ... all of that is mere Technique. It's not trivial, as I'll explain in a minute, but no Technique is an Agenda, in and of itself.

That's right - you can have a game with all kinds of these wild and non-standard rules where you get to narrate the outcome of a roll if it's Tuesday, but on Wednesday you don't roll dice but bark at the moon to resolve combat ... whatever. And that doesn't make it Narrativist. That game, or more accurately, the way it runs most fun, could be facilitating any one of the Agendas.

Creative Agenda is definitely facilitated by System (best understood as how the various Techniques work synergistically) ... or rather, a given System might be good or bad at doing so ... but the point is that Creative Agenda is something the people playing want to do, not any intrinsic quality of any of the Techniques being employed.

QuoteSo to start with the Narrativism thing ... A lot of people say that Narrativism has "nothing to do with narrative." They are flatly incorrect. I often don't know what they mean when they say that. Sometimes it seems they're confusing narrative with narration, sometimes something else, whatever. With just you and me, here, I say that Narrativist play concerns the core emotional motor of experiencing and creative a narrative. So when you say, "its about moral dilemma or about addressing premise," (which happen to be the same thing, so the "or" makes no sense), that is about making a narrative through play itself.

Narrativism and Morality? (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?PHPSESSID=df2504d656f7d704d17343cd35645acc&topic=6564.0;wap2)

QuoteI also think that you may be reading "fixed answer" or "irrefutable" into my use of theme and/or morality as terms, much in the same way that Jesse Burneko has struggled with in the past. The theme that's produced by the viewer/experiencer's mind is his or her own thing; for it to be more than mere projection, the art form must present something novel or "clear" for the person's mind to work with. Two people may come up with different themes, but to do it at all, they had to wrestle with the same Premise.

QuoteThink of Premise as an unstable, intriguing, values-charged issue which a fictional situation has invoked. At this point, the situation is not resolved. The emotional attention is focused and ready. Upon resolution, wham-bo, a Theme gets constructed on the spot. Its content relies wholly on (a) the nature and circumstances of the resolution, which must involve character decisions; and (b) the actual values of the real person constructing the Theme.

Narrativist play absolutely relies upon establishing such a Premise and upon hitting those decision/resolution points during play. That is why its tagline is Story Now, just as the one for Gamism is Step On Up and the one for Simulationism is The Right to Dream. However, I must emphasize the "Now," rather the "Story." That's the key element.

Final points:

1. Your use of "values-charged" and my use of "moral and ethical" are synonymous. I'd rather not get into a tangle about who's right in that regard, but will concede to "values" in gentlemanly fashion.

2. All of the above stuff about Narrativism applies to Gamist play if you switch out the "issues/values" for "competence-based challenge to esteem." The Gamist essay is almost out, I swear, just waiting on a couple more readers' comments.

3. In role-playing, the people involved are simultaneously author and audience, unlike theater, movies, novels, etc. Therefore when I talk about a person "constructing" a theme, I am not talking only about the person who's playing the character - I'm talking about everyone who's participating in play.

Quote from: Settembrini;860732The peculiar intent:
To use the method of roleplaying to elucidate moral responses from the players. That is what is "fun" and "story" and "theme" for Ron and the gang. Getting the people around the table to reveal something about their morality.

Interesting take.

QuoteNote also, that the morality plays[ (pun intended) they were/are interested in are very firmly those of white middle-class/petit-bourgois origins, i.e. vulgar-Freudian schlock.

As opposed to say European poseur faux intellectual origins?

Quote from: Settembrini;860732The peculiar intent:
To use the method of roleplaying to elucidate moral responses from the players. That is what is "fun" and "story" and "theme" for Ron and the gang. Getting the people around the table to reveal something about their morality.

Interesting take.

QuoteNote also, that the morality plays[ (pun intended) they were/are interested in are very firmly those of white middle-class/petit-bourgois origins, i.e. vulgar-Freudian schlock.

As opposed to say European poseur faux intellectual origins?

Quote from: Bren;860776Interesting take.
As opposed to say European poseur faux intellectual origins?

Am I the only person who finds the 21st century un-ironic use of the term "petit-bourgois" hysterical?

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;860773Ok, here are some more quotes from the father of the OSR:

What a fucking windbag!

All those words as a roundabout way to say a Narrativist Premise is a moral or ethical question in the game that engages the players' interest. Of course if he'd made clear, direct statements instead of writing pages of obfuscating, pseudo intellectual drivel, people could have clearly understood his arguments and underlying premises and then clearly stated their refutations or their agreement.

q.e.d.

Nota Bene:

White middle-class vulgar Freudian Schlock ~ European poseur faux intellectual.
You say potato...

Quote from: Settembrini;860784q.e.d.

Nota Bene:

White middle-class vulgar Freudian Schlock ~ European poseur faux intellectual.
You say potato...

Since the Post Modernist or Deconstructionist academics are neither Freudian nor middle-class in their view points those aren't different names for the same thing.

Ah well, then we indeed have a difference. No, Ron & Gang are NOT french theory people.
I was not expecting that level of differentiation.

Quote from: Bren;860780What a fucking windbag!

All those words as a roundabout way to say a Narrativist Premise is a moral or ethical question in the game that engages the players' interest. Of course if he'd made clear, direct statements instead of writing pages of obfuscating, pseudo intellectual drivel, people could have clearly understood his arguments and underlying premises and then clearly stated their refutations or their agreement.

This is my take, without the invective. We just describe it as "problems that you can't just kill (unless your character is a psychopath)" or I think most people say "something other than killing things and taking their stuff". For us, those are the most interesting and memorable parts of the game, not the combat. YMMV and of course, some people just want to kill things and take their stuff.

Quote from: Tod13;860933This is my take, without the invective. We just describe it as "problems that you can't just kill (unless your character is a psychopath)" or I think most people say "something other than killing things and taking their stuff". For us, those are the most interesting and memorable parts of the game, not the combat. YMMV and of course, some people just want to kill things and take their stuff.

I guess Ron's belief was that trad rules systems did not support that agenda explicitly, but that people "drifted" the rules to do so.

I'm a bit confused, though, because his own Sorcerer game had rules that weren't far from trad systems.

I can see the difference, though, in a game like Trollbabe.

Ron Edwards wants to limit "Narrativist" to the highbrow theme-focused games, but I don't think that flies in practice. Even if all the group is interested in is plot, we can still be focused on telling a story -- and that is the big distinction versus a role-playing focus.

With apologies to Omega, what's actually usual from what I've seen is that players know HP data without assuming that their characters are aware of the concept. Like dealing with other 'stats', it's an abstraction in which we indulge as a fun game aspect on top of the role-playing aspect.

The difference is one of emphasis. The "acid test," I reckon, is whether we could play the game without one aspect or another.

I think it's easy to reduce a traditional RPG either to "pure role-playing" or "pure mathematical simulation". An example of the latter would be playing The Fantasy Trip in its original arena combat scenario, as a classic war-game in which the player is not especially identified with any one figure.

At that point, there's no real reason to call it an RPG rather than a war-game. (This is I think one reason many people prefer a limit of one character per player, not only in a given session but at any time in the campaign.)

The former (pure RP) is logistically easier with such a simple rules set as OD&D or T&T, but I've even played RoleMaster (with a real master of a ref) without knowing the game-mechanical details.

"Narrativist" games seem a lot more often to fall apart if players don't have both the narrative aspect and the mechanical aspect explicitly in hand. The role-playing aspect, however, is easily reduced to a level that's just part of narration.

Quote from: Phillip;860954Ron Edwards wants to limit "Narrativist" to the highbrow theme-focused games, but I don't think that flies in practice. Even if all the group is interested in is plot, we can still be focused on telling a story -- and that is the big distinction versus a role-playing focus.

You wanted to say middlebrow.

Quote from: Phillip;860954Ron Edwards wants to limit "Narrativist" to the highbrow theme-focused games, but I don't think that flies in practice. Even if all the group is interested in is plot, we can still be focused on telling a story -- and that is the big distinction versus a role-playing focus.

Something else to be aware of is that, generally speaking, each time Ron Edwards came back to a concept he would make that concept less useful than the last time he touched it.

Every time he came back to redefined Narrativism, for example, he kept revising it to more and more narrowly apply to his preferred style of gaming. He would then take everything that had previously been in Narrativism, shove it into Simulationism, and then simultaneously complain that Simulationism didn't make any sense.

I just got done tracing a similar progression for the term "fortune-in-the-middle": It started as a pretty interesting thought about two-step resolution mechanics. Each time Edwards came back to it, however, he would try to make it apply more and more to the GM's description of outcome. This made fortune-in-the-middle indistinguishable from fortune-at-the-end, which then prompted Edwards to continue further contorting the concept until any semblance of meaning had been lost.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;860942I guess Ron's belief was that trad rules systems did not support that agenda explicitly, but that people "drifted" the rules to do so.

I think that Ron was at best very confused about gaming and how most people play RPGs. You don't need to drift the rules of a traditional game to have the game include moral questions that the players are interested in. Its almost impossible not to include an opportunity for moral questions. Players may or may not be interested in certain moral questions. If they are interested, rules aren't required. If they aren't interested, rules can't force them to be interested.

Now I might want a game like Pendragon, that mechanizes certain traits and passions using a feedback loop system where acting Forgiving tends to make the PC become more forgiving in nature (reflected mechanically as an increase in the Forgiving trait and a corresponding decrease in its opposite Vengeful trait) while acting more Vengeful tends to do the reverse. But I don't require mechanical rules to have Vengeance and Forgiveness as themes in a game. I just need to have play occur in a setting where acts of vengeance or forgiveness are possible responses to the things that happen in play. Which is pretty much any setting ever. And players who care about that as a moral question.

Ron's writing strikes me as being like the output of the proverbial group of blind men trying to describe an elephant.

Quote from: Phillip;860956With apologies to Omega, what's actually usual from what I've seen is that players know HP data without assuming that their characters are aware of the concept. Like dealing with other 'stats', it's an abstraction in which we indulge as a fun game aspect on top of the role-playing aspect.

No need to apologize. Players knowing their HP is how I normally run a game.

But in games I've been in where the players disnt know. Pretty much the only way to go is the GM tracks it and just tells generalities of how the character feels health-wise. You have a "guess" as to how bad off you are now. But not an exact idea.

Is that more "narrativist"?

Quote from: Omega;861006Is that more "narrativist"?

It might be. On the other hand it might be intended to better simulate the real world experience that humans don't exactly know and can't countably and measurably track whatever the things are in the real world that hit points are supposed to represent in the game world. Whenever I've seen it proposed it has always been framed as being more representative of the real world, not as better emulating some genre conceit, literary theme, or narrative technique or format.

Quote from: Nexus;860051What makes a game "Narrativist" (or a Story game or are they different things in your opinion?) to you? Do you consider it a binary situation or is there a spectrum between "traditional" and narrativist? And what would you consider narrativist mechanics?

A player narrates, in a few sentences, what their character is doing and/or saying. Then another player narrates what they're doing in a few sentences. And so on. No pausing. No stalling. There is always a player narrating during a game. And it's all in-character.

Quote from: Omega;861006No need to apologize. Players knowing their HP is how I normally run a game.

But in games I've been in where the players disnt know. Pretty much the only way to go is the GM tracks it and just tells generalities of how the character feels health-wise. You have a "guess" as to how bad off you are now. But not an exact idea.

Is that more "narrativist"?

The last D&D-alike game I ran eventually morphed into the GM (me) rolling all dice and just describing the results to the players with no numbers.  This transition started with an experiment to see whether it would work for the players to not know their HP.

In the group, there was one player with strong narrativist leanings, both by his own admission as well as my assessment of his preferences.  This player was the primary person driving the shift towards numberless (and then player-facing-mechanic-less) play.

This doesn't prove that hidden HP are a narrativist practice, of course, but does provide a data point showing that they can at least co-exist within an individual's preferences.

Oh my. This takes me back to the days when the Forge was still going big time. The whole narrativist vs simulationist thing was such a big issue for many people.

I really don't think its practical to look at narrativism in gaming without thinking about it in relations to simulationist approaches because they are two aspects of roleplaying games that interact with each other to make what an rpg is - and thats something thate exists on a spectrum between both, in a place where that interaction is an rpg.

Neither at their extremes are rpgs - in a sense an extreme narrativist game is a storytelling game and an extreme simulationist one a wargame. They meet in an rpg buit you can stretch an rpg to a point more or less one way to each extreme with it still being an rpg. Its only when one of the two has effectively disappeared that it really becomes the other thing.

I have been playing about with that with 'Fortunes Wheel' http://www.fortuneswheel.co.uk/ (http://www.fortuneswheel.co.uk/) and using tarot cards with a pretty simple system.
It's more narrativist because its not rules heavy for trying to simulate the real world, the playing of roles and exploring an adventure are more important in it - for instance how far your projectile weapons can fire and how range effects damage and accuracy are really not taken as all that important at all and there are no rules for that in basic play. It does however still give a system for simulating things like damage and it can also in theory be bolted onto more simulationist play and in the final game if the Kickstarter gets funded and we get into production it will have play options that are a bit more simulationist. Even with those bolt ons it still will never be on the simulationist side of things.
However, the game plays well with many aspects of simulationist play and that actually largely how we have been playing it - we have used it as a system for adding richness to our Dresden Files games or Cthulhu for instance. Its playing with that tension - you can push it further one way or the other depending on how you want to play.

Really this is a tension that has existed in rpgs from the get go - it boils down to the meeting of Arneson and Gygax and fusing Arneson's more happy go lucky approach (he used to use rock paper scissor stone to resolve things) and Gygax's more rule intensive approach.

I would suggest that Arneson actually created roleplaying games and that with the narrativist and more character/story focused approach you just have a fantasy wargame. But without a set of rules you dont really have as much coherence to it. Its about balance. However in that balance you can have roleplaying with a very heavy narrativist approach where you really cant with a very heavy smiulationist one - because the act of playing a role is itself deeply narrativist. The bit that tends to get lost in a very heavily narrativist approach is not the roleplaying - its the game.

Watching people play with things like Rory's Story Cubes, they really are hardly games at all - they are just prompts for telling a story. telling the story does involve roleplaying to an extent because you get into a character and can create dialogue for them - you do go through some of the same activities. The same goes for Storyworld cards. In contrast, a wargame is clearly a game. Its just not roleplaying.

The key aspect is really not the roleplaying bit - its the game bit. What defines a narrativist game is that its a game not just storytelling.

Having said all that one thing that I got out of my time on the Forge was that really (as previous posters have implied) the whole narrativist vs simulationist thing gets interpreted pretty personally by people and there can be disagreement on what it actually is, what narrativism involves, what simulationism involves. Really though, to me, its all about roleplaying games... a bit of both to one degree or another.

I don't know about some of what you've said. Is the Once Upon A Time card game not a game because the cards are prompts for a story? How about parlor games where one person builds on whatever another person writes or says? I think that it's tough to draw a line.

How about people who dungeon crawl or hexcrawl by themselves? What is that (other than odd, lol)?

Quote from: Hybridartifacts;861200Oh my. This takes me back to the days when the Forge was still going big time. The whole narrativist vs simulationist thing was such a big issue for many people.

Again, we have a lot of words, but no definition. It would really help if you explained what you mean by "narrativism" without being self-referential. Because after reading what you wrote, I have no idea if your version of "narrative" is the same as what Ron Edwards meant or not.

Quote from: Bren;860780... a Narrativist Premise is a moral or ethical question in the game that engages the players' interest.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;861032A player narrates, in a few sentences, what their character is doing and/or saying. Then another player narrates what they're doing in a few sentences. And so on. No pausing. No stalling. There is always a player narrating during a game. And it's all in-character.

That looks a "pure ideal type" kind of semantics, not a relationship with the prominent trends at present.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;861207I don't know about some of what you've said. Is the Once Upon A Time card game not a game because the cards are prompts for a story? How about parlor games where one person builds on whatever another person writes or says? I think that it's tough to draw a line.

How about people who dungeon crawl or hexcrawl by themselves? What is that (other than odd, lol)?

Hmmm... it is something that kinda subjective. Where do you draw a line between something being a game and a way of telling a story? I would suggest a game has rules of play. If there are no rules of play - so Storyworld for instance has no rules and is not really a game, its a storytelling aid (and it doesnt really pretend to be a game either).

As I said though - its a range with extremes at the end though - some things are more story and less game than others but may still have a bit of game in them. Other things may be more game than story but still have a bit of story in them.

I have been chatting with some solo gamers lately - I suspect some similar differences of opinion exist amongst them as well.

Quote from: Bren;861214Again, we have a lot of words, but no definition. It would really help if you explained what you mean by "narrativism" without being self-referential. Because after reading what you wrote, I have no idea if your version of "narrative" is the same as what Ron Edwards meant or not.

Thats half the problem of discussions on the subject - to be honest I think Ron Edwards took the whole thing into a level of abstraction that made it essentially nonsensical.

To me, as I said, its about story focus (playing 'in character', creating narratives and story goals that you explore through story) vs simulation rules focus (trying to represent real world physics in game, getting accurate probabilities etc) - best shown by putting storytelling at one end of the spectrum and wargaming at the other with 'game' sitting in between. Thats the spectrum that has always been there in RPGs, and to be honest its the only ones thats really relevant in regards to play styles. Anything else is missing the point imo.

My idea of 'narrative' may not be what Ron Edwards meant - but people on the forge discussed endlessly what Ron Edwards meant and it never really seemed to get any clearer.

Personally I find "a spoken or written account of connected events; a story." to be a pretty good definition - its good enough for dictionaries and most people on the planet.

Quote from: Hybridartifacts;861421To me, as I said, its about story focus (playing 'in character', creating narratives and story goals that you explore through story) vs simulation rules focus (trying to represent real world physics in game, getting accurate probabilities etc) - best shown by putting storytelling at one end of the spectrum and wargaming at the other with 'game' sitting in between. Thats the spectrum that has always been there in RPGs, and to be honest its the only ones thats really relevant in regards to play styles. Anything else is missing the point imo.

Truth!

QuoteMy idea of 'narrative' may not be what Ron Edwards meant - but people on the forge discussed endlessly what Ron Edwards meant and it never really seemed to get any clearer.

I don't think it ever will. Can we just let the dude fade into obscurity already? It's really annoying when people dismiss games I like out of hand or miscategorize them because they have some elements that remind them of something tangentially related to this dude who hasn't been relevant to the hobby for years now.

Quote from: Hybridartifacts;861421To me, as I said, its about story focus (playing 'in character', creating narratives and story goals that you explore through story) vs simulation rules focus (trying to represent real world physics in game, getting accurate probabilities etc) - best shown by putting storytelling at one end of the spectrum and wargaming at the other with 'game' sitting in between. Thats the spectrum that has always been there in RPGs, and to be honest its the only ones thats really relevant in regards to play styles. Anything else is missing the point imo.

Whereas I see story as something that inevitably occurs when we retell or describe what occurred in play after the fact. And I see playing in character as simulating the character which is in sharp contrast to making a choice not from an in character perspective but from an authorial perspective of trying to push the character in a particular direction to create or explore a particular kind of story or narrative.

QuoteMy idea of 'narrative' may not be what Ron Edwards meant - but people on the forge discussed endlessly what Ron Edwards meant and it never really seemed to get any clearer.

That's a consequence of Ron being really poor at formulating and communicating defined terms. Either Ron just plain sucked at creating meaningful and coherent definitions (a definite possibility) or Ron intentionally created vague and obscure definitions (also a possibility).

QuotePersonally I find "a spoken or written account of connected events; a story." to be a pretty good definition - its good enough for dictionaries and most people on the planet.

It works for me, but that means that every game (as well as every real life sequence of events) when retold is a connected series of events and thus a story, which makes story an after the fact property of all games and of all life experiences. Which means that story is a property that is always true in a tautological or trivial sense.

Quote from: Bren;861511It works for me, but that means that every game (as well as every real life sequence of events) when retold is a connected series of events and thus a story, which makes story an after the fact property of all games and of all life experiences. Which means that story is a property that is always true in a tautological or trivial sense.

That's my view of things. Whether you're closer to the traditional end of the spectrum, or closer to the storygame section of the spectrum, story(or narrative) is an inescapable result of simply playing the game. I'm obviously a person who loves me some storygames, but when I see rules meant to "force" or "ensure" a story, I have to roll my eyes. And when I see people who should damn well know better spouting such nonsense, I have to wonder if they're being pretentious/disingenuous/seemingly ignorant/etc. on purpose. Or if they're the kind of person who likes to theorize and stuff, but has never actually played an RPG before.

It's very simple. Play the game; get a story. As you say, it's tautological. This is how it's always been. It's not something new that some special people introduced to the hobby some 20+ years after it began.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;861498Truth!

I don't think it ever will. Can we just let the dude fade into obscurity already? It's really annoying when people dismiss games I like out of hand or miscategorize them because they have some elements that remind them of something tangentially related to this dude who hasn't been relevant to the hobby for years now.

I am never happy when people dismiss a game based on what is essentially a preference. While it may not be their 'cup of tea' it can still be other peoples and have value in that.

There are games I dont enjoy and will not bother playing (Warhammer for instance) but others love - and more power to them! Part of this is accepting difference - that our ideas of what is 'worthy' are not universal.

Its really all about having fun doing something you like and can share with others who also like what you do. End of.

Quote from: Bren;861511Whereas I see story as something that inevitably occurs when we retell or describe what occurred in play after the fact. And I see playing in character as simulating the character which is in sharp contrast to making a choice not from an in character perspective but from an authorial perspective of trying to push the character in a particular direction to create or explore a particular kind of story or narrative.

That's a consequence of Ron being really poor at formulating and communicating defined terms. Either Ron just plain sucked at creating meaningful and coherent definitions (a definite possibility) or Ron intentionally created vague and obscure definitions (also a possibility).

It works for me, but that means that every game (as well as every real life sequence of events) when retold is a connected series of events and thus a story, which makes story an after the fact property of all games and of all life experiences. Which means that story is a property that is always true in a tautological or trivial sense.

You don't see a narrative as something that also occurs as it happens or is experienced? How then can we talk about an 'unfolding narrative'? Is not the experience of hearing or reading a telling of a story also 'unfolding' as it goes? experientially the difference is around interactivity. How can such a things as an 'interactive story' exist if not in process?

RPGs introduced a very interactive form into what for many is a very fixed literary form - but stories and narratives go back much further than the novel does and oral storytelling has always involved aspects of collaboration, interaction and discovery. That's something RPGs re-introduced and reconfigured to highlight that interactivity - but they still concern sequences of events in play, dynamically as you go that adhere strictly to most normal understandings of the word 'narrative'. An account can be 'spoken' by a group as well as well as by an individual and does not have to be fixed in the past, it can be in process. I can give you an account of what I am doing right now as I am doing it and speak or type it as I go, relating each part of what is happening together in a sequence in time...

Or is that what you mean when you talks about "an authorial perspective of trying to push the character in a particular direction" that sense of of an evolving narrative in process?

I agree Ron was never really clear, nor for that matter do I think anyone I have read actually achieved much if any real clarity on the subject based on anything Ron wrote.

Quote from: Bren;861511It works for me, but that means that every game (as well as every real life sequence of events) when retold is a connected series of events and thus a story, which makes story an after the fact property of all games and of all life experiences. Which means that story is a property that is always true in a tautological or trivial sense.

I tend to subscribe to the dictionary definition and I agree that it's tautological that you get a story as the end result of the game, when you look back on (and potentially retell) it.

Where I see the arguments mostly taking place is over the question of whether the act of playing the game is also inherently the act of telling a story.  That is to say, everyone agrees that an RPG produces a story after the fact, but not everyone agrees on whether it already is a story during play.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;861551That's my view of things. Whether you're closer to the traditional end of the spectrum, or closer to the storygame section of the spectrum, story(or narrative) is an inescapable result of simply playing the game. I'm obviously a person who loves me some storygames, but when I see rules meant to "force" or "ensure" a story, I have to roll my eyes. And when I see people who should damn well know better spouting such nonsense, I have to wonder if they're being pretentious/disingenuous/seemingly ignorant/etc. on purpose. Or if they're the kind of person who likes to theorize and stuff, but has never actually played an RPG before.

It's very simple. Play the game; get a story. As you say, it's tautological. This is how it's always been. It's not something new that some special people introduced to the hobby some 20+ years after it began.

I would agree with much of that. I dont think that rules ever really force a story or narrative (not quite the same thing btw) some do help one to form in particular ways though. They can affect the pattern and form of the narrative and make it more of a story form (that is with more recognisable aspects of story forms such as dramatic resolutions, character development, plot twists etc).

If what we have is 'see orc, attack orc, hit orc, hurt orc, orc hits back, hurts character,...blah blah blah...orc dies, character takes treasure' it is a narrative - but its a very unsatisfying and shitty story. That's why adventures add goals and have things like introductions, back story and plot points/events in them - they start to give it all more shape and transform a narrative into a story. You can add things to do just that and traditionally adventures tend to do that to one degree or another. This is precisely using something to force a story (though its more contextual than rules based). You can do that through rules as well though.

Quote from: nDervish;861593I tend to subscribe to the dictionary definition and I agree that it's tautological that you get a story as the end result of the game, when you look back on (and potentially retell) it.

Where I see the arguments mostly taking place is over the question of whether the act of playing the game is also inherently the act of telling a story.  That is to say, everyone agrees that an RPG produces a story after the fact, but not everyone agrees on whether it already is a story during play.

Essentially the question is if a story has to be a final shaped thing or can it occur in process.

I would suggest that this idea that it has to be a shaped complete thing is a by-product of the arrival of the novel and mass literacy. As such its an unusual and atypical form of story historically and culturally - a blip in storytelling. It is however one that has exerted a very powerful influence over people living in a particular culture in a particular moment in time - but I think rpgs were actually a step in disrupting and disturbing that influence. I think we are actually entering a post-novel era of storytelling where stories are no longer fixed things that have a sense of single authorship.

Quote from: Hybridartifacts;861595Essentially the question is if a story has to be a final shaped thing or can it occur in process.

I would suggest that this idea that it has to be a shaped complete thing is a by-product of the arrival of the novel and mass literacy. As such its an unusual and atypical form of story historically and culturally - a blip in storytelling. It is however one that has exerted a very powerful influence over people living in a particular culture in a particular moment in time - but I think rpgs were actually a step in disrupting and disturbing that influence. I think we are actually entering a post-novel era of storytelling where stories are no longer fixed things that have a sense of single authorship.

I disagree, and note that I did not say that it has to be a final state to be "story".  My personal position is that playing an RPG can be an act of telling a story, but it doesn't have to be.

If I am playing in-character, then I am not telling a story.  I am (through my character) engaged in an activity, and experiencing that activity, while describing the events for the benefit of others present.  Think of it like a bomb disposal technician on the radio to his support team:  "I'm 25 meters from the device...  10 meters...  5 meters...  It's a red metal toolbox, approximately 30cm long by 10cm high and deep.  I'm preparing to release the catch..."  Etc.  He's not telling the support team a story about disarming a bomb, he's disarming a bomb.

If, on the other hand, I'm playing in a style which is conscious of narrative flow, exercising established tropes, etc., then I am telling a story, even though the story is being built as I speak and may not have single authorship.

And, yes, there's a continuum between those two poles, it's not a bright line division.  And, also yes, it's absolutely possible (probably even common) for some people at the table to be playing an in-character role while others are telling a story.  But neither of these mean that playing an in-character role and telling a story are one and the same thing.

GEORGE: Yeah, but nothing happens on the show. You see, it's just like life. You know, you eat, you go shopping, you read.. You eat, you read, You go shopping.

RUSSELL: You read? You read on the show?

JERRY: Well, I don't know about the reading.. We didn't discuss the reading.

RUSSELL: All right, tell me, tell me about the stories. What kind of stories?

GEORGE: Oh, no. No stories.

RUSSELL: No stories? So, what is it?

GEORGE: (Showing an example) What'd you do today?

RUSSELL: I got up and came to work.

GEORGE: There's a show. That's a show.

RUSSELL: (Confused) How is that a show?

JERRY: Well, uh, maybe something happens on the way to work.

GEORGE: No, no, no. Nothing happens.

JERRY: Well, something happens.

RUSSELL: Well, why am I watching it?

GEORGE: Because it's on TV.

RUSSELL: (Threatening) Not yet.

I think that story is being confused with plot here. A story can literally be: "on the way to work, the train took a sharp turn and a dude hit his head with the door."

http://www2.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/intranet/englishbasics/Plot01.htm

Likewise, in the act of acting on the game, you do have a Story as a byproduct. Maybe you did not set out to tell one, just like I don't as I set out to go about my life, but a story is always in the making.

EVENTS 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.

Anyone of course is free to tell a story after the fact, even about a game of Canasta. That doesn't make Canasta a story-telling game! More to the point, D&D and its heirs are a variation on war-games, and were (and often still are) approached with the same expectation that what happens is whatever happens while the players pursue their in-role objectives regardless of whether that is dramatically satisfying from a literary perspective.

A story-telling game is one in which the process itself is a game of telling a story, in which telling a story is the INTENT and OBJECT of the proceedings.

The confusion here arises from the fact that the way we play an RPG is by talking about imaginary figures performing imaginary actions in an imaginary world. The TALKING part is what impresses people enough to get worked up about the "story" in a game of D&D even though it may be far more a mere wandering through "shit happens and then you die" than a video game of jumping and shooting through a sequence of levels with a carefully planned dramatic structure building up to a climactic "boss fight".

Is it some kind of weird 10th anniversary throwback you are re-enacting?

I was going to reply to a few things, but then figured this is easier.

Hybridartifacts: Since people were using the words "narrative" and "story" interchangeable prior to his arrival in this thread(barring some talk of Ron Edwards-specific jargon, of course), switching to definitions that people weren't using is shifting the goalposts. Also note that in arguing against something I said, he did the same thing with the word "force." Until such time as he argues against what we actually said, which would require using the words without changing the definitions mid-discussion, I really don't have anything more to say to, or about, him.

nDervish: 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. Also, 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.

Quote from: Hybridartifacts;861592You don't see a narrative as something that also occurs as it happens or is experienced?

I don't see that perspective as especially relevant to how I have played or want to play RPGs.  I want to find out what the story is, I don't want to direct where the story goes, nor do I want anyone else at the table authoring or directing a story. That preference is one reason I don't talk about an 'unfolding narrative.'

Quote from: Hybridartifacts;861592Or is that what you mean when you talks about "an authorial perspective of trying to push the character in a particular direction" that sense of of an evolving narrative in process?

I suppose it might be.

Authorial perspective is the player choosing what should happen next based on what that player thinks will make the most interesting story - whether "most interesting" means that what happens next aligns with rising action towards climax, the structure of three act plays, or 'my PC is a big, damn, hero' doesn't really matter to my assessment of the process of how the group finds out what happens next.

Quote from: nDervish;861593I tend to subscribe to the dictionary definition and I agree that it's tautological that you get a story as the end result of the game, when you look back on (and potentially retell) it.

Where I see the arguments mostly taking place is over the question of whether the act of playing the game is also inherently the act of telling a story.  That is to say, everyone agrees that an RPG produces a story after the fact, but not everyone agrees on whether it already is a story during play.

I disagree that playing an RPG is inherently or necessarily telling a story. People that claim that typically do so by equivocating on the various meanings of narrative and narration.

First they use the general meaning of narration as talking to say that people are narrating during the game (and hence are narrators). Next they say that the resultant of all the various things said is a narration. Finally, they use the meaning of narrative as a story in the literary sense, to claim that therefore people are telling a story.

Now telling a story might be what some players want to do and facilitating that desire seems to be the point of certain story game system mechanics. Such mechanics facilitate the player (and often the GM) acting as an author of a story. The mechanics may, for example, include a system for deciding what POV prevails in any conflict between the many potential POVs of the players (GM included) at the table or  may suggest, mandate, or encourage a literary type of structure in what happens at the table. A story directed by the GM or a story alternately created by people taking turns at the table's is just not something I find very interesting nor that I have much interest in doing.

I don't want someone directing what happens next in an attempt to tell a better story. I want to find out what happens based on the reality of the game world and the actions of the PCs in that game world. We may end up with a game that is dramatic, heroic, tragic, or comic but that is because the events that unfold are ones in which we see heroism or tragedy or comedy, in the same way that we can drama, heroism, tragedy, and comedy in the real world all around us despite the fact that most people, most of the time do not choose to act so as to make life more dramatic, heroic, tragic, or comic.

Quote from: Hybridartifacts;861595I think we are actually entering a post-novel era of storytelling where stories are no longer fixed things that have a sense of single authorship.

I'm very doubtful that a group created story (in the sense of a novel) will be a more satisfying or interesting story for a non-participant than something created by a hardworking, talented person with a single, coherent vision. Nor do I think we will see novels replaced by a rising tide of cooperative fan-fiction or original shared tales. To use an example from another form of entertainment, sing-a-longs have always been a thing. People like to do that. It's entertaining...as a participant--even when the participants are amateurs and maybe not too skilled. But as a non-participant, I'd much rather listen to skilled professionals. Most people would, which is one reason that we as a society are still willing to pay money to create and maintain a professional class of entertainers.

Quote from: nDervish;861596I disagree, and note that I did not say that it has to be a final state to be "story".  My personal position is that playing an RPG can be an act of telling a story, but it doesn't have to be.

I find myself in 100% agreement with all that you said here.

Quote from: Phillip;861660

The confusion here arises from the fact that the way we play an RPG is by talking about imaginary figures performing imaginary actions in an imaginary world. The TALKING part is what impresses people enough to get worked up about the "story" in a game of D&D even though it may be far more a mere wandering through "shit happens and then you die" than a video game of jumping and shooting through a sequence of levels with a carefully planned dramatic structure building up to a climactic "boss fight".

[strike]This tool.[/strike]
EDIT: Oops that should have read. "This too" as in this, also.

Quote from: Nexus;860051What makes a game "Narrativist" (or a Story game or are they different things in your opinion?) to you? Do you consider it a binary situation or is there a spectrum between "traditional" and narrativist? And what would you consider narrativist mechanics?

If a game's mechanics are designed in such a way that the enforced assumption is the player will be dealing with the events in-game from a third-person PoV or authorial standpoint, rather than a first-person PoV/actor standpoint, then I'd call that a "storygame".

Individual mechanics can go either way, and there is a full spectrum of what a game could include without overall being a storygame. But ultimately, yes, its a binary situation, insofar as the game itself. However, most games can be played as either, depending on how the GM and playgroup approach it. For example, its perfectly possible to play a storygame using the rules from AD&D, just as its possible to play Dungeonworld as a traditional rpg experience. Its only when it becomes impossible to play the game's rules without being forced to adopt an authorial stance that the game itself is a "Storygame", for example Smallville, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, or The Adventures of Baron Münchhausen.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;860434I speak from 10 years of watching people argue over this.  When the day ends, 99% of the time that's what it boils down to.

Young'un. I've been reading arguments over this for close to 25 years. A&E was chock full of em.

Quote from: TristramEvans;861806Its only when it becomes impossible to play the game's rules without being forced to adopt an authorial stance that the game itself is a "Storygame",

I'd say something can be in the storygame section of the spectrum well before that point, but fair enough.

Quotefor example Smallville, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, or The Adventures of Baron Münchhausen.

I get how that's true of Baron Munchausen, since it's literally nothing but narration, interrupting narration, and responding to interruptions to the narration, but how does it apply to the other two? I have both, have played both at least a little, and in actual play they handle scenes and conflicts in a pretty traditional manner.

I recall seeing the Baron Munchausen game and thinking it looked interesting, though I never got acquainted with it.

Less radically, R. Talsorian's Castle Falkenstein looked like a beautiful design that would probably lose some of its charm without some things that might put it in a 'hybrid' category -- at times role-oriented, at others perhaps authorial, both important.

Quote from: Phillip;861820Less radically, R. Talsorian's Castle Falkenstein looked like a beautiful design that would probably lose some of its charm without some things that might put it in a 'hybrid' category -- at times role-oriented, at others perhaps authorial, both important.

I got the same feeling from the SAGA Rules System, for Dragonlance: Fifth Age and the second Marvel game.

At one time, I kicked around replacing the card play in SAGA System (the Marvel version) with dice tosses. The designers seemed to see the card game as adding a narrative feature, but to me it was just a distraction from everything that wasn't a card game.

EDIT: The cards could actually be handy in their role of suggesting themes for improvisation. It's the more mechanical use that I found off-putting.

This seems to be pretty usual in my response to supposedly "story focused" game systems.

The Pool as I recall strips things down pretty well to the point, with an abstract system that is not too cumbersome. Trouble is, then the point itself seems almost pointless.

I'm tempted to think that a lot of 'narrativism' is really a kind of 'gamism'. (I'm not using those terms in Forge sense except by accident, just using them the way that in my experience most people understand them.)

Quote from: GeekEclectic;861818I get how that's true of Baron Munchausen, since it's literally nothing but narration, interrupting narration, and responding to interruptions to the narration, but how does it apply to the other two? I have both, have played both at least a little, and in actual play they handle scenes and conflicts in a pretty traditional manner.

Its been too long since I've read the games for me to give specific examples, but the way the mechanics are handled in both those games gives a precedence to abstract narrative conceits over emulating an actual interaction between a character and a "real" world. I 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?"

Phillip, they once wrote over on the Forge, "Scratch a Narrativist and you'll find a Gamist."

For whatever it's worth.

Geekeclectic, I don't know about the games you are discussing, but I've had people here adamantly insist that Dogs in the Vineyard is a traditional game that gets lumped into the indie/sg/Forge category out of pure tribalism. Ultimately I decided it was because they had a very different experience of traditional games so for them, the practices encoded in the rules and gming guidelines of DitV were pretty much what they already did. There may also have been some selective ignoring of the more SG elements of the game.

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

Combine that with the notion they had that Simulationists dont actually exist, and that means....everyone is just a gamist? So Forge Theory ultimately tells everyone that plays roleplaying games that they are gamers. Enlightening.

No, they didn't think Simulationists didn't exist. They just defined Sim in pretty much the suckiest terms possible, as either massively railroaded/illusionistic style gaming, or (rather vaguely) dry-as-dust enactment of tropes with no real investment in character or outcomes.

The conclusion was that if you claimed to like Sim, you were either playing a GM-led story and lying to yourself about it, or else you were probably subconsciously drifting your game's rules & practices toward Narrativism, with the implication that you'd be so much happier if you'd drop the Sim trappings of your game and play one of the Forge darlings.

To 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.

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.  
(http://data.quadbase.com/Docs/images/ChtTypesRadar.png)
(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 (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=861901&postcount=90), 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 (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=861901&postcount=90), 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.

Quote from: robiswrong;861916The 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.

I don't think that weighting is of much interest to most people. We don't care whether it's more, because it's like whether you'd rather be dead from lead poisoning or mercury; the 'dead' part either way is the big deal!

Quote from: robiswrong;861951I 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.

I agree with this, to the extent that I don't think proposition 2 really deserves anything but dismissal with laughter (though we may grant it more in generosity).

Some people might push that line, claiming story-focused games just do the same old thing only better, because they place a high value on being seen as following the herd even when they innovate, but I think that does the enterprise a disservice.

what defines a narrativist game?

Whatever label some one slaps on anything and proclaims it is. And eventually whatever a narrativist game was supposed to be stops having any meaning because it eventually means everything.

Doesnt help that the original declaration of what was supposed to be a narrativist game was so muddled that its anyones guess what was really meant.

Quote from: Bren;861955If 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.

Yeah, I might have misspoken. It wouldn't surprise me if I responded to something I perceived as going too far in the other direction with something more extreme than I actually intended.

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

Perhaps at some point, but not with that statement, I don't think.

QuoteNow 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.

Yes, I get that now. I thought he was describing a bomb disposal technician character, which would have been something different than actually being an IRL bomb technician on the job. Someone else mentioned playing hockey IRL, too, in what I believe was a similar context. I think both fail as relevant counterexamples, though, because an IRL person doing IRL things is not the same as an IRL person declaring the actions/statements of a fictional character.

QuoteFor 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.

I would say it's not telling a complete story in and of itself, but it is contributing to a story, certainly. An action statement here, a line of dialogue there, it all adds up. I think that layer of removal -- having to communicate the actions/statements of a fictional character to others -- makes it at least somewhat different from an IRL person simply doing an IRL activity.

QuoteIt is no more a story than a chess player saying "Pawn to King's Rook Seven" is telling a story.

I think you covered some important differences in the part I snipped out, but in addition to that, a chess piece is not a fictional character, nor is it meant to be perceived as one. Merely moving a piece on a board isn't the same thing as stating(I'd say the word "narrating" applies here) the actions and statements of a fictional character under your control, even if you do so in the first person.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;862292I think both fail as relevant counterexamples, though, because an IRL person doing IRL things is not the same as an IRL person declaring the actions/statements of a fictional character.

It is true that cutting the green wire yourself and declaring your imaginary character is cutting the green wire are two different acts. I think this difference is not as clear cut as it might at first seem.

• If your character in the game world is playing a roleplaying game and you declare that your character declares that her character declares....well you can see where this is going. The difference between performing an act and declaring an act to be performed can get a bit fuzzy in this recursive set of declarations.

• Also not all declarations of, or orders for, character actions are spoken. One can, and I have, acted out actions by my character.

One instance I recall was a character who had a magical amulet that granted wishes in a fairy tale sort of way. During the entire scene involving my character acquiring and using the amulet I kept my hand on an actual medallion that I happened to be wearing. I figured that so long as I was doing that in the real world as a representation of my PC doing the same thing in the game world, the GM couldn't argue that my character forgot to hang onto the amulet. For some reason which I can't now recall I thought there was some likelihood that someone or something would try to snatch my amulet. The fact that my character was had a very high strength (about 18 (94) or so) made me think that hanging on to the amulet was a pretty good way to prevent theft.
   Here too I think the separation of real world and game world actions is not quite so clear cut. Also, I was obviously not narrating anything in regards to my character who was also continuously holding his amulet.

QuoteI would say it's not telling a complete story in and of itself, but it is contributing to a story, certainly.

But in this sense, rolling the dice is also contributing to a story. Yet I think very few people would describe the act of rolling the dice as narration much less telling a story.

QuoteI think that layer of removal -- having to communicate the actions/statements of a fictional character to others -- makes it at least somewhat different from an IRL person simply doing an IRL activity.

While I agree they are different. I don't think the difference is particularly important or meaningful.

QuoteI think you covered some important differences in the part I snipped out, but in addition to that, a chess piece is not a fictional character, nor is it meant to be perceived as one. Merely moving a piece on a board isn't the same thing as stating(I'd say the word "narrating" applies here) the actions and statements of a fictional character under your control, even if you do so in the first person.

Here's where we don't seem to agree. While agree that my doing something in the real world and my having my character do something in the game world are not identical, I don't see any bright line between this sequence of possible actions.

• Moving the chess piece or ordering the movement of a chess piece and taking an opposing piece.
• Moving a unit on a board game map and ordering and rolling its attack.
• Moving a stand of miniatures (or an individual figure) on a sand table and ordering and rolling its attack.
• Moving a figure of a PC on a battle mat and ordering and rolling its attack.
• Moving a character in an imaginary space and ordering and rolling its attack.

This leads me to conclude that utterances directing a character in an imaginary space are more akin to moving a chess piece than they are to telling a story. After those actions have occurred any of the five situations can be narrated which creates a story of some kind and of some quality (often not a very high quality). A plethora of books that recount famous chess matches attest to the narration even of chess games as a thing that is done.

I love you guys.

I swear... this topic has been beaten so hard into the corner that it's turned into a fucking diamond. LOL

Unless you are larping or playing a combat with boardgame-like rules, the way you do something in an RPG is by saying you are doing it. It's basically a speech-act (q.v.).

Calling this narration--and treating manipulation of speech symbols as distinct from other types of signification--is to spiral down a logical whirlpool.

Quote from: tenbones;862315I love you guys.

I swear... this topic has been beaten so hard into the corner that it's turned into a fucking diamond. LOL

Dinosaurs turned into coal and coal under heat and pressure turns into diamond, so it makes sense that if you beat a dead horse hard enough, long enough, and with enough heat you eventually get a diamond.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;862292Yes, I get that now. I thought he was describing a bomb disposal technician character, which would have been something different than actually being an IRL bomb technician on the job. Someone else mentioned playing hockey IRL, too, in what I believe was a similar context. I think both fail as relevant counterexamples, though, because an IRL person doing IRL things is not the same as an IRL person declaring the actions/statements of a fictional character.

That's actually where I was going with it next.  :D

The main point of the bomb tech example was to determine whether your position is "playing an RPG is storytelling because you verbally describe your actions" (in which case the bomb tech would be telling a story, too) or "playing an RPG is storytelling because you verbally describe fictional actions" (in which case a real bomb tech isn't telling a story, but a player who says the exact same things while playing a bomb tech character is telling a story).

Based on the quote above, it appears that, to you, what makes it "telling a story" is that it's referring to a fictional action.  I still disagree, but now we know more precisely where the disagreement is.

As for why I disagree, my internal experience of in-character roleplaying is substantially different than my internal experience of telling a story and much closer to my internal experience of actually doing a thing.  The fact that the thing I'm doing happens to be imaginary doesn't change that.

If that's the issue, then again I'd point out that there's a difference between "describing" an action and "declaring" an action. Basically as Bren wrote above, if you're playing with one of those giant garden chess sets where you sit up high and have other people actually move the pieces for you, and you say "Pawn to King Four", you aren't describing; you're declaring.

Now, fictional narration is a problem in ways that factual narration is not. We can back up and suppose I'm reporting the chess match to someone over the phone so they can follow along on their own chess set. When I say "Pawn to King Four" I'm definitely not declaring, I'm describing. That would also be the case if, say, between moves I told you what the garden looks like and what the players are wearing.

But suppose the people on the phone got bored of the chess match and asked me to extemporaneously make up a story. Now if I say, "The man rode his horse across the fields," my words are simultaneously effecting and describing a fictional action. On this basis you might start to think that playing an RPG is "narration" after all.

Seeing as it's the middle of the night, I'm going to violate Internet debate convention and admit I don't have a well-formed answer to this line of reasoning. But I do think it's wrong at least to the extent that it ignores the varieties of social-cognitive stance that people may have in relation to the RPG. Clearly if we play a game of "I narrate, then you narrate", we're engaging in improvised narration. But if we play a game of "describe your actions within a virtual space and I will interrupt you to describe the result", we're doing something else--I wouldn't accept a definition of "narration" or that treated the role-playing in a military or business training exercise as equivalent to telling stories at a campfire.

Maybe more when I have time.

Quote from: Arminius;862324Unless you are larping or playing a combat with boardgame-like rules, the way you do something in an RPG is by saying you are doing it. It's basically a speech-act (q.v.).

Calling this narration--and treating manipulation of speech symbols as distinct from other types of signification--is to spiral down a logical whirlpool.

Right. Saying that talking or typing makes sufficient difference becomes utterly ludicrous since there are games played that way that hardly anyone would say fit the story-telling bill, while there are games with graphical and tactile interfaces that hardly anyone would say do not.

Quote from: Bren;862337Dinosaurs turned into coal and coal under heat and pressure turns into diamond, so it makes sense that if you beat a dead horse hard enough, long enough, and with enough heat you eventually get a diamond.

(https://memecrunch.com/image/4fd24bea1861331d5f00043e.jpg?w=400)

Quote from: Arminius;862381Seeing as it's the middle of the night, I'm going to violate Internet debate convention and admit I don't have a well-formed answer to this line of reasoning.

Good.  Neither do I.  What I've already said here in this thread is pretty much as far as I've gotten in my attempts to understand how/why playing an RPG and telling a story are distinct to me.

Quote from: Arminius;862381Clearly if we play a game of "I narrate, then you narrate", we're engaging in improvised narration. But if we play a game of "describe your actions within a virtual space and I will interrupt you to describe the result", we're doing something else--I wouldn't accept a definition of "narration" or that treated the role-playing in a military or business training exercise as equivalent to telling stories at a campfire.

Agreed.

Honestly, as we've gone back and forth on this, I've had a hard time deciding whether we agree or not overall, but this last quote here is really the thing that I get worked up about. To me, at least, "I narrate, then you narrate" is not even remotely the same as "describe your actions within a virtual space and I will interrupt you to describe the result" and, when someone says "playing an RPG is inherently the act of telling a story", it seems to me that they're trying to say that both of those are the same thing, usually with an agenda of trying to say that my preferred play style (describing actions within a virtual space) doesn't exist, except perhaps as a subset of the other style.

And, relevant to the thread's original topic, that's the primary difference between traditional RPGs and narrativist RPGs/storygames as I understand the categories:  Traditional RPGs are geared towards the exploration of a virtual space, while narrativist RPGs/storygames are more about "I narrate, then you narrate".

Late to the party, but I've found this article pretty good on what constitutes narrativist games:

https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/a-formula-for-narrativism/ (https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/a-formula-for-narrativism/)

I noticed some folks here tend associate narrativism with story-games and scene-authorship or something. As the article says, it´s not really the case. In fact, I've played a bunch of narrativist games (it's my favorite style! :) ) but never came across one that uses those kind of mechanics.

Itachi,
That's pretty much my game sessions.

Quote from: Nexus;860051What makes a game "Narrativist" (or a Story game or are they different things in your opinion?) to you? Do you consider it a binary situation or is there a spectrum between "traditional" and narrativist? And what would you consider narrativist mechanics?

A game where the players play individual characters and interact with a setting as through the use of metagame mechanics designed to create a collaborative narrative involving the characters of the campaign.

Quote from: Itachi;892387I noticed some folks here tend associate narrativism with story-games and scene-authorship or something. As the article says, it´s not really the case.

It is the case, the author is just making up a new definition for the term than how it's been used in this discussion

Quote from: TristramEvans;892408It is the case, the author is just making up a new definition for the term than how it's been used in this discussion

Actually, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H728DdvpxtY is pretty much it.

Most power-gamers don't see themselves as power-gamers, but as role-players who play RPGs. And they see role-players as some sort of story-gaming "let's make a story from our shared game session experience here, etc et al" player that doesn't know the fuck about RPGing.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;892410Actually, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H728DdvpxtY is pretty much it.

Most power-gamers don't see themselves as power-gamers, but as role-players who play RPGs. And they see role-players as some sort of story-gaming "let's make a story from our shared game session experience here, etc et al" player that doesn't know the fuck about RPGing.

The difference being that "power-gaming" is a description of a type of player, or the way one plays, whereas when people talk about "narrative games", they are traditionally discussing the focus of and intentions of a rules-set, which are two completely different subjects. The person in the linked article seems to be trying to push a new definition of narrative games as a method or approach to playing instead, which would be comparable to discussions of power gaming, but its just that: a new definition for a term already in common use.

P.S. the person in that video is very weird. I can't put my finger on exactly why, but I don't think I could be in the same room as them for any extended period of time.

P.P.S. I just figured it out...they have all the mannerisms and poise of a human skeksi!

Is anyone else getting tired of various versions of these two statements?

• That's not an RPG because you're not playing a role, you're only playing a game.

• That's not an RPG because you're not playing a game, you're only telling a story.

Quote from: Bren;892467Is anyone else getting tired of various versions of these two statements?

• That's not an RPG because you're not playing a role, you're only playing a game.

• That's not an RPG because you're not playing a game, you're only telling a story.

No - because truth is in it..
Point 1 is about missing the defining point of an RPG, what kind of game it is - i.e. not just any game.
Point 2 is often enough just true in my opinion.

Quote from: TristramEvans;892408It is the case, the author is just making up a new definition for the term than how it's been used in this discussion

Well, don't know who has the "rights" for defining the term really. But if we take, for example, the definition from the forge/wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory#Narrativism) article, which I understand was one of the earliest instances of the term..

Quote from: wikipediaNarrativism relies on outlining (or developing) character motives, placing characters into situations where those motives conflict and making their decisions the driving force

...then Bankuei article (https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/a-formula-for-narrativism/) seems spot-on. I'm more or less a novice on the style myself, but so far my play experience has been totally in line with this definition. And no, we never used player-authorship mechanics or things like that. I understand some games may use those mechanics but that seems orthogonal to narrativist games, the same way Shadowrun having Karma Pool / Edge never made it a story-game.

I just wanted to make clear that player-authorship mechanics are not a requisite to narrativist games. Pendragon and Burning Wheel are good examples. Damn, any game could be played narrativist style! ;)

If by narrative or story- one means those forums that out number our elf-game forums on a mean of between five or even ten to one. It's fighting Godzilla, we have lost. Some of them I have seen have talked about have to do multiple purges each time they reach a million posts, a million posts.

A load of BS that people love to peddle without even trying to figure out what any of it actually means.

Quote from: Itachi;892474Well, don't know who has the "rights" for defining the term really. But if we take, for example, the definition from the forge/wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory#Narrativism) article, which I understand was one of the earliest instances of the term..

Dude, the earliest use of the term is in GNS and Other Matters of Role Playig Theory at the Forge. (Actually I'm sure there was some discussion leading up to that.) However whatever that says, the actual course of Forge theory made plain that Narrativist design overwhelmingly, probably necessarily, requires OOC mechanics or at least OOC consciousness (e.g. acceding to overt GM use of "bangs" instead of finding it jarring to have events thrust on your character not out of in-game logic but because it will force an "interesting" moral choice).

QuoteI just wanted to make clear that player-authorship mechanics are not a requisite to narrativist games. Pendragon and Burning Wheel are good examples. Damn, any game could be played narrativist style! ;)

It's well established that games can be played in different "styles" even by GNS theory, however the theory states that this generally requires "drifting" the game. A "Narrativist" game by definition doesn't need to be drifted because it's designed for Narrativism. Furthermore are you aware that Pendragon is defined in the founding documents of GNS as Simulationist? As for Burning Wheel, it's loaded with OOC elements such as the Artha rules (that draw attention to themselves far more than other games due to their complexity) the fail-to-advance rules, and the explicit conflict resolution rules using stakes.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;892483A load of BS that people love to peddle without even trying to figure out what any of it actually means.

Or people don't know what is happening outside of their tiny social group, it sort of gives meaning to the whole 'playing the setting vs the rules' thing. Those major forums that are running a million posts every eight months or so, they don't have the same kind of rules, no mechanics, no dice, etc.. I don't much care for the whole PbtA, Fiasco, type games, which even when described to me sound like some railroad mary sue fest, but if someone else likes them, so what.

Quote from: TristramEvans;892415P.S. the person in that video is very weird. I can't put my finger on exactly why, but I don't think I could be in the same room as them for any extended period of time.

P.P.S. I just figured it out...they have all the mannerisms and poise of a human skeksi!

Hah! I subscribed to her channel for a while but kept finding myself in disagreement with her pronouncements of what makes 'good GMing'. She promotes a style that's not quite 'storygames' but is very 'illusionist', full of 'quantum ogres' and whatever it takes to make a 'great story'.
A viable style, but not something that interests me.

Quote from: Itachi;892474Well, don't know who has the "rights" for defining the term really.

No one, but the context of this conversation can be found in the title of the thread.

ANY RPG can be played in a narrative style of play. A Storygame imposes this style of play through authorial mechanics. Now, I'm not on the big bandwagon to say "storygames aren't RPGs". But they are distinct as a category of game whose mechanics directly interfere with or oppose immersive play.

Quote from: TristramEvans;892506No one, but the context of this conversation can be found in the title of the thread.

ANY RPG can be played in a narrative style of play. A Storygame imposes this style of play through authorial mechanics. Now, I'm not on the big bandwagon to say "storygames aren't RPGs". But they are distinct as a category of game whose mechanics directly interfere with or oppose immersive play.

Tristram, that's my point: you're conflating storygames and narrativist games into the same thing. This is not true. And I told you why: most games I play these days are narrativists, and not a single one has the kind of authorship mechanics commonly associated to story-games.

Fiasco is a story-game. As is Microcosm, My Life with Master, Universalis, etc.

Cortex Drama is a narrativist game. As is PbtA, Hillfolk, Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, etc.

Perhaps for people who don't play these games, these two groups may look similar. But for those who actually play them, they are pretty different from each other (and the absence of authorship mechanics in the second group is an important factor).

Quote from: Itachi;892523Tristram, that's my point: you're conflating storygames and narrativist games into the same thing.

There is no such thing as a "narrativist game" except as another way of saying storygame. Otherwise, what you have is just a plain old RPG. The distinction being made on player styles is meaningless, because RPGs are not tied to a style of play.

D&D is not a simulationist game, WEG Ghostbusters is not a gamist game, and Pendragon is not a narrativist game. Those are just (highly suspect) terms for playstyles.

Quote from: Itachi;892523Cortex Drama is a narrativist game. As is PbtA, Hillfolk, Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, etc.

Ja what? In what universe do Cortex, Burning Wheel, and Dogs in the Vineyard not have narrative control mechanics?

(I'm unfamiliar with Hillfolk and PbtA is a contentious subject around here, so I'm just going to steer clear of it.)

Quote from: Itachi;892523Fiasco is a story-game. As is Microcosm, My Life with Master, Universalis, etc.

Cortex Drama is a narrativist game. As is PbtA, Hillfolk, Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, etc.

Perhaps for people who don't play these games, these two groups may look similar. But for those who actually play them, they are pretty different from each other (and the absence of authorship mechanics in the second group is an important factor).

Quote from: Justin Alexander;892532Ja what? In what universe do Cortex, Burning Wheel, and Dogs in the Vineyard not have narrative control mechanics?

(I'm unfamiliar with Hillfolk and PbtA is a contentious subject around here, so I'm just going to steer clear of it.)

So, I partly agree with Itachi that the two sets of games are significantly different - but they're also significantly different from more in-character mechanical games like D&D and GURPS. The latter have many abstract and/or out-of-character mechanics, but not necessarily mechanics where the player can definitely write background details - like spending a drama point for a plot twist in Cinematic Unisystem or James Bond 007.

For example, in a fight or conflict in Burning Wheel, there is no declaring of background. (There is authorial power in some informational skills - like being able to say what the weather is from Weather Sense. So it does have authorship, but one could see it as not being a core of the system.)

Dogs in the Vineyard has no explicit authorial rules - when you Push in a conflict, you say what your character attempts. I've seen some interpretations that a Push can be used more broadly, but that's a controversial reading, in my opinion.

As far as I recall, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying is similar - though it's been a while since I played. There are a lot of abstract, non-simulationist rules. However, there are not explicit mechanics for authoring background, though some of the moves in conflicts can be interpreted more broadly.

DitV allows you to declare a relationship with an NPC as long as you have the dice. It lets you narrate your own damage and choose in some cases whether it should increase your trait dice or decrease them. It has a two-track social conflict system where what you say is less important than the dice you choose to push forward when you say it; conversely the factual strength of an argument doesn't modify the outcome in any way unless the opponent's player/GM decides to ignore the dice. Important questions of fact (such as the tenets of faith) are completely plastic and can be brought into existence via player declaration backed by the dice.

It's a massively OOC game.

Edited to add: one of the first "stakes-setting" games.

Nexus, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE???

Quote from: Bren;892467Is anyone else getting tired of various versions of these two statements?

• That's not an RPG because you're not playing a role, you're only playing a game.

• That's not an RPG because you're not playing a game, you're only telling a story.

The first is one point of the problem. You can claim theres role play all you want when playing Chess. But the rest of the world is going to look at you like you are a complete moron because they have more common sense. And it is for some reason usually a storygamer who makes this claim or even more crackheaded ones.

The second one is the other big point of the problem. If there is no G in the RP then it is not an RPG. And usually its the non-storygamers that will point at something obviously not an RPG like acting on a stage or narration and claim solemnly that it is a really real RPG.

And then a storygamer comes along and makes a similar claim. Rinse, repeat ad nausium.

What else is new.

QuoteWhat defines a narrativist game?

Mostly pretentiousness.

I think the first bespoken "Storytelling Game" was Ars Magica (feel free to correct me) which did indeed support it's narrativist goals through troupe play - alternating the 'storyguide' from one scenario to the next - story cards (certainly a novelty back in the 80s) and general advice about narrative structure and techniques. Other notable games of the era that pushed 'story' themes, were Greg Stafford's Pendragon and Prince Valiant, Amber Diceless (developed during the 80s but only published in 1993) and comedy games like Paranoia, Toon and Ghostbusters. Of course, one could argue that people were always interested in story from the get go of the hobby - although game theorists suggest that games like RuneQuest were more interested in 'simulation' rather than 'narration', which is the view argued in Robin D. Laws' HeroQuest, incidentally.

Indeed, the name of the referee for different games give a sort of indication as to what the intent is. In Ars Magica it was the "Storyguide", in previous games the title was "Dungeon Master", "Game Master" or "Keeper" (CoC). These titles denote an element of mastery of the gameworld and an antagonism towards the players - the so called 'gamist' aspect being reinforced by players needing to overcome the challenges presented by the gamemaster. "Storyguide" denotes the crafting of a story in a less directly antagonist way.

One of Ars Magica's creators went on to create the 'Storytelling system' (Mark Rein-Hagen; Vampire: The Masquerade, et al.) and treated the idea as a sort of social movement - Power to the People to create their own stories rather than be spoon-fed Hollywood scripts by a creative oligarchy! Right on!

The other (Jonathan Tweet; Over The Edge, Everway, D&D 3e) sought to explore the narrative structures of game design. GNS Theory has roots in his work in Everway (1995), wherein a somewhat vague diceless system that used Tarot-esque cards highlighted three types of resolution - Karma, Drama and Fate. 'Karma' simply had conflict outcomes determined by a comparison of stats, 'Drama' was GM-fiat in the name of the story and Fate was reading the cards drawn. For Fate read Game, Karma read Simulation and for Drama read....well, you get the idea.

The so called 'story-game' movement, through The Forge and other groups, were taken with these ideas along with ideas from literary criticism.  I do think that there is an element of pretension in a number of games, particularly in some fans who take the rallying cry of 'narrativist' as a conflation towards their own prejudicial tastes of new games vs old.

The totemic Sorcerer (Ron Edwards) does nothing more than reduce the number of statistics, make the mechanics simple and neat and increase a bit of jargon in comparison to the much hated Vampire: The Masquerade which apparently caused brain damage due to the "incoherence" of not being a true storytelling game. There is also something of an obsession with dividing games into type and designing games so that they only fulfill a specific aspect of game design theory. I do think, even though it may be denied, that much of the design behind D&D4e was informed by a desire to be a 'pure' game, divorcing aspects of simulationism and narrativism from the design brief.

Some games, like FATE or Apocalypse World have also made neat systems but make a big play on their 'revolutionary' mechanics. It's a marketing gimmic, flatly, as is the notion that they are 'indie' - how many spinoffs have they had each as generic systems? Other games like Fiasco do admittedly take the RPG hobby in a different direction - GM-less and increasingly divorced from their wargaming roots, with a strict narrative structure that doesn't deviate through player agency. How successful these games will be in comparison to 'traditional' games like D&D remains to be seen.

Quote from: jhkim;892621However, there are not explicit mechanics for authoring background [in Marvel Heroic], though some of the moves in conflicts can be interpreted more broadly.

Yes, there are.  Players can create Complications on opponents and Assets for themselves, and those can be anything that the table agrees is reasonable given the fiction.  It is trivial and expected for Spider-Man's player to create the Complication This is New York, you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us D8 to distract the Green Goblin.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;894737I think the first bespoken "Storytelling Game" was Ars Magica (feel free to correct me)

Victory Games' James Bond 007 RPG, 1983.  First appearance of rules for players using a metagame currency to control the narrative.

A narrativist game is a game in which the players are authors of the consequences of their character's actions rather than actors of their character's actions. Does that sound right?

Quote from: daniel_ream;895861Yes, there are.  Players can create Complications on opponents and Assets for themselves, and those can be anything that the table agrees is reasonable given the fiction.

..the same way I can create situational advantages in D&D or Vampire or Shadowrun for getting a bonus to my rolls.

QuoteIt is trivial and expected for Spider-Man's player to create the Complication This is New York, you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us D8 to distract the Green Goblin.

How is this any different than using the "Home Turf" advantage in GURPS to distract an opponent ?

Quote from: Nihilistic MindA narrativist game is a game in which the players are authors of the consequences of their character's actions rather than actors of their character's actions. Does that sound right?

I wouldn't say that's a good definition. Lots of narrativist games also assumes in-character decisions (aka Actor stance, as opposed to Director stance). In fact, Narrativism doesn't requires Director stance at all. I suggest (again) that the actual definition from the GNS, as described by wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory#Narrativism), is a good enough one:

"Narrativism relies on outlining (or developing) character motives, placing characters into situations where those motives conflict and making their decisions the driving force."

Interesting discussion where Ron explains that Director stance is not required for Narrativism: Narrativism vs Director Stance (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=4188.0;wap2)

*Edit* Btw, the game Sorcerer demonstrates this well through it's Kickers and Bangs concepts, while assuming a fairly traditional Actor stance for players.

Quote from: Itachi;895942I wouldn't say that's a good definition. Lots of narrativist games also assumes in-character decisions (aka Actor stance, as opposed to Director stance). In fact, Narrativism doesn't requires Director stance at all. I suggest (again) that the actual definition from the GNS, as described by wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory#Narrativism), is a good enough one:

Except again, that definition is of a playstyle, not of a type of game, and doesn't meaningfully describe a game system in any way.


An Forge theory is not only long since dead, but was thoroughly rejected by the majority of the hobby; it seems very odd to base any argument around a failed theory.

Quote from: daniel_ream;895861Yes, there are.  Players can create Complications on opponents and Assets for themselves, and those can be anything that the table agrees is reasonable given the fiction.  It is trivial and expected for Spider-Man's player to create the Complication This is New York, you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us D8 to distract the Green Goblin.



Victory Games' James Bond 007 RPG, 1983.  First appearance of rules for players using a metagame currency to control the narrative.

Quote from: Itachi;895940..the same way I can create situational advantages in D&D or Vampire or Shadowrun for getting a bonus to my rolls.


How is this any different than using the "Home Turf" advantage in GURPS to distract an opponent ?

These posts both need more detail. Itachi, are you saying that getting a positive modifier is the same as conjuring setting out of thin air?

Quote from: TristramEvans;895946Except again, that definition is of a playstyle, not of a type of game, and doesn't meaningfully describe a game system in any way.

Sure it's about playstyles, but it's pretty easy to identify the main styles facilitated by most games: PbtA, Cortex+, Hillfolk, etc. are strongly narrativist; D&D, Shadowrun are strongly gamist; Runequest and GURPS are strongly sim, etc, etc, etc.

QuoteAnd Forge theory is not only long since dead, but was thoroughly rejected by the majority of the hobby; it seems very odd to base any argument around a failed theory.

If it's dead, why the hell are we having a thread about Narrativism ? :p

Quote from: Arminius;895952These posts both need more detail. Itachi, are you saying that getting a positive modifier is the same as conjuring setting out of thin air?

Actually, what I'm saying is that creating Assets and Complications in Marvel Heroic has nothing to do with "conjuring setting out of thin air". Here, an example straight from the book:

Quote from: Marvel Heroic CorebookI'm playing Kitty Pryde and I'm trying to decrypt a firewall so that the rest of the X-Men can break into the Hellfire Club's mansion. Putting together my dice pool from Distinctions, Specialties, and so on, I have a total pool of...... Turns out I succeed, so Kitty breaks through the encryption. I want to use the effect die to create an asset, so I declare Compromised Security d6 and can either give that to one of the other players or save it for another roll against the Hellfire Club's computer system.

How is that any different from creating situational advantages in, say, Shadowrun or Gurps ?

Because you're choosing exactly how you succeeded, what that means (Compromised Security) and created a resource that you can now give to another player who can riff off that to declare how Compromised Security is going to help them do X?  At the moment you do that, you're roleplaying Stan Lee, not Kitty Pryde.

How do you think Shadowrun hacking works, applying this phrase you keep repeating, "creating situational advantages".

I'd like to know specifically what "creating a situational advantage in D&D" refers to.

Quote from: CRKrueger;895958Because you're choosing exactly how you succeeded

This seems like the important difference between systems that get described as outcome oriented vs. task oriented or that feature detailed stake setting. Both seem like methods to allow the player rather than the GM to decide what effect occurs from succeeding at a die roll.

In lots of games a player might say,


But there is a clear difference to me between gaining a situational advantage by using the wall is that has already been established to  existence and that existence is known to the player before their declaration and a game where the player tosses down a poker chip with their declaration to ensure the existence of a handy wall to crouch behind.

Quote from: Itachi;895956Actually, what I'm saying is that creating Assets and Complications in Marvel Heroic has nothing to do with "conjuring setting out of thin air". Here, an example straight from the book:


How is that any different from creating situational advantages in, say, Shadowrun or Gurps ?

So you're interpreting the result as the results of what she could do by hacking the mansion's security? For instance if uses the Resource while physically sneaking in it might represent her screwing with automated alarms or locks or against automated defense screwing up their targetting systems. Anything the makes sense to be accomplished by compromising/beating their computer security?  So similar to a successful roll (or rolls) in other systems but more open ended in how its defined?

Quote from: CRKrueger;895958Because you're choosing exactly how you succeeded

...inside limits dictated by the situation at hand and by what the group (GM included) considers coherent. In that same example, the Kitty Pride player couldn't declare, say, that he found a super-secret AI that he has befriended and will be helping him from now on. The GM could totally veto that, say, that's a club computer, not an advanced research facility or something. (which should be the case if the game was about "conjuring setting out of thin air", right ?)

QuoteHow do you think Shadowrun hacking works, applying this phrase you keep repeating, "creating situational advantages".

I don't remember the specifics of Shadowrun well, but following a similar example: I could, after a successful hacking attempt, try to keep control of a camera node (slave node ?), and establish (together with the GM) that every NPC watching the camera feeds would have a negative modifier to detect my teammates.

There. Both are examples of "systems getting compromised". What differs is the language that each system use, but the ending result is the same: a mechanical advantage for the player.

Quote from: Itachi;895968(which should be the case if the game was about "conjuring setting out of thin air", right ?)

Allowing the players to conjure setting out of thin air doesn't require allowing them to conjure absolutely anything out of thin air. You seem to be suggesting here that unless there are no limits at all on the players control of the setting that the player isn't controlling the setting. That seems....wrong.

Quote from: Itachi;895968There. Both are examples of "systems getting compromised". What differs is the language that each system use, but the ending result is the same: a mechanical advantage for the player.

Umm, no.  In Shadowrun, depending on version, "decrypting the firewall" would just be getting in, after that, the real hacking begins.  You have to choose to attempt to hack the Slave Node which corresponds to the camera, or make an operation against the Slave rating of the system with the goal of taking control of the cameras, depending on version.

You don't make a generic hacking roll which allows you to declare a Compromised Security effect, which could be used by Colossus to help with the motion sensors which he needs because he's easy to detect, or by Wolverine so mics don't pick up the sound of him slicing through a door, or so Nightcrawler can use the camera feed to see if there's any guards in the next room before he teleports in there.

Shadowrun is character choosing a specific action with specific intent, then going through the hacking process, which returns a result.

MHR is player making a roll based on how they want to pool their dice based on character aspects, then the writing team of players can use those results to decide how the next panel in the comic book is going to play out.  It's actually pretty good as a superhero comic book storytelling game.

Quote from: CRKrueger;895972Shadowrun is character choosing a specific action with specific intent, then going through the hacking process, which returns a result.

And, depending on the situation and whatever variables that are known to the GM but not the player, the result may not achieve the intent of the player.

For example, the PC may have hacked into the camera node, but if the GM had already determined that the cameras were all down for maintenance or if some other characters just shot out all the cameras, hacking the node may not give you the result you were hoping for even though you did succeed.

I think the term 'narrativist' is going to be unavoidably associated with GNS, which is a deeply flawed theory. "Narrativism" according to GNS is known not just for narrative mechanics, but for a particular focus on theme which Edwards placed as central to his vision based on his own personal readings in literary criticism. There is an increasingly small portion of games which meet Edward's definition of "narrativism", which really would have been more aptly referred to as "themism" or even "Edwardsism"... but that ship has sailed.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;895882A narrativist game is a game in which the players are authors of the consequences of their character's actions rather than actors of their character's actions. Does that sound right?

While I think you are on the right track, I would personally rephrase this as, "A narrative rule or mechanic is one which allows a player to directly narrate/author something which is accepted as being true in the gameworld." So, for instance, being able to define setting details like, "There is a shotgun behind the bar," would be something that falls under the category of narrative mechanics, even though it isn't about consequences of character actions. It also gets away from the notion that any game with narrative rules or mechanics is "a narrativist game" in sum, because I think that this is increasingly untrue. Many modern games allow players authorial power in limited situations (often governed by a meta currency) as this can be a fairly effective way of emulating genre, even if that authorial power is simply along the lines of saying, "That isn't what happened. Do-over," and spending a bennie or what have you.

Don't take my word for it.

Quote from: Marvel Heroic Roleplaying IntroductionAs a player, it's your job to make decisions for your super hero, using your knowledge of his motivation and personality as a guide to how he uses his amazing powers and abilities. Players are like comic book writers and artists - they bring these super heroes to life, making big and small choices for them, and that's what you'll do at the game table.

(...) Everyone shares their ideas, describes what their heroes (or villains!) are doing, and reveals an ongoing story. You might even describe what you're imagining in terms of panels and pages in a comic book - establishing shots, splash pages, extreme close-ups, huge sound effects.

Quote from: Panjumanju;569250I played and ran 8 or so sessions of this game.
I want to champion it, but it has a few problems.
When you get used to the game mecahnic, the rules and the proper pacing of the game, it's actually a really great game. You just have to get over the fact that you're not playing a superhero, you're playing a comic book artist writing the part of one superhero.
Where it all falls down really is in characters. You really need to pick one of the pregenerated characters. While it is easy to make your own character because you just slap them together out of guesses, not every player is a comic author. Players usually felt too dissasociated with their character. The game rewards high numbers, literally, and if a player's character does not have a d12s in their design, they will eventually feel stunted. The way its structured leads to a complete lack of immersion.
In the way that I felt FASERIP's character creation was inspiring and by the end of it you love your character...but the game mecahincs aren't that fun to play...MHR is the exact opposite.

//Panjumanju

Quote from: Silverlion;569051It's a beautiful book. My experience as a playtester is that its very "Story" games based, and for my use, not in a good way. It has a problem with the gap between character and player being wide enough to sink a battleship.
It has asynchronous play. That is the action of the character are somewhat divorced from the players perceptions. In short the mechanics get in the way of playing the person. It becomes more like moving a monopoly piece around the board. Its still "your guy," but it is not essentially connecting your guy to you the player.
Its a beautiful game, and it can play.
I guess for me I want the player to talk in character, do things in character, and decide actions in character that fit the mechanics.
The game seems like it might generate great storyboards, but the action has no personal impact.

Quote from: Skywalker;583608I had a short conversation with them and the standout feature for them seems to be the way the system encouraged them to think outside their characters and allow them to make fun for themselves and the other players direct. They referred specifically to a scene where the whole table co-ordinated to create the kind of dramatic antics that you are perhaps more likely to see onscreen or in a comic than in the other RPGs we have played.

Quote from: Itachi;895953If it's dead, why the hell are we having a thread about Narrativism ? :p

Because the concept didn't originate with and doesn't belong to Forge theory.

The definition of "narrative" is used wrong, so nothing really defines it, I think the term "authority" works better by definition, in that the players have the right or power to do things, or change outcomes that is more the domain of the GM in traditional games.

Quote from: Arminius;895959I'd like to know specifically what "creating a situational advantage in D&D" refers to.

Piling a wall of corpses between you and the enemy. ;)

Quote from: TristramEvans;896000Because the concept didn't originate with and doesn't belong to Forge theory.

Can you elaborate? If we aren't talking about Narrativist (note the "-ist") games in the Forge sense, then this thread is just a bunch of "what it means to me."

Quote from: dragoner;896010The definition of "narrative" is used wrong, so nothing really defines it, I think the term "authority" works better by definition, in that the players have the right or power to do things, or change outcomes that is more the domain of the GM in traditional games.

Yep, I agree.

Quote from: Arminius;896061Can you elaborate? If we aren't talking about Narrativist (note the "-ist") games in the Forge sense, then this thread is just a bunch of "what it means to me."

I've never heard the term outside of forge theory, so color me curious too.

Quote from: Arminius;895959I'd like to know specifically what "creating a situational advantage in D&D" refers to.

Player: I'll roll to convince the guard to let me in.
GM: Ok, the target number is 14.
Player: But remember I've paid him some beers yesterday at the tavern and we became more acquainted after that.
GM: Hmmm, right. Because of this (perfectly justifiable situational advantage), I'll give you a bonus +2 to the roll.

Or...

Player: Since there is this rift in the ceiling and the sunlight is passin through, could I try to reflect it with my shield to blind the goblin ? And if I do that, could it count as a situational advantage/bonus to my next rolls against him ?
GM: Oh totally. Nice idea, by the way.

:)

Quote from: Arminius;895959I'd like to know specifically what "creating a situational advantage in D&D" refers to.

Tactics?

Quote from: Bren;895962But there is a clear difference to me between gaining a situational advantage by using the wall is that has already been established to  existence and that existence is known to the player before their declaration and a game where the player tosses down a poker chip with their declaration to ensure the existence of a handy wall to crouch behind.

This is one I've been wondering about.

How many RPGs, storytelling or non, actually allow you to create things from essentially thin air? I thought most required at least some grounding in the situation to be able to actuate? IE you are in the ocean and a shark attacks. You cant just spend a fate point and say "I hide from the shark behind a wall!" whereas you might be able to say "I hide from the shark behind a big piece of driftwood!"?

Quote from: Omega;896067How many RPGs, storytelling or non, actually allow you to create things from essentially thin air? I thought most required at least some grounding in the situation to be able to actuate? IE you are in the ocean and a shark attacks. You cant just spend a fate point and say "I hide from the shark behind a wall!" whereas you might be able to say "I hide from the shark behind a big piece of driftwood!"?

That you can't create absolutely anything, doesn't mean you aren't creating some things. Sure for any group there is going to be some step that they find ludicrously too far.

Setting aside the tangential question of how one hides behind (on top of?) a big piece of driftwood, if a big piece of driftwood why not a whaling boat from the Pequod?

Quote from: Bren;896081if a big piece of driftwood why not a whaling boat from the Pequod?

I believe that driftwood might be big enough to hide an elephant behind it. ;)

(http://i.imgur.com/AVDl35w.jpg)

Quote from: Bren;896081That you can't create absolutely anything, doesn't mean you aren't creating some things. Sure for any group there is going to be some step that they find ludicrously too far.

Setting aside the tangential question of how one hides behind (on top of?) a big piece of driftwood, if a big piece of driftwood why not a whaling boat from the Pequod?

1: Right. That is why I was asking. I cant think of any game with "fate points" as it were that allows you to totally alter things. Im sure there must be. But Im drawing a blank. Even Torg with its probability bending points still required you to come up with at least some sort of improbably reason for why X happens. And there times where X simply can not happen.

2: Actually it was Queequeg's coffin that saved him. :cool:

Quote from: JesterRaiin;896032Piling a wall of corpses between you and the enemy. ;)

Right, and something like that is done completely by the character.

Quote from: Omega;896066Tactics?

Tactics are using what exists to your advantage, not creating something to give you an advantage.

Quote from: Itachi;896065Player: I'll roll to convince the guard to let me in.
GM: Ok, the target number is 14.
Player: But remember I've paid him some beers yesterday at the tavern and we became more acquainted after that.
GM: Hmmm, right. Because of this (perfectly justifiable situational advantage), I'll give you a bonus +2 to the roll.

Jesus, you really don't see how this is different than the MHR example, do you? Your character actually did talk to that guard before and your character did buy him some beers.  You're not picking up a bonus die carried over from a skill roll you or some other character made before, you're not paying some meta-currency and invoking the "I know a guy" aspect, you're reminding the GM of something that actually happened.  The reality of whether a few beers is enough to have the guard do you a solid depends on other factors also already existing in the setting.

Quote from: Itachi;896065Player: Since there is this rift in the ceiling and the sunlight is passin through, could I try to reflect it with my shield to blind the goblin ? And if I do that, could it count as a situational advantage/bonus to my next rolls against him ?
GM: Oh totally. Nice idea, by the way.

Again, here you're using an already established fact of the light, but now you're trying to create facts about the shield, namely that's it's reflective enough to blind someone.  What kind of shield is it?  Steel, wooden, etc.  A reflective shield would be pretty rare unless is was some type of Aspis/Hoplon or Scutum.  Even if the GM determined that your shield was reflective, then you'd need to make some kind of Dex check or whatever to actually do what you're attempting, different systems would handle that differently of course.  Although a smart character who had fought goblins before might just stand in the light, thus giving goblins a penalty to hit or defend against him while he's there. ;)  That's a lot different then "Spend or Invoke X, do Y."

Quote from: Itachi;896062Yep, I agree.

Ah, so now we come to it.  You agree with Dragoner that the term "Authority" should be used instead of "Narrative".  So what are you objecting to, the idea that there can be a type of OOC mechanic that provides a different form of play or that the name for such a mechanic is "Narrative"?

Quote from: CRKrueger;896098Right, and something like that is done completely by the character.

Tactics are using what exists to your advantage, not creating something to give you an advantage.

er? Really? Figuring out a tactic is creating something, in this case some action, to give you an advantage? Piling corpses to make a barrier is a tactic too. That was the point. Neither are creating something from thin air. They are drawing on whats there.

Right, tactics are In-Character manipulations of elements already existing in the Setting...  

...unless what you're doing is tripping a slime so everyone gets +2 to hit.

That's why OOC Mechanic or Metagame Mechanic or OOC Metagame Mechanic, etc are useful terms, but they don't tell you what type of mechanic that is.

For example James Bond 007 gives you a currency to affect the outcome of a roll or to create things that show up by coincidence or mimic something as seen in the James Bond novels or movies.  The mechanic is OOC, as presumably James Bond doesn't know that Blofeld is going to put him on a death machine and start monologuing.  It's a James Bond game, we all know it's a James Bond game, so James Bond stuff happens.  It's 4th wall breaking meta-knowledge and meta-mechanics used to provide for genre-emulation.

It sounds like Itachi wouldn't like Hero Points to be called a Narrative Control mechanic, but would prefer something like Genre Emulation Control Mechanic or the like, but regardless of what you call it or the history of Usenet or Ron Edward's posting history - the mechanic operates the same, for the same reason.

By contrast, 4e is full of AEDU powers that make no sense in the context of the setting.  The purpose of these mechanics is to provide a tactical challenge (as in the tactics of a boardgame, wargame, cardgame, etc) that don't necessarily line up with what you would expect from a character in the setting.  Those are OOC mechanics, sure, but why do they exist?  They exist to provide for additional OOC Tactical play.

So when you create an OOC mechanic, you do it for a REASON.  That's why terms like Narrative Mechanic or Narrative Control mechanic are useful because they tell you what the mechanic is.  It's a an OOC mechanic that gives the player some Narrative Control.

But...all that having been said, I wouldn't be opposed to a more specific use of language, if for no other reason, to prevent another decade of someone being able to completely shut down all conversation by obstinately going to the mattresses Every.Single.Fucking.Time over the N-word.  

The problem is, once we open that door, I'm pretty sure what we'll find is that no term is acceptable, because there is an entire generation of gamers at this point that never really managed or even attempted to stay mostly In Character while roleplaying.  As such, to them there is no difference between a game with OOC mechanics and one without, because they are, for the most part, always somewhat OOC.

Quote from: CRKrueger;896098Right, and something like that is done completely by the character.

Yes. Unless we're talking D&D 6th, which isn't about combat anymore. Oooops, too soon? ;)

Just joking. In all honesty, I don't understand your observation. While I was only joking, truth is that yes, since the early days of D&D characters were piling up walls of bodies and sometimes they used them to their advantage. :cool:

My point was, that
The living things existed in the setting.
Your character killed them in the setting.
The bodies therefore exist in the setting.
You deciding to manipulate those bodies in the setting to make a "300 wall" to hide behind, or to toss down a hole to squash whatever is down there, or to push before you to set off pit traps, are all In-Character decisions using 100% In-Setting resources.  DMs have been having characters make Str checks, Dex checks, Int checks, Proficiency checks to correctly "MacGuyver" shit for over 40 years now.

None of that is "I spend OOC Metagame Currency X to make the Orc trip over the bodies we've strewn all over the floor, and if I don't spend the OOC Metagame Currency X to make the Orcs trip, then none will.

Obviously characters interacting with a setting will have an effect and make things True that weren't True before.
The difference is, does the change come organically from what the character did or is it some artificial switch that gets flipped?

• If we kill ten orcs then decide to turn this hallway into something out of a Rob Zombie/Clive Barker movie, then we've essentially created Difficult Terrain, Hazardous Terrain or whatever, and there will be an effect.  That effect will be true as long as the conditions don't change.


• If, no matter what I do, I have to spend some kind of OOC Metagame Currency to either create that effect, or once I've created it, have to spend some form of OOC Metagame Currency in order to "activate it" or have it actually apply, then I haven't actually changed the setting in a material way, I've effected Quantum Change, and this hallway now has a Shrodinger's Hazard, that may or may not be in effect depending on the OOC Metagame Currency spends I make to invoke it.

The game in which the first happens is a fundamentally different form of game then that in which the second happens.

Quote from: CRKrueger;896115My point was, that
The living things existed in the setting.

And my point was, that piling a wall of corpses - amusing idea, really - might be considered as "tactics" slash "creating an advantage" in D&D/d20. Nothing less, nothing more. ;)

I know, but considering that type of thing isn't the same AT ALL as what Itachi was claiming it was...I went into more detail.  ;)

Quote from: CRKrueger;896124I know, but considering that type of thing isn't the same AT ALL as what Itachi was claiming it was...I went into more detail.  ;)

I know, Hulk, I know. ;)

It could be a fun movie/book/comic premise if a corps of troubleshooters literally each had a finite number of charges in their utility belt/brain implant/whatever that they could use to effect Reality Deviations or what have you (kinda like The Matrix or Dark City, but less hand-wavy).

But if I'm in a firefight and I duck behind a wall, reminding the GM that I get a +2 for cover is nothing like spending a point and narrating a wall into existence to justify my arbitrary +2.

In the first case the GM either has to have said the wall is there beforehand, or they have to agree that it's there. (Player asks if there's any cover nearby; GM says sure.) The player doesn't have to spend a finite resource.

In the second case there's a pretty strong implication that the GM has to accept the player's narration as long as it doesn't break the game. (That's assuming the GM has any veto power at all.) And the player has to spend a resource. If the mechanical transaction is more than a joke, you have to ask--what happens when the player's out of points? What happens when the player wants a wall but doesn't want to spend a point since it should "obviously" be there--or it's there but the GM won't agree that it's tall/thick enough to provide cover unless the player spends a point? This sort of budgeting of reality draws attention to the meta-layer of interaction and creates a pretense of OOC narration rights. In a more traditional game, players and GM may banter about the application of the rules or the details of a situation but there's no sense that actions are enabled or disabled purely because of a metagame mechanical construct. Simulationist or non-narrative rules (obviously) exist outside the game world but their purpose and function is to mirror causality and decision making within the game world. (See the "immersion break" thread elsewhere on this site.) In Dogs in the Vineyard if you have a free Relationship die, you get to decide on the spot that you have a prior relationship with an NPC. Nowhere in reality or fiction have I heard of someone consciously deciding "that guy and I know each other and I hereby make it so".

AIU, Marvel Heroic Role play (and I guess other Cortex games) seems fall in some middle ground between outright scene editing and "traditional". You can't, afaik, really call things into existence. It has to be justified in some way by the ongoing reality in the game. The GM/players can veto things that don't make sense. The terminology "creating an Asset/Resource, etc" isn't literally pulling it out thin air. If your character is an area described a a broad open field you can't declare you jump behind a wall for cover unless you have some ability, like mutant Earth Mastery, to create one. There's going to be allot of edge cases though and the game is very handwave driven in many ways.

"Based on something in the setting vs. out of thin air" though has nothing to do with "In Character vs. Out of Character".  Just because I'm drawing on things available in the setting or the current situation doesn't mean I'm doing it from the point of view of the character or that whatever mechanic I'm using is something my character is capable of or even knows about.

Quote from: CRKrueger;895972It's actually pretty good as a superhero comic book storytelling game.

This is the nicest thing you've ever said about my stuff. Thank you.

Cheers,
Cam

Quote from: Arminius;896181But if I'm in a firefight and I duck behind a wall, reminding the GM that I get a +2 for cover is nothing like spending a point and narrating a wall into existence to justify my arbitrary +2.

This reminds me of Dogville movie.

(https://naomiswestvillage.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/dogville_productiondesign.jpg)

Quote from: Nexus;896188AIU, Marvel Heroic Role play (and I guess other Cortex games) seems fall in some middle ground between outright scene editing and "traditional". You can't, afaik, really call things into existence. It has to be justified in some way by the ongoing reality in the game. The GM/players can veto things that don't make sense. The terminology "creating an Asset/Resource, etc" isn't literally pulling it out thin air. If your character is an area described a a broad open field you can't declare you jump behind a wall for cover unless you have some ability, like mutant Earth Mastery, to create one. There's going to be allot of edge cases though and the game is very handwave driven in many ways.

The influence here was from Robin Laws' Feng Shui, which explicitly allows players to create things in the scene as props for their stunts and attacks, within the context of the location that's already been described. So, if the GM says you're having a fight in a bar, it's pretty obvious there are bar stools, so you can say that you're picking up a bar stool and swinging it into the head of a dude and everyone else at the table should go with that.

What I went for in MHR was having that be the case in general, but also that if you wanted the thing you've just narrated into the scene to have some kind of actual dramatic weight ("this bar stool really matters in this panel, see how I've drawn it hitting the guy in the head with a loud CRACK") you have to spend game currency to give it a die and add it to your pool. You could describe using a bar stool to hit somebody with if you don't spend the die, but it doesn't add any dice and is just color.

Cheers,
Cam

AFAICT. "Moving behind cover" In MHRP is creating an Asset or a Resource (using a scene Distinction i a certain way) or.  in Hero System is making a half move or taking a Dive for Cover action but they're both in character actions just described differently mechanics and terminology wise. The character still decided to take cover and took in game actions to do so.

Quote from: Cam Banks;896192This is the nicest thing you've ever said about my stuff. Thank you.

Cheers,
Cam

You're welcome.  I also said a while ago,

Quote from: CRKrueger;697402Emulating Comic Books and their narrative tropes isn't what I'm looking for in a roleplaying game, but I will have to say if I was, MHR looks like it does it really really well.

So, while I'm not your audience, I applaud your ability.  Also you've always been a good sport on forums, even when you're getting piled on. :hatsoff:

Also, for people like me who aren't all that narrative, you might want to check out a Cortex+ system for the dice pools.  I do think it's interesting the way you can customize the die pools for what you're trying to accomplish, and you don't have to go Full.Story with the rest of the mechanics either.

I still think the way you construct the die pools in the system is interesting and could be used in a kind of Over The Edge or Barbarian of Lemuria way without necessarily having Effect Dice passed around.

Quote from: Cam Banks;896195The influence here was from Robin Laws' Feng Shui, which explicitly allows players to create things in the scene as props for their stunts and attacks, within the context of the location that's already been described. So, if the GM says you're having a fight in a bar, it's pretty obvious there are bar stools, so you can say that you're picking up a bar stool and swinging it into the head of a dude and everyone else at the table should go with that.

What I went for in MHR was having that be the case in general, but also that if you wanted the thing you've just narrated into the scene to have some kind of actual dramatic weight ("this bar stool really matters in this panel, see how I've drawn it hitting the guy in the head with a loud CRACK") you have to spend game currency to give it a die and add it to your pool. You could describe using a bar stool to hit somebody with if you don't spend the die, but it doesn't add any dice and is just color.

Cheers,
Cam

That's how I understood it. It didn't seem "out of character". The character is still deciding to do things, interact with their environment and make choices based on their personalities, goals and tactical choices. The degree of scene control seems to be really context and group based. You could go completely gonzo with it but its not required and baseline assumption seems to be near a "traditional" game with more freedom of narration. I wouldn't have a problem with a player saying the snatch up a bar stool in a bar right even if I hadn't explicitly described them being there. The "narrative weight" issue can be funky (it was for my group) but Hero System has some similar blurry issues when it comes to Mechanics vs Special Effect. MHRP seems to lean more toward the story driven side of things.

and, IIRC, there are some story/plot manipulation things that GMs and players can spend PP and Doom pool on?

MHR can be played across quite a spectrum of comfort levels with things like truly story-like assets (such as "New York protects its own!") at one end and explicitly physics-based assets (like "sack of hammers!") at the other. I've seen some folks play it super light on the story assets and hard on the gear/physics/defined environment assets, and vice versa.

The reason it ended up this way is that I don't personally have a strong preference one way or the other - I am just as happy playing D&D as I am playing Gumshoe or Dogs in the Vineyard. When I'm designing games I usually aim for some kind of intended play experience but once folks get hold of an RPG they're going to play it however the hell they want to.

Cheers,
Cam

The idea of "narrative weight" and "color" right there is what makes it OOC. A person doesn't pick up a stool and swing it because it looks badass to some audience on the other side of the fourth wall. They do it because it will effectively scare enemies and break heads. So you either do it and you're done, or you don't do it. The player's decision to spend a point and define the action as narratively weighty instead of color doesn't correspond to anything the character can think or do.

Rolleyes at the incoming rule zero apologia.

Quote from: Cam Banks;896201MHR can be played across quite a spectrum of comfort levels with things like truly story-like assets (such as "New York protects its own!") at one end and explicitly physics-based assets (like "sack of hammers!") at the other. I've seen some folks play it super light on the story assets and hard on the gear/physics/defined environment assets, and vice versa.

The reason it ended up this way is that I don't personally have a strong preference one way or the other - I am just as happy playing D&D as I am playing Gumshoe or Dogs in the Vineyard. When I'm designing games I usually aim for some kind of intended play experience but once folks get hold of an RPG they're going to play it however the hell they want to.

Cheers,
Cam

That makes sense. One of the stumbling blocks my supers group ran into with was the concept of "narrative weight". They did things that made sense in the context of the situation as always and it felt "in character" but the mechanics didn't acknowledge unless they could pay for it which felt jarring. To be fair, it was similar to how Hero System used to handle improvised weapons in Superheroic campaigns in that way.

On the plus side, it is really good at handling the more improvisational and out there uses of powers seen in comics in an elegant way that holds together with the rest of the rules. And if played in a highly narrative mode is does a good job simulating crafting a comic book story. That's just not what we wanted at the time.

Quote from: Cam Banks;896192This is the nicest thing you've ever said about my stuff. Thank you.

Cheers,
Cam

Someone on a different board mention that Marvel Heroic was designed to play a comic book, rather than play superheroes.  Which in my opinion fits the game perfectly.  It's also something I actively do not want in my games (Not saying it's bad, to be clear, just not my thing.)

Quote from: Christopher Brady;896209Someone on a different board mention that Marvel Heroic was designed to play a comic book, rather than play superheroes.  Which in my opinion fits the game perfectly.  It's also something I actively do not want in my games (Not saying it's bad, to be clear, just not my thing.)

If the system was more granular and, for lack of a better term, crunchy, I'd probably be willing to use it in a lower narrative mode. One of my group really like it.

Nexus, when you're talking about games that have OOC mechanics you have two things happening.  The character is doing what they are doing, engaging mechanics like normal and the player is engaging mechanics the character has no knowledge of and doesn't represent so much the character action as a modifier, clarifier, enabler of the character action.  You're doing two things at once.  For a lot of people, because the OOC stuff is tied to what the character is doing, they see it as all the same thing and it doesn't seem jarring or interrupting the roleplaying.  Not everyone wants to do those two things at once.  The fact that you like it or that it doesn't bother you doesn't turn two things into one thing.

Also, the general gist I'm getting so far is that a Narravist game allows a non-GM player to edit the scene, whether by adding, removing or otherwise altering something the GM has already placed, usually by some (and often, in my opinion contrived) mechanic that 'allows' them to do so.

This is pretty much what everyone has either agreed, or said, in this thread that's been consistent.

Cam and CRKreuger have pretty much covered it, but I wanted to point out that this:

Quote from: PanjumanjuThe game rewards high numbers, literally, and if a player's character does not have a d12s in their design, they will eventually feel stunted.

is very much the opposite of true.  The game is self-balancing; characters with mitts full of D12s won't be earning Plot Points anywhere near as fast as the characters with D8s, and Plot Points are what let you do the really important stuff.  This design characteristic isn't entirely obvious, mind you, and it requires more system mastery to play a "lower-powered" character at the table, but the system doesn't actually reward higher numbers like that.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;896215Also, the general gist I'm getting so far is that a Narravist game allows a non-GM player to edit the scene, whether by adding, removing or otherwise altering something the GM has already placed, usually by some (and often, in my opinion contrived) mechanic that 'allows' them to do so.

This is pretty much what everyone has either agreed, or said, in this thread that's been consistent.

Does Marvel Heroic role playing met this standard in your opinion?

Quote from: Itachi;896062Yep, I agree.

Makes me think of Ice-T's whole heavy heavy nerd shit schtick, yet not funny and annoying because you have to decipher what people are trying to say as they make up meanings for the words they are using.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;896215Also, the general gist I'm getting so far is that a Narravist game allows a non-GM player to edit the scene, whether by adding, removing or otherwise altering something the GM has already placed, usually by some (and often, in my opinion contrived) mechanic that 'allows' them to do so.

This is pretty much what everyone has either agreed, or said, in this thread that's been consistent.

Yes, pretty much. That is why I think that authority is better, as it better defines the situation than narrative.

Quote from: Nexus;896222Does Marvel Heroic role playing met this standard in your opinion?

Yes.  That's what the creation of 'Assets' do, it appears to my untrained mind.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;896244Yes.  That's what the creation of 'Assets' do, it appears to my untrained mind.

I see. Thanks.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;894737I think the first bespoken "Storytelling Game" was Ars Magica (feel free to correct me)

I believe it's actually Stafford's Prince Valiant game. (Predates Ars Magica and has "Storytelling Game" on the cover.)

Quote from: Justin Alexander;896313I believe it's actually Stafford's Prince Valiant game. (Predates Ars Magica and has "Storytelling Game" on the cover.)

No. Prince Valiant came out in 1989, while Ars Magica came out in 1987/88 depending on who you ask.

And while games like Pendragon, Toon, Paranoia, James Bond and quite probably a number of games all had elements of 'narrative' mechanics and game design, the first game to explicitly coin itself as a 'storytelling game' was Ars Magica.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;896313I believe it's actually Stafford's Prince Valiant game. (Predates Ars Magica and has "Storytelling Game" on the cover.)

Just because it says X on the cover. Doesnt mean it is X in play. (Vampire)

Quote from: Omega;896325Just because it says X on the cover. Doesnt mean it is X in play. (Vampire)

Meaning, as per the standard trope, that Vampire only plays lip service to storytelling?

Bull.

I was playing in a Vampire session this week that was solidly built on a collaboratively designed story, due to strong character backgrounds and preludes and effective personality mechanics that rewarded good roleplaying. It was a great session. It's all in the game and has always been. The  game introduced lots of new ideas pertaining to creating a good narrative that is often not given credit for.

This thread is kinda confusing to me, because I see people using a term coined by the forge (Narrativism) but rejecting it's original definition (play to address characters' personal dilemmas and create interesting stories) while trying to elect new/different one(s). If the intent is to address games which intended mode of play is authorial/directorial (that is, taking OOC actions and "generating setting on the go" - things that are not mandatory to the original definition), then I think Dragoner has a good point in people trying to come up with a totally new label like "Authorial" RPGs or something. In fact, even in it's original definition "Narrativism" is a bad label because it has little to do with the definition of "narrative" anyway.

*Edit* CRKrueger and Arminius: you have some good points. I will try to address them when my work permit. Tonight, hopefully. ;)

In the threefold story design oriented gameplay was labeled dramatism, so there was already a term to use.
It was just that Narrativism was the next new hot deal and everyone with a vague association tried to jump on the waggon, never minding what was really meant.

(Personally I would sort Forge Narrativism into a semi kind of "focused personal crisis sim" instead into something next to dramatism.)

My high level is this.

#1 Rule, gamers are people and exactly what they are interested in can't be placed in a neat slot. Most gamers have a consistent style of play that you can see over the long term. but when it comes to individual session it really boils down what they find interesting at the moment. For example a gamer who loves the wargaming combat aspect of RPGs may wind up getting into some heavy in-character roleplaying during a session because the situation was really compelling to him.

With that being said, three broad styles elements I seen over the years are

1) There to play the game, mostly are interested in using the rules of the game, and the character's stats to overcome the challenges in the campaign. It unpredictable as to what is the victory condition at but most consider the acquisition of stuff that helps in the game a win(a better starship, more magic items, etc).

2) Into acting as a character with a distinct personality, and unique background.

3) Has a specific story in mind to be played out. Often has no problem with metagame mechanics to make this happen.

4) There because of friends. Understand enough of the game so that it isn't an issue. What important that they ware all working together doing something interesting.

Most gamers are not just one of the above, their personal style consists of a mix with the levels varying over the time.

For example I mostly a mix of #1 and #2. I will use the rules to my advantage but I almost always will get into roleplaying my character.

The whole narrative debate in my opinion is fundamentally flawed in regards to RPGs. The wider world has already "fixed" the issue in the form of fan-fiction/fiction communities that do collaborative writing projects. My experience with most self proclaimed storygamers is that they are just a rules obsessed as the hard core wargamers of #1. That many, but not all, are whiners that feel they don't get their way when they played in somebody's else campaign. A few like Ron Edwards turned their whining into something that sounded good on paper and duped a more than a few people into believing that RPGs were broken and needed a 2.0 version.

If you want to create a collaborative story with a group of friend there are better ways to do it than a RPG. Better in that you get more out of your time spend doing it that way then playing a RPG.

Quote from: Maarzan;896341(Personally I would sort Forge Narrativism into a semi kind of "focused personal crisis sim" instead into something next to dramatism.)

This is the best label for the concept of forge narrativism so far in this thread, IMHO.

Itachi, even though answering the original question isn't very interesting without reference to the forge, I don't think it's necessary to uncritically accept the forge definition.

The forge theories say Narrativist games try to facilitate Narrativism, which is a translation of a particular stage drama theory into an interactive context. In fact, though, in order to do this, the theories strongly emphasize OOC mechanics and practices. E.g. the "bangs" in Sorcerer aren't numerical-procedural, but they're one of the keys to the game's functioning and they require the players to be excited, rather than annoyed, at the GM's active introduction of "personal issues".

Beyond what the theory says about how to embed Narrativism in a game design, the actual games demonstrate it. Find a game that's held up as "Narrativist" by the Forge and post-Forge communities, and it will contain a strong amount of OOC mechanics such as abstract point-manipulation dressed up in narration, outright narration trading, pre-negotiated stakes, etc., or the centralizing of OOC practices such as bangs and deliberate juxtaposition of character values by the GM. While these latter don't require the players to directly use directorial power they force players to approach the game from a non-character perspective. (I recall one of the key early forge people bemoaning an instance where a player whose character had paternal issues refused to do anything sufficiently dramatic when the GM "handed him a gun" in a scene with with his father.)

Quote from: estar;896352My experience with most self proclaimed storygamers is that they are just a rules obsessed as the hard core wargamers of #1.

This is important, because in this thread there's been talk like "these aren't types of games, these are playstyles".  Well, yes, they are types of games.  That was the whole point of the Forge.  Different kind of games with new types of mechanics.  Mechanical enforcement of playstyle.

Previously, if I played D&D, I could basically keep my playstyle to myself.  The *Why* of what I did was a mystery.  Did I act as my character?  Did I act to tell a better story?  Did I act because I wanted to try out my new abilities?  Did I act because I'm trying to get into the pants of the person across the table?  Did I act because I wanted to get to a breaking point so I could take a piss?

Now, with certain games, the Why of what I'm doing isn't a mystery because there's this mechanic or set of mechanics that put a pile of tokens in front of me and tells me that I, not my character, can spend them to change things when I don't like the outcome or I want to affect the outcome.  This type of game ASSUMES my playstyle motivation and keeps bothering me about using it's system mechanics to play that way.  The game mechanics are in your face, they are proselytizers for a playstyle, as annoying and useless to me as the Mormons or Jehovah's witnesses who stop by every now and then or the drug dealers at bars, clubs and casinos.

Just shut the fuck up, get the fuck out of my way, let me live as my character for a while, and then, maybe, at some point down the road, either me or my character will then create a story and tell the tale of what transpired.


That's what always gets me so steamed when people come along with "but that mechanic's no different" or "that game's the same as X".  No, it's not the same, yes, it is different, it was specifically designed to be different.  Mechanical design to reinforce playstyle is the entire point of the new school Forge-inspired RPG design.  Mechanics just don't appear on page magically, and when you're writing a roleplaying game, inserting mechanics that engaging require you to not roleplay means you're after something besides roleplaying.  Which is fine, but then tell all your fans to stop being idiots and claiming your game is "just another RPG".

Quote from: CRKrueger;896362This is important, because in this thread there's been talk like "these aren't types of games, these are playstyles".  Well, yes, they are types of games.  That was the whole point of the Forge.  Different kind of games with new types of mechanics.  Mechanical enforcement of playstyle.

Absolutely.  Mechanical enforcement of playstyle was absolutely the goal.  "It shouldn't be possible to play Vampire as Superheroes with Fangs!" was kinda the rallying cry.

Quote from: CRKrueger;896362Previously, if I played D&D, I could basically keep my playstyle to myself.  The *Why* of what I did was a mystery.  Did I act as my character?  Did I act to tell a better story?  Did I act because I wanted to try out my new abilities?  Did I act because I'm trying to get into the pants of the person across the table?  Did I act because I wanted to get to a breaking point so I could take a piss?

My sentiment exactly and you put it in word better than I have been.

I keep pounding on the point that the RPGs are games where the players play characters that interact with a setting with their actions adjudicated by referee.

Note that I don't every states that RPG has to have be any particular type or style of interaction. Or that there are any particular reason for any type or style of interaction. The only requirement is that the campaign is about the playing doing something, anything to interact with a setting. If all you do is think of ways of throwing pies in the the face of the deizens of a setting then you are playing a RPG. If you spend the whole campaign bitching and moaning how your humanity slips away while becoming a monster than you are playing a RPG. If all you do is try to live a life of a group of mages living together in medieval europe then you are playing a RPG. If you are focusing killing a lot of monsters and taking a lot of stuff then you are playing a RPG.

Yet every time time advocate that definition people out of the work treat it like it a narrow straightjacket. If anybody game put the straight jackets on it is games like Edwards Sorcerors, Dogs in the Vineyard, Burning Wheel, etc. Because they all assume you have to play it one way. Which is the source of my long time criticism that many of these storygames would come off as a adventure or campaign supplement for traditional RPG.

Quote from: robiswrong;896377Absolutely.  Mechanical enforcement of playstyle was absolutely the goal.  "It shouldn't be possible to play Vampire as Superheroes with Fangs!" was kinda the rallying cry.

Which is why these games fail to make any type of headway beyond being a niche in the hobby and the industry. Because the vast majority gamers in RPG campaign are not interested in doing one thing in one way all the fucking time in a campaign. So narrative and story game campaign run out of steam quicker than traditional RPG campaign do.

I have run Majestic Wilderlands campaign for 30 years in the same setting. Why? Because I treat like a virtual reality of a living breathing world. This means there are places where individual worry about their humanity slipping away because they are turning into monsters. Where they live the life of a group of mages. Where they kill a lot of monsters and take their shit. Where they desperately try to survive the perils of the game of thrones. Or just try to keep a single neighborhood alive and safe in a city-state.

Show me the equivalent among campaigns run with story-games and narrative game. It 2016, they got a bit of legroom behind them now. Where are the storygamers that been running a setting and/or campaign for a decade or more?

Regarding all the labeling and boxing:
As far I understood the theories started recognizing that there where common and often insolvable conflicts at a lot of gaming tables (especially when it wasn´t a well honed fixed group) - and that it often boiled down to "you are playing wrong" laking words and understanding where the problem lay.

We had the same problem in the past and after I had read about threefold I was suddenly able to find compromises at least with a lot of gamists (coming myself from the simulation side) and a selected few of (personal focused) dramatists.

So these theories are (OK, where) not for theories sake but to achive somiething in / better gaming - which seems to get forgotten nowadays.

Quote from: Itachi;896335This thread is kinda confusing to me, because I see people using a term coined by the forge (Narrativism) but rejecting it's original definition (play to address characters' personal dilemmas and create interesting stories) while trying to elect new/different one(s). If the intent is to address games which intended mode of play is authorial/directorial (that is, taking OOC actions and "generating setting on the go" - things that are not mandatory to the original definition), then I think Dragoner has a good point in people trying to come up with a totally new label like "Authorial" RPGs or something. In fact, even in it's original definition "Narrativism" is a bad label because it has little to do with the definition of "narrative" anyway.

*Edit* CRKrueger and Arminius: you have some good points. I will try to address them when my work permit. Tonight, hopefully. ;)

I think if the language was more clear, there would be less arguments. Things like the "forge definition" I don't like, precisely because I don't care enough to go memorize the definition of a word that is being misused.

Quote from: Maarzan;896433Regarding all the labeling and boxing:

Personally, I'm not a fan of categorization.  I don't mind recognizing what elements things use, and trying to figure out what elements are common, what impact they have, etc., but "this is an A, this is a B" usually seems to be of questionable value.

Quote from: Maarzan;896433Regarding all the labeling and boxing:

As far I understood the theories started recognizing that there where common and often insolvable conflicts at a lot of gaming tables (especially when it wasn´t a well honed fixed group) - and that it often boiled down to "you are playing wrong" laking words and understanding where the problem lay. [/quote]

Yeah, I just usually think that categorization is the wrong tool.  "I'm looking for X, Y, and Z" is a better one, because it doesn't preclude something which has X, Y, Z, as well as A and B, while categorization typically does that (explicitly in GNS).

Quote from: Maarzan;896433So these theories are (OK, where) not for theories sake but to achive somiething in / better gaming - which seems to get forgotten nowadays.

This is 100% true.  Any theory is just a tool.  Also, any theory should be validated against actual examples in the real world, and if your "theory" says a game should be a failure, but it's not, then your theory needs revision.

Quote from: robiswrong;896443...

Yeah, I just usually think that categorization is the wrong tool.  "I'm looking for X, Y, and Z" is a better one, because it doesn't preclude something which has X, Y, Z, as well as A and B, while categorization typically does that (explicitly in GNS).

...

In these days there was no consciousness and no words for this situation. Everyone thought they know what role playing is based on their prior exposition and thsu the others must play wrong.
Thus there was no idea that a,b,x,y,z is what makes your fun different from the other player. This is something that got worked out while smithing the theory.

Quote from: estar;8963511) There to play the game, mostly are interested in using the rules of the game, and the character's stats to overcome the challenges in the campaign. It unpredictable as to what is the victory condition at but most consider the acquisition of stuff that helps in the game a win(a better starship, more magic items, etc).

2) Into acting as a character with a distinct personality, and unique background.

3) Has a specific story in mind to be played out. Often has no problem with metagame mechanics to make this happen.

I think there is an actual playstyle between 1 and 2 which seems to be where alot of players are. They are there to play a character within the context of the rules. The rules matter within the context of the adventure and the adventure and what is going on is as much a goal as amassing power or goodies.

There may be a rare 6th type too. Players who are there neither for the system or the character. They just like the puzzles to solve. Ive played with two like that over the years. They searched for and gravitated to DMs who were really good at it.

Quote from: robiswrong;896443Yeah, I just usually think that categorization is the wrong tool.  "I'm looking for X, Y, and Z" is a better one, because it doesn't preclude something which has X, Y, Z, as well as A and B, while categorization typically does that (explicitly in GNS).

Sometimes you do want X, Y, and Z though, but not A and B, or just anything as long as it's not A and B.  Which gets more challenging when people claim A and B don't exist.

Welcome Back, BTW :D

Quote from: CRKrueger;896473Sometimes you do want X, Y, and Z though, but not A and B, or just anything as long as it's not A and B.  Which gets more challenging when people claim A and B don't exist.

Welcome Back, BTW :D

Or when they claim A and B are Really X Y and Z. Or... Everything On Earth.

Quote from: CRKrueger;896473Sometimes you do want X, Y, and Z though, but not A and B, or just anything as long as it's not A and B.

Sure.  But there's usually some level of compromise that can be had, though in some cases you get the Mustard Problem.  (Being that I hate mustard, and so even a taste of mustard in something is enough for me to hate it).

But understanding which elements are there is a better start to a conversation, I think, than broad categories which contain multitudes.

(Note that I'm mostly talking about categorization in GENERAL, not necessarily the specific of narrativism or narrative fans here)

Quote from: CRKrueger;896473Which gets more challenging when people claim A and B don't exist.

Welcome Back, BTW :D

Quote from: Omega;896527Or when they claim A and B are Really X Y and Z. Or... Everything On Earth.

And these two problems are, of course, the other side of the issue.

I think the basic foundation of of GNS theory, that there are three types of gamers, is fundamentally flawed.  We may be able to classify mechanics this way, but not people.

That is why I agree with Hulk and others that the only way to define a "narrativist" game is through the nature of the mechanics. To me, a "narrativist" game is one that forces or pushes players to play OOC and make decisions outside of their character's control.

This mechanical definition however causes problems with the literal definitions of the words "narrative and simulation" especially in regards to playstyle.  For example, according to the forge, me and my players are hardcore simulationists. My players get highly upset if I ask them to make an OOC decision.  They view it as bad gamemastering. However, we have never been very concerned with "simulation," and in fact have always been a story-driven group.  My players create characters with potentially interesting stories, and I try to create environments and situations where those stories have the opportunity to develop.  We then use traditional roles of GM and players to create the imaginary space and see what develops. In terms of playstyle, are we really simulationists? No. Are we narrativists? No. Do we prefer Simulationist mechanics? Absolutely.  In fact, even though story is a high priority for us, narrative mechanics are highly disruptive in that pursuit. It is no wonder forge theory causes so much conflict.  It stereotypes and overgeneralizes people.  We don't fit neatly into their categories.

Just an opinion here, but I also think the term "simulationist" is, intentionally or not, at least slightly derogatory as it carries a connotation of being limited, whereas the term "narrativist" has a positive connotation of having a higher purpose of some kind. So not only does forge theory inaccurately stereotype playstyle, it also tries to tell us which style is better.

Quote from: Madprofessor;896585I think the basic foundation of of GNS theory, that there are three types of gamers, is fundamentally flawed.  We may be able to classify mechanics this way, but not people.

Any theory assuming there's 100% [anything] human being is wrong.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;896587Any theory assuming there's 100% [anything] human being is wrong.

Yeah, seems kind of obvious, doesn't it?

Still, lots of people buy into it. I suppose if you accept that flawed principle in the first place, then the logical conclusions of GNS theory might seem beyond reproach.

Quote from: Madprofessor;896590Yeah, seems kind of obvious, doesn't it?

Still, lots of people buy into it. I suppose if you accept that flawed principle in the first place, then the logical conclusions of GNS theory might seem beyond reproach.

Ayup.

Still, it's kind of puzzling. I recall no RPG system featuring PCs defined by a single trait/attribute. So, even flawed and limited approximation can't achieve that and yet it's somehow possible to define a living being with a single word only.

Brilliant.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;896595Ayup.

Still, it's kind of puzzling. I recall no RPG system featuring PCs defined by a single trait/attribute. So, even flawed and limited approximation can't achieve that and yet it's somehow possible to define a living being with a single word only.

Brilliant.

Twerps defines all PCs by one attribute: Strength  :)

Quote from: Madprofessor;896585I think the basic foundation of of GNS theory, that there are three types of gamers, is fundamentally flawed.

That's not the basic foundation of GNS theory. GNS is flawed, but that's not why.

Quote from: Nexus;896606Twerps defines all PCs by one attributes: Strength  :)

MWAHAHAHAHA! YOU FELL INTO MY TRAP! Ahahhahaha!

(maniacal laughter, one that might suit a prisoner approaching guillotine and desperately attempting to convince everyone, himself included, that he isn't shitting his pants) :eek:

Ahem. ;)

Quote from: Arminius;896609That's not the basic foundation of GNS theory. GNS is flawed, but that's not why.

Well, I may be wrong I guess.  I am familiar with Edwards' article "System Does Matter" and that is what I based my assumptions off of.  I am hardly a student of Forge theory though.  Care to enlighten me?

Quote from: Madprofessor;896619Well, I may be wrong I guess.  I am familiar with Edwards' article "System Does Matter" and that is what I based my assumptions off of.  I am hardly a student of Forge theory though.  Care to enlighten me?

GNS does not claim that there are three types of gamers.  GNS claims that there are three 'creative agendas' for games, and that a game that attempts to service more than one of them simultaneously will be at conflict with itself.

(Which I still think is bunk).

GNS discussion tends to derail threads, and you can always go back and read GNS And Other Matters of Role-Playing Theory, plus the three articles on G, N, S, and a jillion threads of discussion. Then again many of the latter are full of misinformation. So I'll try to keep it brief.

Fundamentally, GNS posits that there are three modes ("creative agendas") of RPG play, and groups will only be playing in one of them at a time--at most. It claims that groups can also fail to play in any of them because of conflicts and misunderstandings about the collective goal of play. Forge theory does admit that people can be classified as (say) Narrativists, but only because they have a strong preference for one of the modes. However the idea that someone could have no preference is also consistent with the theory, since someone could arguably enjoy any instance of play as long as it successfully engages ("expresses") one of the three modes.

GNS claims that game design can and should facilitate the consistent expression of one and only one of the modes,  because if more than one mode is possible, the game is likely to be pulled in different directions ("incoherence") and be both an aesthetically unsatisfying experience and a power-struggle between participants.

The flaws of GNS are both theoretical/structural and practical. On the theory side:

1. It never came up with an adequate definition of Simulationism.
2. Related to that, it refused to address the aesthetic experience of "immersion" (in the sense of "seeing things as if you were your character"). In fact the GNS theorists helped muddy the term to the point of making it useless.
3. GNS alluded to connections between mechanics and aesthetics but copped out on generalizing about the relationship between OOC mechanics, "immersion" (in the above sense), and Narrativism. It had similar problems with the aesthetics of representation of cause-and-effect, in spite of occasional mentions that "internal cause is king" in Simulationism.

Practically:

4. Because of (3) GNS failed to predict or explain the resistance to "narrativist" and "gamist" design among gamers who had some interest in immersion and/or representation. (By "representation" I mean having the world behave as if real, not just "color" painted over bare mechanics or dramatically-motivated action.) The biggest failing here was the Forge's influence on D&D 4e, which directly caused Wizards to lose their leadership to Paizo.

5. More generally, GNS failed to explain the ongoing, general popularity of "incoherent" design and the relative lack of interest in designs focused on one of the modes (typically Narrativism).

Quote from: robiswrong;896626GNS does not claim that there are three types of gamers.  GNS claims that there are three 'creative agendas' for games, and that a game that attempts to service more than one of them simultaneously will be at conflict with itself.

(Which I still think is bunk).

It's absolutely, evidently and provably bunk.

Quote from: robiswrong;896626GNS does not claim that there are three types of gamers.  GNS claims that there are three 'creative agendas' for games, and that a game that attempts to service more than one of them simultaneously will be at conflict with itself.

(Which I still think is bunk).

Thats because it is.

Most often the more enduring RPGs have all three, or more, elements in them. While those without one or more often are the ones that fail in some manner. It is the focused game that ends up incoherent. Certainly you can make a solid game focused on one aspect. But it is going to likely exclude or even repell those not into that one focus.

Forget who. But someone likened A good RPG to a hamburger with bun and tomato *or insert your topping here*. Any one of the three elements is edible on its own or together with another. But all three together forms the best experience. usually...

Of course a game has all elements inside - partially because you can often interpret the same thing as fitting to different styles.

The point is, that at some occasions there seems to be no compromise possible and then you can see where someone stands.
(and which is the point where a game grinds to halt and fiery discussions start)

Quote from: Arminius;896627GNS discussion tends to derail threads...

Well, I apologize for posting casually and accidentally opening such a can of worms.  Thanks for the excellent summary and the clarifications.  I'll know in the future that this is a door to remain shut.

QuoteWhat defines a narrativist game?

I do.

Quote from: Arminius;896627Fundamentally, GNS posits that there are three modes ("creative agendas") of RPG play, and groups will only be playing in one of them at a time--at most. It claims that groups can also fail to play in any of them because of conflicts and misunderstandings about the collective goal of play. Forge theory does admit that people can be classified as (say) Narrativists, but only because they have a strong preference for one of the modes. However the idea that someone could have no preference is also consistent with the theory, since someone could arguably enjoy any instance of play as long as it successfully engages ("expresses") one of the three modes.

the part I highlighted in bold is the fundamental reason why I think GNS is bunk. My experience that is people agendas fluctuate from session to session. While people will often have a pattern to the type of choices they make and what interests them, you can rarely if ever pigeon hole anybody. Moreso most gamers are sane in that they realize that in order for the whole thing to work there is has to be a bit of give and take. So that just mixes it up even more. And finally none of this can be addressed or fixed by the rules. It involves the dynamics of the group and out of game issues. The solution is has been as it for small group interaction, is to fucking communicate and be willing to listen. And that it never just ends, it is an ongoing thing that will continue as long as the group gets together.

Quote from: estar;898053The solution is has been as it for small group interaction, is to fucking communicate and be willing to listen. And that it never just ends, it is an ongoing thing that will continue as long as the group gets together.

Funny, that.

I think a lot of people turn to rules because they just don't have the social skills necessary to handle that fairly basic level of group dynamics.

Quote from: robiswrong;898203Funny, that.

I think a lot of people turn to rules because they just don't have the social skills necessary to handle that fairly basic level of group dynamics.

I would think that recognizing and accepting rules as an essential part of the negotiations is at the fairly basic core of "social skills".

Quote from: robiswrong;898203I think a lot of people turn to rules because they just don't have the social skills necessary to handle that fairly basic level of group dynamics.

This criticism is applicable to pretty much anyone who believes that there exist conflicts within a gaming group that must be ironed out.

Don't believe me? Take a step back and start at the beginning: Anybody can have the game run exactly the way they want by just solo gaming. For most people, this isn't exactly satisfying. So you add a player. Things become more fun. You can't have everything exactly the way you want it. There is another player who has his own wants. But the amount of fun you lose is far, far less than the amount of fun gained simply by having this additional player. That being the case, this new player does NOT bring conflict to the table. This player is a cooperative partner the facilitates you "trading up" to a higher level of fun.

Then you repeat adding players until it is no longer the case that the concessions you make by adding a new player is outweighed by the fun the new player brings. Group dynamics made simple. Zero conflict.

The instant you or anyone assumes the viewpoint that you are making a "sacrifice" of your own fun for the sake of the group--rather than being aware that you have in reality simply traded up--you are manufacturing the illusion of conflict between what you want out of the game and what one or more other players want. This opens the door to resentment setting in. Resentment is why people bitch on message boards. Conflict, and the theorizing that follows, are attempts to justify feelings of resentment, which only feeds those feelings.

Quote from: Lunamancer;898444So you add a player. Things become more fun.

This is applicable only if you two know each other at least a bit, and you're there to actually play the game. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the circumstances), playing with total strangers, usually via the Internet, isn't uncommon practice nowadays and such random people sometimes bring helluva problems with them.

Yes, people are often massive pricks. Cue conflicts.

BTW, I recall a topic started here a few weeks ago (?) featuring the article by John Wick and his (true or not, I suspect bullshit) testimony of The Tomb of Horrors gameplay he participated in as a player. He was determined to (consciously or not) destroy the session from the very beginning. Such an attitude is shared among many people you meet in the Net and there's nothing that can be done about that.

Quote from: robiswrong;898203I think a lot of people turn to rules because they just don't have the social skills necessary to handle that fairly basic level of group dynamics.

A lot, yes, there's no question about that. But there are also a lot of cases where the energy spent on conflict resolving surpasses the entertainment. Doing things "by the book" is very useful style in such occurrences.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;898459This is applicable only if you two know each other at least a bit, and you're there to actually play the game. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the circumstances), playing with total strangers, usually via the Internet, isn't uncommon practice nowadays and such random people sometimes bring helluva problems with them.

Yes, people are often massive pricks. Cue conflicts.

No. You forgot and failed to quote the other stipulation. When adding a player isn't fun, you don't add them.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;898459A lot, yes, there's no question about that. But there are also a lot of cases where the energy spent on conflict resolving surpasses the entertainment. Doing things "by the book" is very useful style in such occurrences.

True along with much of the preceding post. However the type of communication I was referring too has more to do with keeping tabs on what the players are interested in doing.

Quote from: Lunamancer;898471You forgot and failed to quote the other stipulation

I'm addressing you and your comment only. Feel free to expand it, remind about the context if you feel it changes whole expression, but don't force me to trace who said what to whom. Working with that ancient, non-nested hierarchy of comments is... difficult. ;)

QuoteWhen adding a player isn't fun, you don't add them.

But there's no contradiction here.

It's just you can't tell whether a guy you've never meet before is "fun" or not.
You can't even tell whether his last game is his typical modus operandi, or you just happened to meet him on his special (bad/good) day.
In extreme occurrences (emphasis: extreme) you can't even tell whether the guy doesn't play a game within a game, and doesn't plan to win your (your groups) acceptation and use it to destroy that little gaming club you have three sessions from now on.

In short: you're assuming people are reasonable and predictable. I know they are not.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;898484I'm addressing you and your comment only.

The part you cut out was among my comments. Immediately after what you quoted.

QuoteIt's just you can't tell whether a guy you've never meet before is "fun" or not.

You also can't tell whether a new movie that's just come out is worth the price of admission until you see it and the money is spent. And yet some people make the decision to go to a movie, or a decision not to, all the time. This sort of judgment call is inherent with every single decision we make. It is not "conflict" in any plain English sense of the word.

You can make an error in judgment in playing with someone or not. That does not make it a conflict. It makes it an error in judgment.

Quote from: Lunamancer;898515The part you cut out was among my comments. Immediately after what you quoted.

I see nothing in your thread that might contradict what I've been saying. Are you referring to You can't have everything exactly the way you want it. ? If so, then there's still no contradiction. Feel free to address the source of the problem, it will be far easier and faster than beating around the bush. ;)

QuoteYou also can't tell whether a new movie that's just come out is worth the price of admission until you see it and the money is spent. And yet some people make the decision to go to a movie, or a decision not to, all the time.

Movies and role-playing games have some things in common, but they aren't one and the same, and they can't be used interchangeably in every sense. In this specific case, the source of entertainment is different. For example: you don't interact with people in the cinema in the way you interact with other players. You (and the rest of auditorium) don't co-create a movie, which is directly opposite to what you do during a session.

Sure, there are very specific cases when a RPG session might resemble a movie and the other way around (interactive movies featuring voting system being one), but I suspect you're talking in a broad sense.

Effectively, your example isn't very relevant and proves nothing. RPGs have more in common with, say, sexual intercourse or other social activities where the result is "something" created by all participants.

QuoteThis sort of judgment call is inherent with every single decision we make. It is not "conflict" in any plain English sense of the word. You can make an error in judgment in playing with someone or not. That does not make it a conflict. It makes it an error in judgment.

...and the result is a conflict. One that might ruin a session, develop strong regrets, form a hateful attitude towards RPGs, put a strain even on quite old relationship, or worse.

Even "the error in judgement" isn't applicable when you agree to play with total strangers, since you don't judge at all, you simply say "Skype, 5PM GMT, game X, lev Y characters, class V to Z prohibited, everyone is accepted". Yes, it IS possible to act without judging, or at least initiate an action/event without judging potential participants at all.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;898530I see nothing in your thread that might contradict what I've been saying. Are you referring to You can't have everything exactly the way you want it. ? If so, then there's still no contradiction. Feel free to address the source of the problem, it will be far easier and faster than beating around the bush. ;)

The part where I said you don't take on a player if doing so reduces fun. That does contradict absolutely everything your saying. What you're saying hinges entirely on the basis that you've found an example where I'm having less fun. The only way you are not in contradiction if you just admit you were wrong and drop it.

QuoteMovies and role-playing games have some things in common, but they aren't one and the same,

You put zero thought into this statement. You just puked it up from a million other threads where people talk about the relevant differences between RPGs and movies. Here, the difference isn't relevant. As I explicitly stated, and once again you fail to quote, going to a movie was one general example of a dilemma that exists in ALL choices. That includes which car you buy, which restaurant you go to, what job you take, who you choose to date, and yes, whenever you sit down to play a game. There's never any guarantee will prove ex-post to be what you expected ex-ante.

Quote...and the result is a conflict.

Not necessarily. The result is conflict for you. That was my whole point. You idiots who belief in this "conflict" thing are the ones causing it. For me? It has zero chance of that.

Based on your responses to my posts here, I already have you pegged as someone who is not fun to do anything with. You clearly are more interested in being right than finding truth. And you're a terrible listener. If I did post a skype invite and you showed up, you'd pretty much be booted from my game half way through character creation. And yet not a single thing about play style has been discussed. Nothing that RPG theory addresses is even a factor.

Good rules don't fix bad people. The thing is, it takes two to conflict. It just takes one to say "No, I'm not doing this" and conflict flies out the window.

My, my... Third comment and you're already in fighting mode? That was fast. :)

Anyway.

Quote from: Lunamancer;898618The part where I said you don't take on a player if doing so reduces fun. That does contradict absolutely everything your saying. What you're saying hinges entirely on the basis that you've found an example where I'm having less fun. The only way you are not in contradiction if you just admit you were wrong and drop it.

But I'm not wrong. And in fact, you're not wrong either.

Our claims aren't mutually exclusive. Unless, of course, you treat the rising popularity of online RPGing - involving playing with strangers - as sort of "modern peculiarity of no importance" which is, of course, wrong assumption.

QuoteYou put zero thought into this statement. You just puked it up from a million other threads where people talk about the relevant differences between RPGs and movies. Here, the difference isn't relevant. As I explicitly stated, and once again you fail to quote, going to a movie was one general example of a dilemma that exists in ALL choices. That includes which car you buy, which restaurant you go to, what job you take, who you choose to date, and yes, whenever you sit down to play a game. There's never any guarantee will prove ex-post to be what you expected ex-ante.

So let me get it straight... You've seen people using same argument "million" times, you observed it doesn't end very well, and you still choose to use it? Well now, you either love pain, or... ah, let's leave it at that. ;)

Anyway: I can shoot down each example you provided as easily as I did it with movies, since they all are different enough from RPGing that it renders them irrelevant to this discussion (with the exception of "dating partner" - there are strong similarities, still, it's easy to destroy too), but I don't think you have enough patience and will to listen to that.

Point is: no. The source of conflict is not important and if you treat it as vital, then you're not discussing with me, but with some mental construct that has not much in common with me. Your claim was that there's no conflict that needs to be ironed out and that's what I was addressing, nothing else. And here's my opinion that didn't change so far - no, conflict exists. ConflictS exist. And they often surpass the conflict-managing capabilities of any single person, so it might be useful to address them, recognize, and find a solution.

Just like in real life. Feel free to reduce any microscopic or global conflict to failed expectations or whatever floats your boat. This doesn't render said conflicts non-existent, or easily solvable.

QuoteNot necessarily. The result is conflict for you. That was my whole point. You idiots who belief in this "conflict" thing are the ones causing it. For me? It has zero chance of that.

Based on your responses to my posts here, I already have you pegged as someone who is not fun to do anything with. You clearly are more interested in being right than finding truth. And you're a terrible listener. If I did post a skype invite and you showed up, you'd pretty much be booted from my game half way through character creation. And yet not a single thing about play style has been discussed. Nothing that RPG theory addresses is even a factor.

Good rules don't fix bad people. The thing is, it takes two to conflict. It just takes one to say "No, I'm not doing this" and conflict flies out the window.

You seem to crave for conflict. Unfortunately, I'm not the right person to satiate your needs, bruh. Swearing doesn't bother me, it only determines the way I'm thinking about my interlocutor. :D

Aaaaanyway: your whole point is incomplete. It's based on limited scope, it's backed up by argument proven "million" times to be flawed, and the further you go, the more it seems your understanding of "conflict" itself leaves much to be desired. Nonetheless, I'll allow myself to repeat: there's absolutely no contradiction. You simply present only one part of a theory. I'm expanding it. You might not like it, but it doesn't mean you're right.

That's all. :cool:

Quote from: Maarzan;898241I would think that recognizing and accepting rules as an essential part of the negotiations is at the fairly basic core of "social skills".

Let me clarify.

A lot of people want rules for social situations because they just don't have the social skills necessary to handle that fairly basic level of group dynamics.

Like, getting everyone to agree "hey, we're playing superheroes with trenchcoats and fangs" vs. "we're playing an angsty game about how terrible it is to be a superhero with fangs and a trenchcoat" is the kind of thing that's easily done at a social level, and doesn't necessarily require rules.

"Do I hit the other vampire" is, I think most agree, the sort of thing that normally rules handle well.

Quote from: robiswrong;898953Let me clarify.

A lot of people want rules for social situations because they just don't have the social skills necessary to handle that fairly basic level of group dynamics.

Like, getting everyone to agree "hey, we're playing superheroes with trenchcoats and fangs" vs. "we're playing an angsty game about how terrible it is to be a superhero with fangs and a trenchcoat" is the kind of thing that's easily done at a social level, and doesn't necessarily require rules.

"Do I hit the other vampire" is, I think most agree, the sort of thing that normally rules handle well.

Other people want to have rules fro social situations that they don´t have to constantly deal with players that think that being loud and persevering meand being socially skilled.

Or try to avoid to establish formally that they are playing game type A by mayority vote, so that they can try to switch to their prefered type B in the middle game anyway.

This digression seems an exercise in ridiculous sophistry, Maarzan.

Quote from: robiswrong;898953Like, getting everyone to agree "hey, we're playing superheroes with trenchcoats and fangs" vs. "we're playing an angsty game about how terrible it is to be a superhero with fangs and a trenchcoat" is the kind of thing that's easily done at a social level, and doesn't necessarily require rules.

I think this is predicated on everyone knowing what it is they personally want to play, which in my experience is rarely the case.  No malice or subterfuge need be intended; lots of players will say and even believe that they want to play game type X, but when they sit down to the table end up playing game type Y because that's what's actually fun for them.

Once of the strengths of narrative control games, or dirty hippie storygames in general, is that since they often don't specify a setting, tone or style in favour of letting the group evolve it during play they don't have the problem of player failure to buy in to the setting, consciously or un-.

Quote from: daniel_ream;899039I think this is predicated on everyone knowing what it is they personally want to play, which in my experience is rarely the case.  No malice or subterfuge need be intended; lots of players will say and even believe that they want to play game type X, but when they sit down to the table end up playing game type Y because that's what's actually fun for them.

Once of the strengths of narrative control games, or dirty hippie storygames in general, is that since they often don't specify a setting, tone or style in favour of letting the group evolve it during play they don't have the problem of player failure to buy in to the setting, consciously or un-.

The problem starts, when the players want different things from the game and begin a tug of war.
So it is nice for a player to theoretical be able to adapt the game to his current needs. It doesn´t workout so nice, when other players disagree or adapt themselves in a different direction.

Quote from: daniel_ream;899039Once of the strengths of narrative control games, or dirty hippie storygames in general, is that since they often don't specify a setting, tone or style in favour of letting the group evolve it during play they don't have the problem of player failure to buy in to the setting, consciously or un-.

I have trouble buying into a world we all just brainstormed.

• I like to explore the setting, which isn't very interesting or mysterious if I helped create it.
• Seeing (and participating) in the making of the world is a bit like watching sausage get made. Either can spoil my appetite.
• When the world exists before I start play that makes the world feel more real to me. So co-creating the world detracts from my ability to suspend disbelief and thus my ability to buy into the world.

For the record, I was in the same boat as Bren until I tried Houses of the Blooded. It's not a perfect game, but it really clicked with my gaming group in Montreal. I think the buy-in comes from the same place as authors getting involved in their own creation, or similarly, people just daydreaming and loving it, plus the fact that others might come up with something you did not foresee.

Quote from: daniel_ream;899039I think this is predicated on everyone knowing what it is they personally want to play, which in my experience is rarely the case.  No malice or subterfuge need be intended; lots of players will say and even believe that they want to play game type X, but when they sit down to the table end up playing game type Y because that's what's actually fun for them.

Once of the strengths of narrative control games, or dirty hippie storygames in general, is that since they often don't specify a setting, tone or style in favour of letting the group evolve it during play they don't have the problem of player failure to buy in to the setting, consciously or un-.

First, I agree with your premise that people often don't know what they like. Or rather, the variation of that I find to most often be the case, gamers (at least the forum variety) are especially bad (worse than the general public) at differentiating "feature" from "benefit." They latch onto the features, thinking that's what they want, when it's really the benefit that matters.

This is key. Name any characteristic of a particular RPG you can think of. Like, does it have one player specially designated in some GM-type capacity. Yes or no? Players who tether themselves to features may insist on one or the other. Since it can't be both, they can't play together. However, a skilled communicator dealing with worthy (as in open-minded) players can get to the bottom of the benefits each seek. The game can't provide the preferred feature. But it may be able to provide each with the benefits they derive from the preferred feature.

It also helps to realize there are four levels: the stated goal of play (creative agenda), the methods for determining the best system to handle that (theory), the system itself (game), and the results the system produces (actual play). It's possible to agree on any of the four levels while disagreeing with any or all of the others. For instance, I am sympathetic to the goals of narrativist play, I just think forge theory is dead from the neck up, so "narrativist" games are actually among the very worst at delivering on the goals. But it's also possible to be in complete agreement on creative agenda, theory, and game and still not play well with one another. Ultimately, though, the only one of these four levels that really counts, where we really have to "get along" is actual play.

Is it possible to have mutually gratifying actual play while having very different ideas of what the system should be doing? Technically, yes. But it's highly unlikely. So to facilitate the only thing that actually matters, it is important to consider system. The other two levels, theory and creative agenda, are essentially meaningless. They're too far removed from actual play. So the focus needs to be on the system facilitating actual play. Not the system facilitating a creative agenda. And by facilitating actual play, I mean I don't care who you are or what kind of gamer you fancy yourself, there's some way to accommodate you. IF you are a worthy (open-minded) player.

I don't worry about whether or not the game can handle douche bags. I don't want to play with them anyway.

Lunamancer, that is a very astute analysis. What I have to say is similar.

First, I think it's odd to say that hippy games don't try to enforce tone or style since that's most often what they say on the tin, and it's what Forge theory says is necessary to prevent conflict and incoherence.

If there's ever a kind of game that leaves it up the group when it comes to setting the tone & style, its traditional games. Some indie games also do this but the mark of an indie (loosely Narrativist) approach to this is explicit mechanics for negotiating tone and style, while traditional games depend more on purely social and cultural mechanisms. And since traditional games also have a cultural tradition of the GM setting the tone, that isn't conducive to compromise. That doesn't mean it can't happen, though, either through explicit discussion or through natural social dynamics.

Obviously you can have social failure with either a domineering GM or simply one who isn't sensitive to players' interest and fun, but the mechanical approach also has problems. My experiences there have been mixed at best, with annoying descents into silliness--a "too many cooks" effect--and also sham collaboration where a GM still found ways to screw around with the player.

Lunamancer, good post.

I totally agree with the point on people getting stuck between "what they actually want" and "the things that in the past have gotten them what they want."

Probably the biggest issue I see in most cases is that people assume that the way they learned to play is the way that everyone plays, and so getting stuck into another group that plays a different way causes a break.  A good example of this might be someone that's played primarily hack'n'slash being told "oh, this game is going to focus on intrigue" and thinking that it means hack'n'slashing spies, when it actually means walking around and sneaking and talking to people.  Both are reasonable interpretations of the term, and yet they're not the same.

I normally rely on the GM to have enough experience that they're aware of the different styles of gameplay and can reasonably communicate with potential players.  So, saying "intrigue" is insufficient.  Saying "most of what you'll be doing is gathering information, talking to people, and building and betraying alliances.  I'd expect combat maybe one in four games, and even that will probably be fairly perfunctory" is a lot closer.  Giving specific examples of how situations might resolve out is a good technique, too.  "Yeah, so if you need to get into somewhere and just kill everyone?  That leaves bodies, which will raise tension, and there's a good chance you'll leave some sort of trail leading back to you - so the straightforward approach is not recommended."

Quote from: robiswrong;899485Probably the biggest issue I see in most cases is that people assume that the way they learned to play is the way that everyone plays, and so getting stuck into another group that plays a different way causes a break.  A good example of this might be someone that's played primarily hack'n'slash being told "oh, this game is going to focus on intrigue" and thinking that it means hack'n'slashing spies, when it actually means walking around and sneaking and talking to people.  Both are reasonable interpretations of the term, and yet they're not the same.

I take a bit of a different approach to this. "Communication" is all well and good. As you point out, it can be problematic, even counter-productive, when communication is done using terms like "intrigue" which can mean different things to different people. But sometimes adapting to a different play style is not just simply a matter of communicating. Sometimes it requires building a bit of a skill set. Whether your thing is hack-n-slash, role-play, problem-solving, or anything else, we do observe that some players seem to be better at it than others. So it's not just enough to be told "Oh, our style of play is thus and such." You might actually have to know how.

Obviously we're not going to be doing things like, "Hey, your campaign sounds awesome. So I'm just going to spend the next two years developing my skills to play it. Hope you're still running then." The skills have to be developed far, far in advance where it's not even possible to know what "style" of game you're going to be playing. Discussing expectations just isn't possible that far out.

So the question becomes, well how the hell can I develop a good skill set in advance if everyone plays a little differently and there's no way of knowing what to expect? And my answer to this is "meta-expectations."

Meta-expectations are expectations you SHOULD hold when you DON'T know what to expect. And this is determined by just examining what you have to lose vs gain. If your character dies randomly from an extremely unlucky roll and you didn't expect that sort of thing to be possible, for most people that's a lot worse than if you expected PC death IS possible in a campaign where it really isn't. So for those players, the meta-expectation would be "Always expect character death is possible." If having your character killed randomly is never a big deal to you, then I guess you don't have to sweat this one. As to the hack-n-slash guy in the intrigue game, if the problem there is he's stacking up corpses before the party can get any information out of the NPCs, then the meta-expectation should be, "Always expect monsters/NPCs have a purpose other than to present you with the challenge of killing them."

You can figure out meta-expectations without knowing anything about the games you will be playing in. This allows you to develop them over a long period of time so that when you do get into a new game, whether you discuss expectations or not, you can quickly adapt to the game and play it well.

Quote from: robiswrong;899485Probably the biggest issue I see in most cases is that people assume that the way they learned to play is the way that everyone plays, and so getting stuck into another group that plays a different way causes a break.  A good example of this might be someone that's played primarily hack'n'slash being told "oh, this game is going to focus on intrigue" and thinking that it means hack'n'slashing spies, when it actually means walking around and sneaking and talking to people.  Both are reasonable interpretations of the term, and yet they're not the same.

I normally rely on the GM to have enough experience that they're aware of the different styles of gameplay and can reasonably communicate with potential players.  So, saying "intrigue" is insufficient.  Saying "most of what you'll be doing is gathering information, talking to people, and building and betraying alliances.  I'd expect combat maybe one in four games, and even that will probably be fairly perfunctory" is a lot closer.  Giving specific examples of how situations might resolve out is a good technique, too.  "Yeah, so if you need to get into somewhere and just kill everyone?  That leaves bodies, which will raise tension, and there's a good chance you'll leave some sort of trail leading back to you - so the straightforward approach is not recommended."

Great post.

Quote from: robiswrong;899485I normally rely on the GM to have enough experience that they're aware of the different styles of gameplay and can reasonably communicate with potential players.  So, saying "intrigue" is insufficient.  Saying "most of what you'll be doing is gathering information, talking to people, and building and betraying alliances.  I'd expect combat maybe one in four games, and even that will probably be fairly perfunctory" is a lot closer.  Giving specific examples of how situations might resolve out is a good technique, too.  "Yeah, so if you need to get into somewhere and just kill everyone?  That leaves bodies, which will raise tension, and there's a good chance you'll leave some sort of trail leading back to you - so the straightforward approach is not recommended."

I realize that this is just an example, but as a GM, what game are you running when you tell the players "most of what you'll be doing is gathering information, talking to people, and building and betraying alliances.  I'd expect combat maybe one in four games, and even that will probably be fairly perfunctory"?  A deep cover spy game like "The Americans" or perhaps playing lords at the court of Henry VIII?

That example you gave seems awfully specific.  Combat always depends on what the PCs decide to do.  WFRP is famous for players plying the waterways of the Empire as merchants, and spies might decide to take it upon themselves to eliminate a target rather than calling for a wetworker.  Level of combat is always up to the players, even in B2.  Setting expectations to a degree you're talking about (like "perfunctory" combat every 1 in 4 games) is counterproductive I think.  You have a combat two sessions in a row, due to player's own actions and BOOM! you've broken the social contract.  I think players who are so uptight they need that specific a setting of expectations are exactly the kind of players that are going to call you on it.

Quote from: robiswrong;899485"Yeah, so if you need to get into somewhere and just kill everyone?  That leaves bodies, which will raise tension, and there's a good chance you'll leave some sort of trail leading back to you - so the straightforward approach is not recommended."

A player I actually have to tell this to (unless they are literally a child) is most likely not a player worth having.

Quote from: CRKrueger;899541I realize that this is just an example, but as a GM, what game are you running when you tell the players "most of what you'll be doing is gathering information, talking to people, and building and betraying alliances.  I'd expect combat maybe one in four games, and even that will probably be fairly perfunctory"?  A deep cover spy game like "The Americans" or perhaps playing lords at the court of Henry VIII?

Gee, maybe in a real conversation I'd cover that first, as opposed to an example for a BBS?

Quote from: CRKrueger;899541That example you gave seems awfully specific.  Combat always depends on what the PCs decide to do.  WFRP is famous for players plying the waterways of the Empire as merchants, and spies might decide to take it upon themselves to eliminate a target rather than calling for a wetworker.  Level of combat is always up to the players, even in B2.  Setting expectations to a degree you're talking about (like "perfunctory" combat every 1 in 4 games) is counterproductive I think.  You have a combat two sessions in a row, due to player's own actions and BOOM! you've broken the social contract.  I think players who are so uptight they need that specific a setting of expectations are exactly the kind of players that are going to call you on it.

Oh, come on, you're just looking for things to be contrary about.  Yes, things will happen based on the actions of the PCs, and yes, there will be variances from whatever is stated.  The point is to get an understanding of the ballpark of the style of the game.  No more, no less.

Quote from: CRKrueger;899541A player I actually have to tell this to (unless they are literally a child) is most likely not a player worth having.

Or is expecting a more action-oriented game.

Quote from: robiswrong;899550Gee, maybe in a real conversation I'd cover that first, as opposed to an example for a BBS?
Oh, come on, you're just looking for things to be contrary about.  Yes, things will happen based on the actions of the PCs, and yes, there will be variances from whatever is stated.  The point is to get an understanding of the ballpark of the style of the game.  No more, no less.

Well, I can't comment on what you're actually going to say, I can comment on the example...and that's the problem with this whole "setting expectations" stuff you see slathered everywhere online.  It's all the social equivalent of White Room Bullshit.  It's things taken to the extreme on both sides.  Online it comes off like if we aren't all hand in hand skipping down a very narrow Yellow Brick Road then the players are "Fuck this, I'm out!".

Quote from: robiswrong;899550Or is expecting a more action-oriented game.

"Action-Oriented", now, means leaving bodies every where you go won't have any consequences?  Forget Four-Color, that's One-Color.

I don't mean to come at you specifically Rob, but most examples run this way - far too simplistic, far too strict and narrow, far too specifically detailed, ie. not what I think anyone might say outside of a very small but vocal Indie crowd.

Now granted, I come from a very IC, non-story based perspective.  If you are playing a system with more OOC control, and players have more decisions to make then just character action, then now you're dealing with creating story, so everyone being on the same page as far as what story we're making, what the boundaries are, etc. can be a lot more important than a game in which the world is the world and things that can happen...may happen, so take steps to make sure they don't.

So, lemme tell you a story.

I have a friend.  He's still a friend.  We talked about running a game in a shared world.  We talked about freedom of player choice, about actual lethality, integrity of the game world, etc.  About what old-school meant.  About the twin evils of Drizzt and DragonLance.

When we sat down to play?  He railroaded the shit out of everything.  Denied it too, using every illusionism trick in the book.  When I ran a game?  He was pissed that he wasn't getting his levels and loot because we went through a tourney and his character decided not to enter, even though the party could have done totally different stuff.

Nasty emails flew, insulting each other, accusing each other of wasting time, etc.

Now, that's two guys coming from reasonably similar backgrounds, using the same words, and still completely fucking misunderstanding each other.  In the context of D&D.

This has nothing to do with Forge bullshit.  This has to do with people having very different ideas of what a game is about, and getting pissed when those expectations aren't met.

So, how do you solve that problem, without discussing it, and fairly explicitly?

Are my examples simplistic?  Yeah.  Because I'm writing a forum post and expect people to apply a little "most reasonble interpretation" and not just assume the worst, because we're not face-to-face and so don't have the ability to iterate rapidly on our meaning.  If we were face-to-face, I'd say something, you'd go "whoa there, you can't mean X?" and I'd respond "no, that would be dumb."  But we're not face-to-face, so a little bias towards the reasonable interpretation goes a long, long way.

I'm not going to write five pages just to make sure someone doesn't find a way to take my post the wrong way, because guess what?  If someone wants to, they will no matter what.

Real life examples are helpful, though.

Quote from: robiswrong;899576Are my examples simplistic?  Yeah.  Because I'm writing a forum post and expect people to apply a little "most reasonble interpretation" and not just assume the worst, because we're not face-to-face and so don't have the ability to iterate rapidly on our meaning.  If we were face-to-face, I'd say something, you'd go "whoa there, you can't mean X?" and I'd respond "no, that would be dumb."  But we're not face-to-face, so a little bias towards the reasonable interpretation goes a long, long way.

Amen to that.

Here's the thing, in an effort to appear "smart" or "right", some people--extremely common on forums--set their focus to finding errors and in so doing they are not focused on comprehending meaning. Of course, without correctly comprehending meaning, it's impossible to accurately evaluate whether or not something is an error. They find things they believe are errors that are truly not. And, of course, any attempt to correct them is fruitless on two counts; one, they're not in a place where they can understand the clarification anyway; two, since they are focused on finding fault, they merely parse your explanation as your inability to admit when you're wrong.

You can't reason with them. And it's sad because they may just have one or two great ideas that are lost to their lack of basic manners. You've got three options. Out them. Ignore them. Or use them as objects for your entertainment.

QuoteSo, lemme tell you a story.

I have a friend.  He's still a friend.  We talked about running a game in a shared world.  We talked about freedom of player choice, about actual lethality, integrity of the game world, etc.  About what old-school meant.  About the twin evils of Drizzt and DragonLance.

When we sat down to play?  He railroaded the shit out of everything.  Denied it too, using every illusionism trick in the book.  When I ran a game?  He was pissed that he wasn't getting his levels and loot because we went through a tourney and his character decided not to enter, even though the party could have done totally different stuff.

I could tell you a similar story of about 5 years ago when my cousin had landed a great job that he had to move for, and I had a good job and was looking to upgrade to a nicer apartment, so we decided to go in together to get a really nice apartment and be able to bank mad money at the same time. We discussed the sort of things we wanted and were on the same page about everything. It was a long search, but we finally found the perfect place. A large apartment, good wiring, high ceilings, appliances included, efficient heating, you name it. And then within a year and a half he had managed to turn the place into a shit hole. And he lost his job.

My take on it? It's not that we were misunderstanding each other despite having grown up in the same family, using the same words, and discussing things. It's that he was just telling me what I wanted to hear so I'd go in on the apartment with him, because he wanted to live like a big shot but he knew he couldn't balance out the responsibilities that come with it. He literally ordered out for lunch every day. And our doorstep was an endless stream of Amazon deliveries. Which, of course, he ran out of space to put things. He bought a pet which he neither house trained nor adequately cared for, and it was a pet particularly destructive to nice apartments. We'd discussed that, too, about getting this pet, and after I'd done my research I was against the idea. He went out one day and just came home with it anyway. He got to post pictures of it on social media. Who cares if it chewed the furniture? He'd already taken pictures of the really nice furniture we'd gotten and posted them on social media.

So my question is, could it be a similar thing here?

Maybe he wanted the kind of campaign the two of you discussed but he lacked the ability to pull it together. Maybe he lacked the skills as a GM to actually be prepared without knowing what the players would do, and wasn't very good at improvising when they threw him curve balls. So he resorted to railroading, and then to illusionism and denial to cover up his incompetence. Likewise, maybe he lacked skills as a player to earn the XP and treasure at a rate to keep pace with the rest of the group, and maybe he was insecure about that. I'd imagine if that was the case, he might still not be ready to admit it.

QuoteSo, how do you solve that problem, without discussing it, and fairly explicitly?

Three important things here:

1) What if, as in my story and quite possibly yours, it was never a communication problem to begin with? What if it was something else? What if it's a matter of lack of know-how?

2) Just as people on a message forum can find some way to misunderstand you know matter how carefully you word things, so too can gamers at the table. So whereas #1 I'm saying "It's a skill problem, not a communication problem," here I'm saying, "It's a problem of intentions, not a communication problem."

3) Maybe it is a communication problem. But, just like you correctly observe, a little bit of communication leaves open the possibility for massive misunderstanding on the details. And as maybe CRKreuger's point is that adding more communication still leaves room for vagueries. Actually, I indeed posed this theory months ago on this site, was derided for it, only now to have seen example after example of people posting problems that fit the exact form I predicted. Still, no retraction from the "talk it over" cult.

The point is this: there ARE ways to communicate other than words. Like actions or choices. And they communicate important information that we often don't think about. I could listen to a former co-worker talk 'til he's blue in the face how we gotta vote for the right people, for someone who actually cares about helping the poor. But when it comes right down to it, he won't buy a homeless man a sandwich out of his own pocket. Yeah, he cares about poverty. Right up to the point where it costs him 5 bucks. If you listen to his words, poverty is a very important issue. If you listen to his actions, it's less important than his Netflix subscription.

Your above friend? Maybe he wanted to run an old-school game. But not bad enough to want to cede his own control over to respecting player choices.

Quote from: Lunamancer;899605I could tell you a similar story of about 5 years ago when my cousin had landed a great job that he had to move for, and I had a good job and was looking to upgrade to a nicer apartment, so we decided to go in together to get a really nice apartment and be able to bank mad money at the same time. We discussed the sort of things we wanted and were on the same page about everything. It was a long search, but we finally found the perfect place. A large apartment, good wiring, high ceilings, appliances included, efficient heating, you name it. And then within a year and a half he had managed to turn the place into a shit hole. And he lost his job.

My take on it? It's not that we were misunderstanding each other despite having grown up in the same family, using the same words, and discussing things. It's that he was just telling me what I wanted to hear so I'd go in on the apartment with him, because he wanted to live like a big shot but he knew he couldn't balance out the responsibilities that come with it. He literally ordered out for lunch every day. And our doorstep was an endless stream of Amazon deliveries. Which, of course, he ran out of space to put things. He bought a pet which he neither house trained nor adequately cared for, and it was a pet particularly destructive to nice apartments. We'd discussed that, too, about getting this pet, and after I'd done my research I was against the idea. He went out one day and just came home with it anyway. He got to post pictures of it on social media. Who cares if it chewed the furniture? He'd already taken pictures of the really nice furniture we'd gotten and posted them on social media.

So my question is, could it be a similar thing here?

My ex-wife had Borderline Personality Disorder.  I'm very, *very* familiar with this type of behavior.

It's possible, of course.  But I think that's also why it's important to make sure there is clear communication about expectations - that way, you can start to tell when you're dealing with this situation and not simply miscommunication.

In cases like you're describing, to me it's about setting expectations (which was done), then delineating clear consequences for behavior, and then enforcing those consequences.  As soon as he had bought the pet, I'd have been relatively quick to exit.  Not because of the animal, but because of the way he went about it.

Quote from: Lunamancer;899605Maybe he wanted the kind of campaign the two of you discussed but he lacked the ability to pull it together. Maybe he lacked the skills as a GM to actually be prepared without knowing what the players would do, and wasn't very good at improvising when they threw him curve balls. So he resorted to railroading, and then to illusionism and denial to cover up his incompetence.

So, what should be done in this case?  Personally, when dealing with the types of personality issues I've found above, the only thing I've found to work is to set and enforce fairly rigid boundaries, or to just avoid either the person or the problem areas.

Quote from: Lunamancer;899605Likewise, maybe he lacked skills as a player to earn the XP and treasure at a rate to keep pace with the rest of the group, and maybe he was insecure about that. I'd imagine if that was the case, he might still not be ready to admit it.

Nah, nobody really got much xp/treasure that day, if any.  He's very much in the "gimme levels and lewt" mode of gameplay - won't play a video game if he can't get all the achievements, can't play MMOs because the lure of More Achievement is always there, etc.

Quote from: Lunamancer;899605Three important things here:

1) What if, as in my story and quite possibly yours, it was never a communication problem to begin with? What if it was something else? What if it's a matter of lack of know-how?

Then figure that out, and either decide if you're going to assist them, or bail out.  But I think you have to have clear communication to even detect that.

Quote from: Lunamancer;8996052) Just as people on a message forum can find some way to misunderstand you know matter how carefully you word things, so too can gamers at the table. So whereas #1 I'm saying "It's a skill problem, not a communication problem," here I'm saying, "It's a problem of intentions, not a communication problem."

Sure, and in cases where it's truly an intention problem, *run like hell*.

(I may be biased)

Quote from: Lunamancer;8996053) Maybe it is a communication problem. But, just like you correctly observe, a little bit of communication leaves open the possibility for massive misunderstanding on the details. And as maybe CRKreuger's point is that adding more communication still leaves room for vagueries. Actually, I indeed posed this theory months ago on this site, was derided for it, only now to have seen example after example of people posting problems that fit the exact form I predicted. Still, no retraction from the "talk it over" cult.

I think 'cult' is unnecessary?

More communication is not necessarily better.  The *right* communication is.  I've found that *specific examples* are a much better way of communicating than generalized statements.  "Old-school" means *nothing*.  "Each session will be a delve into the megadungeon near the characters' town.  Each session will end when they return.  Players may have multiple characters.  You'll decide which characters you're playing when people show up.  PC death should be expected, but can be avoided through good play."  That's imperfect, but it has a lot more information in it than "old-school".

Quote from: Lunamancer;899605The point is this: there ARE ways to communicate other than words. Like actions or choices. And they communicate important information that we often don't think about. I could listen to a former co-worker talk 'til he's blue in the face how we gotta vote for the right people, for someone who actually cares about helping the poor. But when it comes right down to it, he won't buy a homeless man a sandwich out of his own pocket. Yeah, he cares about poverty. Right up to the point where it costs him 5 bucks. If you listen to his words, poverty is a very important issue. If you listen to his actions, it's less important than his Netflix subscription.

Absolutely.  I couldn't agree with you more.

But in the context of starting a game and getting on the same page, *what do you propose* that's better?  If you're saying that no amount of talking can prevent miscommunication or misalignment of expectations, then I utterly agree.  But it seems like a good starting place.  And then watch what people actually do, and when it's obvious there's a misalignment, again, figure out what the issue is.  Whether that's by talking, or observation, or (probably) a combination of the above.

Quote from: Lunamancer;899605Your above friend? Maybe he wanted to run an old-school game. But not bad enough to want to cede his own control over to respecting player choices.

This is, of course, possible.  But frankly at that point he should simply be honest about things.  If he can't, then there's clearly some weird stuff going on.

Quote from: robiswrong;899611I think 'cult' is unnecessary?

Not really, the whole "talk it out" thing is ridiculously overblown practically to the level of submitting a business plan to investors. :D  Too much of a good thing.

As far as your friend goes, was that expectations?  Sounds like your friend was simply a bad GM, I mean whose expectations would have matched that game?  Also sounds like he's just not into roleplaying, he wants to Diablo all over the place with dice.  In what talk is someone going to say "I'm an action junkie who can't sit still for an hour without bloodshed, I only play at Action Hero level, I expect to win and have phat loots."  Maybe if you handed him out a interview sheet with 20 aspects of roleplaying and had him rank them 1-10.  But instead of the gaming version of the MMPI, I just play a game.

When I have a bunch of new players, or we're trying a new game, there's always a "shakedown tour".  The first session is something light and fun, trying to highlight the basic areas of the system, so maybe a break-in/heist, or a bar brawl/city chase, A Rough Night at the Four Feathers kind of thing.  Dropping them In Media Res also works, then it takes the pressure off the whole "meet-up" thing.  It will be dangerous, but not Blow Up the Death Star dangerous.

After that first game, we'll all know each other a lot better.  They'll know how I GM, not how I say I GM, and I'll know how they play, not how they say they play.  They may find out that things not on their Player's Rider are actually fun.  In any case, if someone blows their top over death, can't stand talking to NPCs, hates combat, can't sit still if they're not in the spotlight, or anything else that really has little to do with expectations other than "I expect to be a useless shitbag of a player and for everyone to take it." it will show up.

I basically do High Concept then Elevator Pitch versions of my setting, system, table.  That's it.  If they ask specific things about the system, I tell them, but if they ask things like "What's the combat level going to be?" or "Is there going to be a lot of talking and social interaction?"  I just say "That's up to you, not me."  Scheme for the crown, be a bandit, open a brothel, spend all your time exploring, whatever the players want to do, they'll do, within the limits of the reality of the setting.  Sure I may have some structure in mind, if so, that's all in the Elevator Pitch, which takes a couple minutes.

So basically it's like everything else.  A good idea to have some form of pre-game discussion, but online it becomes the extreme of no talking (which never happens) or the required mandatory Social Contract that not having is the source of all bad gaming.

But no amount of talk has showed me how someone is going to play live, at the table. Ever.

Quote from: CRKrueger;899642In what talk is someone going to say "I'm an action junkie who can't sit still for an hour without bloodshed, I only play at Action Hero level, I expect to win and have phat loots."  [...]
But no amount of talk has showed me how someone is going to play live, at the table. Ever.

This, this, a million times this. As (I think) I mentioned upthread, people lie about what they want, whether out of embarassment, malice or lack of self-awareness.

Quote from: CRKrueger;899642Not really, the whole "talk it out" thing is ridiculously overblown practically to the level of submitting a business plan to investors. :D  Too much of a good thing.

Talking doesn't solve everything. But not talking doesn't solve anything. It's just, not doing something.

There are three reasons people don't do what you want them to do.

1. They don't know what you want.
2. They don't know how to do what you want.
3. They don't want to do what you want.

• Talking can fix #1. It doesn't always fix it, but talking usually works better and faster than charades or the other person just guessing about what it is you want.

• Just talking to people can't fix #2. You can talk about what you want all day long. If the other person doesn't know how to do what you want, talking about what you want is unproductive. You may both agree that they should do that thing, but if they aren't a skilled brain surgeon, talking about what sort of surgery you need, want, expect isn't going to get the job done. Not knowing how to do stuff is fixed by training/learning. Of course training often involves some talking.

• As a first step, talking can help to figure out that the problem isn't #1 or #2, and thus by elimination, it is #3. Once you know the problem is #3, you can stop wasting your time and effort explaining what you want or training the person in how to do what you want. You might try talking to negotiate with the other person to get them to want to do what you want. Often in return for them getting something they want from you. Sometimes that works. If it doesn’t, then your best alternative is either to accept the other person is going to keep not doing what you want (i.e. you decide you’ll put up with them as they are) or you find someone else who wants to do what you want.

Quote from: CRKrueger;899642So basically it's like everything else.  A good idea to have some form of pre-game discussion, but online it becomes the extreme of no talking (which never happens) or the required mandatory Social Contract that not having is the source of all bad gaming.

But no amount of talk has showed me how someone is going to play live, at the table. Ever.

Yeah, I find people that actually write out their "social contracts" to be rather silly, personally.

And all of the things you're talking about doing are good things, to me.  So is talking.

My bigger point is that saying something like "old school" is often worse than saying *nothing*, because it means very different things to different people, and so can set expectations where they shouldn't be set.

Quote from: CRKrueger;899642Not really, the whole "talk it out" thing is ridiculously overblown practically to the level of submitting a business plan to investors. :D  Too much of a good thing.

And, again, you're assuming I'm talking about taking it to that level.  I'm not.

Quote from: CRKrueger;899642As far as your friend goes, was that expectations?  Sounds like your friend was simply a bad GM, I mean whose expectations would have matched that game?  Also sounds like he's just not into roleplaying, he wants to Diablo all over the place with dice.  In what talk is someone going to say "I'm an action junkie who can't sit still for an hour without bloodshed, I only play at Action Hero level, I expect to win and have phat loots."

Nobody will ever say that, because it's a horribly insulting way of putting that.  They might talk about how they like epic fights, they might talk about how much they like having 'epic' fights, or different types of monsters, or being heroic, or whatever.

Quote from: Bren;899670Talking doesn't solve everything. But not talking doesn't solve anything. It's just, not doing something.

There are three reasons people don't do what you want them to do.

1. They don't know what you want.
2. They don't know how to do what you want.
3. They don't want to do what you want.

This is a good breakdown to me.

I think talking is generally *necessary*, however it's usually not *sufficient*.  So, no, I don't think that talking alone will solve all of society's ills.  But it's a good place to start.

Quote from: robiswrong;899673Yeah, I find people that actually write out their "social contracts" to be rather silly, personally.

And all of the things you're talking about doing are good things, to me.  So is talking.

My bigger point is that saying something like "old school" is often worse than saying *nothing*, because it means very different things to different people, and so can set expectations where they shouldn't be set.

Exactly. Some terms set different, often clashing expectations without further resolution. "Supers" and "Pulp" for example. I do like to discuss tone and mood among other things though. Its gives players both an idea of what to expect and how to design their characters mechanically and fluffwise.

QuoteThis is a good breakdown to me.

I think talking is generally *necessary*, however it's usually not *sufficient*.  So, no, I don't think that talking alone will solve all of society's ills.  But it's a good place to start.

Even if no battle plan survives contact with the enemy intact its probably not better to have no plan at all.

The funny part is that I've been equally slammed on other boards for stating that you should watch people and observe them in play to figure out what they really want.

Quote from: Nexus;899674Exactly. Some terms set different, often clashing expectations without further resolution. "Supers" and "Pulp" for example. I do like to discuss tone and mood among other things though. Its gives players both an idea of what to expect and how to design their characters mechanically and fluffwise.

Dear god, "pulp" and its opposite "gritty".  Ugh.  I hate those terms.  Soooooo much - and for exactly that reason.  People think they're actually saying something when they say they like "pulpy" or "gritty", but they're not, because you have to figure out what they mean by those terms.  You cut out *some* of the problem space, but not much.

Supers isn't quite as bad, because most supers fans are into the genre enough that they can talk about 'street level' or 'four color' or 'silver age' and have at least a reasonably consistent idea of what that means.

Quote from: robiswrong;899677Supers isn't quite as bad, because most supers fans are into the genre enough that they can talk about 'street level' or 'four color' or 'silver age' and have at least a reasonably consistent idea of what that means.

I was more referring to people that just say its a "supers" game which can mean anything from Superfriends to The Authority and then some. Even quantifiers like Street Level merit some additional discussion: Batman, Daredevil and The Punisher are all street level but have some very different aspects. I've run allot of supers game and really learned this the hard way.

I am not sure I get the distinction either. Some people seem to think FATE is the story game around. It has some minor elements of a story game, I think, but it is fairly traditional overall.

RPGs consist of a bit of a mix of factors. The most basic thing is some sort of task resolution system (or systems) so that PCs can interact with the world in a way that hopefully makes sense. On top of that, many RPGs introduce war-game like rules to handle combat, which often is a bit more complex than normal actions (though some games authors might disagree). There are also some that include features from other types of games, such as including rules on how your estate is doing over the next few months of buying and selling land and goods etc (some of these rules resemble Monopoly more than war games). Some RPGs also include ways for the players (not just the GM) to shape the world around them, beyond what the characters could do, and I suspect that these are what most people call "story games" or narrativist games.

And, if you ask me, it's all cool. Houses of the Blooded is probably the most far out there game I have tried, with rules covering most of the above (except not resembling war games very much), and it is a great game. On the other hand many games have little beyond a task resolution system, where few GMs feel the need to use miniatures and boards, and I have had great fun with that too when it is done well (BRP comes pretty close to this ideal, though I know some people use it with some wargame features added).

Quote from: CRKrueger;899642But no amount of talk has showed me how someone is going to play live, at the table. Ever.

Same. But I have found that explaining the campaign and the tone I as the DM am aiming for tends to weed out a few problems right out the gate. Like the pitch just doesnt interest the player and they decline. Or in making the pitch, they sound interested. But their commentary sets off the little warning bells. I also like to ask players what styles of play they are used to. Things they expect.

After that its a matter of learning if a players style or table personality meshes. And whoooeee have I had some NOT mesh types. Partially because apparently several of the local DMs are of the bad sort and its ingrained in the players certain negative traits or outlooks.

But before session talk helps. Its not the cure-all some tout it to be. But its pretty much a must have to at least communicate to the player what game is being played, what setting, scope, my particular style, etc.

Example: I warn players that I tend to run D&D with "Raise Dead" type recovery few and far between. Or at least requiring effort to pull off. Some players really dont like that and want a raise temple in every town.

Quote from: Trond;899727I am not sure I get the distinction either. Some people seem to think FATE is the story game around. It has some minor elements of a story game, I think, but it is fairly traditional overall.

I allways wondered about that too.

I think the FATE series of games have simply replaced the WoD games as those most often read and talked about online by people who have never played.

Quote from: TristramEvans;899734I think the FATE series of games have simply replaced the WoD games as those most often read and talked about online by people who have never played.

Nah, that honor goes to Burning Wheel.  I can't tell you how many Burning Wheel "fans" I know that have never played it.

Quote from: Trond;899727I am not sure I get the distinction either. Some people seem to think FATE is the story game around. It has some minor elements of a story game, I think, but it is fairly traditional overall.

RPGs consist of a bit of a mix of factors. The most basic thing is some sort of task resolution system (or systems) so that PCs can interact with the world in a way that hopefully makes sense. On top of that, many RPGs introduce war-game like rules to handle combat, which often is a bit more complex than normal actions (though some games authors might disagree). There are also some that include features from other types of games, such as including rules on how your estate is doing over the next few months of buying and selling land and goods etc (some of these rules resemble Monopoly more than war games). Some RPGs also include ways for the players (not just the GM) to shape the world around them, beyond what the characters could do, and I suspect that these are what most people call "story games" or narrativist games.

And, if you ask me, it's all cool. Houses of the Blooded is probably the most far out there game I have tried, with rules covering most of the above (except not resembling war games very much), and it is a great game. On the other hand many games have little beyond a task resolution system, where few GMs feel the need to use miniatures and boards, and I have had great fun with that too when it is done well (BRP comes pretty close to this ideal, though I know some people use it with some wargame features added).

I think the difference isn't so much a distinct bright line as a spectrum were most games and most people preferences lay somewhere between the two extremes.

Quote from: Nexus;899763I think the difference is as much a distinct bright line as a spectrum were most games and most people preferences lay somewhere between the two extremes.

Sure. But either way it's cool to try things on the extremes. Some people might find that they like "story games", AND "old school". There are others who seem to think that if they do try story games or whatever, then they have joined some sort of brain washed cult :D

Quote from: Trond;899769Sure. But either way it's cool to try things on the extremes. Some people might find that they like "story games", AND "old school". There are others who seem to think that if they do try story games or whatever, then they have joined some sort of brain washed cult :D

Some of the narrative games operate fairly differently, to the point where it's very jarring for someone used to more traditional systems.  Like getting into a car and realizing that the gas pedal is on the stereo knobs and the brake is the steering wheel.  That can cause quite a bit of backlash.

I went through that a bunch myself.

Quote from: Trond;899769Sure. But either way it's cool to try things on the extremes. Some people might find that they like "story games", AND "old school". There are others who seem to think that if they do try story games or whatever, then they have joined some sort of brain washed cult :D

I don't have a problem with people liking whatever they want and I've tried some so called "Story games" (occasionally unknowingly as I found out there were story games later). I've said before I don't get the intense hostility that seems directed at the "other side" before. Try whatever interests you. :)

Quote from: Trond;899727I am not sure I get the distinction either. Some people seem to think FATE is the story game around. It has some minor elements of a story game, I think, but it is fairly traditional overall.

Heavy marketing and sales is to do with that. To be fair, the game books are neatly packaged and the system is tidy at least - but I don't really see anything in the game beyond presentation that wasn't in other action orientated games of 20-30 years ago.

Of course, if all you've ever played before is Pathfinder or GURPS, say, then it may be a revelation.

What aspects of the system are "story game"?

Quote from: Nexus;900103What aspects of the system are "story game"?

Well, the mechanisms of 'story games' like My Life With Master or Fiasco are intended that each session establishes a set of themes or relationships that will move through a narrative towards a near-prescribed ending that resolves these themes and relationships.

Other games don't do this, but they do attempt to use literary techniques in designing characters for example - set Q&A or preludes - or attempt to demphasise the notion of simulating 'reality' for a more genre-emulating system of play. Of course, some might say that a lot of this stuff is pretty muc in most RPGs if you look for it, although some games make a bigger deal of it than others.