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

[clearstream]

Not if the new player says the same things, or different things that support the same "ludonarrative".

To reach this assessment (i.e. "same") is insufficiently sensitive to differences in the ludonarrative. The ludonarrative is not a summary or any sort of precis of the ludonarrative. It's not a retrospective of one linear traversal. Different players will offer differing performances: they'll say different things and load those things significantly differently.

The player is not themself a signifier. They produce them.

Similarly, this is insufficiently sensitive to features of and differences in the signifiers. It is not only what players say (signifiers they contribute and curate), but

how they say it (intonation, connotation etc)​

recollecting that signifiers are dynamic, how they update them (choosing, driving, leveraging and enacting)​

their expressions and movements including those that are to the side of what they say​

their live arguments or conflicts (such as in PVP), or conspiring and abetting (such as conferring and planninng), with other players​

their efforts to influence how other players play​

...the list is endless​

Taking the player away changes the supervening ludonarrative. Some have compared TTRPG to improv, where players are actors. They are actor/authors, fabricating the significance-laden game mechanism through wielding the game-as-artifact tools, and working with and within that mechanism.

As far as "observation" of signifiers go: if the "ludonarrative" changes with a new interpreter, then it is not ergodic literature, is it?

As I said in an earlier reply, don't conflate ergodic literature with what I am saying. It was a stepping off point... nothing more.

Setting those points aside, I currently see the ludonarrative as the entire implied volume, while stories are the specific traversals within the volume viewed in hindsight (and perhaps at times envisioned or prepared by participants). Story then is linear (although stories can wind back and forth, entangle and cross over one another). Ludonarrative is dynamically non-linear.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

On "I don't see people playing super cautiously in other games either," I guess it really depends upon the game. I can tell you from 1984 through 1999 (and all the one shots since), every B/X Pawn Stance Dungeoncrawl game and every RC Hexcrawl game I ran featured developed and deployed S.O.P.s that optimized for risk profile and resource management.

Haha, yeah, back in the '70s when we played D&D/Holmes/early pre-DMG 1e mix we had a whole set of codewords and SOPs that was named 'Sniff & Listen'. At one point one of us wrote up a book to hand to the GM. The caller would just trigger an SOP, like "we go to the door and Sniff & Listen" and that was understood to be the SOP for a standard set of door inspection routine, listening, etc. It included EVERYTHING, examining the door for signs of Ear Seekers, listening, smelling, looking for traps and tricks, etc. "Open Door" had a whole additional set of procedures. There was one called "Mule Go Bang" for breaking down a door, etc.

The Dungeon Company didn't go wildly into the unknown. We went with large cohorts of hirelings, mobile shelters, defensible wagons in the outdoors, and movable wooden 10' and 5' wide barriers in dungeons that we pushed ahead of ourselves. We were like an army group, we weren't there to lose! No chances were taken! We pixel bitched the entire dungeon, every square centimeter and treated it like a gold mining business.

That's turtle play, for sure! That's what you get IME from classic dungeon crawl play. Now, obviously, that isn't going to exactly describe other games/genres, like BitD, but I guarantee you, you don't 'win' BitD by being a crazy man, so the idea is not really 'winning'! I think that's part of the problem is, without any real depth built into characters, all you can really play is some variation of the 'XP Game', and it becomes like The Dungeon Company, more of a game of calculating and minimizing risk than anything else.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Haha, yeah, back in the '70s when we played D&D/Holmes/early pre-DMG 1e mix we had a whole set of codewords and SOPs that was named 'Sniff & Listen'. At one point one of us wrote up a book to hand to the GM. The caller would just trigger an SOP, like "we go to the door and Sniff & Listen" and that was understood to be the SOP for a standard set of door inspection routine, listening, etc. It included EVERYTHING, examining the door for signs of Ear Seekers, listening, smelling, looking for traps and tricks, etc. "Open Door" had a whole additional set of procedures. There was one called "Mule Go Bang" for breaking down a door, etc.

The Dungeon Company didn't go wildly into the unknown. We went with large cohorts of hirelings, mobile shelters, defensible wagons in the outdoors, and movable wooden 10' and 5' wide barriers in dungeons that we pushed ahead of ourselves. We were like an army group, we weren't there to lose! No chances were taken! We pixel bitched the entire dungeon, every square centimeter and treated it like a gold mining business.

I have never played like that and it sounds utterly miserable to me.

That's turtle play, for sure! That's what you get IME from classic dungeon crawl play. Now, obviously, that isn't going to exactly describe other games/genres, like BitD, but I guarantee you, you don't 'win' BitD by being a crazy man, so the idea is not really 'winning'! I think that's part of the problem is, without any real depth built into characters, all you can really play is some variation of the 'XP Game', and it becomes like The Dungeon Company, more of a game of calculating and minimizing risk than anything else.

Eh. In my experience people always make characters with at least some depth, and also, I don't think a lot of people need "win conditions" or goals beyond "cool characters having cool adventures." It is not about a goals, it is about having a fun ride. The goal is just an excuse for having a ride. Like most characters in my game care about gold, but I don't think the players really do. Players care about having exiting stuff for their characters to for, and treasure is just one convenient excuse to put their characters into a tight spot. Though obviously not the only one, there are way more interesting reasons.

 

[thefutilist]

I’m not opposed to learning how it’s used. Even in talking in those terms to someone that wants to use it that way, but there’s even more barriers there. 1. Everyone means something different by the terms. When I try to dig in to understand what exactly is being meant, except for the broadest similarities, the nitty gritty details don’t align between people, even people mostly on the same side. And 2. Even the same person often contradicts their own explanations of the terms.

You’re probably better off asking specific people for their takes rather than seeing them as representatives of a theory. As you pointed out, people have genuinely different views.

For instance, I do consider Critical Roll as Narrativist play (at a rough estimate about half of all role-players are trying achieve Narrativist fun). It’s just been busted by role-play culture.

I’m even open to debating this point. Given that I think Narrativist play is anti-genre, it may actually be an open question as to whether people secretly want to achieve it if only they knew better v they are actually happy with genre emulation.


Anyway you were asking about what ‘play to find out means’. In it’s broadest sense it means play to find out how this situation resolves. Vincent coined it to refer to the purpose of a specific game.

So in Sorcerer you play an arrogant sorcerer who has called upon soul destroying demons to help him get what he wants. The initial conditions of the game mean there are going to be four different endings.


They get what they want but at the cost of their soul.

They get what they want, soul intact.

They don’t get what they and lose their soul.

They don’t get what they want, soul intact.


We play to find out which one happens. Although the specifics of the situation are going to throw up additional questions.

Will Alicia get with Mari?

Will Bernard get over his grief?

Will Sarah become C.E.O?

We play to find out.


This is usually contrasted with someone (mostly the GM), knowing the answers to these questions and play is about how we get there.

I don’t think it has great utility when we get to the nuts and bolts of play.

 

[FrogReaver]

But your (1) and (2) are one way to engage in narrativist RPGing. But it's not straightforward to divorce your (1) and (2) from mechanics. Suppose, for instance, that a common outcome of the resolution mechanics is that a new situation is created that is largely thematically irrelevant - eg a need for healing, or replenishment of gear. Or suppose that a common feature of the resolution mechanics is that time has to be closely tracked (eg for spell durations), then the GM can't frame scenes in thematically responsive ways if that would require departing from those time-tracking requirements.

my initial thought here is Yes! Mechanics can get in the way of any type of play at times. You illustrate this well I think.

To me that’s an argument to get rid of those particular mechanical barriers when you want narrative play. But that doesn’t need to mean completely changing all mechanics. At least the case for needing that isn’t immediately apparent. DM empowerment over whether to invoke a rule or make a new one on the spot seems to get you there as well.

Going down a separate line of thought, it’s easy for me to see how some games have more rules that get in the way more often. Which to me implies some games will allow for more narrative play in the mix. But my intuition says all the elements are present to some degree in all playstyles. Like mandates that moves follow from the fiction is advice applicable to both narrativist and simulationist games. @clearstream mentioned earlier about particular mixtures and that seems very applicable to your position then, but you also were very anti-spectrum then and it’s hard to see how we don’t end up with a spectrum of narrative play following my 1 and 2 above when coupled with your points about certain mechanics getting in the way.

Or suppose that the principle vehicle of scene-framing is map-and-key - that is, the movement of the PCs across a map is tracked, using distance-per-rate-of-time rules to do that, and the GM uses their key to tell the players what the PCs encounter; it is not easy to reconcile this sort of framing technique with thematically relevant scene-framing.

Yea. I’m not as big on map and key play. You talk a lot about it and I can’t say my play is completely devoid of it, but it’s certainly not the main feature of my play. You focus on it alot in describing differences and maybe that’s part of our communication problem.

 

[Manbearcat]

Right. I am not saying that cautious play never occurs, just that I haven't personally encountered it much. I don't think I have ever played in the proper old school dungeon Vietnam mode. And I actually try to make attrition and resources matter (not boring ones like arrows and stuff, but HP and spells slots etc) in my D&D using gritty rests and stuff like that, but I still do not see people playing particularly cautiously.

So yes, obviously if you come from culture where cautious play is very prevalent, and then get into a game that diminishes or prevents that, it feels like big shift. But if you didn't have the issue in the first place, then you really are not gonna notice the impact.


Right. And that is something you could easily do. Look at Critical Role, huge chunks of the play revolves around personal stories and issues of the characters. My current D&D game is intentionally pretty episodic pulp adventures in style of Conan & co, so I wouldn't say characters are super deep nor most of the game revolve around their personal issues, but still we have still dealt with their family dramas, old enemies, difficult relationship with their culture and stuff like that. And of course the main direction of the game is mostly dictated by one character's obsession about ancient lost secrets. Granted, that is in certain sense an excuse to have pulpy fantasy adventures.

But the basic structure of making the game to be about characters is super simple. Have players come up with concept themes and backstories for characters, then the GM mines those for content of the game. People have done this forever in one way or another. Usually it is just one ingredient among many, but of course one can easily make it the main ingredient if one wants. Personally I prefer a mix of more personal and more external stories. Like in a TV shows some episodes are more character centric and some more external issue centric.


I know their background, and whilst interesting, their working class plight didn't much feature, as they were our antagonists from the get go, so we were not predisposition to be very sympathetic towards them. Though my character, who is of the lowest class of our team, was initially most positive towards them.

So you made a huge deal about me getting the name wrong. And if you stop to consider it, there is very simple reason for this. For the same reason I might indeed call Crows Ravens and Red Sashes Red Scarves etc. I am a Finn, we don't play in English. And it would be weird to have English words pop up in a Finnish in-character speech. So every name with an obvious meaning, every concept we need to refer to in-character, we translated. Factions, districts, names of things. That's how casual about this game we were. So most of the time I'd call them Mustalamput, and so when I try to remember what it is in English, I just translate it back and such glitches may occur.


I didn't say game becomes turtley and cautious. I said D&D characters are more eager to resolve things with violence, as getting hurt is less serious business in that game. In Blades we don't usually storm in guns blazing, we try to approach things with stealth and guile when possible. Though of course that's not always an option. And it actually is something I like about the game. Risks feel more real, like you were a normal human instead of an invincible superhero.

And yeah, perhaps healing isn't super slow, but it is slower. It is serious resource sink that you must burn your precious downtime activities on and being hurt causes actual penalties. And bear in mind, we're pretty early stages of this game, so our gang doesn't have a lot of resources.

Not a ton of time, so I'm just going to hit the high, important notes as I see them as briefly as I can:

1) Mea culpa and retraction for the observation regarding "Black Lamps vs Lampblacks." Obviously, your ESL situation kills that tentative observation of mine stone-dead.

2) You already got a perfect answer from @darkbard regarding the extreme differences between what Critical Role did in their 5e game (a sort of high-production w/ a heavy focus on the visuals/signals to the audience around color and affectation, some level of writer's room dynamics, discretional rules ignoring to achieve preferred story beats, some level of GM metaplot + player character arc/metaplot possibly w/ some player-side railroading working in concert); Neotraditional play.

In the past you've grokked my usage of "System's Say." I'm just going to invoke it again (for economy). That fidelity to System's Say is such an essential (in frequency and magnitude) difference between what Critical Role is doing and, say, what we did last night in our (2nd to last) The Between session and what we'll be doing tonight in our Stonetop game. Relentlessly following the rules, being deeply interesting in the game engine's input upon the trajectories of character, evolving situation-states, emergent setting is fundamental to the blow-by-blow experience of play. I mean, if one thing is taken away from these conversations, I hope it is that. These games demand fidelity to the game layer. The game layer is very purposeful. It is not opt-out. It is a participant as much as the flesh & blood around the table (virtual or meatspace). And each of those game layers, while having a fair amount of shared DNA, each have novel aspects that change that blow-by-blow experience from one game to another. Yes, the fiction of Dogs in the Vineyard is different from Apocalypse World, but the game layer is also enormously different, despite Baker authoring both...that difference in game layer matters considerably to the cognitive and emotional space of each participant playing.

TLDR on 2: If you find yourself saying "I just want the system to get out of the way (of your story of your immersion...whatever)" and/or you want the option to opt-out of the game layer or system directives in the course of play? You are not a Narrativist-inclined player. Story Now games feature a blow-by-blow experience that you're clearly_not_looking_for (and cannot recreate with heavy GM mediation and table discretionally opting out of the game layer and any focus at all on conflict & stakes free/lite play) out of TTRPGing (either as a player or a GM).

3) I appreciate your response regarding player hesitation to engage in violence (despite what the game is telling you to do; eg Go Boldly into Danger), but I can't figure what is going on at your table beyond the suspicion that your GM is either giving out too much Harm or the players just feel the physical peril is more "Sword of Damoclese-ey" than it actually is.

I mean, yes, the game is physically dangerous to characters and increasingly so if you punch above your belt (Assault Scores with higher Tier opposition). But, again, I've got so much experience with that game and its just not materialized. The danger in that game is serious (especially Tier 0 to Tier 2) but its danger from the things I mentioned in that post (full Crew Trauma Out of a Score and/or abandoning a Score w/ a PC or two having Trauma'd out in the midst of it and not being able to make a move to get them out of their helpless pickle, characters hitting 3 Traumas early or 4 Traumas total, Incarceration, danger to Friends/Contacts/Vice Purveyors/Allies/Cohorts that you've developed relationships and bonds with).

Harm is absolutely perilous to Cohorts. That is a fear that should loom. But to PCs? Net, in the course of a huge amount of running that game? Dangerous, yes...but not this looming peril that should send players knuckling under the weight of it so they're reconsidering going boldly into danger and therefore violating the rules (and Best Practices are rules...they're not opt-in/out; Go Boldly into Danger and Embrace the Scoundrel's Life are foundational to play). Your signals are a bit mixed as to whether or not the players are actually Going Boldly into Danger or not (you brought this line of conversation up in the course of discussing this particular issue...so that generates a read from me that you feel they aren't, in fact, going as boldly into danger as the game expects/demands).

EDIT: The primary point of duress (both frequency and magnitude) that Harm puts on play is the impact of Reduced Effect and -1d of Harm 1 and 2.

---

I think I'm just going to cut it there. I could talk about how game engine meets espoused principles meets meatspace dynamics to generate a play paradigm (turtling vs going boldly into danger); incentive structures, trade-offs, the weight of social customs and pressures, internalizing and operationalizing norms (unknowingly or knowingly). But I think I don't want to engage too deeply with that at this point. The above is enough I think (for me, at least).

 

[FrogReaver]

Thoughts on this?

In GNS,
Simulationist (S) is a preference for mechanics (game elements) to drive a reality simulation within the game.

Narrativist (N) is a preference for mechanics (game elements) to drive a narrative simulation within the game.

Gamist (G) is a preference for mechanics (game elements) that exist foremost for the game. For example, encounter guidelines where the PCs dont normally face encounters with too strong or too weak opponents.

To me it’s the synthesis of all these things together in a game that makes it work. All games seem to have pieces of each of these. The best mechanics IMO are ones that can drive simulation, narrative and the game itself simultaneously - even if not doing any of these perfectly.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So I've mentioned it several times, but has none in this discussion watched Critical Role? Because I feel people's conception of D&D in these discussions often seem to be some sort of outdated near pawn stance dungeon Vietnam, that I do not recognise. That or just adventure paths. To me D&D (and just RPGs I play and run in general) look more like CR. Trad, but characters certainly aren't some sort of interchangeable afterthought even though everything wouldn't always revolve around their personal issues. And if a lot of people weren't already playing that way, now they certainly are, as at least half of the D&D GMs are trying to mimic Mercer. And I am not even thinking that he is somehow amazing, I just find his style pretty relatable even though I wouldn't agree with all his choices. Seeing it helps to understand how a lot of people these days play or at least aspire to play.

And of course that also is the playstyle which probably influenced the design of Daggerheart quite a bit.

I'm not super familiar with CR. I saw some of the earlier stuff. I've definitely read Daggerheart. What separates this style from, say @Manbearcat is Story Now play, from what I can see. Daggerheart, for instance, makes no real attempt to explain or espouse this technique. Not that it's hostile to it, DH is much more friendly to this style of play than any edition of D&D, maybe 4e excepted.

However, what I gather of CR style is it envisages taking a set of plot elements developed by a single author and then mapping character considerations into the situation in some way. And I am very much unclear as to the details of how this all happens in CR play, but DH at least doesn't really commit to Story Now and thus also doesn't commit to things like DW's admonition against plot.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think a lot of people need "win conditions" or goals beyond "cool characters having cool adventures." It is not about a goals, it is about having a fun ride.

Anyway you were asking about what ‘play to find out means’. In it’s broadest sense it means play to find out how this situation resolves. Vincent coined it to refer to the purpose of a specific game.

<snip>

We play to find out which one happens. Although the specifics of the situation are going to throw up additional questions.

Will Alicia get with Mari?

Will Bernard get over his grief?

Will Sarah become C.E.O?

We play to find out.


This is usually contrasted with someone (mostly the GM), knowing the answers to these questions and play is about how we get there.

So, I think we can see in @Crimson Longinus's post that I've quoted another point of contrast: there are no questions to be answered. Play is just a "fun ride".

In practice, in my experience at least , the content of "fun ride" RPGing is provided overwhelmingly by the GM, and fits within conceits provided by the game. An example of what I mean is this:

Like most characters in my game care about gold, but I don't think the players really do. Players care about having exiting stuff for their characters to for, and treasure is just one convenient excuse to put their characters into a tight spot.

The caring about gold is a conceit that is generated by D&D itself. It's a fig leaf that sits over the players' participation in the "stuff for their characters to do" that is provided by the GM.

This is, in my view, a long way from narrativist play.

 

[pemerton]

my initial thought here is Yes! Mechanics can get in the way of any type of play at times. You illustrate this well I think.

To me that’s an argument to get rid of those particular mechanical barriers when you want narrative play. But that doesn’t need to mean completely changing all mechanics. At least the case for needing that isn’t immediately apparent. DM empowerment over whether to invoke a rule or make a new one on the spot seems to get you there as well.

The GM deciding when to invoke rules or abandon them or whatever is, in my opinion based on my experience, not a good fit with player-driven play. For instance, if the GM is at liberty to suspend the rules, then instead of the rules bringing unexpected results, driving home the consequences of failed protagonism, etc, it just becomes the GM making a decision to hose or not hose the player. Which isn't much fun for either participant, in myexperience.

When it comes to "completely changing all mechanics" I don't know what you have in mind. 4e D&D, for instance, doesn't completely change all of AD&D's mechanics. It doubles down on some of them and changes others.

Burning Wheel doesn't completely change all of RQ or RM's mechanics. If you're a RM or RQ player, and you look at a BW PC sheet, you're going to recognise the significance of the long list of skills, the derived attributes, etc. You'll quickly work out that spell tax is like PP or POW depletion.

But there are key elements of BW that differ from RQ and RM, and that make it better suited for narrativist play. As I've already posted in this thread, I doubt very much I'll ever GM RM again, having found a game better suited for my purposes.

Going down a separate line of thought, it’s easy for me to see how some games have more rules that get in the way more often. Which to me implies some games will allow for more narrative play in the mix. But my intuition says all the elements are present to some degree in all playstyles. Like mandates that moves follow from the fiction is advice applicable to both narrativist and simulationist games. @clearstream mentioned earlier about particular mixtures and that seems very applicable to your position then, but you also were very anti-spectrum then and it’s hard to see how we don’t end up with a spectrum of narrative play following my 1 and 2 above when coupled with your points about certain mechanics getting in the way.

I honestly don't know what the spectrum is that you (and @clearstream?) are trying to articulate.

I mean, either the session of play addresses premise, or it doesn't. Either the way scenes are framed, and resolved, generates theme, or it doesn't. Either there is rising action across a moral line - driven by fit characters and apt antagonism - or there isn't.

I’m not as big on map and key play. You talk a lot about it and I can’t say my play is completely devoid of it, but it’s certainly not the main feature of my play. You focus on it alot in describing differences and maybe that’s part of our communication problem.

Well the goal of my posts is not to characterise your play. That's up to you.

But it seems to my implausible to deny that map-and-key play is not a big thing. I mean, I have CoC modules that are full of maps and keys - what the heck is that about, other than being a massive marker of the enduring cultural footprint of D&D's map-and-key approach across the whole hobby.

Another enduring thing, related to map-and-key, is that play should start "at the edge of the map" or "at the entrance to the mapped place" - that is to say, that play should being in a low- or no-stakes situation, so that the players' first move is to enter the "gameboad" and thereby being the process of enlivening scenes.

This is why any discussion of starting in media res gets labelled as railroading by many people, even if the "res" of the scene are things that the GM has directly taken from the players' cues. For instance, I've often posted - as an example of narrativist play - my first session of Burning Wheel: one of the PCs had a Relationship with his balrog-possessed brother, and had a Belief that he would find a magic item to help end that possession, and I opened play with that PC in a bazaar in Hardby with a peddler offering to sell him an angel feather.

Multiple posters have told me that that was an inappropriate way to start, and that the session should have started at the gates to the city, so that the player has the choice to go to the bazaar or not. That criticism makes no sense at all unless one takes as a premise that play should begin at the edge of the map with nothing at stake. Which is to say, the criticism both reflects the cultural legacy of map-and-key play, and is directly at odds with the goals of narrativist play.