Tactical and Narrative Role-Playing Games

[Cluedrew]

So over the years of hanging around the forum I have crafted my own organization system for different role-playing systems. It isn't all encompassing but it does cover an important high level concept. It is the scale from tactical to narrative role-playing games. But to explain what it means, I'm going to have to take a step back.

Just to get us started, I'm going to do the impossible and define role-playing games. At least it would be impossible if I was trying to be very precise about it, really this is supposed to be a framing device for the rest of this thread and not a perfect general definition.

So the definition is: A role-playing game is a game that has both a mechanical layer and a fiction layer, the players have access to both and the layers interact with each other.

To go over that in more words; I'm saying it is a game because that glosses over all the things we all roughly know that I don't want to go into detail about, and I'm not going to. So that leaves us with the layers and interaction.

The mechanical layer is the hard rules about stats, rolling dice and the groups of outcome like "success" or "failure". The fiction layer is the words, the story about the setting, the personalities of the characters and the many details the rules do not capture. There are other layers, like the "what is happening in real life" layer, but they show up in most games and I have nothing in particular to say about them. Interaction between the two means that they affect each other, each can have moments where it decides what is happening.

With the definition done, I can now explain what this organization of role-playing games is all about: Which of these two layers does the system focus on? A tactical role-playing game puts the mechanical layer at the center of its design, while a narrative role-playing game does the same with the narrative layer.

Despite the rather binary description, the groups aren't quite that clean. The "what to focus on" decision has to be made many times over a rules system so the whole system can land anyone on a broad scale. So you can break it down and apply the comparison on pieces of a system.

This comparison is on the structural of the rules. Player (including a GM) can have a different focus than the system itself. This is a mismatch, but if it works, it works.

What this difference looks like depends on where we are in the rules. The best example I have of a single point of comparison is in the resolution system. Consider the phrase "fiction first", which I guess is the opposite of "mechanics first", although I just made that phrase up. Generally, fiction first systems recommend that you decide what you are doing in fiction and then fit the – usually fairly flexible – rules to that situation. Hence, mechanics first systems generally have you pick a mechanical option, which then dedicates some fiction and you can fill in some extra flavour.

That is the big example, but there are others. No long explanations this time, but a few others include: having (or not) a special tactical mini-game to dig into (usually combat), measuring distances in concrete (ft, m) vs. abstract (near, far) units, having enough overlapping options to support optimization vs. spreading things out more (not that I have ever found a system you can't optimize a little) and a focus on player skill vs. character skill. There are others. There are also some things - like PC/NPCs using different rules - that are associated with one end of the scale; but perhaps not for a structural reason.

As this explanation has already gotten long enough I'm wondering if there is anything I can cut*, I'm going to wrap this up. The tactical/narrative scale has been my main way of organizing things within the role-playing game for quite a while now (well, that an setting), and I have been trying to hammer out a good description of it for quite a while too, and I hope I have finally succeeded.

Thoughts?

* I did, this is after one round of that.

[Telok]

You may want to consider clarifying the statement "like PC/NPCs using different rules" since some people use it to describe one method of monster creation in D&D 3.p. and will assume that's what you're talking about.

[Yora]

Well, yes...

But what kind of utility or application do we get from this observation?

[Batcathat]

So the definition is: A role-playing game is a game that has both a mechanical layer and a fiction layer, the players have access to both and the layers interact with each other.

I'm not sure this includes all games. What about games that are purely freeform without any mechanics at all? (Though I suppose it might depend on how we define mechanics, even freeform games usually have a GM that can arbitrate conflicts).

[Vahnavoi]

You are wasting a lot of words to get at a simple concept: rule priority.

As in: if a game makes two (or more) different statements about a thing, which takes precedence?

You have correctly identified games can be grouped by which kind of rules they prioritize, but whether these groups fall on the scale you propose is dubious. It's more likely it's a multidimensional space, of which typical gamer juxtapositions only manage to describe a glimpse. Consider there are at least 8 different aesthetics of games that are widely acknowledged and you can rank them in priority in 8! different ways.

Other criticisms include failure to define roleplaying games. First of all, defining a roleplaying game is not impossible. It's trivial: a roleplaying game is a rule-based exercise where a player assumes viewpoint of a character in a staged situation and decides what to do, how, and why.

The existence of separate layers of gameplay is a valid observation, but it's not a definition, certainly not of roleplaying games. Nearly all game types have tactics and strategies particular to them, and several others have a fictional layer too that comes about as result of playing. Consider a card game where players deal cards from their hand to finish each other's sentences in order to construct a story. There is a clear mechanical layer (how the cards are dealt, when a player's turn is etc.), clear strategic and tactical layers (players have to reason what kind of a story they want and in which order to deal their cards to get their desired result) and a clear fictional layer (the story that's being created). But few would confuse this for a roleplaying game because the players never assume roles, never make decisions from the viewpoint of any character within the story.

[Cluedrew]

To Tolak: I'll clarify that I'm only talking about NPCs that could be PCs but aren't if someone is confused about it. I've given up trying to head off every misunderstanding, especially since I have had to repeat them directly at people even if they are in the opening post. Also that post feels big enough already.

To Yora: To communicate ideas about different types of role-playing games. Same as most descriptions of role-playing games, or having the term "role-playing game" to begin with.

To Batcathat: I said it is impossible to create a perfect definition and I meant it. But if we want to apply this framework to free-form role-playing, then free-form is so heavily focused on the narrative side the mechanics side has disappeared. And whether that means free-form is still a role-playing game is kind of besides the point here, we can discuss it using the same terms and get takeaways like: If you usually prefer tactical systems you are less likely to find what you are looking for in free-form.

[Satinavian]

I would avoid the name "narrative". That is usually reserved for games that consider themself most with story and drama. Those are often more concerned with gnre conventions, pacing, tension arc ect than the fiction of what happens in the game. If one of your categories is about the fiction, name it after that.

[Quertus]

So, ignoring the specific wording, for example taking this as a description of an RPG rather than a definition… hmmm… I disagree that “level of abstraction” (such as precise distances vs “near” and “far” equate to “rules first” vs “fiction first”. That is, I think that you can have precisely defined vague distances, and clear “rules first” interaction with those vague distances.

To me, “fiction first” is… “who cares about specific stats, this is a Kryptonite elemental punching Superman!”.

But I feel I’m missing the forest for the trees.

[HidesHisEyes]

I don’t think a spectrum fully encompasses all the varieties of roleplaying games there are - people seem to have largely turned against the “simulationist / gamist / narrativist” model at this point and that’s got three poles. And I’m not sure if “tactical” is what I’d put at the far end of your spectrum. I can think of games that are both very narrative-focused and very tactical, if I’m just using the general definition of tactical. Ironsworn jumps to mind.

But I think it’s a useful way of thinking about RPGs, yeah, it captures something I would probably mention if I were describing a game to someone, eg to see if they wanted to play it.

But aside from this and from genre, setting and premise, I might also talk about
Procedural vs freeform
Specific vs generic
Diegetic vs metagame-focused
And good old gamist vs narrativist vs simulationist (which I still think is a perfectly good model).

It may be hard to define RPGs but I honestly think that’s nothing next to how hard it is to categorise them.

EDIT: oh as a side note, I didn’t include fiction first vs mechanics first because I think all RPGs are really fiction first. That’s part of my own definition of RPG. You can put the mechanics really close to the front - “kryptonite elemental makes an attack roll against superman with a +100 bonus” instead of “kryptonite elemental punches superman, obviously superman is screwed, he’s out of action, let’s roll to see if he even survives” - but they can’t be at the front because there has to be some fiction… well, first… for the mechanics to mean anything at all.

[Cluedrew]

To Satinavian: Yeah, "narrative" is not a perfect word but there is only so much I can do to stop people from jumping to conclusions. Still, if you have a better word for it I'll hear the suggestion.

To Quertus: Hmm... maybe that is asymmetric, in that a narrative system might be wasting its time with concrete units but a tactical system can use either. Or maybe I was off with that example. But the forest and the trees could also work as a metaphor to explain how it is not about any single choice, rather the accumulation of them across the entire system. You can still be within a birch forest even if you are staring at an oak tree if every other tree is birch. (Maybe those weren't the best trees for that metaphor.)

To HidesHisEyes: I think you have hit the type of description I am going for, it isn't supposed to be all encompassing but is something worth mentioning about a system when figuring out if someone would enjoy it. I don't know much about Ironsworn but, kind of like "narrative" above, I was just getting words that captured some of the feel of that end of the scale. I think it came from the fact that tactical systems tend to have tactical combat mini-games.

While making this system, I did wonder if I was remaking the GNS system (which did not deserve to have the weird slander campaign slapped onto it, but that is another story). I eventually convinced myself I am probably not because there is no "simulation layer" to build out the third point of the triangle. That would also be the fiction layer. I suppose you could try to split the layer into some in/out of would story considerations pair. But even if you did that, I don't know if that would result in the changes to rules I am talking about.

Well... I mean D&D (any edition) is not "fiction first" as I described the idea in the opening post. And arguing that isn't a role-playing game is... a tough sell. What exactly do you mean by "really fiction first"?

[Tanarii]

Thoughts?

I think there are quite a few games with narrative rules, and that throws a wrench in thinking about fiction first or rules first.

It also throws a wrench in the idea of if it's even still a Roleplaying Game, because many such games heavy in these rules change the focus. Instead of playing a character in a fictional environment, you're (at least partially) playing a story about a (or some number of) character(s) in the fictional environment. In some extreme cases, a player may even be occasionally playing the story of what are technically supposed to be other player's characters. At a certain point, I'd argue these games have crossed the line from a Roleplaying Game to a Storytelling Game.

[Satinavian]

While making this system, I did wonder if I was remaking the GNS system (which did not deserve to have the weird slander campaign slapped onto it, but that is another story). I eventually convinced myself I am probably not because there is no "simulation layer" to build out the third point of the triangle. That would also be the fiction layer. I suppose you could try to split the layer into some in/out of would story considerations pair. But even if you did that, I don't know if that would result in the changes to rules I am talking about.

Isn't your "narrative" basically what GNS once meant as SIM instead of what it meant as NAR? Except that you add how rules-light the system is for some reason ?

[Vahnavoi]

@Cluedrew: you are retreading some of the same ground as GNS, but it's worth noting that most people remember only the most superficial elements of GNS. (Namely, that it dealt with gamism, narrativism and simulationism.)

So it's worth it to reiterate some more specific claims of GNS. Most importantly, it didn't really deal with gamism, narrativism and simulationism as dimensions of game design, it treated them as (creative) agendas (which is why it calls them -isms). And it posited that in order for a game to be coherent, it has to pick one and stick to it. A game mixing agendas is incoherent. By GNS standards, all major RPGs, D&D especially, are incoherent and should be frustrating to play as a result.

In non-insane... sorry, non-GNS terms, this is just the issue rules priority I explained earlier. But rules priority doesn't actually prohibit mixing and matching game design elements - one only has to pick and choose what to prioritize when different rules are in conflict. So a game can have both detailed mechanical rules about single combat and very loose rules based on real conversation for social issues, serving two different aesthetics of gameplay at different times, and there's nothing incoherent about that.

Another thing about GNS is that only narrativism was well-explained, because towards the end GNS started being a thing from drama gamers to drama gamers. Narrativism didn't cover every type of narrative or fiction, it was mostly centered around drama and moral dilemmas. Gamism and simulationism were comparatively ill-defined and ill-separated. So when you distinquish your own idea by stating you only have two legs, not three, I'm sorry to say, that's almost a distinction without a difference. GNS only had three legs on paper.

I reiterate that the truth of the matter likely is that there are significantly more dimensions of game design than two or three - again, at least 8 aesthetics of gameplay are widely recognized - so while your observations are correct, the theoretical scale you're trying to construct will likely fail.

[NichG]

I guess my suggestion would be, rather than trying to construct (another) ontology of games, focus on the idea of priority as an important thing to establish when specifying a game.

That is to say, I haven't seen very many RPGs say explicitly 'for this section of the rules, the rules as stated are determinative of what makes sense in the fiction' and 'but for this other section of the rules, their purpose is guidance rather than determination and the fiction holds priority should these rules come into conflict with the concepts of the setting or vagaries of how the specific situation is imagined.'

Rules that establish sense are different than rules which are trying to model sense, after all.

[Vahnavoi]

That is to say, I haven't seen very many RPGs say explicitly 'for this section of the rules, the rules as stated are determinative of what makes sense in the fiction' and 'but for this other section of the rules, their purpose is guidance rather than determination and the fiction holds priority should these rules come into conflict with the concepts of the setting or vagaries of how the specific situation is imagined.'

Ironic, considering in 1st edition AD&D books Gygax does this more than once. The relevant concepts have been around for over 40 years but rulebooks somehow struggle to mention them.

[HidesHisEyes]

Well... I mean D&D (any edition) is not "fiction first" as I described the idea in the opening post. And arguing that isn't a role-playing game is... a tough sell. What exactly do you mean by "really fiction first"?

Oh don’t get me wrong, I know what people usually mean by the distinction, and I don’t have a huge problem with it (and I wouldn’t claim that D&D isn’t a roleplaying game, of course.) But my conceptual nitpick is that, strictly speaking, all RPGs have to be fiction first in the sense that you have to establish fiction before you can engage mechanics, otherwise you wouldn’t know which mechanics to engage or what they mean. And you can put the mechanics very early in the process of resolving actions, like the moment a player says “I search the room” they make a check, as opposed to asking them to describe where and how they search. But in both cases we need to start by imagining the character in the fiction, searching a room.

[Tanarii]

While making this system, I did wonder if I was remaking the GNS system (which did not deserve to have the weird slander campaign slapped onto it, but that is another story).

GNS deserved every bit of criticism it had leveled at it.

[Cluedrew]

Well, the thread is picking up and I'm hitting my rule of three, so I'm going to have to come back to some of these posts. (Also I'm short on time so I'm sticking to points I have an immediate response to.)

At a certain point, I'd argue these games have crossed the line from a Roleplaying Game to a Storytelling Game.

Yes, but at a certain point, going the other direction, we have crossed the line from role-playing game to war game. And we might even be able to leave the role-playing game genre without touching the scale, because my definition was not meant to be complete, just highlight one aspect of the genre, with is the interaction between mechanics and fiction.

Isn't your "narrative" basically what GNS once meant as SIM instead of what it meant as NAR? Except that you add how rules-light the system is for some reason ?

For the first part, I managed to convince myself that this was something different from GNS but if you think this is just me chatting about two-thirds of it... I'm going to need an explanation about what I missed.

For the second part, I don't think rules-weight factors into this definition. At the very least it wasn't anything on purpose, where did I say that? I definitely see there being a correlation, for various design reasons, but I didn't meant to make it a requirement.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I know what people usually mean by the distinction, and I don’t have a huge problem with it [...] strictly speaking, all RPGs have to be fiction first in the sense that you have to establish fiction before you can engage mechanics, otherwise you wouldn’t know which mechanics to engage or what they mean.

Maybe I'm misreading this, but I think you have something different "first" because you start checking earlier. Instead of starting at the player's/character's decision about what to next, you start all the way back at the establishing of the situation that is to be resolved. Does that sound right?

[Tanarii]

Yes, but at a certain point, going the other direction, we have crossed the line from role-playing game to war game. And we might even be able to leave the role-playing game genre without touching the scale, because my definition was not meant to be complete, just highlight one aspect of the genre, with is the interaction between mechanics and fiction.

It's possible. To cross that point, you have to stop making decisions for a character in the fantasy environment. And start making them for a board game pieces instead. That means not thinking of what your character would do, but what your piece would do.

Battle mats make this easier in combat IMO, and is one reason I don't like them.

Regardless, in general combat makes this easier, which is why some people erroneously try to divide phases of a game into "roleplaying" and "combat". It's also why some people instinctively dislike game structures outside of combat, they mistakenly associate rules with a decrease in character focused decision making.

[Vahnavoi]

Yes, but at a certain point, going the other direction, we have crossed the line from role-playing game to war game. And we might even be able to leave the role-playing game genre without touching the scale, because my definition was not meant to be complete, just highlight one aspect of the genre, with is the interaction between mechanics and fiction.

The distinction between wargames and roleplaying games really does not go where people think it does.

To wit: wargames are games concerned with simulating warfare. Doing this with explicit mathematical algorithms is just one design paradigm within wargames. The great grand-daddy of modern wargames, Kriegsspiel, was revised not just once, but several times to rely less on algorithmic rules and more on adjucation by a human umpire based on their real expertise. This eventually culminated in Free Kriegsspiel, essentially, freeform game master adjucated wargaming, where players express their plans to the umpire in spoken natural language and the umpire returns the next state of game based on their own judgment, with little or no reference to abstract game mechanics.

The reasons for this change? The original algorithmic rules were deemed too slow and unwieldy to play with and often produced unrealistic results.

That's right, the entire discussion of game master adjucation versus abstract mechanics was had by serious military people over a century before modern tabletop roleplaying games, and close to two centuries before now. I'm not entirely sure if Gygax and Arneson played Kriegsspiel and Free Kriegsspiel specifically, but it should be obvious the concept of umpire from Kriegsspiel was the precedent for a roleplaying game referee or dungeon master.

It's possible to argue wargames heavy with explicit algorithmic rules are more common than freeform wargames now, helped in part by cheap computing devices. But that's a trend within the genre, not definition of it. It still stands there are wargames as far from, say, Games Workshop BS, as play-by-post freeform roleplaying is from D&D.

[kyoryu]

Any time a taxonomy discussion comes up, I'm reminded of one of the Malcolm Gladwell books where he talks about, of all things, spaghetti sauces.

The big takeaway there is that a lot of predictions were wrong about what people liked, and there really wasn't a high level division between things.

But if you charted out various factors that you could use to describe sauces, you'd find that there were clumps where a bunch of things with similar traits ended up.

And when it comes to RPGs, I think similar is true. High level splits just aren't useful - but what is useful is looking at the individual traits that a game might have, and identifying clusters. That doesn't mean that any game exists within one of those clusters (some won't) or that the clusters have sharp edges (they don't) or that other clusters can't form (they can), or that any single trait identifies something as being in a cluster (it doesn't).

I've talked about the three interaction patterns common in RPGs (and, to be clear, it's not hte only possible ones, just the ones I've identified):

Type 1:
GM: "This is the situation"
Player: "I do this."
GM: "This is the new situation"

Type 2:
Player 1: "I move my piece in accordance with the rules."
Player 2: "I move my piece in accordance with the rules."
Player 3: "I move my piece in accordance with the rules."

Type 3:
Player 1: "This happens."
Player 2: "And then this happens."
Player 3: "And then this happens."

"Traditional" games are usually some blend of Type 1 and 2 (with the type 2 stuff often being in the tactical combat minigame). Some push more into Type 1 stuff by trying to formalize as much as possible - at the extreme end, you get a culture that insists that GM judgement is inherently bad and should be minimized, and everything should be a matter of rules, to the greatest extent possible. Put another way, "I prefer Type 2 to Type 1".

"Narrative" games have a number of traits, in most cases.

1. They tend to run "fiction first", as noted. This means that, in general, specific widget interaction is avoided. Things like Power Attack where you choose your bonus/penalty generally don't work with this. It also means that the entirety of the game situation is not intended to be codified in game widgets, but things in the shared understanding can also matter.
2. They tend to heavily focus on Type 1 interaction, with varying amounts of Type 3 interactions. A lot of players of narrative games love Type 3 stuff, and will often emphasize it in their games, regardless of how much the games do themselves.
3. They tend to cut out the "tactical minigame" aspect of games, running combat more-or-less like anything else would be run.

Those seem to be the core, but there's a number of other ones I could get into. But I do think that identifying common traits of "clusters" (I often think of it as "tags, not categories") is a more useful way of looking at the problem than trying to make strict top-level divisions.

[Tanarii]

1. They tend to run "fiction first", as noted. This means that, in general, specific widget interaction is avoided. Things like Power Attack where you choose your bonus/penalty generally don't work with this. It also means that the entirety of the game situation is not intended to be codified in game widgets, but things in the shared understanding can also matter.

I'm not really sure this holds tru though. Take AW, which goes on and on about "fiction first". It's full of widgets.

What it seems to mean, at least within its take, is: "determine the possible resolution/widgets that apply from the fiction, and determine possible outcomes from the fiction as filtered through the resolution/widgets results."

The interesting part is this is close to what D&D 5e says to do for ability checks. (Wether or not it's run that way is a different matter.) It's also identical to what Angry DM advises.

The difference is both of those don't try to cover it up and disguise it and make it out as something special with discredited post-Forge philosophy.

-------

I was looking back at one of our old discussions on GNS, and I found a comment I made on ways to play and resolve PC actions:
"Causal: players describe what they attempt do, then GM determines how to resolve based on likely outcomes (possibly using dice), and describes resolution. Attempting actions causes likely outcomes.

Narrative: players describe what they attempt do, then GM determines how to resolve based on necessary narrative outcomes* (possibly using dice), and describes resolution. Attempting actions causes narratively necessary outcomes."
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...ist-and-gamist

[Quertus]

EDIT: oh as a side note, I didn’t include fiction first vs mechanics first because I think all RPGs are really fiction first. That’s part of my own definition of RPG. You can put the mechanics really close to the front - “kryptonite elemental makes an attack roll against superman with a +100 bonus” instead of “kryptonite elemental punches superman, obviously superman is screwed, he’s out of action, let’s roll to see if he even survives” - but they can’t be at the front because there has to be some fiction… well, first… for the mechanics to mean anything at all.

But my conceptual nitpick is that, strictly speaking, all RPGs have to be fiction first in the sense that you have to establish fiction before you can engage mechanics, otherwise you wouldn’t know which mechanics to engage or what they mean. And you can put the mechanics very early in the process of resolving actions, like the moment a player says “I search the room” they make a check, as opposed to asking them to describe where and how they search. But in both cases we need to start by imagining the character in the fiction, searching a room.

I mean, you *can* start with mechanics, like a point buy, and develop a character or setting based on what you divine from the math. And there are systems where you can start from the mechanics “computer programming? I default to my ‘claws’ skill” and try to figure out what fiction could support those mechanics. Heck, “describing combat” is a classic example of starting with the mechanics and moving to the fiction.

That said, I would claim that it is a prerequisite of Roleplaying to start at the fiction, and work towards the mechanics.

To Quertus: Hmm... maybe that is asymmetric, in that a narrative system might be wasting its time with concrete units but a tactical system can use either. Or maybe I was off with that example. But the forest and the trees could also work as a metaphor to explain how it is not about any single choice, rather the accumulation of them across the entire system. You can still be within a birch forest even if you are staring at an oak tree if every other tree is birch. (Maybe those weren't the best trees for that metaphor.)

Yes, I agree that it is asymmetric. Further,

I guess my suggestion would be, rather than trying to construct (another) ontology of games, focus on the idea of priority as an important thing to establish when specifying a game.

I wonder whether this isn’t best framed as a subset of a different discussion, as one factor to consider when designing or adjudicating games.

That said, “level of specificity”, and especially “level of specificity of distance” is a real oddball. Usually, IME, regardless of whether the system measures / cares about “143.27 meters” or “3 areas”, what my players want is “about the length of a football field”, “<points> about half the distance from here to that tree” and “well within the range of your sniper rifle”, “you can’t cast fireball that far”, “you can only charge that far if you activate your speed boost”.

So IME it is neither the mechanics nor the fiction, but the players that have primacy wrt the communication of distances.

Then there’s the issue of “storage” and “conversion”. With a battle map, “storage” of location is automatic. However, when you move to theater of mind, in what terms is the location data stored, and how does one convert that to game mechanics? Answers vary.

Rules that establish sense are different than rules which are trying to model sense, after all.

You’ve lost me. Is this important enough to understand to be worth giving an example of what you mean?

[BRC]

I'm not sure this includes all games. What about games that are purely freeform without any mechanics at all? (Though I suppose it might depend on how we define mechanics, even freeform games usually have a GM that can arbitrate conflicts).

I would say that freeform roleplay DOES have mechanics, and that they are shared with improvisational theater: Yes, And.

If we are doing a freeform RP, and I declare that my character makes themselves a sandwich, it is generally against the rules for you to declare that my character did not make themselves a sandwich. Without that mechanic in place, it's not a freeform roleplaying game, it's just two people telling stories at each other.



I would actually say that "Yes, And" is a mechanic underlying RPGs, or cooperative storytelling, in general.

Now, as for "Fiction first" vs "Mechanics first", I don't find that a very useful split, because part of an RPG, for me anyway, is that it must be "Fiction-First".


The question that comes to mind is, if you are in a situation where, narratively, your character could try something, but the rules don't provide a way to resolve that, can you attempt that thing?

I think of the game Heroquest. Heroquest is not dissimilar to D&D, there's even a game master. Heroquest has furniture, like tables, but there is no rule for climbing on a table. Therefore, tables are impassible barriers that you must walk around. Heroquest, despite having basically identical narrative trappings to D&D, is not an RPG because you can't climb over the tables.


D&D doesn't have a "Climb over Table" rule, so if you say "I climb over the table", the DM is obliged to figure out how to resolve that.


The difference is true, but I don't think it's especially insightful.

[NichG]

I wonder whether this isn’t best framed as a subset of a different discussion, as one factor to consider when designing or adjudicating games.

That said, “level of specificity”, and especially “level of specificity of distance” is a real oddball. Usually, IME, regardless of whether the system measures / cares about “143.27 meters” or “3 areas”, what my players want is “about the length of a football field”, “<points> about half the distance from here to that tree” and “well within the range of your sniper rifle”, “you can’t cast fireball that far”, “you can only charge that far if you activate your speed boost”.

So IME it is neither the mechanics nor the fiction, but the players that have primacy wrt the communication of distances.

Then there’s the issue of “storage” and “conversion”. With a battle map, “storage” of location is automatic. However, when you move to theater of mind, in what terms is the location data stored, and how does one convert that to game mechanics? Answers vary.

You’ve lost me. Is this important enough to understand to be worth giving an example of what you mean?

So for example, 'vampires need to drink blood - a vampire that goes without blood for more than 1 day per decade of its existence enters a state of frenzy, in which it loses control of its actions and attempts to violently acquire blood from anyone it can' is pretty clearly implicitly a rule whose purpose is to establish the fiction. This rule defines something about what a vampire is, how their hunger works, etc. Correct usage of this rule would be for example having characters in the world be aware that e.g. they can make a vampire go crazy by starving them, about how long it would take, etc.

Now lets say that rule is followed by 'A vampire in frenzy moves and tries to make a grapple attempt against the nearest living target each round'. This could be a rule whose purpose is to establish the fiction by saying 'what is frenzy actually?'. But it's more likely IMO that this rule (implicitly) is trying to give a way to simplify how to play a vampire that is in frenzy. If the purpose of this rule is to model the sort of sense of the fiction, then that means this rule should have a lower priority than other things from the fiction in determining what happens. Furthermore, drawing conclusions by assuming that this rule is always true would not be called for.

For example, a literal interpretation of that rule might mean that if you had a frenzying vampire it can be kited back and forth by people taking turns being 'the closest to the vampire' and by doing so force the vampire to waste time running back and forth. But a better interpretation according to the fiction of 'the vampire is hungry and is controlled by their hunger' might be that the vampire just picks one and bee-lines towards them. Or, lets say someone is 10ft away but behind a 5ft thick stone wall, and someone else is 20ft away but exposed. Or even just you have a sleeping human victim 40ft away, but there happens to be a rat 35ft away in the other direction that is also technically a living victim.

If the rule on frenzy is there to establish fiction, then these sorts of kiting strategies should work against a frenzying vampire and that should in principle be a known fact about vampires that they're vulnerable to that kind of manipulation. If the rule is however there to provide a simplified model of the fictional world, then when its clear according to the fiction 'this behavior doesn't make sense', then the rule should be ignored.

Furthermore, if the purpose of the rule is to establish fiction but the result that it establishes is nonsensical, then it is a bad rule. But if the purpose of the rule is to provide a simplified model of the fiction and sometimes gives nonsensical results, it is not necessarily a bad rule at all, as long as it is clear that the rule is there to be used for convenience rather than as physics. It would only be a bad rule if most of the time it has to be discarded.

Another example would be a rule like 'when someone wants to invest in a business, roll X dice to determine the return'. If that rule is taken to be there to establish fiction, then its saying 'businesses in this world don't actually have causal factors that determine their success or failure - its purely random and all businesses have the same risk'. If the rule is there to provide a simplified model of fiction, then it does not imply 'businesses are this way' but rather it implies 'feel free to simplify the underlying factors that could be fictionally-relevant into this random process when those factors haven't been established or don't really matter'.

[kyoryu]

I'm not really sure this holds tru though. Take AW, which goes on and on about "fiction first". It's full of widgets.

What it seems to mean, at least within its take, is: "determine the possible resolution/widgets that apply from the fiction, and determine possible outcomes from the fiction as filtered through the resolution/widgets results."

The interesting part is this is close to what D&D 5e says to do for ability checks. (Wether or not it's run that way is a different matter.) It's also identical to what Angry DM advises.

Yes, I would say that both of those qualify as fiction-first. Fiction-first is heavily correlated with "Type 1" interactions, and is as old as roleplaying, regardless of the language used.

(Also, you'll note that I am as critical of Forge/GNS as anyone, to the point of recommending people use GDS rather than GNS).

I was looking back at one of our old discussions on GNS, and I found a comment I made on ways to play and resolve PC actions:
"Causal: players describe what they attempt do, then GM determines how to resolve based on likely outcomes (possibly using dice), and describes resolution. Attempting actions causes likely outcomes.

Narrative: players describe what they attempt do, then GM determines how to resolve based on necessary narrative outcomes* (possibly using dice), and describes resolution. Attempting actions causes narratively necessary outcomes."
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...ist-and-gamist

As someone that enjoys both narrative and "traditional" games, and has a strong background in very traditional gaming, I completely disagree with that characterization of narrative games (in much the same way that I disagree with virtually everything that Ron Edwards said about "simulationism" - he completely missed the point and the mark)

In the games I've played in, run, had run by people that have worked at companies that made "narrative" games, and so on, and so forth, worrying about "necessary narrative outcomes" never really seemed to be a thing. The things that have stood out:

1. There's a huge emphasis on not railroading, and letting things play out. This is directly opposite to some definitions of what is "narratively necessary".
2. There's a lot more willingness to accept player input on things, though this can vary greatly from table to table
3. Much, much less emphasis on combat, and much more emphasis on the non-combat aspects of the game
4. Much more emphasis on the characters, as opposed to the characters being levers to interact with the world with. In most cases, the game/plot/story revolves around the characters in such a way that if you had different characters in the game, it would be markedly different. It's often about their conflicts with each other or with NPCs, rather than them overcoming a series of challenge (which is, to be honest, more of a "traditional" than a "classic" mode of play, if you look at the "cultures of play" article).
5. There's a lot more emphasis on the things described in the world having an effect on what can/can't be done.
6. There's usually a lot less gameplay revolving around "figuring out how to get the most bonuses."

[Tanarii]

1. There's a huge emphasis on not railroading, and letting things play out. This is directly opposite to some definitions of what is "narratively necessary".
2. There's a lot more willingness to accept player input on things, though this can vary greatly from table to table
3. Much, much less emphasis on combat, and much more emphasis on the non-combat aspects of the game
4. Much more emphasis on the characters, as opposed to the characters being levers to interact with the world with. In most cases, the game/plot/story revolves around the characters in such a way that if you had different characters in the game, it would be markedly different. It's often about their conflicts with each other or with NPCs, rather than them overcoming a series of challenge (which is, to be honest, more of a "traditional" than a "classic" mode of play, if you look at the "cultures of play" article).
5. There's a lot more emphasis on the things described in the world having an effect on what can/can't be done.
6. There's usually a lot less gameplay revolving around "figuring out how to get the most bonuses."

Nothing in this list stands out as "narrative" to me except possibly #2, and only then if that means there are narrative mechanics to allow players to play the story, rather than just play their character. In other words, they can affect events in the world to come out how they want them to due to some underlying rationale about how they think they should play out, rather than have their character take an action and the GM resolve due to cause and effect.

Example of a narrative mechanic to play the story: Blades in the Darks heist scene ability to retroactively tell a story about something that has previously happened, establishing the fact in current time.

The rest of your list reads like stuff that can apply to any kind of roleplaying game.

---------

Otoh I was describing/contrasting causal resolution (cause and effect) vs narrative resolution (IMO a spectrum from Rule of Cool to Railroading) on the GMs part. Nothing to do with how the player plays making it a narrative game.

Edit:

(Also, you'll note that I am as critical of Forge/GNS as anyone, to the point of recommending people use GDS rather than GNS).

Ya I was reminded when I was scanning the previous thread.

[Vahnavoi]

@Tanarii: Don't use "narrative" when what you mean is "genre conceit" or "trope logic" and much of the disagreement goes away.

In more detail: there's more than one style of storytelling and there are vast practical differences between games emphasising different style.

For a practical example, take two horror games. Type A horror game is all about emulating genre conceits of non-game horror fiction. Characters all adhere to established tropes and the plot follows footsteps of a story the players have already seen elsewhere. People who know the tropes inside out might be able to predict most of the game from the outset, but go along anyway because that is the point. Nobody really expects to be horrified.

Type B horror game is all about making players feel the horror. Pre-existing genre conceits are only used insofar as they make the players uncomfortable. The characters and the plot are new and personal to the degree such is possible. Trope knowledge does not give any great advantage to predicting the game, because re-enacting or making a good example of the genre isn't the point. Players make decisions based on how much horror they think they can handle.

A player of mine once voiced the difference while playing LotFP scenario Death Love Doom: "This game is more realistic than a movie. We don't have to do the stupid thing."

[Tanarii]

@Tanarii: Don't use "narrative" when what you mean is "genre conceit" or "trope logic" and much of the disagreement goes away.

Nothing I'm writing about has anything to do with trope logic or genre conceit, unless the GM/player is using that when as their underlying thread (plot or theme) when making decisions about how the narrative should play out, instead of a cause and effect based on player making decisions about their characters actions and GM resolving base on logic effects.

If they are using that as their underlying thread, then sure, it is a case of using narrative process to enforce the genre conceit or trope logic. If they are using a different underlying thread, then it's not, but still a narrative process instead of a causal one.

[NichG]

This is the problem of reductive ontologies. Assigning a name to a tradition of play doesn't mean that every distinction between that tradition and others will be explained by that particular word and it's associations.