Rough categories of Narrativist play/design

[Marco]

My guess ...

Would be that in those cases the mechanics of the system are not especially facilitating to the Narrativist play that may/does exist (although the setting may well be).

The three categories look to me (I realize the specification was made about play rather than design intent--but still) like categorizations on how system interacts with Narrativist play.

So, if I've got this (and I'm very much in question about that) the category would be:

4. Mechanics do not facilitiate Narrativist play (asking "what happened given a set of start conditions") and it's up to the participants to provide the narrativist support when/where it is wanted/exists.

-Marco

[Walt Freitag]

I've been thinking about these categories since you posted them, and I have a question. What are they useful for? I find GNS to be eminently useful. It helps me make game purchasing decisions. It informs choices I make about who to game with. It helps me make design decisions. It helps me have more fun gaming. The vanilla/pervy categories are useful in the same way. But these...what do I do with them?

One possible application is the design of tools and techniques for effective deliberate drift (which I suppose would be, by definition, transition). Having a more precise idea of where you're trying to get to than just "Narrativism" seems like it could be helpful. For instance, tossing Whimsy Cards into the system pot appears counterproductive if you're looking for category 2 or 3, but possibly helpful for category 1. Also different categories might map to different "most likely piftalls, e.g. railroading for category 2, competing Gamist drift for category 1. (These are examples of the general idea, not specific hypotheses, yet.)

- Walt

[Jason Lee]

I see the categories as mainly being about the role of System. In the first category, contact with the System is constant. (Big gasp from the gallery: "But that's System-less play, isn't it?" My response: "No. Drama-based resolution requires more points-of-contact, not less.") In the second, that contact focused very tightly on the reward-resolution connection, with anything else being handled relatively casually or at least "effects-first." In the third, the contact is again constant, but highly quantified, unlike the first.

'K, let's check if I'm following you.  Pretending for a moment Vampire supports Nar, that'd put it in category 3; nature, demeanor, humanity, willpower, and virtues all tied to resolution in one fashion or another;  highly quantified and constant contact?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi,

John, I don't know which systems you are claiming I classify as Simulationist. But say we're talking about RuneQuest. Does using that rules-set mean anyone must be playing Simulationist? No, it doesn't. Telling me which game systems you use does not tell me how you play in terms of goals and modes.

Also, your post (and many of yours previously) seems oriented toward the idea that GNS is all about "one person, one mode, one system, one way to play," period. It's not. If you play in diverse GNS terms, that's great. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't read a post that says, "This instance you're describing sounds Narrativist" (e.g. the Water Uphill game) as, "Thou Art Narrativst in Every Game You Play."

Marco, your post and interpretation make sense to me. Your category 4 definitely represents a possible venue of Narrativist play. I've seen in some groups who do this, the rules being used often get tacitly ignored to the extent that they eventually are playing in category 1, though - this is where the whole "System doesn't matter" mantra comes from.

Jason, it could be. Seems to me it'd be more like #2 - a Vampire game that fits better into #3 might be more like Vincent's "Hungry, Desperate, and Alone." It's very abstract and the quantified variables only concern Premise, and nothing else. Imagine rolling above your Blood Pool to Hunt, and below it to interact nicely/normally, without any skill sets or Powerz - that's more like what I'm thinking of for #3. But without a real game to look at, it's hard to speculate.

Best,
Ron

[Jason Lee]

Jason, it could be. Seems to me it'd be more like #2 - a Vampire game that fits better into #3 might be more like Vincent's "Hungry, Desperate, and Alone." It's very abstract and the quantified variables only concern Premise, and nothing else. Imagine rolling above your Blood Pool to Hunt, and below it to interact nicely/normally, without any skill sets or Powerz - that's more like what I'm thinking of for #3. But without a real game to look at, it's hard to speculate.

Except Vampire doesn't have a strong connection between rewards and Premise, so no #2...which is fine because we aren't worried about categorizing a non-Nar game.  Puts 7th in #2 then if I'm not mistaken, what with the drama dice/virtues/hubris/experience point links.

If I'm following you now, that makes Marco's #4 category pretty valid from an actual play point of view.  No rewards connection to Premise (other than enjoying play), or even necessarily any mechanical support for addressing it - though I think the rewards aspect might be the more important of the two.

However, for the purpose of these categories #4 may not matter.  I got the impression this was about designs, not actual play, and without mechanic reinforcement you can't much call it a Nar design even when played Nar.

(All assuming I'm on the boat now instead of being dragged behind it on an innertube).

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jason,

You sound pretty much on-board to me.

Yeah, agreed on all counts, including 7th Sea, pending a few more tweaks to bring the connection you're talking about into the foreground (and getting rid of the metaplot).

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

Ron,

I agree. This brings up a chain of thought for me:

Certainly if enough rules are modified a given game could be pushed towards any of the three (in AD&D, handing out XP for "role-playing" would be ... 2, no? Or formalizing plot immunity for characters who were acting "in accordance with the story"--that is, a player can veto death if he explains why thematically his character should live).

Or if you were playing AD&D with very old heroes past their prime and dying off (last act of Beowulf) and you started out to end it with everyone dead and the questions revolved around the legacy they left behind--then it'd be 3.

But really,a whole lot of play that is *close* to Narrativist falls into cat 1 under--in a sense.

Take the story-like sim game where the GM is supplying the majority of the plot but the characters are still fairly empowered (what's missing at this point is, prehaps, only an actual Premise--the action might jsut be asking the question "can we defeat the evil empire?")

Now (if I'm making sense there) so long as the PC's act wtihin what the GM sees as "a resonable path" (i.e. they fight with stealth and guile rather than making a full-on-very-likely-suidical attack on the evil empire's fortress) then the outcome of the decisions is not exactly random.

That is to say that while there *is* a random element involved, it's heavily weighted in favor of the protagonists. Thus, when presented with a number of choices (court the not-so-evil princess to try to win her over, choke the evil emperor by waylaying his evil tax-collectors, foment revolt in town, etc.) the players are still asking the type-1 question (albeit not necessiarily, as I said, in a Nar context).

But sometimes (maybe?) it *is* a Nar context (and in this case it's quite possible for even the weighted chance to come out "wrong" which would be a system-priority conflict)--but that's just not a given that it'll happen.

And it's even less of a given in some game systems--especially with players who understand that system well.

Hero takes the "bite" out of otherwise-deadly conflicts with stun points (granted this does not make the resolution Dramatist--but bear with me: if the characters are powerful enough in the right fashion, then while there may be some uncertainty, if the odds of success are high enough so long as the the players are playing in what *they* precieve as the "right" fashion then it's pretty close to Dramatist).

I think this speaks to my enjoyment of strong bell-curves. JAGS has one of the lowests whiff-factors of games of its type (there are lower--but a crit-fail is 1:1296 instead of 1:216 for GURPS/Hero).

Secondly some mechanics (Stun and PD spring to mind in Hero) or more explicitly (Fate points) would lead systems pretty firmly in cat-4 to appeal to people who might be more at home in cat-1 systems.

Does that make any sense?
-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Marco,

It does make some sense to me ... except that to the extent that you're not talking about Narrativist play, it's not really relevant to the categories. I'm assuming from the start, for purposes of this thread, that Premise (Egri, etc) is the priority of play for everyone.

Let me see if I'm able to tackle it, though. Let me know if I'm just flailing. You seem to be focusing on randomized outcomes and player-character survival, particularly the notion that if character survival is favored by the system or procedures of play, the outcomes may be considered "less random."

The topic is trickier than it looks. Once you provide some organizing factors to the Drama-resolutions (e.g. Universalis), the assertions made by various players become "randomizers" for the currently-speaking player, far more so than one might think just from reading the rules. The traditional assumption that Drama methods assure more predictable outcomes than Fortune methods is actually not valid.

Also, player-character survival may not be an issue at all. In one of my old Champions games, for instance, Killing Attacks were disallowed for player-characters and relatively rare and weak even for villains. Getting killed simply wasn't a major feature of play. The "randomization" (or better, low-predictability) applied to winning or losing fights, and that was important for whatever weak or struggling Narrativism was in action in that game, but the essentially-null chance for a player-character to die wasn't relevant to that.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Just as a personal favor, let's not say "Dramatist" to describe Drama resolution. The term Dramatist has a noble place in history as one of the three Threefold members, and Drama-based resolution is something else entirely.

[Marco]

Hi Marco,

It does make some sense to me ... except that to the extent that you're not talking about Narrativist play, it's not really relevant to the categories. I'm assuming from the start, for purposes of this thread, that Premise (Egri, etc) is the priority of play for everyone.

I agree. I think that's pretty much on target--I was not so much interested in the use of dramatist mechanics as non-random evaluation systems (that was, I think brought up in your #1 point) as the fact that even "random" mechanics could be used under the right circumstances to "make a statement" in a narrativist fashion (whether it's acording-to-Holye Narrativist play at a given instance, I can't say--but I do know that one of the things I did like about Hero was that, for example, my character might suffer complications--but not (likely) die a meaningless death due to the rules).

So yes Drama mechanics aren't necessiarly predictable (I would not say they're random tho--I think that has implications that might be misleading)--but they are used to make a statement. And standard Sim mechanics can be used that way too (at least under the right conditions).

And I think that's a major point of appeal to some of us who prefer those systems since it works for 2 or even 3 modes at once: I get a sense of Simulationist exploration: let's see Luke in a fight with three storm-troopers, gamism--but he'd better use his powers right, and possibly even narrativist story/addressing of premise.

-Marco