Narrative modules

[John Kim]

With all the usual provisos that go with statements like this, I get a strong Narrativist whiff from the James Bond rules. Not like in Prince Valiant, which simply seizes the reader from behind and mugs him in the Narrativist alley, but a whiff anyway.

I'm not familiar with the modules, and look forward to what you think in that regard.

I may post more about the system on some other thread -- it's definitely one of my favorites (along with Champions and Buffy).  

I'd prefer to wait before posting spoilers about the modules, since I'm currently running it.  "Back of Beyond" is slightly shorter than average at 32 pages.  It was published in 1986, and the presence of Nazi war criminals in Australia had been featured in some documentaries of the time.  Perhaps unsurprising given its origins as a penal colony, Australia has always been something of a general haven from outside prosecution (cf. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jan2000/nazi-j17.shtml">this article for example).  

The module starts with the PCs being called in to M.I.6 -- a Q branch technician has mysterious stolen a file with the data from some old Nazi medical experiments.  The technician turns out to have been brainwashed, and was killed, using a microchip receiver surgically implanted in his inner ear.  

The PCs soon followed a series of clues to somewhere in Australia.  They currently suspect that Mako Tajima, an Australian scientist working in the AERL (a government environmental agency) is actually Kenji Saito -- one of the scientists who helped work on the files that were stolen.  

What I like about the James Bond modules is that the material is generally usable.  The modules generally spend about 25% describing the NPCs, 25% on locations, 25% on player handouts (which go over very well, BTW), and 25% on plot.  The plot as outlined usually assumes pretty unimaginative players and GM -- which is fine, IMO.  Calling for complex character interactions is sure to stymie newbie GMs.  However, the material is easily usable to support more complex interactions.  The villians can easily change plans based on what the PCs do -- and you can use the NPCs and locations described in an altered flow of events.

[Sean]

It would, sort of by definition, be extremely difficult to write a module for a game where players define the situations that confront them.

On the other hand, it should not be hard to write a good narrativist-facilitating module if you're working with the assumption that (a) you have a GM and (b) the GM is at least partly in charge of the settings and situations that confront the players. (This is not to say those are good assumptions, or that RPing is in any way better with them in place!) What you need is:

(a) a setting

(b) some interesting NPCs with goals of their own

(c) some suggestions for striking events that could involve both PCs and NPCs

(d) rough suggestions about what NPCs and/or broader setting elements might do in response to PC actions, but probably only the vaguest of timelines, if any, so that PC action drives the story

The key thing, I would think, would be to give the players elements out of which they could build a story, and which would confront them with interesting choices in response to what they would do.

I don't see any reason you wouldn't call this a module.

I'd like also to agree with MJ that earlier posts about 'classic' modules involving railroading are wrong. (I assume that the word 'classic' refers exclusively to pre-1980 materials: later D&D and non-D&D stuff alike features heavy railroading in many cases.) What early D&D modules were as I found them were settings, with information mostly for facilitating Gamist play, but which could be applied to anything one felt like at the moment. Three that come immediately to mind as 'dungeons' that wound up producing more narrative-leaning than competition-leaning play in our group's hands were Village of Hommlet, Dark Tower, and especially Vault of the Drow, where we ran two full independent campaigns. One of these served as a break from the GDQ march-through, involving a PC half-elf who had fallen in love with Eclavdra disguising himself as a half-Drow and starting a rebel army in the caves on the border in the hopes of somehow protecting Eclavdra from the Fane and stopping her from conquering the world above at the same time. The other was not even in the context of the GDQ series: we played a gaslight magic/mystery campaign set in Erelhei-Cinlu. (It's weird to think that there was a time when the Drow were sort of new and interesting, at least to me, in light of what's come since.) So that's my two cents on that.

[Christopher Kubasik]

I'd like to jump on the classic-modules-don't-mean-railroading bandwagon.

The real rails were put down by well-meaning editors and writers in the game companies who want to help players produce "story."  The created colorful NPCs, often with emotional "agendas" (in one way or another), a flow from set up to climax, and potential "hooks" designed to help make a random bunch of PCs without an investment in module care about it out of the blue.

The problems are obvious now with hindsite: since the NPCs arrived with solid emotional agendas tied directly to the story the way the PCs never could be, the story was really more or less driven by them, about them, and focused on them; the need to "flow" the story to a pre-printed climax meant that whatever the Players might have wanted to focus on had to be hidden behind the window drapery, in ever a genteel fashion (usually with everyone in hiding); and the hooks never really worked very well outside of: This is your job, you care cause it's your job.

The game lines I'm aware of that went this route were: Shadowrun, Earthdawn, DC Heroes, Torg, Star Wars (1st), many AD&D 2nd.  I'm sure there were more.

The trick was, many people wanted more story, more emotional invetment for the characters (and thus the players), but pretty much nobody had a clue that so many assumptions about roleplaying would have to be ditched to make it work.  Most of these "story" modules were dungeon maps reconfigures as scene blocks with arrows conneting them instead of rooms with tunnels connecting them.  Uh-hu.  That's not going to work.

In many respects, as far as Nar modules goes, I'd tweak Sean's first suggestion above (setting) to A Premise Rich Setting.  Glorantha, for example, is premise rich.  

As a counter example, almost all of Shadowrun is not.  FASA purposely, and cleverly, built the PCs as outcasts from society.  Their sole function was to keep getting money while remaining outside of society.  There was no suggestion that a family, friends or any kind of connection to anyone or anything but the team mattered.  (Even spiritual energy, in the form of Shamans, remained a solitary venture.)  There are no premise decisions to be made, because even before play starts, all ties to anything but your bank account have been severed.  (The shadowrunner group exists only to fortify the chance of success on a job.)

So, A Premise Rich Setting, and then add with Lots of Sockets for the PCs to Plug Into.  Thus, you end up with what Ron writes for his Sorcerer settings.

What I'd add to make it more "modual-ly" is photocopy pages that break down the premise elements into handouts for the players. They don't *need* to know all the details about the setting.  They do need to know there's a tension between faith and family.... And let them know that, quick and easy.  Then, during the character creation session they can go down the Menus of Premise Richness, asking the GM questions when they want.  The whole group starts filling in the details, picking character traits and history that plug them into the Premise or not.  

As for specific tales, I again think we turn to Sorcerer: a relationship map, stats for those NPCs.  Assign Kickers (or SAs, or whatever is going to get you through the night), and reconvene in a week after the GM's done the fleshout out prep work.

As for an out of the box Nar model.... I don't think it's going to happen.

Christopher

[John Kim]

I'd like to jump on the classic-modules-don't-mean-railroading bandwagon.

The real rails were put down by well-meaning editors and writers in the game companies who want to help players produce "story."  The created colorful NPCs, often with emotional "agendas" (in one way or another), a flow from set up to climax, and potential "hooks" designed to help make a random bunch of PCs without an investment in module care about it out of the blue.  
...
The game lines I'm aware of that went this route were: Shadowrun, Earthdawn, DC Heroes, Torg, Star Wars (1st), many AD&D 2nd.  I'm sure there were more.  

Here I agree 100%.  It is amazing how backwards this is.  Earlier modules which were less "story-oriented" were actually far better for story, in my opinion.  Because they primarily a location and NPCs, story could develop freely around the PCs in that location.  I can clearly see this comparing "Ravenloft" (a classic AD&D1 module) and, say, "Roots of Evil" (an AD&D2 Ravenloft-setting module).  The latter is horribly, horribly railroaded with PC action explicitly having no effect on the plot progression, which is done in boxed text.  The former, though, is IMO as good for story as I've seen in any AD&D material.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi John,

100% agreement. I used to get incredible Narrativist mileage out of old Champions adventure modules specifically because they (usually) didn't pre-suppose a plot, and they did include tons of Premise-rich content like family feuds and romances.

Best,
Ron

[Andrew Norris]

I've noticed several (heck, most) of the adventures published for Unknown Armies follow this structure. They outline a situation, characters, the relationships between these characters, and introduce one or more reasons for conflict to spring from the situation.

"Prison Break" from One-Shots is a popular demonstration module, and its success rests entirely on the fact that each of the pregenerated PCs has elements of their personality that are going to throw them into conflict with each other.

I haven't noticed adventures of this kind having an explicitly stated Premise, but one seems to be implied in almost every case.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Andrew,

My issue (speaking strictly in Narrativist terms) is that the Unknown Armies scenario books tend to be 95%ers. So much of the story is under way by the time play begins, that the player-characters' decisions more or less merely decide whose bullet hits whom. Not only is Premise locked down, but theme typically is too.

From a play-it-out Simulationist experiential perspective, it rocks, though.

Best,
Ron