Narrative Authority and/or Power and Resolution Mechanics

[Wart]

(Whups, this belonged here rather than in "Actual Play".)

The old thread about narrative authority has gotten a bit tangled, as Ron has pointed out, so let's start a new, more focused one.

Many RPGs have action resolution mechanics - and I'd suggest that the vast majority do if they're beyond the "let's pretend" level of complexity. A good deal of those use dice or other randomisers, a sizeable minority use no randomisers but still have some means of determining the success or failure of an action. (Perhaps with graduation, as in FUDGE.)

Let's take it as given that we're all eloquent types who use the rules to direct our narrative description, rather than the basis of said description. (So we tend to say "I slash at the orc and open up a gaping wound in its belly" rather than "I roll a 20 and hit the orc for 10 HP.")

Let's also take it as given that action resolution mechanics tend to focus on small, discrete events (such as a lockpick attempt) rather than long-term events (such as the course of a campaign).

Now: assume we are playing a game where action resolution mechanics are used. Assume furthermore that the group has more or less agreed to abide by said mechanics most of the time, except under certain circumstances. (Such circumstances might vary from campaign to campaign: a Narrativist reason to break the rules would be to prevent a pointless and unsatisfying death for a PC, a Simulationist reason would be to prevent a patently ridiculous and unrealistic result.)

Now, we are talking about one of those situations where the group is willing to go along with the action resolution mechanics. So, the action resolution mechanics, and not the players, are deciding whether the players' actions succeed or fail. The players are still free to make up the nature of the success or failure (to a varying extent: critical hit tables are a clear exception to this), however they have agreed to delegate the decision of whether the action succeeds or fails to a mechanic.

(Let's not get hung up about inanimate objects and non-sentient charts being able to make "decisions" - what I mean here is that they're being used by the human beings to determine the result, and the human beings have agreed to abide by the result they indicate.)

The question is: does this mean that in such a situation the players have shared a little of their narrative authority and/or power with the resolution mechanic?

And if this isn't the case, who *does* have the narrative authority over the success or failure of actions, if the players have willingly given it up?

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

This may be a bit of a side point, but people might be misinterpreting what I mean by authority-to-narrate.

In my view, even if I say, [rattle rattle] "I roll a 20, so I [rattle rattle] do 10 points," that's still narration. I could have rolled those dice and they would not have "counted," being (say) out of sequence or not given the GM's nod, or whatever.

In other words, I'm talking about the verbal confirmation that what has been suggested to happen (by dice or anything else) has indeed happened in the game world. I am saying that this verbal confirmation is a necessary piece of play - in fact, can be said to be the actual medium of play.

Authority over this ability is a big, big deal. Who's been in a game when the player rolled really well, and it was disqualified because the GM hadn't called for the roll? Or what about cocked-dice standards? It doesn't apply just to dice, either - in many ways, this is not a "dice" issue at all. It is most closely related to IIEE issues, especially when those issues are badly handled by the rules in question. Therefore, when the player says, "I jump in front of him!", who establishes, actually, that the character has (a) jumped (b) in front of him?

Now, in hopes of bringing this point 'round the mountain to Art's question, I suggest that even the decision to abide what "what the tables say" is itself a social and verbal decision (not trivially/technically, either - I mean significantly and substantively).

In other words, resolution mechanics never have authority. They present outcomes - but those outcomes are picked, chosen, interpreted in a variety of ways, and otherwise turned into raw material for a social interaction. This is most obvious in Fortune-in-the-Middle, but I maintain that the pre-roll decision in a more traditional framework follows my above point as well.

Vincent! You're the dude who pioneered the idea that game-mechanics exist to empower/influence the basal acts of narration-trading and so forth. Speak up!

Best,
Ron

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Thanks, Ron, that's exactly what I was trying to say in that thalidomide-baby thread over there.

[Wart]

In my view, even if I say, [rattle rattle] "I roll a 20, so I [rattle rattle] do 10 points," that's still narration. I could have rolled those dice and they would not have "counted," being (say) out of sequence or not given the GM's nod, or whatever.

Okey, if I've got this right then:

"Narrative authority" consists of who is allowed to speak (and have his/her words count in a meaningful way) at any particular point.

"Narrative power" is the degree to which one can affect the way the narrative goes.

*So*:

Given that resolution mechanics have no authority because they can't speak (and now that phrase makes a shedload more sense)...

...can they have "narrative power"? Not in a direct way, but in the sense that they impose limits on what the person currently holding narrative authority is able to say about the situation. Limiting someone's choices about what to say when one's narrating definitely seems to me like some sort of narrative power.

In other words, even though you can't delegate narrative authority to a resolution mechanic, you can delegate narrative power.

And if you can't delegate narrative power... what are you delegating? You're giving up some degree of control over which way the game goes to the mechanic, after all.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

Sure Art, given an agreement to use the dice or whatever as an influence on the narration, they become a piece or part of the creative/imaginative process of saying what happens.

(I'm struggling to avoid that phrase, "narrative authority," because Narrative is often read as related to Story in a Big Way, whereas Narration refers to, you know, just talkin' ...)

For instance, let's take Dust Devils.

1) Shared narration is used to set up a conflict situation, and everyone is more or less on the same page about the characters' various goals in the conflict.

2) Then we draw cards, spend various points to get re-draws or whatever, and finally end up with poker hands showing. That settles (as we have agreed) the winner/loser side of things, as well as penalties to the loser.

3) Then the high card in the hand determines who gets to narrate the outcome, including important things like secondary effects, the nature of the loser's penalties, collateral damage, and some NPC stuff.

In my view, this system is way more organized, more honest, and more fun than that of, say, RuneQuest, in which the dice outcomes were heavily nuanced and (to be fair) quite logical and clear, but their relation to who gets to say what is entirely unstated - and hence becomes highly customized, even Drifted, by individual groups.

So my thought is that yes, dice/etc are enlisted in the narration process, but they are authoritative to an agreed-upon level, which can never be other than influential (as opposed to "replacing" narration).

Best,
Ron

[Wart]

(I'm struggling to avoid that phrase, "narrative authority," because Narrative is often read as related to Story in a Big Way, whereas Narration refers to, you know, just talkin' ...)

It might be useful to change "narrative authority" to something different, to differentiate it from Narrativism and "narrative power". ("Authority" and "Power" being interchangeable in the minds of most.)

"Yakkin' Priviledge"?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Art,

Yeah, you'll see in my posts that I'm always trying to say something like "distribution of narration" rather than "narrative" anything, when we're talking about basics of any role-playing.

And the over-casual use of the term "power" throughout these boards is an ongoing source of unnecessary confusion.

Best,
Ron