Looking for narrative adventures and tips on writing them

[lightcastle]

Hey Chris,

I know all about Gloranthan overload. Suffering it myself as a newbie and am just starting to come out.  I will keep it fairly tight and narrow. But I'm not going to hammer down exactly what until I hear from the players a bit more. I'll give the sketchy overview of some of the cultures, and see what they gravitate to. If they all start leaning Orlanthi, that says something different than them going different ways.

About the only thing I'm pretty sure is that the Lunar threat looming over them will be a part of the game. As much as I am pro-lunar, it's far easier to have the expansion of the Empire be something all the players are dealing with culture-wise.

As for the city and the players in it, yes, I will be keeping it down to 3 sides, methinks, with virtually everything else background info.

[Mark Galeotti]

The writers of HQ were, I think, unaware of the theories here about what sorts of preparation supports narrativism best.

Or they just didn't buy into the approach :-)

All the best

Mark

[Mike Holmes]

The writers of HQ were, I think, unaware of the theories here about what sorts of preparation supports narrativism best.

Or they just didn't buy into the approach :-)

Believe it or not, I actually meant to mention that.

This is actually an important point. The designers don't believe, in general, I think (Mark?) in the theory around here. That is, if I don't miss my mark, they think that HQ can support multiple types of players with the same rule set. In that lots of us Forgies would disagree.

Not to get into that debate here, but the point is that if you want to play using narrativism, then realize that the game wasn't specifically designed to support that the way many of us expect. That is, while it's my opinion that narrativism is what HQ supports best, I think it takes some slight drift to get it all the way there.

But that's up to the individual to decide. The point remains the same, however - the scenarios, while having some potential for narrativism, weren't designed like we claim is best for supporting narrativism. So you'll have to adjust them a tad if you want that.

Mike

[rylen dreskin]

Thanks for the replies.  I thought this would generate a few.

This is my first explicit use of narritive play and I'm still not entirely not sure what that means.  Still, learn by doing.  It will also be my players, so I'm writing a short explanation of what I'm trying.

I don't have characters yet, so I can't map too far in advance.  I plan on the Kite story to introduce them to the system, Oranes Spindle to show them a HeroQuest, and then a simple factional struggle as the first non-sequential game.  It will probaly determine the direction of the clan, and I'll elaborate when characters are made and the clan created.

Thanks for the links to Well of Souls and the long narrative thread.  I noticed that when I first found this site, but put off reading it due to size.  Its well worthwhile.

Cheers,
Rylen

[droog]

Not to get into that debate here, but the point is that if you want to play using narrativism, then realize that the game wasn't specifically designed to support that the way many of us expect. That is, while it's my opinion that narrativism is what HQ supports best, I think it takes some slight drift to get it all the way there.

Being fairly new to the theory and its practical application, I wonder if you would mind laying out the sort of drift you're thinking of? I've read the essays and I think I've got a grasp of the theory and its terminology. I'd agree that the presented scenarios do not support Narrativist play as it is defined here.

In other words, what changes do you think need to be made in order to play HQ in full-blown Narrativist mode?

[Mike Holmes]

Not much, really, Droog. Systematically, it's really just some pretty valid interpretations of the rules as written. I don't think those are pertinent here, so if you want to see these interpretations, start a new thread on the subject. In any case it's likely to just be a list of links to a lot of the threads in this forum. That is, we do a lot of this interpretation here.

The biggest change is in deciphering how to play from the examples given in the book. That is, the system is pretty damn supportive of narrativism, but the examples all tend to support the GM creates plot paradigm. And by examples, I mean the adventures mostly.

Basically, I'm talking a circle here. The "drift" that you need is to play adventures prepared in a style more supportive of narrativism (what I'm noting above). Setting up a series of conflicts that aren't tailored to the characters issues is just problematic as a means to support narrativism in play. Makes for an OK sim game, I think, but then I think that you have to drift the system to match that... see some of Simon's comments for how to do that.

Mike