Narrativist Reward Mechanics

[Kirk Mitchell]

Hi everyone.

I've been working on my RPG, and feel that it lacks a bit when it comes to reward mechanics. THe only form of reward that players really get comes into play at the end of the game as a way of effecting the results of the story.

The mechanic works like this: For every action that directly or indirectly advances the character's goal, the GM can grant the player a resonance point. These points are used at the endgame to alter the way that the story ends and effects the world. I can't really explain it all that will right now, because I'm in a hurry, but I can give more detail if you want.

I somehow don't feel that this really works.

Any suggestions on Narrativist reward mechanics that work, or could work in my case?

Kirk

[Kirk Mitchell]

Ok, maybe it will help a little to open up the question a bit more: How are narrativist reward mechanics created? What exactly do they reward, how do they reward that and feed back into narrativist protagonism?

Any thoughts? Have I missed anything significant?

Kirk

[Green]

Ok, maybe it will help a little to open up the question a bit more: How are narrativist reward mechanics created? What exactly do they reward, how do they reward that and feed back into narrativist protagonism?

Any thoughts? Have I missed anything significant?

I believe it depends upon the system.  However, in my own game, one of the ways to replenish story points is to address premise.  In other words, by addressing premise, you go a long way toward maintaining narrative input in the story as it unfolds.  In other words, narrativist play frequently becomes its own reward.  I'm not sure if it works exactly like this in other narrativist systems, but if my experiences with a (highly altered) game of The Pool is anything to go by, it may be symptomatic of a greater phenomenon.

[Bankuei]

Hi Kirk,

Narrativism relies on two things; player input and addressing premise.  

From what you mentioned about your game, the reward is based on giving players the ability to affect the story outcome, and that raises several questions:

-Do players have any OTHER means of input into what happens?
-Is this reward give the right to: Create/establish conflicts, narrate resolutions, decide success/failure, create other setting material, improve/alter the character, or many of the above?
-Is the reward constant, like an ability level or is it a limited resource like "plot points"?
-If the reward is a resource and/or directly tied into success/failure, is there any incentive for the players to actually spend or use them, or will they most likely hoard them and keep them for emergencies only?
-What, if anything, in your game, encourages addressing premise?
-Is there a specific premise(Sorcerer-"What is worth your humanity?") or is it wide open(the Pool)?

These things make a big difference.  

To contrast and compare, the Pool works because it gives the option for player input(via Director Stance) every time the dice hit the table, OR allows players to get more dice(effectiveness).  Either way, rewards happen when dice are used in conflicts, so players are given incentive to get into conflicts.  Premise is created and addressed through both the GM and the players (who get their input guaranteed by the narration rules).

Adventure!, a mostly Sim facilitating game, also has some Director stance mechanics, in that players can spend points to get input...but the big difference here is that these points are limited, and hard to get.  Between the preplanned plot style advocated by most White Wolf games and the extreme limitations on player input, Adventure! doesn't really help players get input, much less inject or address premise.

A couple of concerns you may wish to look out for in your game in particular:

-If resonance points are rewarded at the end of play, players will have a slower learning curve about what earns reward.  On the spot rewards help players figure out what to aim for much faster.  This is a bigger problem when trying to show players accustomed to Sim play a new way to do things.

-If resonance points are the only way players have input, you'll need to make sure they have a LOT of them, and not worry about hoarding them.

-You should tie character goals directly into the sort of things that relate to the premise.  Check out Mountain Witch and its Fates for a great example of this.

Chris

[Kirk Mitchell]

Thanks Chris and Green,

As I understand it, narrativist protagonism relates to the character's ablity to address the premise. The reward system must feed back into the ability to address the premise. How does one allow both character and player more power to address the premise? So far what you have listed relates to granting more story power, but how is this done?

At the moment I'm sort of thinking of backing off a little from the focus on my game itself, and look at narrativist reward mechanics as a whole, and how they work.

[Edited to continue post]

However, to answer some questions about the game (and because I do need some feedback ;)):

Do players have any OTHER means of input into what happens?

Yes, the actions that characters attempt in the game are narrated by the players depending on the interpretation of a draw of Tarot cards, using card meanings that I put together myself.

[/quote]Is this reward give the right to: Create/establish conflicts, narrate resolutions, decide success/failure, create other setting material, improve/alter the character, or many of the above?

The reward does absolutely nothing in game. Recently I saw My Life With Master and did a little research. I found that it is quite similar (as far as my limited knowledge of MLWM goes) to the epilogue system. The more resonance points you have, the more power you have to narrate the epilogue of the story.

Is the reward constant, like an ability level or is it a limited resource like "plot points"?

The reward is a constant, and cannot be used as a resourse at all.

What, if anything, in your game, encourages addressing premise?

There is no encouragement as such (yet, but I'll get to my ideas below), but the basic premise of the game is "What would you be willing to do for the people you care for?"

Ever since I started this thread, I have been spending a lot of time mulling over this problem, and have come up with some ideas on how to get players more willing to get involved in the plot and risk their characters.

At the moment, there is a resource called "Sacrifice" which can be triggered by a condition called the character's "doom". This is most often character related, and relates to the other characters in the game, so that the characters spend a lot of time setting each other off. If the character's doom is triggered, they can expend a point of Sacrifice (a limited and unreplacable resource) to gain narration rights. The player may narrate the character's actions freely without consulting the cards. However, the more sacrifice that is used up, the more danger the character is in. Should Sacrifice reach 0, the character becomes "fallen" and must try to regain their humanity (having sacrificed it for others) before the other character's become fallen, or the character will be lost. (that was a bit rambling)

There is a problem with this, as I see it. The danger to the character would seem to lead to hoarding, so as well as resonance points, which allow greater impact on the endgame, I have been thinking of granting players player introduced "bangs" (to use Ron's terminology) every time they trigger another person's doom, and granting resonance points every time that player's doom is triggered.

To me, this also seemed to introduce another interesting idea: With player's introducing bangs, instead of the GM, I may not need a GM at all. Players could bid their bang piotns for "Authority" to interpret the rules, and the plot could be manipulated using bangs.

I would like some comments on these ideas, but I think that I'll split these two concepts, the bang bidding for Authority and player introduced bangs/resonance points into two different threads in the Game Design forum. I just needed to get them out into the open.

Ehem!

Back to the show!

Kirk

[matthijs]

Instead of asking how one allows players more power to address premise, perhaps you should ask why they don't have that power in the first place?

In my mind, the problem with a reward system in a narrativist game is that reward systems traditionally give players more power vs. the GM/system, in one way or another. However, many nar games don't actually have the GM/system as the players' opponent.

It seems to me that the best reward for addressing premise is the satisfaction of addressing premise. I'm not sure if there can be an in-game mechanism for this at all.

The closest I've come is "applause points", where players give points to other players that do something they like. So far, these points have absolutely no effect on the game rules - they're more like social contract tokens.

[Mike Holmes]

The reward system must feed back into the ability to address the premise.

In my mind, the problem with a reward system in a narrativist game is that reward systems traditionally give players more power vs. the GM/system, in one way or another.

There's a false assumption here. There are two parts to any reward system.
A) what behavior causes the reward to be given, and
B) what the reward can be used for.

If one is of little consequence, it sorta drops out of the formula. That is, you can ignore one in theory if it's not that important. In Sorcerer, you get bonus dice for playing in a cool way. These make you more effective, yes, but that's really not too important to play - they're ephemeral and don't lead to player habits like power accumulation. So what happens is that players play in cool ways - which is what was intended.

So you don't have to have narrativism on both sides neccessarily.

Mike

[Trevis Martin]

Just a bit that I wanted to add. Consider that 'reward' mechanics also include mechanical punishment or consequence elements.  

Sorcerer is a great example with its humanity mechanics.  When ever the player makes a character decision that interacts significantly with the humanity definition of the game, they are given a humanity gain or loss roll.  The mere fact that there is a roll means that something of real value in the game is at risk at these moments and that makes a statements relative to humanity.

Trevis

[matthijs]

Mike,

Trying to get my head around this...

- I agree that a reward doesn't need to have a use in order for it to be a reward. Token rewards still feel like rewards. So a symbolic reward system (which specifies what behaviour is rewarded, and also that the reward has no use) could work for nar.

- However, if the reward has a use, the only things I can think of are to break some sort of constraint or give some sort of power to the player. That power can be applied against the GM or the system.

- If that power is vs. the GM as adversary, or the constraints are set by the GM, that assumes that the GM is allowed to set up some challenges for the character in such a way that the player must use his rewards to overcome them. Doesn't that mean that the GM is in effect controlling what challenges have to be meaningful for the character/player?

- If the power is vs. system constraints... that means part of the challenge is in the system. Such a system would somehow have to mirror/emulate/represent the challenges the character faces. But then, isn't such a system redundant?

- It seems to me that if the reward has a use in the game system, then that system is actually taking focus away from addressing premise. Addressing premise is its own reward, in my book.

Sheesh... just read the nar essay, thought I understood it pretty well, now I'm not so sure anymore. (I guess we should start a club for people who say just that on these forums...)

[Mike Holmes]

You're making this way more complicated than it has to be. In Sorcerer, the reward is given for Narrativism, but can only be used for Gamism. Very simply, bonus dice in Sorcerer are power enhancements that make the character more likely to win in conflicts. Looked at alone, they're very Gamist. But they are given for doing tactically unsound things. So they really can't promote Gamism, because the reward happens automatically on the output end, and is only given for narrativism.

What I'm saying is that you can give traditional power up bonuses as the reward, and the net effect can still promote narrativism.

Mike

[matthijs]

Hokay. I'd kind of assumed that Sorcerer was hardcore nar in every detail, and couldn't get that to fit. I'm in danger of going all "one-true-way" with narrativism, and it feels kind of wrong for me to use seemingly gamist techniques/systems in a narrativist game; however, I can see how they can be a means to an end.

[Kirk Mitchell]

I agree with Mike. A narrativist reward mechanic can be granted for narrativist actions, but can be used for gamist or simulationist purposes. But, how would you have narrativism on both sides of the equation? Could you conceavably have a functional reward mechanic that rewards addressing premise and feeds back into addressing premise (narrativist protagonism)? If so, how would one achieve this?

I sort of like rewards to actually do something, because once you get to the point when you realise that the rewards don't actually do anything the system becomes redundant. When I playtested Great Ork Gods with my friends, they wouldn't have given a shit about Oog if it hadn't gotten them more Goblins.

Just some thoughts

Kirk

[Mike Holmes]

The "standard" way to empower narrativism on both sides of the equation is what's been suggested already - give the player specific powers to create things neccessary to create more premises. The problem is defining the powers narrowly enough to make it automatically narrativist. Because director powers, etc, can be used for any goal in theory.

But that, to me is unneccessary. That is, restraining such director power probably won't be neccessary, because, informed on the other end that play is about narrativism, the player will hopefully use the powers for more narrativism. That is, director stance powers don't particularly lend themselves to anything else (sure one can win contests with them, but where's the challenge in that?).

All this said, I think this isn't a particularly good way to go. It's very generic. And, worse, incestuous. The "loop" is too tight. I see players getting points, spending them, and then winning them back for spending them correctly. That's always somthing to avoid.

What I like to see is two stage loops at least. That is, the reward is given for one area of thematic exploration, but ends up being useful in a different area of exploration. Meaning that you want to have more mechanics that deal with these things in a more in-game manner.

At least that's my take.

Mike

[M. J. Young]

But that, to me is unneccessary. That is, restraining such director power probably won't be neccessary, because, informed on the other end that play is about narrativism, the player will hopefully use the powers for more narrativism.

Although I'm interested in the idea of narrativist rewards in two loops, I think this particular quoted passage isn't very useful. In essence it confirms that if players are committed to an agendum, you don't need a reward system to reinforce it. The point of a reward system, though, it to assist players to understand what the game wants them to do and encourage them to do that, not something else.

The flaw in this idea is seen in the fixes that "give experience points for good role playing". So often that comes to learning that the new way to super-charge the character is by playing in whatever fashion pleases the guy who passes out points--gamism with a new game.

Granted that if everyone in the group wants to do narrativism, understands what that means, and perceives how to get there, it doesn't really matter what the reward system does. If it's contrary to narrativist objectives, it will be ignored. What we need is narrativist reward systems that fully encourage narrativist play, so that those who don't know what that is are pointed in the right direction.

--M. J. Young

[Kirk Mitchell]

M.J. how would you suggest that narrativist mechanics point the player in the right direction, and have reward mechanics "fully encourage" narrative play? Explanations within the game text would help in this regard, but how would mechanics do the same?

Mike, I understand what you are saying, but to have narrativism on both sides of the equation, as well as the dual loop would be near impossible, as far as I can see. How can you grant directorial power, and have that feed into only another part of exploration. Maybe some sort of restriction on how the directorial power is used, but then what is the point of having directorial power in the first place. Better to just have increased effectiveness in that particular part of exploration. Or am I missing something?

I guess what I'm driving for is a "pure" narrativist reward mechanic. A reward mechanic that rewards narrativist play, and can only be used in narrativist play. Not that there's anything wrong with narrativist rewards with other uses, but that's just what I'm looking for. It may not even be possible, but I'd like to try to find it if I can.

Kirk