Narrativism and Small Groups

[Judd]

Is there a link between Narrativist games and small groups?

It seems to me that the most successful Nar games work with groups of 3 and 4's pushing it.

Is there a Story Now strategy for large groups that anyone can think of?

I know in diceless games (Amber & Nobilis) I have heard of GM's often handing out NPC roles to players whose PC's aren't involved in a scene, a tactic I often used in an old Ars Magica game I ran.  I liked handing out NPC roles to players, usually with a 3 paragraphs NPC write-up because it would mean the stories never played out the way I had evisioned, often ending up with complications I had never imagined.

[M. J. Young]

Of course, "small" is a relative thing. Our Legends of Alyria game had seven of us (including the referee), six players. That's the maximum I'll run for Multiverser, but it's a really small group for D&D (if I announce a game, I've got fifteen to twenty players very quickly). It was a good size for what we were doing, though.

I think Narrativism is limited by the need for the players each to have meaningful roles in the story, so each can address the premise through their actions and turn the story in new ways. Gamism is limited by the need for players to be able to prove themselves individually in the context of the challenge; that means that team play can incorporate rather large numbers of players, as the challenge involves working together to overcome the odds so individual value is perceived through the success of the group ("We did it"). So perhaps playing with more players in a narrativist campaign requires more skill and a more expansive story that involves more characters.

My experience is limited in this regard, however.

--M. J. Young

[John Kim]

Is there a link between Narrativist games and small groups?

It seems to me that the most successful Nar games work with groups of 3 and 4's pushing it.

Is there a Story Now strategy for large groups that anyone can think of?

Well, this doesn't have to do with GNS per se, but I had an observation abou the storytelling paradigm that I expand on in my essay http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/narrative/paradigms.html">Story and Narrative Paradigm in RPGs.  The storytelling paradigm holds that there is a single story, thus additional players by definition are splitting up smaller and smaller pieces of it.  On the other hand, the immersive experience paradigm holds that each player's story is different -- so, for example, you can have a LARP with hundreds of players and all of them have different experiences to relate and different perspective on shared experiences.  

I think that both of these can lead to experience like Narrativism in the GNS sense -- but the methods and mechanics may differ from the canonical Narrativist games.  In LARPs, larger groups work because not everyone in the group has to be concentrating on and validating each action.  i.e. You can have independent conversation and action going on.  These principles can be applied to any game (i.e. you don't have to adopt other principles of live-action play to have simultaneous action).  

I know in diceless games (Amber & Nobilis) I have heard of GM's often handing out NPC roles to players whose PC's aren't involved in a scene, a tactic I often used in an old Ars Magica game I ran.  I liked handing out NPC roles to players, usually with a 3 paragraphs NPC write-up because it would mean the stories never played out the way I had evisioned, often ending up with complications I had never imagined.  

I see this as good up to a point.  i.e. Suppose there is a scene with six characters.  This is better for sharing screen-time if each character has a player, rather than three being NPCs run by the GM and three PCs.  However, even if all characters are run by players, you still run into overload if there are too many characters in a scene.  

I haven't done a lot of play with large numbers of players, but it seems to me that one of the benefits of team play with a caller is that the players can talk amongst themselves independently of the GM.  i.e. While the caller is interacting with the GM, the other players are discussing among themselves to properly disperse resources, plan tactics, and so forth.  To use this for more narrative play means that the intra-party dynamics should have its own conflicts and dimensions.