Narrativist examples of play?

[Erik Ny]

Hi,

First time poster, who's been lurking for about a month or two by now, trying to soak up the Forge ideas like a sponge. Anyway...
I read a post a few days ago (I think it was by Mike Holmes, but I can't find it again, so I could be wrong) that basically said that while Hero Quest assumes narrativist play, the examples of play in the book are all focused on sim play. This frustrates me a bit (not what Mike said, but the inconsistency between the rules text and the examples), especially since I am gearing up towards running my first game with an explicit Nar CA (I was surprised how enthusiastic the players I've talked to have been when I've discussed it with them - they're all pretty much die hard sim players). I would have felt much more secure if I had had  examples of play that really showed a Nar CA.

First question: Are there such examples of play anywhere online somewhere? A transcript of online play perhaps? Or are my concerns unfounded? I just feel I'm heading out into the unknown, and every bit of support would be helpful.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Hiya Erik,


Welcome to the Forge.  You're right, if you want to play Nar the examples of play in the HQ book are enough to drive you through a wall. (Through, not up. They are that bad.)

For examples of play search the Actual Play forum for Well of Souls play threads, there are at least three that I remember. You can find the scenario online here. It's also worth checking out the thread in which Chris Chinn (posts here as Bankuei) and Peter Nordstrand developed Well of Souls, it's here in the HeroQuest forum IIRC.

You've probably seen the recent thread here in the HQ forum "What the heck is a Bang??" with some brilliant advice form Mike Holmes on bangs in general, not limited to HQ.

For more examples of play (with a considerably higher noise-to-signal ratio), I posted several threads on the HQ forum asking for advice on converting our ongoing Midnight game to HeroQuest so we could start playing Nar properly, featuring clueless-but-getting-better questions from me and eternally patient answers to them, most from Mike Holmes. The first play report that actually figures bangs and how they played out is here, the session prep threads have bang development discussions. 



Hope this helps some. I'm sure others will have more examples to point you to.



Kerstin

[Erik Ny]

Hiya Erik,


Welcome to the Forge.  You're right, if you want to play Nar the examples of play in the HQ book are enough to drive you through a wall. (Through, not up. They are that bad.)

Thanks. Yes, that was pretty much my reaction as well...

For examples of play search the Actual Play forum for Well of Souls play threads, there are at least three that I remember. You can find the scenario online here. It's also worth checking out the thread in which Chris Chinn (posts here as Bankuei) and Peter Nordstrand developed Well of Souls, it's here in the HeroQuest forum IIRC.

You've probably seen the recent thread here in the HQ forum "What the heck is a Bang??" with some brilliant advice form Mike Holmes on bangs in general, not limited to HQ.

Thanks, I'll take a look at those threads. I feel I understand the idea of bangs, in theory. In practice, I've never had an opportunity to try it out.

For more examples of play (with a considerably higher noise-to-signal ratio), I posted several threads on the HQ forum asking for advice on converting our ongoing Midnight game to HeroQuest so we could start playing Nar properly, featuring clueless-but-getting-better questions from me and eternally patient answers to them, most from Mike Holmes. The first play report that actually figures bangs and how they played out is here, the session prep threads have bang development discussions. 

I've read them (or at least most of them) and they were very inspiring - part of what convinced me to try out HQ in the first place in fact. 

I've talked with my group about scene framing, about conflict resolution instead of task resolution, and bangs, though not quite using the terminology. I haven't mentioned kickers, but figured I'd drop that on them when we're doing character creation.

Another thing that's a bit unrelated - has there been any suggestions for dealing with more powerful characters? My head starts swimming a bit when I think about character abilities on one hand as "things they're good at", and on the other hand as "power to influence the story". Let's say just for the hypothesis that one player wanted to play the avatar of of some deity, with kick-ass powers, but of course also big issues, while another player was content to play said avatar's mortal travel companion. I want to let my players tell the story they are interested in, but how do I go about it?

Maybe the question should be a second thread, but since it's mostly me having things vested in this thread, I think it's alright with a bit of drift...

[Erik Ny]

Please ignore the last question in my previous post. I dropped back to the forum, and realized there was another thread that addressed it.

[Mike Holmes]

Several things here to look at.

Actually I think that your issue about how to rate powerful beings is an interesting one. And there's really no good answer to the question. You'll have to make some decisions on your own. What I would suggest is what I'll call the standard hybrid answer for now. Basically you let the player with the powerful character have ability levels that match the scale that's in the book, and don't worry about "story power." Becuse in the end, story power in HQ is really a lot more about number of abilities than it is about ability level. Put another way, a 17 vs 14 is no different, not even mechanically, from a 17W4 vs 14W4. What makes a character fun to play is how many abilities went into making that total up.

So you can somewhat have your cake and eat it too here. Rate the abilities by the scale, and don't worry about story power. It's fascinating - even if the characters both participate in the same contest (which you tend to see little of anyhow in the sort of Edwardsian play that I advocate), it really doesn't matter if there's a disparity in power levels. Try some examples, and you'll see what I mean.


Consider that the examples in the book, the examples of play, are actually more narrativism than you might think. I think that people get the wrong idea with narrativism that it means "literary" or "plot ends up more like a book" or somesuch. It doesn't mean that at all. In most cases we don't know why the players are deciding to do what they're doing. But, for instance, just because a player says that they're going to change religions based on some light reasoning doesn't automatically mean gamism (or even a lack of simulationism). Could be anything.

What is bad in the book are the adventures, since they somewhat preclude narrativism as they're written. Given that they largely intend to railroad characters from scene to scene. Now, that said, consider too that the authors may not agree with my personal assessment about the game being particularly supportive of narrativism. Rather, they believe that the game supports a gaming ecumenecism and can be used for many styles. As such, their putting in standard sim adventures is not surprising.

Yeah, it dissapoints me, too, but realize that there are few people in the world that can write a narrativism scenario. So it shouldn't surprise anyone. In fact writing up a narrativism scenario is almost an oxymoron, given that you don't know the characters that will be presented.

So the book really can't be blamed much.

I think examples, in any case, might be bad ideas. I don't think you can see from examples of play what I think you think you're looking for. If that makes sense. I'd just dive in if I were you.

Mike

[Erik Ny]

Ok, I trust your judgement. :)

One thing in particular that I was curious to gander from a transcript was how GMs of Heroquest handle narrative control. To what extent do you hand over the narration of conflicts to players? I guess I don't see why it should necessarily be a GM duty.

[Mike Holmes]

Ok, I trust your judgement. :)

One thing in particular that I was curious to gander from a transcript was how GMs of Heroquest handle narrative control. To what extent do you hand over the narration of conflicts to players? I guess I don't see why it should necessarily be a GM duty.

Narration rights and Narrativism actually have no direct link, you're aware, right? You are correct that it works to allow players to narrate results in Hero Quest. And sometimes this works to give players the idea that they should be using dramatic methods of decision-making for their characters. So, if you're into it, go for it. But it's not a 100% requirement.

What I do in HQ is to allow players to narrate outcomes occasionally with the idea that I exist as the final arbiter. That is, theoretically player narration is a request for the narration to go through as they want it, with me mostly tacitly agreeing that this is the case. The rights I reserve to alter such narration rarely get used.

What I do try to do more is to get players to understand that they have control of the plot in terms of scene selection. I use this term instead of scene framing, because the important part is not so much setting the scene as deciding on who is going to be present and what the situation is so that the plot can go in a particular direction. As such a player can frame a scene to get this, sure, or they can simply make the "request" for a scene by using their prerogatives to drive the character. That is, if the player simply says, "I'm going to see the count to have it out with him" I consider that a request for me to frame a scene with the count in which they can have it out. The important part isn't the narration so much as the selection of what the situation is next (from which the conflicts will flow).

I actually haven't been doing this well online of late, and I've had to make the process much more explicit. So allowing scene framing can help if it gets players to understand that they're driving plot.

Essentially, you don't have to give players director stance authority for them to play narrativism (see Sorcerer). But sometimes to break players out of the paradigm where driving the character means not paying attention to where the plot is going, giving them these powers helps.

So my longwinded point is that you may want to do this sort of thing in order to get the players on board with narrativism if they're not already. But you don't neccessarily have to do so at all. HQ as it's written with the narrator doing all the, well, narrating can work just fine to promote narrativism, too.

By way of diving in, BTW, do you have the characters yet? If/When you do, post abstracts of them here, and we can help you with prep. If you don't need help coming up with bangs and such, then there's really probably not a whole lot we can do for you. Narrativism is actually pretty easy, once you know what it's about.

Mike

[Mandacaru]

One thing in particular that I was curious to gander from a transcript was how GMs of Heroquest handle narrative control. To what extent do you hand over the narration of conflicts to players? I guess I don't see why it should necessarily be a GM duty.

...while I would hand over as much of the narration of conflict over to the players as possible, at the very least as they are as likely to have a neat idea as me. I also find this shows me which way they want to take the game.
Sam.

[Erik Ny]

Narration rights and Narrativism actually have no direct link, you're aware, right?

Yes. It's just a personal desire to "share the burden" so to speak. I understand it's not something that has to be done.

You are correct that it works to allow players to narrate results in Hero Quest. And sometimes this works to give players the idea that they should be using dramatic methods of decision-making for their characters. So, if you're into it, go for it. But it's not a 100% requirement.

What I do in HQ is to allow players to narrate outcomes occasionally with the idea that I exist as the final arbiter. That is, theoretically player narration is a request for the narration to go through as they want it, with me mostly tacitly agreeing that this is the case. The rights I reserve to alter such narration rarely get used.

What I do try to do more is to get players to understand that they have control of the plot in terms of scene selection. I use this term instead of scene framing, because the important part is not so much setting the scene as deciding on who is going to be present and what the situation is so that the plot can go in a particular direction. As such a player can frame a scene to get this, sure, or they can simply make the "request" for a scene by using their prerogatives to drive the character. That is, if the player simply says, "I'm going to see the count to have it out with him" I consider that a request for me to frame a scene with the count in which they can have it out. The important part isn't the narration so much as the selection of what the situation is next (from which the conflicts will flow).

I actually haven't been doing this well online of late, and I've had to make the process much more explicit. So allowing scene framing can help if it gets players to understand that they're driving plot.

Essentially, you don't have to give players director stance authority for them to play narrativism (see Sorcerer). But sometimes to break players out of the paradigm where driving the character means not paying attention to where the plot is going, giving them these powers helps.

So my longwinded point is that you may want to do this sort of thing in order to get the players on board with narrativism if they're not already. But you don't neccessarily have to do so at all. HQ as it's written with the narrator doing all the, well, narrating can work just fine to promote narrativism, too.

By way of diving in, BTW, do you have the characters yet? If/When you do, post abstracts of them here, and we can help you with prep. If you don't need help coming up with bangs and such, then there's really probably not a whole lot we can do for you. Narrativism is actually pretty easy, once you know what it's about.

Mike

Thanks, this was exactly what I was looking for. I assumed that a lot of Forge GMs did this, even though it's not part of the rules (as far as I've been able to tell - I'm still on my first read-through).
We haven't made characters yet, and it's a little uncertain when it will happen as it's something of an understanding that we won't start until our current campaign of Hunter the Reckoning is over, and I'm not the GM on that one. I'll be sure to post abstracts when that happens though. Help with bangs would be welcome when we get there.

[Gelasma]

What I do try to do more is to get players to understand that they have control of the plot in terms of scene selection. I use this term instead of scene framing, because the important part is not so much setting the scene as deciding on who is going to be present and what the situation is so that the plot can go in a particular direction. As such a player can frame a scene to get this, sure, or they can simply make the "request" for a scene by using their prerogatives to drive the character. That is, if the player simply says, "I'm going to see the count to have it out with him" I consider that a request for me to frame a scene with the count in which they can have it out. The important part isn't the narration so much as the selection of what the situation is next (from which the conflicts will flow).

I have this pattern too.
And I like your term "scene selection", it is more to the point than "scene framing".

[Mike Holmes]

To be clear, in a game I'm running right now, I have actually recently mandated some actual scene framing, to force the players into the mindset that I'm trying to promote (right Kerstin?). So I am using that hammer. It's just not standard for how I run games. Again, when players take the initiative, I let them. But in many cases play can tend to look pretty "standard" from an outside POV.

Like I could point you to my IRC logs, but as they're narration only, they're completely opaque in terms of what's going on with the players.

Mike

[Kerstin Schmidt]

To be clear, in a game I'm running right now, I have actually recently mandated some actual scene framing, to force the players into the mindset that I'm trying to promote (right Kerstin?). So I am using that hammer.

Right. Glad you did, too. Desperate times and all that.

Like I could point you to my IRC logs, but as they're narration only, they're completely opaque in terms of what's going on with the players.

I was leaning towards suggesting the PBEM game for examples of play, unfortunately it's full of players turtling including me (until recently). But still with all its drawbacks it might be worth checking out for Erik? I so remember my own thirst for examples of this-other-sort-of-play when I wa shifting over my Midnight game, I do believe even something quite imperfect would have helped me.



Kerstin

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Oh and Mike. While we're talking about PBEM and narration...
*cough, cough*, *prod, prod* 
I shall hound you now.  :-)

(Sorry, Erik. Desperate times.)

Kerstin