Directoral Mechanics?

[Paganini]

In a narrative game, I'm thinking that the most important function fulfilled by the mechanics is to determine who gets to say what happens. This contrasts with traditional games, where the mechanics often determine events. I've been equating "getting to say what happens" with "directoral power." I think this is correct terminology, but someone please chip in and corret me if it's not. :)

Anyway, this suggests to me that the core component of a narrative game will be the mechanic that distributes directoral power. The quality of such a game will be directly proportionate to the appropriateness of those mechanics.

Has anyone give thought to how directoral power should be destributed? That is, what should give the right to narrate? What actions should result in the acquisition of the right? In other words, what is important when determining the appropriateness of dishing out directoral power? I'm especially interested in hearing from the author of the Pool (James West, yes?) about the thinking behind the Pool's design decisions.

[Ron Edwards]

Nathan (Paganini),

I'd like you to back up a bit, because your question is itself flawed.

1) All role-playing games' mechanics' purposes are devoted toward establishing "who gets to say what happens," also called "narration." It has nothing to do, necessarily, with Narrativism by itself. (The "dice" never say what happens; their use must be validated by a human authority at the table, even in the most hard-core non-Narrativist play out there.)

2) As demonstrated by the other thread you started, you've been confounding Director stance with Narrativism pretty severely. That means that you should expand your question about the distribution of Director stance outwards to all of role-playing as well.

3) Looking at #1 and #2 together, I think you should consider that Director stance and saying what happens are two totally different things.

So you really have two questions, I think:

A) What is the variety and what are the consequences of distributed narration across a role-playing group, regardless of (or perhaps compared among) GNS?

B) When and how is Director stance formalized across the entire range of role-playing games?

Best,
Ron

[Paganini]

Nathan (Paganini),
1) All role-playing games' mechanics' purposes are devoted toward establishing "who gets to say what happens," also called "narration." It has nothing to do, necessarily, with Narrativism by itself. (The "dice" never say what happens; their use must be validated by a human authority at the table, even in the most hard-core non-Narrativist play out there.)

I think maybe you need to give me a better explanation here; that statement doesn't quite look right to me. It seems to me that a lot of game designers put their prime effort into just that: Making their systems determine events, especially designers that are concerned with realism. They want the system to produce certain events, and only certain events. Sure, the players have to decide to honor the events that the system determines, but the decision to play any game system is, at the most basic level, an agreement to abide by the rules of that system. If a player goes against the events determined by the system, then he's breaking the rules / cheating.

[quote="Ron]
2) As demonstrated by the other thread you started, you've been confounding Director stance with Narrativism pretty severely. That means that you should expand your question about the distribution of Director stance outwards to all of role-playing as well.
[/quote]

Yeah, I'm definately going to go reread the stance sections of the essay again before returning to this thread. Be back soon! :)

[Zak Arntson]

Here's narrative control without Narrativist decisions: My Fungeon game. Here's the root of it:

The system facilitates making monsters and traps, avoiding said traps for experience, killing said monsters for experience, getting loot, and gaining levels. Gamism all the way.

The system also designates a single Player as the narrator of events during a round of action. This is narrative control.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Zak,

This post is just to say, "Right!"

That is, narration is a neutral term referring to who gets to speak, whether in terms of description, proposal/announcement, or (especially) finalized resolution. Narration is a necessary component of role-playing of any kind and has no special relationship to Narrativism.

Best,
Ron

[Seth L. Blumberg]

The "dice" never say what happens; their use must be validated by a human authority at the table....

Sure, the players have to decide to honor the events that the system determines, but the decision to play any game system is, at the most basic level, an agreement to abide by the rules of that system. If a player goes against the events determined by the system, then he's breaking the rules/cheating.

The dice do not say what happens. They don't talk. I can't think of a single RPG in which the interpretation of Fortune mechanics is carried out solely by looking up the results on a table and reading the indicated section of text aloud, either.

The dice may dictate (by agreement among the players) some element of what is to be narrated, but someone always has to narrate it. That's important and non-trivial. First-time GMs of traditional systems find out quickly how non-trivial it is.

[Paganini]

The dice do not say what happens. They don't talk. I can't think of a single RPG in which the interpretation of Fortune mechanics is carried out solely by looking up the results on a table and reading the indicated section of text aloud, either.

Meaning no personal disrespect, I don't agree with you. In many systems, the dice *do* say what happens. The decision to play a system is a tacet agreement to abide by the rules of that system - rules that often are deterministic in nature. In D&D, frex, the dice *very much* say what happens. There are set procedures to follow for many situations that determine what happens in those situations. If there's a fight, the dice say if you hit or miss, and whether or not (and how much) damage you do.

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Okay, the dice say I hit the orc and did 2 HP of damage.

What does that mean? How does that translate into narrative? What are the consequences? What happens next?

The rules do not prescribe every aspect of the result of every action, even in a Gamist Fortune-at-the-End tactical exercise. If they did, it would stop being an RPG, because there would be no scope for the playing of a role.

[Valamir]

There've been a few places where Nathan has been off in his recent threads, but I can't say this is one of them.  For some reason this particular statement is being disected and held under a microscope (for reasons I don't comprehend) and alot of really twisted logic.

Quite frankly Nathan's assertion that in some games the dice determine the outcome is 100% correct as far as the rules are concerned, and his example is spot on.

Assumeing players are playing rules as written, beating the THACO means "I hit" and rolling my damage dice is how many HPs I hit for.  That result was 100% determined by the dice.

As far as it not determining the "narrative associated with it", who cares?

1) There are many many groups of gamers out there for whom "I rolled 18" "You Hit" "For 7 damage" IS the entire extent of the narrative.

2) Sure you can get all colorful about it, and sure the dice doesn't determine whether I describe the hit as a solid uppercut to the ribs or a deep thrust to the thigh...I decided that.  But since that description has absolutely ZERO impact on rules as written play its entirely immaterial to the point.

I felt the need to point this out because I can't see the purpose of drawing a line in the sand about dice determining or not determining to begin with.

But if there is some value to making this distinction I think it should be limited to determining things with actual game impact.  In many games dice do determine the bulk of what has game impact.  Much of the rest is just flavor.

Heck RoS has damage tables where the roll determines which part of your body gets broken and bloody.  Thats very Dice Determined in my book.

[Paganini]

Okay, the dice say I hit the orc and did 2 HP of damage.

What does that mean? How does that translate into narrative? What are the consequences? What happens next?

In a lot of games it stops right there, and there's nothing wrong with such games. In fact, I play them frequently with my siblings and have great fun. It's obviously not my preferred method for serious gaming, but the point is that, yeah, lots of times the dice do say what happens, period.

Additionaly, in the D&D example "translating into narrative" doesn't seem to apply. Narrative color retroactively applied by the GM and / or players is just that: color that serves to flavorize the dice. The dice are the determiners; the group simply makes the results produced by the dice look cool.

Anyway, this seems to be drifting away from the topic, so I guess I'll shut up. :)

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Sure you can get all colorful about it, and sure the dice doesn't determine whether I describe the hit as a solid uppercut to the ribs or a deep thrust to the thigh...I decided that. But since that description has absolutely ZERO impact on rules as written play its entirely immaterial to the point.

I'm not talking about hit locations, dramatic death scenes, and other "color" issues not handled by the rules. I'm talking about the integration of this particular combat round into a story. Unless the plot of the adventure is "All of you are kidnapped and dumped in the arena and must fight your way out"--which is a wargame and not an RPG at all--there are narrative issues that the dice don't cover.

[Valamir]

And I think both you and Ron went overboard on this "dice does not determine" tangent.

What Nathan actually said was:

This contrasts with traditional games, where the mechanics often determine events.

And this is 100% true.   In traditional games (i.e. standard 80s sim with a gamist twist) mechanics OFTEN determine events.

They do.  There may well be narrative leading up to those situations, but in these types of games "did you hear the enemy", "are you suprised by him", "who gets first swing", "hits and misses and damage" are ALL determined (with the exception of the attached color description) by dice.  Thats certainly enough stuff to qualify as "often determines" in my book...especially since in most traditional games this sort of thing was the mainstay of the entire gameing session.

Nathan's statement in this regard is entirely true and I'm failing to see where the big discussion trying to say that it isn't is coming from.

[Seth L. Blumberg]

I'm not arguing with Nathan's assertion about "traditional games, where the mechanics often determine events"; I'm supporting Ron's assertion that all games involve narration, and thus a decision about who gets to narrate (though that decision may be made ab initio and across the board, as in traditional games where all narration is ostensibly the province of the GM).

I'm thinking of abandoning the words "Narrativism," "Simulationism," and "Gamism" (at least in my personal posting) and substituting "N-mode," etc.; the "-isms" seem to obscure more than clarify, by suggesting connections that do not in fact exist.

[WhistlinFiend]

Hmmm...I see where the explanation of narrative control is going, but what would be the "definition" of directorial power? Can someone post a few examples?

-dave

[Paganini]

Hmmm...I see where the explanation of narrative control is going, but what would be the "definition" of directorial power? Can someone post a few examples?

Players in Director Stance have control over Situation as well as Character. For example, Violet grabbed a fire extenguisher off of the wall the other night in our Squeam game. I hadn't previously put one there, or even thought to, but it's the sort of thing that you would find on a university wall. Earlier on a more significant use of player Directoral power introduced an NPC.