Narrative modules

[anonymouse]

Split from http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9751

. . . if playing this particular game worked so wonderfully to free the participants into wildly successful brainstorming during play ... and since the players were a core source during this event, as evident in the game's Dedication and in various examples of play ... then why present the results of the play-experience as the material for another person's experience?

Agreed. Can there be modules a la AD&D for Narrativist games? Or would that be antithetical to the style of play?

I don't see why there couldn't be such modules. They'd probably be a hell of a lot shorter, though.

I imagine there would be a bunch of pre-generated characters available, along with a story/relationship map already filled out. Maybe a few blank circles to allow the group to customise a little bit.

Probably offer 2-3 Premises, have the group pick one to focus on. The pregens would obviously be written so that they could equally participate in any one of them.

Maybe a bunch of snapshots or notes for the GM for likely situations based on the map; if Teak (PC) and Sara (NPC) are enemies, and someone picks Teak, at some point you'll likely get a confrontation between them. What are some likely outcomes? Discuss this Premise-wise; it isn't so important whether Sara goes to the Laundromat or the Dorm after their fight, as it is what Premise you're using this to further.

Finally, the whole design would probably be packaged design-wise something analogous to a pop song. Lots of hooks to grab a lot of people, easy to listen to, maybe not a lot of depth but that won't stop you from playing it (and possibly again! see: multiple Premise choice). It'd even be possible to do this in such a way as to write system-neutral Nar modules. You'd label them "Horror" or "Soap Opera" with some notes on what sort of stats the characters would have and leave it at that.

Page count.. well, figure something like 10-12 characters, one to a page; a couple pages for the Story/Relationship maps, a few pages on map notes and maybe system notes, a few pages for each of the premises and how to work those with the characters.. I dunno, 20-24 pages or so?

Did I miss anything? I'll say upfront that most of my playing isn't in a Nar mode so this isn't coming from any long-term play experience for this sort of thing.

[ScottM]

Well of Souls was an explicit attempt to design such a scenario.  Here's the design phase, character creation & bang prep. Here's how it turned out:
Actual Play 1, 2, 3, and conclusion.

[edited once to rephrase 'bang prep' to include character creation]

[Mike Holmes]

I'd call Well of Souls something more like a supplement than a module. Because the idea of a module is that it can just be taken as is, and "plugged" into play. You just can't do that with narrativist prep.

That said, I think supplements like this can be of any length. Because if they're not just for "one-shot" consumption (which, again given narrativism you can't really assume), then they can include any amount of material. So, unlike Well, I can envision really big supplements that have multiple relationship maps, and other such tools, and general information to enhance play in this style. Remember that it's not metagame or "unnarrativist" to have a set backdrop. So you can have handouts, for instance (Ron does).

I could easily see something like this getting voluminous fast.

Mike

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi,

Well of Souls was an explicit attempt to design such a scenario.  Here's the design phase, character creation & bang prep. Here's how it turned out:
Actual Play 1, 2, 3, and conclusion.

[edited once to rephrase 'bang prep' to include character creation]

You forgot the actual scenario at http://www.geocities.com/doctorpeace/well.html

:-)

Cheers,

/Peter N

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

My conception of such a thing is very much like the back-stories and relationship maps in The Sorcerer's Soul. Can they be "run" like a module? No - in fact, not at all. But are they very useful plug-ins for an existing set of Kickers and setup? Yes, I think so.

The only other version would be a 95%-er like In Utero, in which, frankly, you aren't really playing the game in full. It'd be like learning basketball by pretending both teams are tied at the end of the fourth quarter and doing a Sudden Death.

Best,
Ron

[Blankshield]

I think a Narrativist module could be designed, but it runs the (strong) risk of a premise that fails to engage, as it is very (very!) tricky to aim a meaningful issue at a bunch of strangers and expect them to fit neatly into pre-arranged places around it, even if those places are broadly defined.

If I were to try and do something like that, I would be incline to make it something like a How to Host a Murder game.  Prebuilt relationship map, a set of kickers instead of the HtHaM set of clues, and time or circumstance limits to close off a given 'round' of kickers.  Possibly use pastiche to set it into a known setting, as HtHaM does, maybe not.  Still darn tricky, and runs the risk of the imbedded premise not grabbing some/all of the people involved.

Rambling on the fly,

James

[anonymouse]

James,

No worse than picking up a module to run an Ancient Egypt-theme pyramid tomb crawl when your group thinks Egypt is for sissies and what they want are forgotten Chinese cities overrun by demons.

The GM just needs to know what his group likes to play and pick something up appropriate.

Ron,

Yeah, that does need to be pointed out and I skipped over it; I think there can be "Narrativist modules" but they would be decidedly different entities than your standard adventure/module package for something like D&D. Much more like kickstart kits or "plug-n-play" campaign starters than keyed dungeon maps.

Still, I think it's a cool idea, and if I ever wanted to get into a Nar-heavy game it'd be nice to have something like this around.

[M. J. Young]

I think that narrativist modules are possible--they just look different.

Seth, in trying to run demos for Legends of Alyria, devised a complete set-up, characters, setting, starting points, everything needed to run a game. In essence, he took away from the players the part where you create the story map and the characters, and went to "play starts here".

That's what a module does--it takes out the prep time and says "play starts here, and proceeds in this direction".

In most (not all) gamist modules, that means maps showing where things are, descriptions saying what's in them, ratings of the challenges ahead, and similar structural components. In a narrativist game, you might never need any of those (although some of them might be valuable, and could be prepared in advance if their necessity to the story was fairly foreseeable).

Since a module is essentially a pre-packaged collection of everything you need to begin an adventure, it looks very different in a narrativist context, but serves the same function.

--M. J. Young

[anonymouse]

M.J.,

The classic modules are much more than packages to get an adventure started, they are the adventure. You're buying Illusionism off the shelf; they players have their characters, they start at the Beginning, and you work them to the End. They're for DMs who didn't have the ability or time to craft their own Illusions.

Now obviously not every DM used them that way, but it was - and still is - the design goal for them. (And here I'm speaking of D&D modules specifically, as I have very little experience with others; although Shadowrun modules/adventures were exactly the same.)

In general,

Nate and I were talking a bit about this in #indierpgs tonight and he suggested you couldn't hardcore Premise in, that it would be a mistake. But I refer to my "Common GNS sticking points" thread; dealing with the Premise is what -makes- Narrativist play, isn't it? Having a storymap, or having or not having a keyed dungeon map, doesn't have anything to do with any mode. You must have the Premise for a Nar-promoting module; otherwise, it's just a bunch of Situation.

Which is great and all, but doesn't really promote any mode in particular.

[clehrich]

The classic modules are much more than packages to get an adventure started, they are the adventure. You're buying Illusionism off the shelf; they players have their characters, they start at the Beginning, and you work them to the End. They're for DMs who didn't have the ability or time to craft their own Illusions. ... I'm speaking of D&D modules specifically, as I have very little experience with others; although Shadowrun modules/adventures were exactly the same.

Do note that the Call of Cthulhu modules were excellent, and quite different from D&D ones, although I think your basic points hold in many ways.

Nate and I were talking a bit about this in #indierpgs tonight and he suggested you couldn't hardcore Premise in, that it would be a mistake. ...

No, actually I think you could do it, if you wanted to, so long as the game system to which the module referred was itself keyed to the development of Premise.

First, modules don't necessarily dictate order or plot; I always disliked the ones that did, frankly, preferring to let the PC's wander around a level until they got what they wanted and moved onward.  It's sort of like games like Doom, in which you had to get the Red Key to get through the Red Door; so long as they get to the Red Key, they don't have to bother with every room and every monster.  So strong plotting isn't necessary, helping us get around the dangers of Force.

Okay, so now let's suppose we start with a general Premise, but definitely no Known Answer (which would be Force again).  Let's say we set up a dungeon (classic D&D terms, but a different system, OK?) in which there are slavers who've been capturing babies and so forth.  So there's a nice little morality play here, where the PC's have to stop the Evil Slavers.

Now we throw a curveball, but this is known to the players in advance: turns out the babies are orcs, and thus necessarily evil anyway.  The Slavers are all written up to be able to make a nice pitch for how they're really saving these babies from evil orc culture; they claim that babies raised their way are productive members of Good society, because they've been purged of (protected from) Evil orc culture.  [Incidentally, I'm sort of thinking of the mid-century Swiss government policy of kidnaping Gypsy babies and raising them among non-Gypsy Swiss families so as to prevent their developing into antisocial thieves, which is obviously what all Gypsies are.  True.   :-< ]  Furthermore, they don't let these "saved" orcs free into society, but it's not because they're really slaves, but because the outside world will treat them as monsters and not listen to their pleas.

Because the players know that something like this is coming, they are encouraged to develop characters (or have them handed out) who consider themselves very moral people, and furthermore not particularly racist or whatever.

Okay, so somewhere along the line they'll be confronted with the Issue: the Slavers will defend themselves, and the PC's have to react.  How do they take it?  I mean, you don't have to decide that what they're doing is really evil -- they do have a point, if being an orc means necessarily being a vicious butcher, which it often seems is the case.  If they can make orcs not vicious butchers, what's wrong with what they're doing?

With luck, the experiences of the PC's in the dungeon, complicated as it will surely be, will encourage PC disagreement about the issue.  Ideally, you try to structure it so that they meet lots of different Slavers, perhaps including some who are actually "converted" orcs, all of whom have slightly different takes on the issue.

Eventually, you have a module that emphasizes player and character exploration of the moral problems at hand, without dictating clearly what they're supposed to do about it.  The fact that stats are provided for the Slave Lord doesn't mean they have to fight her; they could conclude that she's the savior of orc-dom.  You could even provide multiple stats, depending on what they decide; for example, if they think she's wonderful, you could have them meet her -- and discover that she's a half-orc.  Hmmmm....

I don't think you could do this for all Premises, but I don't see that you couldn't do it at all.  Force a Premise?  Sure.  Of course, as Ron will hastily point out, not all Narrativism requires a forced Premise, and no Narrativism allows a pre-resolved Premise.  But a forced Premise without a set answer seems like a pretty do-able thing.

Of course, you'd have to actually want to design it....

Chris Lehrich

[Halzebier]

The classic modules are much more than packages to get an adventure started, they are the adventure. You're buying Illusionism off the shelf; they players have their characters, they start at the Beginning, and you work them to the End. They're for DMs who didn't have the ability or time to craft their own Illusions.

Now obviously not every DM used them that way, but it was - and still is - the design goal for them. (And here I'm speaking of D&D modules specifically, as I have very little experience with others; although Shadowrun modules/adventures were exactly the same.)

Some Shadowrun modules are slightly different from D&D modules in that they contain explicit advice on using force at various points in the adventure.

(Example: "If the fight goes well, send in a bunch of hostile elementals; if the PCs seem to be going down, have Lonestar provide support".)

The point of the modules' advice seems to be that the fight will be a close call no matter what the characters do.

(Am I correct in thinking that this is railroading the moment the players resent it?)

Most Rolemaster modules I'm familiar with provide just a situation charged with potential conflict (i.e. motives, a timeline for what happens if no one interferes, and stuff like maps etc.). The GM sets up a playground, and then the players may do whatever they want. Wasn't there a term for this?

Regards,

Hal

[Mike Holmes]

Hal, the RM "modules" were pretty much "open sim" (meaning no force). Making them really like little supplements. In the back there would be suggestions for adventures to run in the area described, and usually the setting had some elements that seemed like obvious goals. But the idea was pretty clearly that the GM had to "hook" the characters with something, and then they'd explore the map.

In practice you ended up with a lot of illusionism. I've "played" them all, BTW. The Shadow World ones as a GM, and the ME ones as a player (ugh).

Mike

[M. J. Young]

The classic modules are much more than packages to get an adventure started, they are the adventure. You're buying Illusionism off the shelf; they players have their characters, they start at the Beginning, and you work them to the End. They're for DMs who didn't have the ability or time to craft their own Illusions.

I've got a bunch of these, and I don't see them that way.

First, these are only illusionism if there is a set order of events and the players can't get out of it because the referee keeps them on track. Illusionism means that at the critical moment when the players are asked whether their characters go left or right, either the answer doesn't matter (it's two doors to the same encounter) or one direction will immediately appear wrong (dead end); but it requires that the players do not know this to be the case.

Those modules which I have in which there is a plot to follow are Trailblazing modules: they present the clues that the players are going to need to keep their characters on course, but they don't suggest any force if they get off course. In trailblazing play, the referee has laid out the plot, and the players are dedicated to looking for it and following it to the end. That is not illusionism; it is not even incompatible with narrativism, although it would be extremely difficult to play narrativist in that context.

There are other modules (D&D modules) in my collection which do not provide "where do you go" or any suggestion of sequence of events. Keep on the Borderlands is a classic example--it provides a cave network in which there are many different kinds of monsters and a few variations on traps and encounters, and the players can have their characters go anywhere and do anything. There is, somewhere in the midst of the advice that characters get when they arrive in the area, the suggestion that they start with the lower entrances (because the upper entrances lead to more dangerous situations)--but there is nothing to force the players to go there.

Now, maybe our argument here is because we're disagreeing about the definition of a module. So here is my definition:

A module is a supplement which provides everything the referee needs beyond the rules to begin running a game, and everything which it is reasonably foreseeable that he will need during play that the rules do not otherwise provide.

For Legends of Alyria, that would be: storymap, characters, places included, starting point. Everything else is provided in the rules, as far as I can see.

The point of a module is to reduce prep time to reading the module; any supplement that does that is a module.

Now, if you have a different definition, present it and defend it; but if we're going to say, "A module is a predesigned gamist or simulationist adventure" then the question is circular. If instead we say, "A module is a fully prepared collection of materials from which an adventure can be run with no additional preparation", then I don't see why narrativist modules are impossible. After all, don't narrativist referees create such things for their own use?

--M. J. Young

[John Kim]

Most Rolemaster modules I'm familiar with provide just a situation charged with potential conflict (i.e. motives, a timeline for what happens if no one interferes, and stuff like maps etc.). The GM sets up a playground, and then the players may do whatever they want. Wasn't there a term for this?

The terms "Open Sim" and "Pinball Sim" have been used.  This is pretty much Threefold Simulationism (cf. http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/threefold/simulationism.html">recent essay), which is different from GNS Simulationism and I think overlaps with Narrativism.  

I'm not familiar with the RoleMaster modules, but the way you put it describes pretty well my preferred module design for Narrativist play.  I love the old Daredevils modules and James Bond modules.  I am currently running one of the latter: "You Only Live Twice II: Back of Beyond".  While it has some notes on potential scenes, most of it is devoted to characters, locations, and background -- which can flexibly be used for a variety of different character actions.  

I suspect there is a tendency to say that this only supports GNS Sim.  After all, there's only characters, situation, and setting here -- some would say.  But I think that is based on a misconception.  Narrativism doesn't have to be about explicitly worded moral Premise.  So I'm not sure about the JB007 modules specifically (I'll know more after I run it), but I think that this approach broadly should be compatible with Narrativism.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi John,

With all the usual provisos that go with statements like this, I get a strong Narrativist whiff from the James Bond rules. Not like in Prince Valiant, which simply seizes the reader from behind and mugs him in the Narrativist alley, but a whiff anyway.

I'm not familiar with the modules, and look forward to what you think in that regard.

Best,
Ron