It's time for yet another half-baked Jason idea.

Considering your traditional randomizer aided resolution system from a Nar perspective, success or failure of resolution should not be the concern. As the protagonist, successful resolution of conflict is a foregone conclusion - unless failure either moves the character into another conflict or deeper into the current one, thereby extending the conflict. For the story to be satisfactory the conflict must either be resolved or retroactively rendered irrelevant.

This still requires risk, but the story does not fork because of success or failure, it forks because of the cost of success.

A glitch I see in my hypothesis is the tragic ending - I'm not certain how tragedy works into this.

Tragedy is not always failure. Many Greek and Sakespearean plays are tragedies, but not failures. They set out to explore a question and do so quite well. The survival or happiness o the protagonsit is not the point.

Personal anecdote: Many times in my recent D&D-playing years, I've tried to maneuver my character into a "You escape, I'll hold the bridge" type of scenario, or some other heroic, idiomatically-appropriate death scene, only to be foiled by my friends leaping in to save me at the last moment, aided by a DM who presents challenges but doesn't really want to kill the PCs. How weird is it to feel deprotagonized by being saved?

I don't know Jason. I can see the potential in story variation from success or failure. The conflict will always resolve yes, but not necessarily to the protagonists desires. The story asks a question, the protagonist gives one answer, the forces of antagonism another, then they duke it out. The meaning or message is determined by who wins.

Yeah, Brendan's got it. Failure can be just as "protagonizing" as success. Charcters fail in Sorcerer a lot, about half the time I'd say. But it doesn't matter. Because success is not what makes a protagonist - it's the decisions that lead to the conflict that matter.

I brought this up to Ron a long time ago, and his response is that, for narrativism, the use of a randomized resolution system is merely a springboard for creativity. That is, it gives you some structure to play around. But it doesn't direct play. Unlike in a Gamist game, where player manipulation of the resolution system is ususally what the game is all about.

Mike

Hello,

In hopes of forestalling a common misunderstanding, what I mean (as Mike cites me) is this: either failure or success of a given conflict makes for good story. Fortune resolutions in Narrativist play are typically about conflict, and even in task-based systems, they are often upgraded to conflict status through a variety of informal cues traded among participants.

In case anyone needs to hear this again, I do not consider "oh we'll just decide" or any other kind of unstructured verbal means of deciding outcomes to be very helpful for Narrativist play. In fact, I think it's often extremely destructive toward it - going so-called "system-less" or permitting anyone to ignore Fortune outcomes have never, in my experience or observation, facilitated Narrativist play. At most, they have only prevented Simulationist techniques-combinations from interfering too much, and in some cases they actually facilitate Force (which is anathema to Narrativism).

I'd also like to nip another mis-reading in the bud: that Narrativist play is aided by systems which do not resolve in-game conflicts, but merely pass about the right to say what happens. The Pool is an aggressively Narrativist-facilitating system when the dice decide conflict outcomes (as written); it is merely consensual storytelling when the dice only trade about who gets to talk.

So: the in-game results of Fortune systems are springboards for creativity during Narrativist play, via their constraints on what must be honored in the next creative moment.

Best,
Ron

So are you saying that in conflict res success or failure determines speaking authority? Or just that looking at success vs failure as a speaking authority issue, rather than a character action issue, is more facilitating of narritivist play?

I don’t see a fortune based resolution to necessarily focus on who has narrative control. Why does the dice roll have to indicate narrative control? Why can’t it simply represent success or failure?

I think that a simple success or failure resolution could still inspire a creative outcome from whomever was narrating. A system of degrees of success or failure could be interesting in challenging narrators to greater granularity in narrating outcomes. I think who has narrative rights is a separate issue. Who, how, why, and when a participant gets narrative control seems like a big variable in the minds of different Narrativist players.

If the system is going to include some strong roles for narration rights or even a system of assigning them, I would suggest clearly stating such in the text. We shouldn’t assume it is an “inferred” or “natural” state of a Narrativist fortune based resolution system.

Just my two cents...

Aaarrrghhh ...

Neither of those is what I'm saying. I'm saying the exact opposite: that Fortune systems do better in Narrativist play when they are used to dictate in-game events, not when their sole role is to apportion speaking.

Let me clarify a couple of terms which seem to get boggled a lot.

Narrative = fictional characters in a situation, which reaches a crisis point and becomes resolved, in such a way that real people get emotionally engaged in what's going on. That's a narrative.

Narration = speaking, specifically, describing fictional events.

I am saying that Fortune systems may be employed to facilitate Narrativist play - the resolutions of conflict. They may do so at a large scale (one roll = one fight) or a small one (one roll = one punch).

I am also saying that if you lose this element of a Fortune system, and only let it apportion narration rights, then the system loses an immense amount of positive contribution to Narrativist play. That contribution is specifically the dice's (or whatever's) ability to constrain what happens next. It is extraordinarily useful for building rising action, a feature of narrative, without having to interject such rising action wholly through

That's why Narrativist play which employs a Fortune system is badly hampered by the techniques of fudging, whereas Simulationist play (directed toward story creation) which employs a Fortune system is facilitated by such techniques.

If there is one, single principle that every word I've written about role-playing is focused on, it is this: Drama-driven resolution systems are very poor for Narrativist play unless they have extremely high degrees of constraint built into accompanying parts.

Zero at the Bone represents an attempt of mine to demonstrate that the latter is possible. However, many, many games which purport to facilitate "story creation" through ignoring dice and focusing on "just talking" are accomplishing precisely the opposite of Narrativist play.

It strikes me that I am being mis-understood to an astonishing degree about this issue. Let me be clear:

Theatrix is extremely poorly suited to Narrativist play. So is octaNe. So is any resolution system in which (1) adversity arises because "someone says so," and (2) that someone gets to determine how and where and when and how much, and (3) that same someone gets to say, when all is said and done how the resolution of that adversity turns out.

Does that make any sense at all?

Best,
Ron

Hi guys,

To reiterate, and hopefully clarify what Ron is saying:

Fortune systems(Dice, Cards, whatever) in Nar games work best when they say what happens(success or failure). Who gets to say it, is irrelevant to Nar play happening.

So, as an example, in Riddle of Steel, the dice say if you succeed or fail, live or die. The GM always narrates, just like most traditional rpgs. What makes Riddle of Steel a great Nar game has nothing to do with who narrates. Sorcerer operates in the exact same fashion in that regard.

octaNe, is NOT a Nar game, because it doesn't(by itself) support Nar play. It does involve trading narration rights back and forth, although there is no other incentive to push for addressing Premise.

Chris

Hello,

I'll clarify a few more things.

1. The "aarrghh" was directed toward Bpetroff93's post.

2. Chris (Bankuei) is correct except for leaving the door open for a possible mistaken inference in this sentence:

octaNe, is NOT a Nar game, because it doesn't(by itself) support Nar play. It does involve trading narration rights back and forth, although there is no other incentive to push for addressing Premise.

Watch me everyone, I'm probably gunna miss understand even more and Ron will explode! ;)

Anyway, to Ron or anyone, some side questions: In a movie or such, when someone fails or suceeds at a task, it isn't in a documentary style 'this is what ended up happening' way, but in a 'pass or fail, this addresses premise'.

So does something like fortune in the middle (as I understand it) support narrative play better? I may have the idea of fortune in the middle way wrong, but its more like rolling to see what resources you have to narrate with, then using them. Ie, if your holding off orcs at the bridge (premise of 'what will you give up for your friends', perhaps) and you use fortune in the middle and find your kicking ass ability is at max, you as a player could say 'Well, I have lots of kicking ass resources, but I'll only apply the amount I need to address premise'. The dice tell you, documentary style, how many resources there ended up being. But the player then goes on to address premise by applying the resources granted by the dice. He might want to show his PC is willing to give up his life, and so doesn't use all ass kicking resources (otherwise it would screw up his premise address).

Or am I way wrong? It's just that I don't believe (currently) that dice generated results address premise, they can only focus your creativity.

Though having said that, fortune at the end (again, as I understand it) can be used toward a narrative goal, because although it resolves everything itself (and gives a documentary style 'that's how it ended up' result), the resources your left with after that result can still be applied in a way that addresses premise (sort of the old 'fight on for the life of my kingdom while I'm on one hit point because that's what I'll do when it comes to my kingdom or me' stuff). But as the dice control the resolution which controls resources, and as they have no clue when it comes to addressing premise, it doesn't seem a satisfactory method.

I'm basically trying to get my bearings here, so I'm putting forward ideas to see how much they fit.

Hi Ron

I'll be blunt: there is no incentive, at all, for Narrativist play using the octaNe rules.

cruciel wrote:
Considering your traditional randomizer aided resolution system from a Nar perspective, success or failure of resolution should not be the concern. As the protagonist, successful resolution of conflict is a foregone conclusion - unless failure either moves the character into another conflict or deeper into the current one, thereby extending the conflict. For the story to be satisfactory the conflict must either be resolved or retroactively rendered irrelevant.

Hi, Alan

When we talk about conflict resolution in design that supports narrativist play, are we talking about resolving conflicts within the shared fantasy or between the players? Is one or the other required, or better at supporting narrativist play?

When we talk about conflict resolution in design that supports narrativist play, are we talking about resolving conflicts within the shared fantasy or between the players? Is one or the other required, or better at supporting narrativist play?

Hello,

This is my reply to Callan (Noon).

Callan, you are 99.99% of the way. Almost exactly right. Here's the one little bit to consider, in several parts.

All else being equal, Fortune-in-the-middle is indeed a superior resolution technique for Narrativist play ... if the group likes having overt authorship around the table. By "authorship," I do not mean Director Stance (popping stuff into play or having stuff happen externally to one's character), but rather the sense of communicating, during play, to everyone present - "This is the important part."

When you use SA's in TROS, or spend a wad of coins in Universalis, or blow a Hero Point to alter a result in HeroQuest, or narrate the outcome of one of the internal rolls in a series in Trollbabe ... all of those say, "NOW, here it is." Whereas rolls and stuff in which you don't do these things, although still logistically important to play, are not (um) money-shots, if you will.

Fortune-in-the-middle permits a "play" (in the mechanical sense, variability) in how a given roll gets interpreted. It imposes severe constraint, to be sure - in Sorcerer, if you fail that defense roll by two dice, you have two victories of damage/loss happening to you, period. But there's "play" in what they are and how they get applied, and retroactively in game-time, how they happened. This is absolutely central to deciding upon and playing the character's next action, in a way which is nearly indescribable until you've tried it out thoroughly.

I cannot over-stress that the constraint imposed by the quantitative outcome in a Narrativist Fortune-in-the-middle technique is absolutely crucial to the technique's power in fulfilling this Creative Agenda.

Fortune-at-the-end is certainly usable in Narrativist play. However, that "importance" now exists only in the internal emotional experience of each player, and may or may not get reinforced at the Social Contract level. And hey ... if you miss the defense roll, and if you go to the Critical Hit table for the NPC, and you roll there, and then you fail your resistance check, and ... hey, pierced lung, you die. The creative reward? That you knew it was plausible, and that is all you get. Never mind whether it's important or not.

Many groups use classic Fortune-at-the-end systems (GURPS, Rolemaster, Hero System, BRP) for Narrativist play, which means they must alleviate the above phenomena via social mediation or simple "trust the GM not to apply certain results" social expectations. To do this, they have to develop an in-game sense of shared "how we do it" that borders on the telepathic, and often relies on Ouija-board thinking (see my Narrativism essay about this).

They also often Drift things without realizing it: "Oh, we use the Hero System, so how can we be playing Narrativist? What? Oh, those are Whimsy Cards. Yeah, we use'em all the time." Burning experience points for re-rolls or quick-heals is one of the oldest house rules in RPG history for such systems, and that's why.

See why people get confused? When they're accustomed to Fortune-at-the-end, they equate ignoring the dice with Narrativist play because a lot of the time the dice provide results which are incompatible with the group's sense of importance for this conflict. But when you use Fortune-in-the-middle, that problem is gone, and therefore the power of the dice to provide absolutely necessary constraint cannot be ignored without hosing the play-experience.

Narrativist play which relies on the techniques of Fortune-in-the-middle, conflict resolution renders the whole "roll vs. role" debate completely meaningless. That debate lies only within the purview of struggling with primarily Simulationist-facilitating systems, whether toward Narrativist play or toward Force techniques within Simulationist play.

And you'll notice that I did not spend one word on the issue of who narrates within the entire discussion.

Best,
Ron

Aaron wrote: Tragedy is not always failure. Many Greek and Sakespearean plays are tragedies, but not failures. They set out to explore a question and do so quite well. The survival or happiness o the protagonsit is not the point.

Aaron wrote: Personal anecdote: Many times in my recent D&D-playing years, I've tried to maneuver my character into a "You escape, I'll hold the bridge" type of scenario, or some other heroic, idiomatically-appropriate death scene, only to be foiled by my friends leaping in to save me at the last moment, aided by a DM who presents challenges but doesn't really want to kill the PCs. How weird is it to feel deprotagonized by being saved?

Brendan wrote: I don't know Jason. I can see the potential in story variation from success or failure. The conflict will always resolve yes, but not necessarily to the protagonists desires. The story asks a question, the protagonist gives one answer, the forces of antagonism another, then they duke it out. The meaning or message is determined by who wins.

Mike Holmes wrote: Yeah, Brendan's got it. Failure can be just as "protagonizing" as success. Charcters fail in Sorcerer a lot, about half the time I'd say. But it doesn't matter. Because success is not what makes a protagonist - it's the decisions that lead to the conflict that matter.

I brought this up to Ron a long time ago, and his response is that, for narrativism, the use of a randomized resolution system is merely a springboard for creativity. That is, it gives you some structure to play around. But it doesn't direct play. Unlike in a Gamist game, where player manipulation of the resolution system is ususally what the game is all about.

I have a question about The Pool.

It's defined as a game that supports Nar. I can see that. It has conflict resolution, traits are often defined by character goals or emotions, and the advancement system develops the character from the events that occur in play.

However, the actual fortune system seems to have bit of a conflict with Nar in that a decent chunk of character effectiveness (1 to 3 dice) are determined by GM fiat. Which gives the GM a sizable measure of control over the probabilities of every conflict. I suppose it could be said that the GM dice are how the GM's agenda is expressed.

I'm just sort of curious about this.

EDIT: Ya know, I started off by saying I had a question, and then I never stated one. Oh well, I suppose it's implied.

cruciel wrote: I have a question about The Pool.
..
However, the actual fortune system seems to have bit of a conflict with Nar in that a decent chunk of character effectiveness (1 to 3 dice) are determined by GM fiat. ...I suppose it could be said that the GM dice are how the GM's agenda is expressed.

Alan's nailed it yet again, Callan.

Another common myth about Narrativist play is that the GM is (a) a humble servitor or (b) discarded. In fact, I suggest that out of the three Creative Agendas, the GM is most necessary in Narrativist play, in the sense that some of the GMing-tasks (see the Narrativist essay) literally cannot be left to consensus, when protagonist-style decision-making is under way.

What confuses people is that Narrativist play does not permit a particular family of techniques that result in GM-Force (the power to manage and determine others' player-characters' protagonist-level decisions). Perhaps it will be easier to understand if you examine the exact parallel phenomenon in Gamist play - imagine if the GM were able to tweak the order and effectiveness of announced actions, had final authority over characters' decisions, and was able to turn any aspect of the system into whatever he wanted, in Gamist play. Bluntly, no one would play.

Because, in Simulationist play which emphasizes the tropes and features of a given sort of story, exerting GM-Force is just about the only way for in-game events to turn out appropriately, people have come to associate "GM" with "story-controller." Thus they wrongly figure that Narrativist play must not need a GM, or if he's there, he's kind of boring or humble.

Nope. Look over all those GMing-tasks. Think about the "buck-stopper" concept that I described earlier this week. Just leave the Force out of it, and you'll see that the Narrativist GM is still a rooting tooting unique member of the role-playing process, with special roles and skills. Just not that skill.

Hell, man, in Sorcerer, the GM plays the demons. And I mean, he or she plays the demons. That ain't a small thing.

Best,
Ron

Ahhh...

So, Alan and Ron, are you basically saying that because it's assumed that the GM's agenda in The Pool is Nar, then the GM's dice are in service of Nar?

Hi Jason (cruciel),

That's too vague. What is the point of a GM in Narrativist play? I claim above that this Creative Agenda benefits greatly from a designated person (or more accurately, from certain tasks being under someone's control at any given point). That's a strong statement! Why would I make such a claim?

Check out the Narrativism essay again, and see if you can articulate it. Don't try to guess what Alan and I are thinking. Just read, ponder, and say it yourself.

Best,
Ron

Hello,

Following up from my post, I seem to have been discussing "the buck" for quite a while, without realizing it.

Director Stance (this is the one I was referring to above)
Deciding scope for conflict-based resolution
harsh Humanity (specific to Sorcerer)
Play contrack "checklist?" (more about explicit Social Contract in general)
Shared narrative vs. Exploration of character in Trollbabe
Stance is still not power (very very useful)
Rights of narration (rather intense)
Who gets narrative power?
Problems narrating again
TMW:COTEC - Rewards and The Thrust of the System (see my post contrasting the "veto" vs. the "buck")
Player control (boy, this one's from all the way back in June 2001, and I'm still trying to get the point across)

Hope these are helpful.

Best,
Ron

Thanks Ron! :) I'm glad I wasn't far off in my understanding.

Ron wrote: I cannot over-stress that the constraint imposed by the quantitative outcome in a Narrativist Fortune-in-the-middle technique is absolutely crucial to the technique's power in fulfilling this Creative Agenda.

Ron wrote: I cannot over-stress that the constraint imposed by the quantitative outcome in a Narrativist Fortune-in-the-middle technique is absolutely crucial to the technique's power in fulfilling this Creative Agenda.

Hello,

Callan, you asked,

is it crucial to the narrativist CA directly, or is it crucial to the idea of 'play'. Without the contraint it isn't play (more just sitting around and making a group story without constraint), and without play, you can't conduct the narrativist CA? But the primary focus of the constraint is to support play first (which then goes on to support the CA)? Right? Wrong?

I wonder if you might also clarify what "quantitative outcome" means. A Sorcerer roll produces a quantity of victories. On the other hand, while Trollbabe works for narrativist play, its rolls produce a binary 0/1 result must be sufficient - unless Pace changes this.

As I was thinking of it, anyway, by "quantitative" I'm including binary procedures, which is probably a terminological abomination.

Hi Mike,

My thinking (and training) exactly - but without a book or two to hand while I was replying last night, I was hesitant to get pedantic.

So yeah - quantitative indeed.

Best,
Ron

Interestingly, this might be indicative of the "right-brain/left-brain" dichotomy. I think people less disposed to be analytical than perhaps you or I, those sometimes described as "right-brained" in terms of being able to assemble information in other fashions, might need less of this sort of input, or find it obstructive at times. I mention it, because these people might be the ones for whom "freeform" seems to be optimum.

Just a thought.

Mike

After some thinking, reading, and sleeping I had a total 'Doh!' moment in regards to resolution in The Pool. I'd say I had an epiphany, but that's far too regal word.

The GM's dice are identical in function to GM set target numbers for a resolution. I don't see a Nar conflict with that, as in Nar play it's perfectly peachy for the GM to be in charge of setting the risk level for a conflict (someone has to decide, might as well be the buck stopper, right?). More dice equals more easy

I was fooled by the myth of opposed rolls, except in reverse - assuming that because the player was rolling the dice they had something to do with his effectiveness ratings. I actually feel sort of silly for failing to notice this, oh well.

So, 'Doh!', thanks a bunch - I think I'm clear on The Pool now. Ya know, The Pool is a pretty swell game.

Hi Jason,

I think we should close this one now, don't you?

Best,
Ron

Fine with me.

Aaron, Brendan, and Mike actually drove the initial topic home in the first three posts. Except for a speed bump at The Pool, I've just been enjoying the ride ever since. The scenery has been fascinating.