Hello,

I've been discussing some Narrativism stuff with some people, and here's a little snippet, as a preview to the Narrativism essay. I most recently presented these ideas to Chris Chinn (Bankuei) and then decided to move them into public discussion.

I see three main branches of Narrativist game play/design (not ordered within categories):

1. The Window (partly), Over the Edge, Castle Falkenstein, possibly Puppetland - strong setting ("genre") emphasis, relies highly on GM control (hopefully beneficent) of IIEE, liberal Drama resolution; dangerously vulnerable to railroading; I think Soap, InSpectres, and Universalis represent a development in this category of stronger IIEE-structure but retaining the Drama emphasis for resolution. This sort (or rather, the play best promoted by these games) of play asks, What happens? And, then given that the answer to this question is not randomized, What am I trying to say?

2. Prince Valiant, The Whispering Vault, Zero, Sorcerer, Dust Devils, Trollbabe, Hero Quest, Orkworld - very strong reward mechanics design, resolution relies highly on Fortune in the Middle, relationships and motivations are forefront regardless of setting vs. character emphasis; TROS is a "stealth" version of this category. This kind of play centers on, What will I promote and bring into being? What change do I want to effect upon the environment? How will I leave my mark? Where do I make my stand?

3. Wuthering Heights, Violence Future, My Life with Master, Le Mon Mouri, Otherkind, The Dying Earth - highly strictured behavior/descriptor mechanics, with choice often playing an "against yourself" role for the character. This sort of play (or rather, the play best promoted by these games) says, Things fall apart; the center (I) cannot hold. Then it asks, What bit do I want to hold onto the longest? What, if anything, can be salvaged? Notice that Schism, Urge, and other sorcerer/demon combination versions of the game effectively shift Sorcerer into this category.

Any of these may be funny or grim, shallow or deep, highly affected by external aspects of the fictional world or wholly internal, uplifting or depressing, and so on.

Thoughts, comments?

Best,
Ron

Looking over your branches and then thinking about my own game, Kathanksaya, I'm wondering if maybe another category is needed. I'm not precisely sure exactly what it is, but at least one of its traits would be the emphasis on character as the medium through which other elements are developed. Of course, I may be trying to create a broad category for what is in reality a small number of games (or perhaps just mine).

Hi Green,

I should clarify that I'm not trying to set up three incontrovertible and fixed sets of Narrativist play, so much as trying to identify historical trends and priorities. It wouldn't surprise me if further categories, or more likely individual games that fit none of these, were identifiable.

I need to go over Kathanksaya (I haven't reviewed it since your first version) before commenting on it specifically, but the variable you've presented - emphasis on character - isn't really related to these categories, I think.

Category #1: Castle Falkenstein derives its conflicts primarily from Setting, Soap from character, and both Universalis and The Window are pretty laissez-faire about where conflict comes from (in terms of the five elements).

Category #2: Hero Quest derives its conflicts primarily from Setting, Prince Valiant from Situation, and The Whispering Vault, Sorcerer, and Dust Devils from Character.

Category #3: Wuthering Heights derives its conflicts primarily from Character, My Life with Master primarily from Setting (the Master being for all intents and purposes the Setting), and The Dying Earth from Situation.

So it seems to me as if it makes more sense to critique your game in terms of Fortune vs. Drama resolution, the uses and nature of Fortune in resolution (if any), the presence and role of personality mechanics (if any), and the role of Director Stance, to see whether it matches any of these or has proceedd in an altogether different direction.

Best,
Ron

Hey Ron,

Where would you put The Pool?

Paul

Paul Czege wrote: Hey Ron,

Where would you put The Pool?

Paul

In the backyard, between the rock garden & the sauna. Ha!

Ugh. Josh. Get thee to a punnery.

Paul

joshua neff wrote: ... between the rock garden & the sauna ...

I think that what Ron is saying is that these categories don't include the entire range, and aren't neccessarily mutually esclusive, either. The idea is not to create categories into which every Narrativism facilitating game can be fit, but just to discuss some directions that these games go off into. So, it might be the case that The Pool doesn't fit any category.

With that caveat, it would be #1 for The Pool, if I had to chuck it into one of these categories. The important thing is that there's no real reward system that encourages addressing anything in particular, and the results aren't at all random (in an MoV, the result is entirely at the players whim).

Mike

Hi Mike,

Actually, I think The Pool represents a very stripped-down, "essentialized" version of the second category ... if one plays it like I do, with the dice roll dictating success or failure for the stated conflict. If one doesn't, and goes with the "complications" or "narrate how you want" interpretation of both failed rolls and Monologues of Victory, then you're right, it's in the first category.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, The World The Flesh and the Devil goes into the first category.

Edit: also forgot to mention, Extreme Vengeance goes into the third category.

Best,
Ron

Oh, and I forgot to mention, The World The Flesh and the Devil goes into the first category.

Gak. Why do I have to be in the first category? I want to be in the second category, next to John and Greg :(

Seriously though, in looking over the categories yesterday I was struck by the thought that they hint interestingly at a similarity of outlook among designers categorized together. Specifically, the "meaning of life" to the designers in the third category is identity differentiation; what's important to them is how a person defends and establishes himself in the face of situational adversity. And the meaning of life to the designers in the second category is interpersonal relationships; you are defined by the interactions you have.

But I can't quite put my finger on the meaning of life for the designers in the first category.

Paul

Paul Czege wrote:

Gak. Why do I have to be in the first category? I want to be in the second category, next to John and Greg :(

But I can't quite put my finger on the meaning of life for the designers in the first category.

Paul

Hey,

Ralph's right. I plan to spend a fair amount of time talking about how play/design in this category is extremely vulnerable to Narrativist powergaming (which is basically railroading by a non-GM).

When that powergaming, and who's "best" at it, becomes the point of play, then the Story Now priority shifts to Step On Up, which is to say a full GNS-Drift to Gamist play, of the hard core variety.

Which is why much Amber play and LARPing tends to look a bit Narrativist-y at first, but is actually solidly Gamist.

Best,
Ron

Which is why much Amber play and LARPing tends to look a bit Narrativist-y at first, but is actually solidly Gamist.

That's interesting. You've said before that were you to play Nicotine Girls, you think it would be pretty Gamist. Would you put Nicotine Girls in category one?

Paul

Hi Paul,

Regarding Nicotine Girls, what I really say (and few notice) is that it's an unfinished game. I can only infer certain things about what it might facilitate and speculate about them. I emphatically disavow any "tag" that people think I've licked and stuck on the current text.

The reason I speculated about its Gamist potential had to do with the players' ability to undercut one another's attempts for their girls to reach their Dreams, and with my reading that play, per character, culminates in a do-or-die shot at the Dreams.

Whether that is actually what the game promotes, or how it gets played, is another question entirely.

Let's say, on the other hand, that aspects of the completed game, some day, instead promote intensive Narrativist play. Given the current approach to attributes and to play in the text, I'd lean toward putting it in the third category.

Best,
Ron

Given that these three categories are observed historical trends (and not offered as a fixed or complete schema for categorizing Narrativist play), it might be interesting to compare them to another channel historically feeding Narrativist play: Narrativist drift. Especially, Narrativist drift of the most popular game systems (not because they're especially prone to such drift but because they present the most numerous individual opportunities for such drift to occur).

Most of the Narrativist-drifted play I've experienced seems, in retrospect, to fit quite comfortably into type 2. But that could be an artifact of the particular techniques my friends and I have used to get from point A to point B -- particularly, no-myth play as an intermediate step, during which Fortune is retained.

I can see at least the possibility that different routes could lead to the other types. Drifting to Narr play by means of prevalent story points or drama resolution seems like it could lead to type 1, while drifting by way of sweep-the-cards-off-the-table crisis/disaster scenarios could lead to type 3.

Does any of this accord with others' experiences? Is there any value in looking at Narr design or play from this angle?

- Walt

Walt's got himself an interesting question there. I'll just pile someting on top of it.

Up at the first post I was fairly confident unintentional Nar fit snuggly into type 1. Then, somewhere in the middle of the page, I became convinced it was more like type 2. Now I'm just plain confused.

It may not matter if you're not interested in going into drift, because I cannot think of a specific game designed with that goal in mind (that you couldn't instead say was Sim). Then again, my game system database is limited.

Quick input:

I've found that my 2 year Feng Shui campaign drifted easily into type 1 and later into type 2, as our game built up its own set of relationships and mythos to it.

I also have found that Legend of the 5 Rings drifts easily into type 2. The typical NPCs served as an excellent example for the players to follow, and the high drama nature of samurai stories easily drew focus into the relationhips.

All of this is based highly on my personal style of play, so your experience may vary.

Chris

Hello,

That's a good topic, Walt, although I think it's not going to yield I'm fairly well convinced that drifting to Narrativist play will end up scattered across a wide, wide variety of possible variables. Who knows which feature of a given game gets grabbed and tweaked? Remember, all you need is commitment to seizing the Premise and making it squeal a Theme.

My old games of Champions tended to end up like that second category (let's not call these Types, by the way), when they didn't go all dysfunctional due to railroading.

A more recent game of L5R, run by Mario, definitely "went Narrativist" when he decided to revamp his NPCs into a Sorcerer's Soul type relationship map after the second session of play. However, since we changed no rules, we had to grit our teeth a few times when system issues were at odds with these goals - notably the Honor definition and rules as well as the linear-causal combat. If we'd drifted these rules in particular, I don't doubt that we would have ended up in the second category.

W.D., regarding "unintentional" Narrativism ... I'm not sure what to say, because "intent" is either so intangible as to be meaningless, which is my usual position, or revealed through action - in which case if Narrativist play happens, then it's intended (as would be the case for any other mode).

I think that what you're referring to is non-verbalized Narrativism, which really isn't a big issue. No one expects Gamist play, for instance, to be established through overt negotiatory dialogue, extrinsic to the Gamist interactions and (sets of) decisions. Why expect it for Narrativist play, and why consider Narrativist play without it to be worth special discussion?

Pending your response, and running for the moment with the "non-verbalized" concept, I suggest that play within any of the categories I've listed, or within any Narrativist context at all, may or may not include overt dialogue or internally-constructed (mental) dialogue about Premise and Theme at the abstract level.

Best,
Ron

Hey Ron,

I've been thinking about these categories since you posted them, and I have a question. What are they useful for? I find GNS to be eminently useful. It helps me make game purchasing decisions. It informs choices I make about who to game with. It helps me make design decisions. It helps me have more fun gaming. The vanilla/pervy categories are useful in the same way. But these...what do I do with them?

Paul

I think Ron's already "warned" about one use -- avoiding dysfunction and drift. He pointed out the possibility for one of the categories to become prone to gamist drift. Dynsfunction ensues, natch.

I leave the rest to Ron, but I smell other "warnings" in the essay.

Hi there,

I have several goals with these categories, some of which are waiting in the wings for the Narrativism essay.

1. I will be presenting several sets of independent ways to evaluate Narrativist play. This is just one of them. Taking them all into account at once yields astonishing diversity, much like you find in both Gamist and Simulationist play as outlined in the other two essays. Understanding that diversity is a big deal, both in terms of "design toward" and "design outside."

2. On a personal note, I've been frustrated for a while by people assuming that Ron's Play-Preference defines Narrativism, and I want to break that assumption's back.

3. I have a lot to say about the first category, some of which is going to be painful for many. For historical and easily-understood reasons, this category is where many Narrativist-inclined people "fled" during their experiences with a massive shift toward Simulationist play in the published RPG materials in the middle 1980s. However, I think in many ways they jumped from the frying pan into the fire. I'll present more about this in the upcoming weeks.

Best,
Ron

P.S. It was very wrong of me to forget Theatrix for the first category as well. It shouldn't surprise anyone that it occurred to me even as I was typing the words "frying pan into the fire" above. No game exemplifies my point about this category better than Theatrix.

Paul Czege wrote: ... What are they useful for? ...

Ron Edwards wrote: W.D., regarding "unintentional" Narrativism ... I'm not sure what to say, because "intent" is either so intangible as to be meaningless, which is my usual position, or revealed through action - in which case if Narrativist play happens, then it's intended (as would be the case for any other mode).

I think that what you're referring to is non-verbalized Narrativism, which really isn't a big issue. No one expects Gamist play, for instance, to be established through overt negotiatory dialogue, extrinsic to the Gamist interactions and (sets of) decisions. Why expect it for Narrativist play, and why consider Narrativist play without it to be worth special discussion?

Pending your response, and running for the moment with the "non-verbalized" concept, I suggest that play within any of the categories I've listed, or within any Narrativist context at all, may or may not include overt dialogue or internally-constructed (mental) dialogue about Premise and Theme at the abstract level.

Hi Jason (not W.D., sorry about that),

It doesn't need a special name. It's just Narrativist play.

The "designed to be Sim/Char" part of your description is irrelevant. We're talking about play, which is whatever it is when it's played.

The presence of techniques like Director Stance to any degree, frequent or very overt Author Stance, metagame mechanics, shared narration, or lots of other things are not necessary for Narrativist play. They are often found there as reinforcers or useful techniques, but that's all. Narrativist play without them needs no particular name.

I can't emphasize this enough; although no matter how many times I say it, many people seem unable to get it. Can someone else manage to articulate the idea better, please?

Best,
Ron

Hi folks,

To tail on to what Ron is saying:

Narrativism has 2 requirements-
-Player input
-Premise

These things can happen with mechanics reinforcing them, or they can happen because the group agrees to play that way(whether it has been explicitly mentioned or not). That's why folks can find themselves playing Nar style and never knowing it, provided that Player Input is happening, and Premise is forming, whether it was "intended" or not.

Chris

Ron Edwards wrote: Hi Jason (not W.D., sorry about that),

It doesn't need a special name. It's just Narrativist play.

The "designed to be Sim/Char" part of your description is irrelevant. We're talking about play, which is whatever it is when it's played.

The presence of techniques like Director Stance to any degree, frequent or very overt Author Stance, metagame mechanics, shared narration, or lots of other things are not necessary for Narrativist play. They are often found there as reinforcers or useful techniques, but that's all. Narrativist play without them needs no particular name.

I can't emphasize this enough; although no matter how many times I say it, many people seem unable to get it. Can someone else manage to articulate the idea better, please?

Hi Jason,

That's an important point - I'm glad you brought it up.

These categories (perhaps in quotes, they're just notions at the moment) aren't about stance at all. They're about source of conflict, to some extent, but not in the sense of being based on it. Paul's post shows how conflict is related to them, but I don't think it's the defining feature.

I see the categories as mainly being about the role of System. In the first category, contact with the System is constant. (Big gasp from the gallery: "But that's System-less play, isn't it?" My response: "No. Drama-based resolution requires more points-of-contact, not less.") In the second, that contact focused very tightly on the reward-resolution connection, with anything else being handled relatively casually or at least "effects-first." In the third, the contact is again constant, but highly quantified, unlike the first.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: In the first category, contact with the System is constant. (Big gasp from the gallery: "But that's System-less play, isn't it?" My response: "No. Drama-based resolution requires more points-of-contact, not less.")

Hi Ralph,

Spot-on. That's where Universalis shines and Theatrix stumbles.

The game I'm considering building for the Narrativism essay is an attempt at this category in which player Actor + subtle-Author Stances and full GM/player distinction are preserved, like Theatrix and The Window, unlike Universalis, but with very formal IIEE and reward mechanisms.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: I see the categories as mainly being about the role of System. In the first category, contact with the System is constant. (Big gasp from the gallery: "But that's System-less play, isn't it?" My response: "No. Drama-based resolution requires more points-of-contact, not less.") In the second, that contact focused very tightly on the reward-resolution connection, with anything else being handled relatively casually or at least "effects-first." In the third, the contact is again constant, but highly quantified, unlike the first.

My guess ...

Would be that in those cases the mechanics of the system are not especially facilitating to the Narrativist play that may/does exist (although the setting may well be).

The three categories look to me (I realize the specification was made about play rather than design intent--but still) like categorizations on how system interacts with Narrativist play.

So, if I've got this (and I'm very much in question about that) the category would be:

4. Mechanics do not facilitiate Narrativist play (asking "what happened given a set of start conditions") and it's up to the participants to provide the narrativist support when/where it is wanted/exists.

-Marco

Paul Czege wrote: I've been thinking about these categories since you posted them, and I have a question. What are they useful for? I find GNS to be eminently useful. It helps me make game purchasing decisions. It informs choices I make about who to game with. It helps me make design decisions. It helps me have more fun gaming. The vanilla/pervy categories are useful in the same way. But these...what do I do with them?

Ron Edwards wrote: I see the categories as mainly being about the role of System. In the first category, contact with the System is constant. (Big gasp from the gallery: "But that's System-less play, isn't it?" My response: "No. Drama-based resolution requires more points-of-contact, not less.") In the second, that contact focused very tightly on the reward-resolution connection, with anything else being handled relatively casually or at least "effects-first." In the third, the contact is again constant, but highly quantified, unlike the first.

Hi,

John, I don't know which systems you are claiming I classify as Simulationist. But say we're talking about RuneQuest. Does using that rules-set mean anyone must be playing Simulationist? No, it doesn't. Telling me which game systems you use does not tell me how you play in terms of goals and modes.

Also, your post (and many of yours previously) seems oriented toward the idea that GNS is all about "one person, one mode, one system, one way to play," period. It's not. If you play in diverse GNS terms, that's great. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't read a post that says, "This instance you're describing sounds Narrativist" (e.g. the Water Uphill game) as, "Thou Art Narrativst in Every Game You Play."

Marco, your post and interpretation make sense to me. Your category 4 definitely represents a possible venue of Narrativist play. I've seen in some groups who do this, the rules being used often get tacitly ignored to the extent that they eventually are playing in category 1, though - this is where the whole "System doesn't matter" mantra comes from.

Jason, it could be. Seems to me it'd be more like #2 - a Vampire game that fits better into #3 might be more like Vincent's "Hungry, Desperate, and Alone." It's very abstract and the quantified variables only concern Premise, and nothing else. Imagine rolling above your Blood Pool to Hunt, and below it to interact nicely/normally, without any skill sets or Powerz - that's more like what I'm thinking of for #3. But without a real game to look at, it's hard to speculate.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Jason, it could be. Seems to me it'd be more like #2 - a Vampire game that fits better into #3 might be more like Vincent's "Hungry, Desperate, and Alone." It's very abstract and the quantified variables only concern Premise, and nothing else. Imagine rolling above your Blood Pool to Hunt, and below it to interact nicely/normally, without any skill sets or Powerz - that's more like what I'm thinking of for #3. But without a real game to look at, it's hard to speculate.

Hi Jason,

You sound pretty much on-board to me.

Yeah, agreed on all counts, including 7th Sea, pending a few more tweaks to bring the connection you're talking about into the foreground (and getting rid of the metaplot).

Best,
Ron

Ron,

I agree. This brings up a chain of thought for me:

Certainly if enough rules are modified a given game could be pushed towards any of the three (in AD&D, handing out XP for "role-playing" would be ... 2, no? Or formalizing plot immunity for characters who were acting "in accordance with the story"--that is, a player can veto death if he explains why thematically his character should live).

Or if you were playing AD&D with very old heroes past their prime and dying off (last act of Beowulf) and you started out to end it with everyone dead and the questions revolved around the legacy they left behind--then it'd be 3.

But really,a whole lot of play that is *close* to Narrativist falls into cat 1 under--in a sense.

Take the story-like sim game where the GM is supplying the majority of the plot but the characters are still fairly empowered (what's missing at this point is, prehaps, only an actual Premise--the action might jsut be asking the question "can we defeat the evil empire?")

Now (if I'm making sense there) so long as the PC's act wtihin what the GM sees as "a resonable path" (i.e. they fight with stealth and guile rather than making a full-on-very-likely-suidical attack on the evil empire's fortress) then the outcome of the decisions is not exactly random.

That is to say that while there *is* a random element involved, it's heavily weighted in favor of the protagonists. Thus, when presented with a number of choices (court the not-so-evil princess to try to win her over, choke the evil emperor by waylaying his evil tax-collectors, foment revolt in town, etc.) the players are still asking the type-1 question (albeit not necessiarily, as I said, in a Nar context).

But sometimes (maybe?) it *is* a Nar context (and in this case it's quite possible for even the weighted chance to come out "wrong" which would be a system-priority conflict)--but that's just not a given that it'll happen.

And it's even less of a given in some game systems--especially with players who understand that system well.

Hero takes the "bite" out of otherwise-deadly conflicts with stun points (granted this does not make the resolution Dramatist--but bear with me: if the characters are powerful enough in the right fashion, then while there may be some uncertainty, if the odds of success are high enough so long as the the players are playing in what *they* precieve as the "right" fashion then it's pretty close to Dramatist).

I think this speaks to my enjoyment of strong bell-curves. JAGS has one of the lowests whiff-factors of games of its type (there are lower--but a crit-fail is 1:1296 instead of 1:216 for GURPS/Hero).

Secondly some mechanics (Stun and PD spring to mind in Hero) or more explicitly (Fate points) would lead systems pretty firmly in cat-4 to appeal to people who might be more at home in cat-1 systems.

Does that make any sense?
-Marco

Hi Marco,

It does make some sense to me ... except that to the extent that you're not talking about Narrativist play, it's not really relevant to the categories. I'm assuming from the start, for purposes of this thread, that Premise (Egri, etc) is the priority of play for everyone.

Let me see if I'm able to tackle it, though. Let me know if I'm just flailing. You seem to be focusing on randomized outcomes and player-character survival, particularly the notion that if character survival is favored by the system or procedures of play, the outcomes may be considered "less random."

The topic is trickier than it looks. Once you provide some organizing factors to the Drama-resolutions (e.g. Universalis), the assertions made by various players become "randomizers" for the currently-speaking player, far more so than one might think just from reading the rules. The traditional assumption that Drama methods assure more predictable outcomes than Fortune methods is actually not valid.

Also, player-character survival may not be an issue at all. In one of my old Champions games, for instance, Killing Attacks were disallowed for player-characters and relatively rare and weak even for villains. Getting killed simply wasn't a major feature of play. The "randomization" (or better, low-predictability) applied to winning or losing fights, and that was important for whatever weak or struggling Narrativism was in action in that game, but the essentially-null chance for a player-character to die wasn't relevant to that.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Just as a personal favor, let's not say "Dramatist" to describe Drama resolution. The term Dramatist has a noble place in history as one of the three Threefold members, and Drama-based resolution is something else entirely.

Ron Edwards wrote: Hi Marco,

It does make some sense to me ... except that to the extent that you're not talking about Narrativist play, it's not really relevant to the categories. I'm assuming from the start, for purposes of this thread, that Premise (Egri, etc) is the priority of play for everyone.