100% Story-Focused RPGs

Without getting into debates about GNS theory, and just acknowledging that some people informed by that theory made games with certain goals in mind, what are the most intensely "narrative," narrative games?

I mean games where the characters don't really have stats so much as descriptions, and dice rolls, if there are any, determine broad strokes of the way things go in a scene rather than success in attempting a specific task like picking a lock.

My favorite is Misspent Youth, which is a game where you play as a bunch of rebellious teenagers fighting an evil authority figure that the party and GM create together to be as hateable to everyone as possible.

I have no idea if the creator of Misspent Youth was actively basing his ideas on "narrativism" in the GNS sense, but each session of the game itself is divided into scenes and follows a narrative structure with various scenes answering questions about the characters' relationships and their success and failure in fighting a great evil.

Each player has a series of cool traits about them rather than stats, and each scene you try to roll certain numbers in order to "win" the scene, literally just rolling 2d6 and then describing what awesome thing you do in pursuit of your goal, then the GM does the same as the villain. As you approach the climax of the "episode" (session), the odds are shifted in favor of the GM. But never fear, if the GM rolls the winning number, you can auto-win a scene by "selling out" one of your traits, turning it into a dark reflection of what it was. Basically giving up a little bit of your childish innocence in pursuit of victory over the authority. Becoming a little more like the monster you're fighting.

I do like more challenge-focused games like D&D, but as far as storygames, this is my favorite.

Can you please recommend me some more that are more "purely story games" like that?

Other urls found in this thread:

mediafire.com/download/yief94966gursfs/Shock Social Science Fiction.rar
projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/purplexvi/bliss-stage/
bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Microscope and Kingdom both are Literally Just Index Cards™ games. Still pretty fun, though.

Sounds awesome. Thanks for the recommendations. I know what Microscope is. What's Kingdom? Is it similar in premise?

Kingdom is similar but a lot less complicated. Basically, there's no GM and the players are all filling some kind of role in a managed environment, the Kingdom. I've played it a few different times, and for example the first time we played in a BSG-style fleet and quickly had a civil war between civvies and the military, while the most recent time we played we did GATE but with Nazis in WWII instead of the SDF.

Shock: Social Science Fiction.

But prepare for political turmoil in your group if you're all radically different in that respect and at all passionate about your views.

Cool. Sounds fun. Thank you for making me aware of it.
You had me at the title. I'll just play it with a group of people who are roughly similar to me in politics.

Archipelago, though not by Ben Robbins, should be considered the honorary third member of this trilogy.

I'd never heard of that one either. Cool.

Anyone got the pdf of this? Can't find it anywhere

Just spent twenty minutes looking around. Nothing.

bampu

Where does FATE fall in this? I haven't played it but I've heard it called narrativist. Is it pure story like OP is talking about, or is it a more traditional RPG with some more story-focused mechanical elements plugged into it?

Polaris.

Isn't Fiasco one of these?

Bliss stage.

It's a game where you desperately struggle to hold onto the few people that matters to you in the face of a world ending alien apocalypse, and you're the only one who can stop it. But the more you fight, the more you alienate yourself from the people you're protecting.

Don't fuck up.

Cool. Is it possible to save the world without suffering a horrible personal tragedy?

Like, mechanically, can an unambiguously happy ending ever happen?

Fate is more traditional. But its also a DIY toolkit system, so you can swing it lots of different ways.

Yeah, though you're likely going to see some tragedies. It's often a game about choosing what you're really fighting for. But I've seen games result in happy endings with no loss.

When I was a player getting the final action, it resulted in my character reuniting with his now wife and remaining closest friend at the end to just settle down and lead a peaceful life. In his own personal dream world, after he decided to hijack the power of the aliens, wiped out all adults and declared himself god. It was heartwarming.

Anybody else here have trouble enjoying most of the in-between systems?

Like, I can do OSR dungeon crawls where narrative emerges as your wide-eyed novice adventurer learns the ropes, sees his best friend who dreamed of adventures with him die, tries to get revenge, barely escapes and loses his hand in the process, then plots out a more long-term vengeance that he eventually achieves when he hires like 30 dudes with the gold he got on his next couple crawls to drag the guy out to the middle of nowhere and just take him out. I'm down for that kind of player-directed old school shit.

And I love these games that are about story rather than strategy, where you do stuff based on what would be cool/dramatic/interesting.

But when it comes to games that mix the two, all bets are off. I've never played a game of WoD that wasn't a huge clusterfuck, for example. The system seems fine, but holy shit, the railroading that I've seen. And the same has gone for the times I've played Savage Worlds and FATE, too.

Just an addition. The greatest strength of bliss stage (Well, alongside how the system really forces you to care mechanically.) is how, at the end of the day. The Player in question blissing / traumaing out gets to narrate what happens. Which means even if you're ending up with a bittersweet or even dark ending. It happens on your terms, according to your vision of the character.

Cool. How many players do you recommend it for? 3-5 plus GM, like most games?

2-5 players, plus GM.

Really, you only need one player. But you might want more. You also want to be oops on creating interesting / fun NPCs, as they are often going to be just as important in the grand scheme as player controlled characters / pilot / anchor characters. A bliss stage game REALLY hinges on a solid character cast.

The number that I've usually played with is three players and one GM. Though I've noticed a habit that one player tends to take protagonist status. One tends to be the tragedy magnet (Usually unintentionally) and one lies in a grey area. This isn't really a issue of my group as everyone's kinda been in one role or another for some reason.

Dogs in the Vineyard has stats (in the sense of having a few set pools of dice), but you should definitely check it out.

>Anyone got the pdf of this? Can't find it anywhere
mediafire.com/download/yief94966gursfs/Shock Social Science Fiction.rar

Not that user, but thank you!

>railroading
Seems obvious your problem is the GM rather than anything else.

However those "in between" systems I'd say are harder to run. Full-narrative games are often GMless, so they're mechanically very good at sharing the storytelling. Full-simulation or -gamist systems just put all the story responsibility onto the GM, and most players know how to deal with it. The mid-way point where the GM has to run the game but also share the story is tricky and unusual, so you're less likely to find people who are good at it.

Geiger Counter is a great GMless oneshot which is designed to replicate survival horror, e.g. Alien, Sunshine, Cabin in the Woods, The Thing, etc.

Bliss Stage is a game about rape and incest, and the mechanics literally don't function. Even if they did, most of the players are meant to do nothing while one person fights.
The setting is barely there, and the game pretends that it's so mature and edgy when really the creator literally just wanted to make a game about children fucking.
projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/purplexvi/bliss-stage/

Wow great argument fagtron you sure convinced me with those hot opinions

>Bliss Stage is a game about rape and incest

You get no benefit from incest, rape is going to rapidly cause a death spiral of trust breaks and character harm.

>and the mechanics literally don't function.

Literally a meme statement by people who can't read a book. I've repeatedly played Bliss Stage rules as written.

>Even if they did, most of the players are meant to do nothing while one person fights.

Fights take one hour tops, other players have things to do through the Pilot Safety and Anchor mechanic. There's also multi pilot fights.

>The setting is barely there

You're meant to write your own, do you even have an ounce of creativity in you?

>and the game pretends that it's so mature and edgy when really the creator literally just wanted to make a game about children fucking.

And here we have the crux of the argument. This guy is uncomfortable with the intimacy mechanic a and people having badwrongfun. Epic meme, friend. :^)

>This guy is uncomfortable with the intimacy mechanic a and people having badwrongfun.
user, I spend my time on F-list and someone cockteased me with the promise of a Monsterhearts game. You know, the game where you literally have sex powers.
I'm not uncomfortable with intimacy mechanics or sex in an RP. I just find the way that Bliss Stage presents itself to be cringey. It doesn't handle the topics with any sense of decorum or maturity.
The book is badly put together and the author is a wanker.

Also, one hour is a long fucking time for one person to have the spotlight.

>do you even have an ounce of creativity in you?
This is a shitty argument on par with "I don't see YOU making an RPG".

To actually add to the thread aside from pointing out how terrible Bliss Stage is:

Fiasco.

Fiasco is fun as fuck.
bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/

Also, if you want a game about teenagers having sex, Monsterhearts.

>This is a shitty argument on par with "I don't see YOU making an RPG".

Except for the part where they're completely different, you mean.
If a game provides you with only the broad strokes for the setting, only a few core points, it's only logical to assume that you are to build up from there.

>user, I spend my time on F-list and someone cockteased me with the promise of a Monsterhearts game. You know, the game where you literally have sex powers.

Okay.

>I'm not uncomfortable with intimacy mechanics or sex in an RP. I just find the way that Bliss Stage presents itself to be cringey. It doesn't handle the topics with any sense of decorum or maturity.

So that makes the game entirely about child fucking, because there are rules for child fucking if you go through four other steps?

>The book is badly put together and the author is a wanker.

It really is when you're going through it trying to reference shit. I think it's meant to be read all the way through once.

>Also, one hour is a long fucking time for one person to have the spotlight.

Then bliss stage isn't a game for you, friend. If you can't handle characters having individual episodes emphasising one player more and the spotlight being more intensive, rather than diffused. That's entirely on you.

>This is a shitty argument on par with "I don't see YOU making an RPG".

So is that.

...

I said "on par with". And I'm aware of how it works, but it doesn't give you shit all to work with. There are other games that do "build the setting together" a lot better.
Like Monsterhearts, actually...

>So that makes the game entirely about child fucking, because there are rules for child fucking if you go through four other steps?
user, the CREATOR OF THE GAME literally said that it is a game about sex. The characters are also all under the age of majority.
Again, I have zero problems with that, and the same is true of Monsterhearts. But one of the games treats sex a lot more maturely. It even comes with a companion PDF that talks about boundaries!

user, I've elaborated on why I don't like Thing, highlighted issues that someone getting into Thing might not be aware of, and even provided an alternative to Thing with similar themes. Don't be disingenuous here.

But it gives plenty. It gives you info that it was the real world, how things got how they are, how you're fighting against the aliens, and... what more do you need? It's literally reality, except with dream monsters and dream mecha.

On a side note, no, the author hasn't said the game is about fucking. He said it's a game where sex isn't a taboo. That does not equal 'sex is the most important thing'. It's not. You can have an entire campaign without a single relationship reaching 5 intimacy.

And when it comes to maturity. one doesn't need a dissertation about why sex is a thing that happens and isn't bad by default in order to be mature about the subject.

>user, the CREATOR OF THE GAME literally said that it is a game about sex. The characters are also all under the age of majority.

Yep, the creator also said it's all about character development. I'm shilling Bliss Stage because of the sex, I'd lie if I said it wasn't a big part of the game.

But the seriously engaging moments I've had in that game more had to do with the build up of various relationship strain, the increasing tension as trauma rises and then being pushed onto the harder missions with both of these things being at the breaking point.

Monsterhearts is a game about supernatural teenage romance, cool. Bliss Stage is a game about child soldiers fighting a war they inherited without choice.

One is not like the other on a fundamental level. Not to mention the differences in how the games mechanically pace themselves.

It seriously boggles my mind, how you're conflating a post apocalyptic mecha game with a teen horror romance game. Because they both use intimacy as a theme in pretty different ways. And then jump to the conclusion that you can easily use one to replace the other.

>I'm shilling Bliss Stage because of the sex
I'm shilling NOT Bliss Stage because of the sex

I need to get to bed.

What's the opposite of shilling? Redpilling? Flaming (archaic)?

>And when it comes to maturity. one doesn't need a dissertation about why sex is a thing that happens and isn't bad by default in order to be mature about the subject.
No, but it should be a little more mature than rating sex--nothing else, just having had sex with someone, regardless of your feelings--as the highest possible intimacy, and a note that there's no reward for incest. It doesn't handle it well.

Pretty sure he means "I'm NOT shilling it because of the sex".

I don't mean that Monsterhearts serves the same purpose as Bliss Stage. I'm saying that Monsterhearts handles a topic that Bliss Stage tries to handle in a much better fashion. Making a Bliss Stage Apocalypse World hack would probably be much better.

Also, rereading this book I had forgotten just how terribly it's laid out. This PDF is like when the teacher says she wants TWELVE pages, so you double space and up the font.

>Making a Bliss Stage Apocalypse World hack would probably be much better.

Misses out on the actual mechanical pacing of Bliss Stage. Wouldn't be a bliss stage game at that point, unless you severely changed how PBTA worked. At which point why the fuck are you bothering?

B-Bumpin'

more pls

Swords Without Master

It's a very light sword and sorcery game that runs smoothly and organically. There are dice, but they only tell you what "tone" your narration should take and occasionally whether or not you screw up.

Set up takes minutes and a story can be quick and to the point or stretch over multiple sessions episodically.

Kickass. Does it capture the feel of authors like Howard or Lieber?

WoD is basically a traditional game of DND that desperately thinks it's another shit. It only works with heavy railroading and a master/entertainer figure.

The rules and description do a good job encouraging that sort of feel. It's all narrative though, so you have to bring a little of your own to keep it there or your players can go right off the edge with the tone.