What's wrong with narrative-oriented games and why do they trigger so many people?

>If system doesn't support your goal, than why would you run it?
Because it's the system your group knows, and, no matter how much you plead, they aren't learning another one.

Well, it's generally in everyone's interest to have the best time they can. If people refuse to try the tool that is able to do the best job in what they want to achieve, then it's pretty sad. It kind of sabotages their intents.

Do you mean games where there are narrative based mechanics, or games where regardless of system the GM is pushing a linear story?

If the former, it's because some people hate mechanical incentives for roleplay. People see stuff like Fate's Aspects or SW's bennies and think "this game rewards me for fucking myself and everyone else".

If the latter, then it's because players mostly don't appreciate the GM treating them like a captive audience for their failed novel concept. A good game plot is one the players create for themselves with the hooks available. Not one where they just ride the rails till the end.

I generally don't enjoy the narrative stuff myself but had a fun game today of InSpectors. I think it strikes a nice balance of story and having a literal points system for winning the session, like its a co-op party game. I doubt it will be my favorite game but for getting morning drunk it works out.

For me, meta-narrative elements drop my immersion something fierce.

How do you roll dice?

Dice at least are minor.

I get this is an autism thing on my part, because the things that bug you are going to bug you, but can you explain how to you one is minor and how the other's aren't?

Not that guy, but...

>My character has a chance of failure when they take an important action, roughly as people do in real life, and this is represented each time they have a chance to fail, directly and measurably, by a die roll

vs

>My character's place in the narrative as a protagonist is reinforced by their Plot Points which I as a player, not they as a character, choose to spend to influence the game's story, not the character's direct actions.

It probably doesn't help that the majority of narrative-focused games are also fairly rules-light. If you want a crunchy game that's built around the kind of story it wants you to tell with it, your options are limited to stuff like Legends Of The Wulin and maybe Spellbound Kingdoms.

Like says, meta-narrative takes it away from what the character is doing to what I as a player is doing and I'm not a fan of that. Dice are just a method of solving variability in actions.

Also, dice rolls could be solved entirely by the GM, with players just saying what their character does and getting success/failure responses
Meta currency and meta mechanics must be handled by the player themselves.

Don't forget Burning Wheel.

Oh neat. Immersion in story vs immersion in representation of reality effects how you separate you from characters? Like, its all mediated experience to me, so it doesn't bug me if one has rule X and the other rule Y, just different games, but I think I get it. In a way making the narrative aspects explicit makes it less realistic. The dice are literal representations of chance, rather than using a narrative point to change what a circumstance is due to chance in the story. Cool. Thanks.

The group doesn't have to learn a new system. Only you, the GM, does.

>Also, dice rolls could be solved entirely by the GM, with players just saying what their character does and getting success/failure responses
I disagree, rolling your own dice helps that much more with the whole player agency thing, which is kind of the entire draw of rpg systems.

>The dice are literal representations of chance, rather than using a narrative point to change what a circumstance is due to chance in the story
I actually don't have much of a problem with "narrative points" as a marker of protagonisthood for characters, but only when they're just a way to warp the odds, rather than just outright saying "I do thing" and having it be so.

He said could, not should. It is possible to have the GM control every aspect of randomization. It is not possible for the GM to control every Fate point because Fate points are specifically for the player.

WoD was like this

It's threefold, ascending order of obnoxiousness:
Firstly, the so-called 'narrative games' usually build essentially the whole of their 'system' around a subset of gameplay principles that any sane DM has been sticking to since oDnD, while not bothering to include many other good things, even optionally, because that would be 'against the philosophy'. There wasn't any philosophy to begin with.
Secondly, they advertise their compilations of mechanised good GM advices as something not seen before. They again start talking about some 'philosophy' here, this time around labelling it as 'brand new' and 'revolutionary' with strong hints at 'this is the thing the tyranny of traditionalists has been denying you for so long'. It's similar to forking a long-lived open-source project, hacking at it until it's simplistic enough, and then selling under a proprietary licence, while taking all the credit.
Thirdly, the shills. To be a contrarian is human. Iirc, the narrative game craze begun around late 2013, correct me on this one. It was a time of relative drought, and many people who felt like riding the brand new bandwagon to the future where it's them who are right just couldn't help but vomit their thinly-veiled taste superiority all over. Then 5e came, neo-OSR became a thing, and generally the quality and quantity of TTRPG products went up. The potential market for narrative games shrunk, and the bandwagoners felt betrayed and doubled down on their fanatism.

In the end, the so-called narrative games are a niche type, they are hugely demanding on a certain playstyle to pull good runs off, and they also require a lot of DIY, which by the way is usually glossed over in the rulebooks, and is an instance of slight dishonesty.

I personally hate fate and rather like PbtA. Aspect accounting and fate point economy just trigger me. As to PbtA, this kinda flowy roll-light game structure appeals to me, but I still find many PbtA products too heavy on the 'let me show you the true way' side. I don't like rulebooks that assume any high ground.

Your blatant hypocrisy warms my heart, user. A toast to pretentious asshats who don't play the games they shallowly criticize, and who think they can read people's minds.

Narrative games tend to be kind of meta, which ruins my sense of immersion. That doesn't necessarily make them bad though, just not my cup of tea.

And where is that I'm being hypocritical? A bullet point list would be great.