Narrative Games

I mean, sometimes you want to just play an in-depth game with plenty of rules for resolution of things. Other times you want to just tell a story together but want a sense of structure and randomness to it. I think there's room for both.

And I think there's a lot of room in the design space for these rules-lite type games.

Anything PbtA can just go straight into the trash. I've never played in games with such a substantial absence of interesting or fun dynamics than those of that particular narrative system. Narrative game systems in and of themselves can be really fun, and I particularly enjoy FATE, but anything to do with Apocalypse World is like pulling teeth... while I understand that people will like what they like, I can't understand how PbtA games get so much praise for being such pieces of shit.

Cool opinion, bro. I don’t play anything other than PbtA, myself.

I ran a couple seasons of MotW and had a blast doing it. My players are mostly seasoned gamers that enjoy story heavy RPGs and zany shenanigans. One player was even brand new to ttrpgs and he had a great deal of fun as well.

I don't really have much experience with the other games mentioned, but The Sprawl, and Action Movie World were both worth trying as well.

Gonna be trying like 5 new to me PbtA games at a con next weekend, and most of them seem pretty fun, if quirky.

Oooo, which five?

Can you give me some factual and objective reasons why the game is any good, or is your enjoyment of the game purely subjective, and thus, worth about as much as anyone else's opinion?

Lets see... Bedlam Hall, which is basically Downton Abby meets The Adams Family. Legend of the Elements, which almost beat for beat the Last Airbender setting. Threadbare, which seems like a Tim Burton-esque take on toystory. The Veil, which is a different mission-oriented cyberpunk game than The Sprawl. And Impulse Drive, which is a sci-fi space opera type game.

Yes, and we play narrative-based systems all the time. Like Blades in the Dark, Monster of the Week, Bubblegumshoe, Tales from the Loop for example. (Seriously.)

But also Dresden FAE, Marvel Heroic RP, other PbtA, and once we even played The One Ring.

Which is your favorite? I want to get a long running campaign going.

>eating shit is disgusting.
>cool opinion bro, I personally gobble up turds exclusively.

Depends on what the group wants, honestly. Narrative games rely heavily on the conceits of the setting to work.

Our group had the most fun playing Dresden FAE, but I think that was a result of the characters being (accidentally on purpose) over-the-top.

Certainly. I think that taking dice away from the GM is a stellar idea, I love how quick playbooks make character creation, I think narrow games where every mechanic reinforces the genre and theme is the right call, and I think that ultimately PbtA succeeds in getting out of the way of good storytelling and creating drama when they do co,e up.

>I think that taking dice away from the GM is a stellar idea
You think so? Doesn't sound like a quantifiable fact to me. Nice opinion bro. Oh, and by the way, just because the dice are out of the GM's hands doesn't mean he is powerless to do anything. At his whim, you can literally be fucked over even if you succeed at a skill check.
>I love how quick playbooks make character creation
Checking boxes and filling in premade details on narrow archetypes sure sounds narrative and interesting, oh boy! By the way, we can't call it what it is (a character sheet), because that's just too mainstream.
>I think narrow games where every mechanic reinforces the genre and theme is the right call
Nice opinion bro, I happen to disagree entirely, so I think I can understand why you like PbtA so much now.
>I think that ultimately PbtA succeeds in getting out of the way of good storytelling and creating drama when they do come up
It goes out of its way to get -in the way- of good storytelling. Every action comes down to a dice roll followed up by an immersion breaking 'discussion' on what should happen next.

Sounds like a lot of "I think"s, which isn't objective in any way.

>Sounds like a lot of "I think"s, which isn't objective in any way.
Why would he need to be objective? Because you asked him to be? Because objectivity in criticism is desirable, or even possible?
Are there objective, quantitative measures for goodness? For goodness of games?
At some point, you must realise that game quality stems from value judgements and not physical qualia.

Are you okay?

You could also try to defend your points, you know, considering you keep yelling about someone else not being objective about their claims while... not making 'objective' claims yourself.

>The Good
The draw for me is that it is extremely easy for players to sit down and play. One character sheet front/back typically explains character creation adequately. A single front/back page Moves list adequately describes the rules that a player typically needs to know for any interactions that require rolls.

The prep work for the GM is no worse than any other TTRPG, and is easy to seat-of-your-pants with minimal improv skill if that's your style.

>The Subjectively Good
I have seen so many character creation sessions for games like FATE or any of the crunchy systems just paralyze players with choice. When you can play just about anything, it's hard to decide what you want to do. Even worse if you are the type of player that wants a synergy and cohesion in party make up. What PtbA games tend to do is give players an immediate direction to take their character right out of the gate. Fewer choices, yes, but sometimes constraining creativity in certain ways can lead to ideas that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

These games also have good one shot potential. Like I said earlier, you can sit down at a table and be playing within 10 minutes. Sometimes when there are cancellations in scheduled rpg sessions, it is fun to just run something quick and simple for everyone who can still attend.

>The Downsides
The lack of choice can be a bit chafing, I'll admit. There's only so many playbooks/moves/stats etc. It can be hard to play a character concept that doesn't fit the molds easily.

The other issue I've found is ongoing campaigns tend to be difficult. Running an 8-12 session campaign arc is fine. Trying to run a second arc after that becomes challenging with the amount of character advancement by the end. My solution has been to resolve to just one season long, concise stories.

>Objective criticism is impossible

You wasted trips on this.

>Why would he need to be objective? Because you asked him to be? Because objectivity in criticism is desirable, or even possible?
Yes. Game design theory is a real thing.
>Are there objective, quantitative measures for goodness? For goodness of games?
Yes, otherwise one could make the argument that no system is inherently bad or flawed when in reality, that just isn't the case.
>At some point, you must realise that game quality stems from value judgements and not physical qualia.
Personal opinion is important when deciding whether or not to play a game, but there are some objective measures of solid game design that fall outside the realm of subjectivity.

Are you okay? You didn't seem to take my assessment of PbtA very well when you first responded. You don't have to cry bro, it's just a cool opinion.

What is a narrative game anyway? Is FATE narrative? Is Genesys narrative? To what degree?

>there are some objective measures of solid game design that fall outside the realm of subjectivity.
What do you consider them to be? If you can give me some quantitative measures I can try to apply them to DW, which I've played and run.

Do you disagree with the implication though?

I haven't made up my mind. I think there's a world of difference between "generally accepted" and objective. I think there's a world of difference between "easily compared" and quantifiable. I'm intrigued by your ideas, however.

Objectively? It's fast and easy. I can bring in people who haven't played rpgs before by just handing them 2 sheets of paper, no other rules required.

It runs faster due to built in story mechanics, smaller hp pools, and quick conflict resolution. With DnD and Pathfinder, I've often had trouble with even 4 hours not being enough, PbTA can do a complete session in 3, sometimes 2, which helps a lot when scheduling is an issue. PbTA games also tend to be episodic which helps if players need to drop in and out; fewer delays because you need a full party for an important session or to complete one.

The campaigns being shorter can also help- people can explore most of the system in a few sessions vs multi year campaigns for DnD. The narrative aspects and simplicity also cut down prep time when I'm GMing, which is a big help.

Honestly the main objective advantage is that the game runs much more smoothly than a meatier system when time and player churn are issues- you just get to play more. I enjoy the story game aspects but that's a style preference on my part.

They vary based on the game in question, but as PbtA claims to be narrative, that's the focus I'll go with. First and foremost, how would you stack up DW's freedom of choice (for players and the GM) in character creation, storytelling, and other important narrative facets compared to other systems? In my experience, with playbooks, your number of combinations (and their narrow focus on specific events and configurations) leads to a very finite number of both choices, and potential combinations with other characters. Classes in games such as D&D are similarly limiting, but in theory, those games give you far more choice than PbtA ever does.

Second, how do the mechanics work out in practical play? Does the game run smoothly, or is it clunky? The mechanics behind certain actions leading to 'discussion' rather than in game actions and events seems to take away from it all. Furthermore (and this is something that, admittedly, was fixed in AW 2.0), there was a time where putting a shotgun to a bandit's head (according to the rules) didn't result in his death (you got what you wanted unconditionally through his giving up, which allowed him to survive). Limiting player choice and providing a set number of potential outcomes for any given action might speed things up by having players no be paralyzed by choice, but that's like drowning yourself to avoid burning to death.

>there was a time where putting a shotgun to a bandit's head (according to the rules) didn't result in his death (you got what you wanted unconditionally through his giving up, which allowed him to survive)
actually, with the relevant moves, you can set the thing you want them to do as 'die' so that if you succeed it's a guaranteed kill

I play PBTA, use currently the word "narrativist" and I don't know what the fuck is a "narrative" game.

Okay, but you can surely see that there's a problem if shooting the guy in the head requires a special use of a 'move', rather than just doing it. That's assuming you got enough successes on... I guess it'd be 'Go Hard'... to get precisely what you want without complications. I'm not saying that rolling for it is bad, but I am saying that for a narrative game, AW goes out of its way to make that action have as little narrative flow to it as possible.

Character creation has fewer choices mechanically though there are fewer trap options and it's easier to homebrew. Players have much more story control- they have mechanics that are strongly suggested to or outright steer the narrative; this particularly helps with martial classes in Dungeon World compared to DnD, who feel like equals with casters in and out of combat- and MoTW & The Sprawl have no similar imbalance.

Mechanics are very smooth if the GM is good at improvising- it takes getting used to and especially in Dungeon World the lack of guidance can be an issue for new GMs; the Sprawl is the best of the ones I've played in having clear rules and expectations without being restrictive, with the caveat that if you take a PbTA game out of its intended genre it suffers much more than DnD or Pathfinder does.

>They vary based on the game in question
Sounds very objective...
>how would you stack up DW's freedom of choice (for players and the GM) in character creation, storytelling, and other important narrative facets compared to other systems
Constrained sharply. Obviously there's no comparison with d&d3 or gurps. However, it sharply focuses the game on an intended play style and excludes many counterproductive builds possible in other games. In short, the mechanical combinations are sharply limited (until and unless you roll your own playbooks) but to good effect elsewhere.
>Second, how do the mechanics work out in practical play? Does the game run smoothly, or is it clunky?
Butter smooth and easy. With an agile GM there is reasonable fun in the system (though simple) and play goes quickly. Tactical play is not a focus, and absent. The rules do lack certain simulation elements, but rely on fiat. Instead the rules excel at adding "fair" complication and genre appropriate challenges in an idiosyncratic way.

>Okay, but you can surely see that there's a problem if shooting the guy in the head requires a special use of a 'move', rather than just doing it.
It wouldn't always. You need more context. Generally, people try and resist being executed, but if the narrative situation precludes it then they simply die.

Guys, methinks you could read the book. Hell, even the reference.

SUCKER SOMEONE
When you attack someone unsuspecting or helpless, ask the MC if you could
miss. If you could, treat it as going aggro, but your victim has no choice to cave and
do what you want. If you couldn’t, you simply in�ict harm as established

I dare to say you don't need to Open Your Head to the malestrom here.

>Sounds very objective...
It is. Not everything uses the same metrics, but that doesn't mean that they can't be objectively criticized. You don't pick up a book on genealogical study in order to judge how sound a mathematical theory is.

jesus christ the autism is mutating

Methinks you need to read my post again. 'Sucker Someone' was introduced in the game's second edition, which I admit in the post itself.

Cool opinion bro, but it's kind of autistic in and of itself to have no rebuttal except for 'that is autistic'.

PbtA doesn't claim to be anything.

Apocalypse World claimed to be a way to tell neat stories about post-apocalyptic survivors.

Every PbtA game is different.

You don't understand this and never will, though, because you can't understand objectivism except when it's associated with Ayn Rand.

>GUYS LOOK AT ME IM TROLLING LOL

It was discussed even in the first.

How does the whole 'meta' game of Blades feel? Seems kinda interesting with all the wheels turning behind the scenes that could help a GM with a lot of the world building and shifting politics of the city.

How does it work out in practice?

>"PbtA doesn't claim to be anything"
>He says this even though the thread is 'talk about narrative games' and the OP has an AW image.
>Y-you don't understand, your understanding of objectivism is limited to Ayn Rand!

I mean yeah, sure, the game itself isn't claiming to be narrative/a narrativist game, but it's clear what its audience believes it to be.

>opinions I don't agree with are trolling

>you don't understand this and never will

I understand pretty well. Your assertion of the opposite doesn't necessarily make it so.

>I understand pretty well. Your assertion of the opposite doesn't necessarily make it so.
But user your assertion of the opposite doesn't necessarily make it so.

It sounds like we're in agreement then, I knew you'd come around eventually!

>you don't understand this and never will

The absolute state of PbtA players. Is there a canvases any more automatically devoted to trash as them?

Which does teens solving mysteries better:
Tales in the Loop
Bubblegumshoe
?

Both of those seem good, but you could also give Small Towns a look (technically not focused on kids exclusively, but they're an option during character creation).

what constitutes a narrative game? i think in nomine counts but no one wants to play it

>pointing to the rules

>bad

'k then

generally a game with mechanics that encourage players to act in character (rewarding roleplay or otherwise encouraging actions regardless of whether they move you closer to "winning" or not). Stuff like OWoD traits system that gave you bennies when you roleplayed to match your traits even if they will actively harm your character.

for /tg "narrative" pretty much means any game with an iota less autistic crunch than DnD.

Nothing. People take it as a real concept as they can't grok what narrativist means.

Depends which part of the "meta" you're referring to. In practice I'll stick with the typical session workflow but fudge things around to fit my needs. I know the game isn't a huge fan of players spending a lot of time doing prep work for their heists but my players love that shit and so do I so I ignore that part.

Other than that things go pretty smoothly. There's enough framework that it makes setting up a session easy while flexible enough to let me more or less do what I want. Overall the game strikes a nice crunch balance for me where players feel mechanically unique unlike something like FATE yet if I need to create an antagonist on the fly it's much easier than a truly crunchy system. The gang leveling system is great too since it's both a character sheet and a nice little progress chart of watching your little baby gang grow up into a much more powerful group of chucklefucks.

>ignores well put together post with thought out assessments of pros, cons and opinions
>continues to flail loudly

No. That isn't how this works, literally 100% of this is pre preference based and little else. The only objective statements you can make about nearly any system are when they are broken beyond the point of any hope, like say F.A.T.A.L.

Vincent Baker certainly is aware of GNS theory and pretty solidly in the narrativist camp.

I like "it does what it sets out to do" and "everything functions as advertised" as an okay, somewhat objective criteria.

I started playing Blades when some players didn't show up to a game, best decision I ever made. The game can seem a little slow at start but when the players understand what he is going for and use the mechanics the system gives them it becomes something else entirely.

Why do you guys reply to trolls

>create an antagonist on the fly it's much easier than a truly crunchy system.
it's dead easy in about any crunchy system. just don't give your NPCs any advantages/disadvantages, just plain attributes and skills, maybe some loosely defined background (see D&D 5E) package on top of it

That's self-evident (did he even do games that aren't?), but I'm not sure PBTA as whole are narrativist. They mostly are, of course, but I got the feeling The Sprawl might be considered gamist.

>It's real easy to make an antagonist in a crunchy system
>Just strip them of everything that makes them unique and fill in the numbers later

This.

You're really going to attack someone's opinion for being an opinion, in a thread exclusively about people's opinions?

The only facts that can be applied to these games is stuff like skill check percentages, page counts, and sales figures. Almost everything about why we like or dislike them is an opinion, including your opinions.

Your implication is too broad to be accurate or inaccurate. Objective criticism is possible for some things, impossible for others. For forms of entertainment, it is at best incomplete, and often meaningless.

This actually is one of the problems I have with a lot of the narrative systems. The goal is to be less about rules and more about story, yet they often end up with these very weird and purely meta level mechanics that break immersion and fuck up a logical narrative flow as much or more than lots of rules would have done.

Any narrative systems you would recommend?

so what makes antagonists unique in PBtA (crunchwise!) and how can that not be repliacted in any other, crunchier systems?

You realize that art, a highly subjective thing, gets taught in schools and colleges? For even though art is highly subjective, there is good craftsmanship and bad craftsmanship.

Isn't it weird that this stupid argument about PBtAis still going, but there's no responses to the long, reasoned out responses?
It's almost as if there's someone trolling, and no response will be good enough.

Not even the dude you were arguing with, just laughing at your quick-fix solution to making villains in crunchier systems boiling down to stripping them down to numbers.

I always find it funny when people get into these shit flinging arguments instead of discussing the actual downsides of the system (it's complete arbitrariness of rolling 7 vs 2d6 with no room for skill proficiency or challenge ratings).
Instead, have the patrician narrative system. Genesys not only tells you how much you succeed or fail, but also how well it does or does not go. Mind you, these are on two axis, so you can succeed with disadvantage, ect. And it's pretty crunchy, to give both the classic DnD feats/abilities feel along with your improv story telling. Really, if you can get past the fact of proprietary dice, you'll find it really is the best narrative system out there.

>Isn't it weird that this stupid argument about PBtAis still going, but there's no responses to the long, reasoned out responses?
>It's almost as if there's someone trolling, and no response will be good enough.
Yeah, but we're not getting quest threads back and board quality will continue to decline.

lol nice try retarded cuck

>just laughing at your quick-fix solution to making villains in crunchier systems boiling down to stripping them down to numbers.
Yes. CRUNCHWISE. that's something neither you nor the other dude has grasped. does the ruler of the kingdom have to have a "wisdom of the ancients" feat or is it enough to give him a wisdom stat of 85%? reminder: please answer that question in the context of a GM who has a need to be able to come up with crunch for NPCs on the fly easily.
none of it precludes you giving that ruler an interesting personality and an interesting plot.

i fail to see what is so narrative about it except in name? care to explain?
i guess this harkens back to the question: what is a narrative game anyway?

I think from a philosophical perspective, sharing narrative agency is the only coherent option when you stop treating the GM as a neutral arbitrator.

2d6 is a bell curve, 7 is its average roll. I've never looked into this system but that's not really arbitrary. I could see the rolls being too reliable, though.

>does the ruler of the kingdom have to have a "wisdom of the ancients" feat or is it enough to give him a wisdom stat of 85%?
That depends on several factors
>How does the system handle feats?
>What does the feat do?
>Would not having leave a significant disadvantage to the character's effectiveness?
>Is this NPC someone that the party is expected to meet frequently?
>What does having an "85% Wisdom" represent?
>Does this NPC have class levels?
>Does this NPC have access to spells?
Among other things relating to the plot and the setting.

In something like a PbtA game, it would probably take less than five minutes at most to create this NPC's abilities would already be laid out in front of you thanks to how simple character creation is.

In crunchier systems, there's so many questions to consider that in order to play this character, you have to pretty much strip them down to numbers without context and pray to god that nobody actually interacts with them.

If you spend five minutes crafting your villians, your doing it wrong. its a loving task.

...

I'd also like to point out that PTBA really disadvantages quieter players/groups who aren't especially bombastic or 'out there' with their characters.

>it's complete arbitrariness of rolling 7 vs 2d6 with no room for skill proficiency or challenge ratings

Having +1-3 on specific uses of moves is the equivalent of a skill system (equates to a trained skill having some bonus to the stat roll in other systems, except without a set skill list), and most PbtA games have that.

I have also seen some people run it with circumstancial modifiers of +/- 1 or 2, though it does sorta go against some core ideas of the game; still, it did not implode, so technically, the system can handle it.

I never set any goalposts to begin with. It just doesn't take a calculus genius to come up with a few numbers based on hit probabilities and understanding the variety your PCs bring to the table, instead of sir checkbox the brave

>It just doesn't take a calculus genius to come up with a few numbers based on hit probabilities and understanding the variety your PCs bring to the table, instead of sir checkbox the brave
It does, however, take much longer to generate an NPC the more variables you have to consider during the character creation process, which you cannot ignore if you're talking about an NPC that interacts with the party, especially one who is going to be interact with them on the regular basis.

I can come up with random numbers between 1-20 to generate a shitty NPC off the top of my head, but unless I consider their race, class, background, equipment, etc. they might as well be commoners with higher-than-normal stats.

it is quite possible to abstract the shit out of them if complexity isn't your forte. mechanically you aren't constrained by such and its quite easy to generate NPCs by changing up equipment and assigning competitive HP totals. Design can be more detailed if you think about it in a more atomized way.

>it is quite possible to abstract the shit out of them if complexity isn't your forte.
The argument was whether or not designing a villain on the fly was harder in a crunchier system or not (see ).

So, if you have to ignore 95% of the options that you could choose just to create a skeleton of a character to work with on the fly, you're just admitting how poorly crunchier systems are at helping a GM to generate shit on the fly in comparison to systems with lighter rules to follow.

Numbers aren't everything, especially in a system like D&D where the bulk of your abilities comes from class, race, background, spells, and equipment.

You're not replying to me here.

You have dodged the question of what you do in those 5 minutes that can't be replicated with ease in a crunchy system. Let's say it was D&D, then I could invent a feat that, for example, gave the character a Wisdom reroll everytime he was tempted into doing something stupid. Takes me about 30 seconds.

So what about PbtA? What cannot be replicated by crunchy games?