Quote from: CRKrueger;882041So that would be a no on admitting we all don't create narrative or experience things the way you do, huh?  Not a surprise.

I wish I could call you funny, but unfortunately, the arrogance of your point of view is all too common and banal, which is why we do this every year or so when one of the anointed comes in to tell us how we actually think.

No dude. It's me realizing I don't give a fuck what you think.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882040Yay.

More pedantic squabbling. It's fun for the whole family.

So what is a work of fiction a retelling of?

Aha, the pat and predictable answer.  RosenMcStern asked how I know you don't roleplay the way I do and probably never have - you just proved it with yet another Storygames.com 101 response.

Since there is no Westeros, then anything coming from roleplaying in Westeros is by definition a narrative because you're inventing something, in essense you're "writing" as much as Martin is.

Complete and total proof of the lack of the Roleplaying IC Immersive experience, but I could have told everyone that from the first page.  Why, because I've seen it again, and again, and again.

Let's guess what your response will be if I told you the whole point of IC Immersive Roleplaying was suspension of disbelief so that you were feeling and thinking of those events as if they were the creation of an occurance, as if it were happening to you.  What would be your response to that I wonder? :hmm:

Quote from: Manzanaro;882025Can you break that down for me a little further? Plus I added a paragraph to my last post for hopefully some additional clarity.

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Just that if you are describing the act of a person speaking to a group of players in the game world as Narration, that isn't the same thing as Narrative in the sense of telling a story. The first instance is really just communicating information to the players, helping them to imagine what is going on, so they can make a decision about what to do next. There is a big difference between a historical narrative and a narrative in a novel. There is also a big difference between a historical narrative and the narration of a GM, telling players what is occurring in the game world at that very moment. Like I said before, if your point is that narrative is just a handy term for what the GM is doing, that is fine. If you like the GM to employ literary approaches to color the narration, then fine. It is whence makes the leap from "GM speaking is narrative" to "RPGs are therefore about stories or narratives in the more literary sense of the term" that it becomes an issue for me (and confusion around those terms is why in these sorts of discussions online I am wary of the labels).

Again, this wouldn't be an issue, except you have writers making that kind of argument all the time (that a good RPG ought to play like a movie or book because they are about telling stories). I have no issue with these folks enjoying RPGs as stories, what irks me is when they suggest an ought.

If that isn't what you are doing, and I am just misunderstanding, then I have no disagreement. Just understand the wariness because so often this whole "narrative is inevitable in RPGs" is the first step in an "all RPGs ought to be like good stories" argument (at least online). A lot of this is just me trying to clarify my position.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882034What I'm seeing is a lot of outrage for not sharing your opinion. How much of that do you see coming from me?

Also narrative does not equal literature. Nor is narrative some nebulous imaginary thing that I am using as a metaphor.

An RPG session with no emergent narrative would be one in which no events were related for the entire session.

I think this gets at a fundamental divide though over approach. And this is why how we talk about it is so important sometimes. If you are treating the in game developments as acts of creation, as storytelling developments in the hands of the players and GM, that produces a very different experience than if you are approaching the events as if they are really occurring at that moment and immersed in that. I don't think either of these approaches are wrong, and I certainly think many gamers blur them up a bit and don't worry about the distinction. I do think, just to use history as a metaphor, if your focus is on what is going on at that moment, rather than how that moment can serve a bigger narrative that is unfolding, you get something quite different in the end. As a GM, if I see my duty to tell a narrative, versus just report what I think is happening in the game world, I will make different choices.

I just see it more as events unfolding there at the table. My experience as a player and a GM isn't one where I cam consciously narrating stuff, it is one where I am engaged with what is going on. As a player I don't narrate, I announce what I attempt to do and/or I speak as my character speaks. As a GM, I try to provide the environment that occurs in, and I try to establish outcomes of such attempts based on plausibility and dice rolls. Someone from the outside looking in might see narrative I suppose. But I don't and I would find to disruptive for me to think in those terms.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;882048I think this gets at a fundamental divide though over approach. And this is why how we talk about it is so important sometimes. If you are treating the in game developments as acts of creation, as storytelling developments in the hands of the players and GM, that produces a very different experience than if you are approaching the events as if they are really occurring at that moment and immersed in that. I don't think either of these approaches are wrong, and I certainly think many gamers blur them up a bit and don't worry about the distinction. I do think, just to use history as a metaphor, if your focus is on what is going on at that moment, rather than how that moment can serve a bigger narrative that is unfolding, you get something quite different in the end. As a GM, if I see my duty to tell a narrative, versus just report what I think is happening in the game world, I will make different choices.

I just see it more as events unfolding there at the table. My experience as a player and a GM isn't one where I cam consciously narrating stuff, it is one where I am engaged with what is going on. As a player I don't narrate, I announce what I attempt to do and/or I speak as my character speaks. As a GM, I try to provide the environment that occurs in, and I try to establish outcomes of such attempts based on plausibility and dice rolls. Someone from the outside looking in might see narrative I suppose. But I don't and I would find to disruptive for me to think in those terms.

Okay. But here is the thing. No simulation can be complete. A GM in particular is going to find himself simply deciding what happens at some point. "Authoring" events. So what principles do you use to make these decisions?

When you, as the GM make transitions like, "An hour later..." what guides you in where to come back into focus?

I get the whole immersion thing. I do. I have praised it as a technique in this very thread. But does it work for GMing in the same way as it works for a player portraying a single character?

And yes, I am on the same page as you when it comes to deciding outcomes. But what I am talking about is not arbitrating outcomes based on what uou find to be narratively pleasing, but the way you than present those outcomes to the players in narrative form. The way you set scenes through description, the way you communicate the character and personality of NPCs. All if this stuff is based in narrative technique.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882036What kills me though? Is a very simple topic getting so tortured that we find ourselves branching out into discussions of Descartes' demon rather than stuff that relates to the simple initial premise like, "I find that empathizing with the protagonists helps build a more emotionally resonant narrative and here are some ways I have found to help establish that" or " I find that even seemingly nonclimactic failures on the part of the PCs can be compelling and here are some approaches that have worked for me" or any of an unlimited number of approaches that might be taken to my initial premise.

Instead, aside from some good bits scattered over the thread, we get page after page after page of pedantic squabbling and accusations of one true way isms.

I think if you relinquish the argument on narratives being an essentially component of all RPGs, people would be happy to hear you out. That sort of disagreement is a pretty big one on this site. So people will see it and come out guns blazing. Since that is just a side argument anyways, might as well focus on what it is you are after in the thread.

I just re-read the OP (I was responding to the ongoing debate in the last couple of pages rather than the first post).

I am a little unclear on what you are after. It sounds like you don't want mechanical solutions, you want something from the GM or adventure structure side of things? I think the key there, is to do it in a way that doesn't railroad. That was the big problem that emerged in the 90s with a lot of this stuff.

While I don't usually think in terms of narrative, I do think in terms of excitement and drama. So my approach here would be to focus on NPCs. If you have NPCs who are in opposition to the party with strong motives that's a great engine for these sorts of things. Most good stories have a villain. You won't get much in the way of plot structure in an RPG (I think plot structure is something the medium naturally resists) but you can get something close to a good story if you focus on making solid villains who are active in the setting.

Other approaches would be things like reveals. If you want to drop a big secret revelation on your players that's pretty dramatic most of the time (provided it isn't overdone)--i.e. Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882051Okay. But here is the thing. No simulation can be complete. A GM in particular is going to find himself simply deciding what happens at some point. "Authoring" events. So what principles do you use to make these decisions?

Again, you are the one using the term simulation, I never used that for what I do. I don't think of it as simulation, I think of it as breathing life into and creating a living world. I understand why people use simulation, but to me that has a conniption of gritty realism. I am doing a wuxia game right now, so simulation doesn't feel like the right word to me.

Most of my choices as a GM flow from the NPCs and groups involved. If not that, then something like the plausibility of the outcome. But if it has anything to do with characters, my thought isn't something like 'what is narratively appropriate" it is 'what would Lord Iron Face do".

QuoteWhen you, as the GM make transitions like, "An hour later..." what guides you in where to come back into focus?

I am very careful about this one. Because anytime I elapse time I am removing the ability of the players to take action. So I always make sure that we've reached a point where the players have exhausted talk, action,etc and are fully intent on getting from point A to B or just waiting out time until something occurs.

QuoteI get the whole immersion thing. I do. I have praised it as a technique in this very thread. But does it work for GMing in the same way as it works for a player portraying a single character?

No, the GM is doing everything in service to immersion. Where it does work for the GM, at least for me, is I do get immersed in the NPCs, and I do get immersed in the setting. That helps guide a lot of my choices.

QuoteAnd yes, I am on the same page as you when it comes to deciding outcomes. But what I am talking about is the way you than present those outcomes to the players in narrative form. The way you set scenes through description, the way you communicate the character and personality of NPCs. All if this stuff is based in narrative technique.

I try to be minimal. I don't frame the scene (at least not as I understand scene framing). I try to report things as accurately as I can.

When I convey NPCs, it is through their words, tone and actions. I almost never offer physical descriptions unless there is a key trait that is crucial. If someone is unusually handsome, I will say so, otherwise, it is just a man in nice clothing. I will point out the things that make them noticeably different from others. But usually I keep my descriptions to something like ("A large man with a beard and hard whip walks toward you").

Quote from: Manzanaro;881975Okay, let me just run this by you.

Yes you get immersed. People get immersed in books, games, movies, portrayals, thoughts... So, no offense but this is to me like someone saying, "I got super immersed in this book. Therefore the words of the book were not a narrative." One does not follow the other.

Reading about Conan and Role Playing Conan are very different things. You can not effect Conan's actions in a book, not even a pick-your-path one. You can not role play him just by reading the book. EG: You can not have him pick up a rock on the road even if the story says he picks up a rock on the road.

Whereas in an RPG where you are playing Conan he acts according to you. EG: He can pick up a rock on the road.

So saying "He may not think he was RPing but he really was." is incorrect. Some people are. Some very much are not.

Here's an example of a technique I like to use. Let's say I am running a horror game and I am keeping track of all kinds of stuff going on in the background, but there is nothing really hitting the table in the next week. So I will say, "okay, I'm going to advance about a week here. Does anyone have anything they'd like to play out in that week?" And my players know that this is me giving them an opportunity to frame scenes themselves. This might be a discussion between the characters of recent events. It might be a character having dinner with his family. It might be a brief scene in which a character is shown in a different context than we see them at other times.

These scenes are rarely very long and they are generally gone into with a conscious intent of illuminating the character in some way.

And the thing is? As the GM I could not frame these kind of scenes and expect them to pan out. It needs to come from the players because it is their characters. And what I find this DOES is add some weight when we get back into the more typical horror stuff. Everyone knows the NPCs. Everyone has gotten a fuller glimpse of their fellow PCs.

Does this kind of technique strike you as out of place or unacceptable in a simulation oriented game? Or put slightly differently, would you find it broke immersion in some way?

Quote from: Manzanaro;882051The way you set scenes through description, the way you communicate the character and personality of NPCs. All if this stuff is based in narrative technique.

I guess the big difference for me here, is I tend to think of it as public speaking and reporting technique rather than narrative. I mean, I am trying to communicate effectively, but I don't employ the same techniques I might when I am writing a short story or something. That is a much more carefully plotted out method of communication. I have all day to sit there and think of the perfect way to say something and to pull the reader in, in a way that is in service to a bigger story. What constitutes good technique for writing a book, will be very different for what constitutes good technique for communicating events to your players. I get an image in my head, I communicate it quickly and as accurately (from their point of view) as possible.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882062Here's an example of a technique I like to use. Let's say I am running a horror game and I am keeping track of all kinds of stuff going on in the background, but there is nothing really hitting the table in the next week. So I will say, "okay, I'm going to advance about a week here. Does anyone have anything they'd like to play out in that week?" And my players know that this is me giving them an opportunity to frame scenes themselves. This might be a discussion between the characters of recent events. It might be a character having dinner with his family. It might be a brief scene in which a character is shown in a different context than we see them at other times.

These scenes are rarely very long and they are generally gone into with a conscious intent of illuminating the character in some way.

And the thing is? As the GM I could not frame these kind of scenes and expect them to pan out. It needs to come from the players because it is their characters. And what I find this DOES is add some weight when we get back into the more typical horror stuff. Everyone knows the NPCs. Everyone has gotten a fuller glimpse of their fellow PCs.

Does this kind of technique strike you as out of place or unacceptable in a simulation oriented game?

I don't think it is unacceptable at all. I probably wouldn't call that a scene though. I had something similar happen this past game. My players took over a sect headquarters and arrived there after months of dealing with another task. When they got to the headquarters they were informed by the second in command that a number of people had announced their intent to come and speak with the new sect leader (one of the PCs). Because they were basically sitting there until these different people showed up, I asked if they had anything they wants to do while they waited and handled each thing that came up (one player wanted to go see a witch living at the base of the headquarters, another wanted to practice some of his techniques, etc). None of these struck me as scene framing. I was just giving them a voice on how far time elapsed so they could control what their characters were doing within that period of more murky time progression.

So I think the term framing the scene is a bit loaded in this case (and scene framing has particular meaning in RPG discussions). I would see what you are describing as giving the players the power to decide what period of time to focus on. To me that isn't really scene framing, it is them telling me what their characters do. If you think of them as scenes, that can definitely change how you approach them.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;882064I don't think it is unacceptable at all. I probably wouldn't call that a scene though. I had something similar happen this past game. My players took over a sect headquarters and arrived there after months of dealing with another task. When they got to the headquarters they were informed by the second in command that a number of people had announced their intent to come and speak with the new sect leader (one of the PCs). Because they were basically sitting there until these different people showed up, I asked if they had anything they wants to do while they waited and handled each thing that came up (one player wanted to go see a witch living at the base of the headquarters, another wanted to practice some of his techniques, etc). None of these struck me as scene framing. I was just giving them a voice on how far time elapsed so they could control what their characters were doing within that period of more murky time progression.

So I think the term framing the scene is a bit loaded in this case. I would see what you are describing as giving the players the power to decide what period of time to focus on. To me that isn't really scene framing, it is them telling me what their characters do. If you think of them as scenes, that can definitely change how you approach them.

Coming up with terminology for stuff that there really is no existing terminology for is kind of a bitch. So you start using shorthand that is more or less functionally equivalent. And then people don't know what the fuck I'm even talking about... But what can you do.

Like, that technique is an example of what I would call getting players invested in the narrative. And I know that notion pisses some people off from word one, but I have no other way to describe it.

But this is the kind of thing the thread was intended to discuss. Ways of making what happens in the game more powerful, while NOT using narrative rules.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882062These scenes are rarely very long and they are generally gone into with a conscious intent of illuminating the character in some way.

I missed this bit. This is definitely something that wouldn't factor into my decisions to elapse time. Illuminating the character is something I can say for certain has never been a thing I've consciously intended. For me, elapsing to that brief bit and focusing on it, is just so I can give the player a chance to do what he or she wants before the next event.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882070Coming up with terminology for stuff that there really is no existing terminology for is kind of a bitch.

It's called "resolving weekly turns."  It's nothing new with D&D in 1974, either.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882070Coming up with terminology for stuff that there really is no existing terminology for is kind of a bitch. So you start using shorthand that is more or less functionally equivalent. And then people don't know what the fuck I'm even talking about... But what can you do.

Like, that technique is an example of what I would call getting players invested in the narrative. And I know that notion pisses some people off from word one, but I have no other way to describe it.

But this is the kind of thing the thread was intended to discuss. Ways of making what happens in the game more powerful, while NOT using narrative rules.

Well, if you are going to introduce language, people will be voting with their opinions on whether it is helpful. Particularly when you move from 'scene' to 'scene framing' (which is a thing in discussions about RPGs and usually something that you see on sites devoted to narrative styles of play). Again, you are the one choosing to focus on the linguistic side of this discussion. I am happy to find points where we agree and focus on that, but I am going to throw in my two cents when I find the language doesn't quite fit how I conceive of play. You can't force people to adopt the language you want to use.

In the case of Scene I think it is particularly important because I find that word actually does shape the behavior of players and GMs (much more so than story). I've definitely noticed players try to hit dramatic beats more if you talk about scenes in games (and I have done that in the past).

Keep in mind, most gamers understand casual use of the word story. But Narrative and Scene have more of a buzzword effect because they do mean something in these discussions. Narrative mechanics are a thing. Scene Framing is a thing. This is a site focused on immersion that generally isn't into story focused RPGs. So you are going to be met with some resistance and suspicion if you focus on those two words.