Its more a problem that your use and application of the term narrative is so broad that it is essentially "everything on earth" which pisses people off to absolutely no end because it dilutes the term to the point it has no meaning.

Whats a solo game? "everything on earth"
Whats an RPG? "everything on earth"
Whats a sandbox? "everything on earth"
Whats a narrative? "everything on earth"
Whats a simulation? "everything on earth"

etc ad everything-on-earthium...

Narrow your definition down and people wont be so inclined to fight you so violently because then they can grasp what you are after easier. Otherwise this will continue as you bounce around subjects all under one blanket term.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;883597I think most people here would just call that the judgment, decision or description by the GM.

Fine! Whatever you want to call it, what might be interesting are the techniques you use to make the communication (in whatever media you employ) "compelling, dramatic, suspenseful, involving " -- the terms Manzanaro used in the OP.

It's a puzzle what Manzanaro is actually after, especially since he seems to try to have his cake and eat it too when it comes to the GM manipulating or not manipulating events themselves.

However, actually addressing what we do to increase enjoyment beats the crap out of futile rounds of "means this," "does not," "does so," "uh-uh," "uh, yeah" ...

Quote from: Phillip;883677Fine! Whatever you want to call it, what might be interesting are the techniques you use to make the communication (in whatever media you employ) "compelling, dramatic, suspenseful, involving " -- the terms Manzanaro used in the OP.

It's a puzzle what Manzanaro is actually after, especially since he seems to try to have his cake and it too when it comes to the GM manipulating or not manipulating events themselves.

However, actually addressing what we do to increase enjoyment beats the crap out of futile rounds of "means this," "does not," "does so," "uh-uh," "uh, yeah" ...

A bunch of us from various playstyles told him exactly how we achieve those things and pretty much every one, Forgite or Grognard, was told "No, that's not what I mean, or that's not what you think it means because {definitions used by one}.

Quote from: CRKrueger;883602I dunno man, his description of roleplaying has the Event be rolling the die.  In other words, the action of the player. He's not even considering experiencing the character.  Players roll dice to determine narrative.  That's more than quibbling about jargon, that's a fundamentally different thought process than roleplaying as some of us here know it.

THIS is pretty important. The way I first played D&D, the abstraction was entirely the Judge's business, "behind the scene" like the physics of the real world. All I did was specify what I was doing from my character's POV.

RosenMcStern raised the same issue more explicitly with the suggestion that player rules knowledge should be the same in an RPG as in Checkers or Old Maid.

Quote from: CRKrueger;883606Eh, post 18, I responded this way:

• Interesting setting - The characters have lots to do, lots to choose from.
• Interesting NPCs - Whatever they decide to do, there are people who they can interact with that seem actual personalities, not stereotypes or cliches.
• Interesting Enemies - Gangsters, cultists, corporations, nobles, people who have their own agendas, own resources and probably will conflict with the PCs at some point.
• Pull no punches - They play their PCs, you play the world. Play it straight and play it hard.

Post 100 and something, Asen responded this way:

• Create interesting NPCs and require the players to do the same.
• Put them in interesting situations with either no easy or no obvious answers, or both.
• Play out what the characters would do and adjudicate impassively.

Well, I'd missed your post when I first posted. Sorry:).

QuoteYou know we see differently on a great many things, but here it looks like we're pretty much the same.  However, there's a clue that shows you in reality it's more likely we got to nearly the same place from different ends of the horseshoe.

Well, I began with simulating someone's interesting life. Did you start from a game, or what;)?
Now, the fact that Ron Edwards is roughly at the same point, is what might surprise you. But it's true, according to Sorcerer's Annotated Edition:D.

Quote from: CRKrueger;883591Actually it's quite deniable, because that's not what happens.

Roleplaying through IC immersion doesn't create an account of events, it creates events the same way people in 1066 created events by living their lives.

I didn't say "roleplaying creates an account". I said, explicitly, it "ends up with" an account of events.
Whether you have someone who roleplays immersively, or roleplays in a story fashion, you still have an account of events in the end. As you said yourself, all accounts can be used to create an account of events. So you end up with an account, whether directly or indirectly.
And that's why I used that specific turn of phrase.

QuoteAfter a Presidential Debate each camp creates a different account of those same events as they construct their narrative of what they want people to think happened.  Those accounts frequently have very little to do with what actually occurred.

And three people that played in the same session can have different ideas of what happened. So?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;883595I don't think this is necessarily the case. A narrative can emerge form events, but it doesn't have to.

That's an interesting question. Is it a narrative if nobody tells it?
And my idea is that it is. Everyone's life has a potential narrative, even if it's never told.

QuoteAnd a narrative, to me, implies an attempt to imbue some kind of meaning and shape to the tale, rather than just a recording of events that occurred.

It doesn't imply that to me, though. So I didn't imply that in what I said.

QuoteI would distinguish between a narrative and a chronicle if pressed to explain the difference. When I write my campaign log after a session, I don't think of that as a narrative (historical, literally or otherwise), I think of it more as a chronicle (and something I am doing consciously after the fact, to record the events of the game).

Yes. And I've said it in this thread that roleplaying creates an account of events comparable to non-fiction, like a biography, or a chronicle.

QuoteWhat bothers me is being told that is what I am doing, or being forced to use a metaphor that just doesn't resonate with me.

Except that I'm not telling you that;).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;883613No one is saying they are real. They are saying the experiences are immediate and not narrative in their view.

'Immediate' I would say in the sense that the interface between desire and action falls out of attention.

In real life, whether I use a mechanical device or spoken words to shift a rudder 15 degrees or get engines half ahead, I'm not telling a story (and neither is whatever or whoever responds to the command and perhaps says "Aye!"); I'm just performing an action.

When I'm playing a video game and push a button to have my character lunge with a sword, I'm not telling a telling a story, just performing an action. Whether the game designer is telling a story is a matter of (higher level) game structure.

Note as well that in neither of these cases do I need to know the inner rules of the "black box" that translates my desire into action. All I need to know is the interface for communicating the action I wish to perform, and once I am familiar with that it can be almost as intuitive as the interface with my own body's muscles.

Quote from: AsenRG;883686I didn't say "roleplaying creates an account". I said, explicitly, it "ends up with" an account of events.
Whether you have someone who roleplays immersively, or roleplays in a story fashion, you still have an account of events in the end. As you said yourself, all accounts can be used to create an account of events. So you end up with an account, whether directly or indirectly.
And that's why I used that specific turn of phrase.

Yeah, events *can* be used to create an account of events.  Steel can be used to make a Fork or a Machine Gun, that does not mean Steel is a Fork, Machinegun or any other form of Tool.  Steel is a material used to make tools.

When roleplaying, you very specifically and objectively DO NOT end up with an account any more then Stephen King can end up with a book without actually writing one.  It must be created.  An accounting of events is a telling of events.  If you do not intend to create an accounting of events while playing and work towards that story creation, you most certainly DO NOT create an accounting of events.  

Roleplaying creates events.  A series of events, collection of events, group of events, list of events, pick your word that means "a bunch of" and you have it.  Without intent to do more, that's ALL you have. Period.

Quote from: AsenRG;883686That's an interesting question. Is it a narrative if nobody tells it?And my idea is that it is. Everyone's life has a potential narrative, even if it's never told.

Nope.  There's millions of people who lived badass lives we'll never hear about because no one ever created a narrative about them.

A potential narrative is like saying "Every time I fly into New York, there's a potential I just might sleep with Olivia Wilde while I'm here."  Once you decide to tell the story of that crazy night that never happened, or maybe it did, then you create the narrative.

There is no Potential Narrative, it's not Potential Energy.

Quote from: AsenRG;883686Is it a narrative if nobody tells it?
And my idea is that it is. Everyone's life has a potential narrative, even if it's never told.

My idea is a potential narrative is not a narrative in the same way that a potential bestseller that is never written down or published is not a best seller.

Quote from: AsenRG;883686Yes. And I've said it in this thread that roleplaying creates an account of events comparable to non-fiction, like a biography, or a chronicle.

You seem to be using "creates" in a non-standard way. Why are you doing that?

Certainly everyone has a past. Living your life creates a sequence of events that can be (but are not always) contemplated in hind sight or written down. But having a past doesn't automatically create a biography. Creating a biography is a separate act.

Similarly playing an RPG creates a sequence of events that can be (but are not always) contemplated in hind sight or written down. If you write it down or tell it to someone it's a narrative. If you contemplate it, but don't tell it or write it down, it's arguably still a narrative (at least I think it is). But if you never write it, tell it, or contemplate it after the fact there is no narrative.

Of course all of this is an ontological side issue to the question of what it is that Manzanaro actually wants more of in his RPG sessions. I'm still waiting for a clarification of what it is he does want.

Quote from: Bren;883705You seem to be using "creates" in a non-standard way. Why are you doing that?

The same reason it's always done, to blur any distinction or difference between a method of roleplay that concerns only roleplaying and a game system that includes no mechanics to do something else, and a method of roleplay that actively creates story at the same time and includes mechanics to add that to the experience.

Because while talking on storygames.com where such mechanics are debated and discussed and referenced explicitly as being a reason to specifically play that game, in other venues, all of a sudden those mechanics, playstyles and agendas become some nebulous, undefinable thing that probably doesn't even exist.

I think the matter of playing a game in which we speak or write of events in a game-world is simply not such a profound novelty to those of us acquainted with the simulation hobby from which RPGs spun off.

Really, I have NEVER encountered somebody who got all exercised about the "narrative" in an Avalon Hill board game, a miniatures game, etc. Making a move is just firing a gun, selling a stock, bunting a ball, inspecting the scene of the crime, or whatever. The event itself is what's important, regardless of mode of enacting it.

Quote from: Phillip;883710Really, I have NEVER encountered somebody who got all exercised about the "narrative" in an Avalon Hill board game, a miniatures game, etc. Making a move is just firing a gun, selling a stock, bunting a ball, inspecting the scene of the crime, or whatever. The event itself is what's important, regardless of mode of enacting it.

That's because you just didn't realize you were playing Squad Leader wrong.

Quote from: Bren;883711That's because you just didn't realize you were playing Squad Leader wrong.

Yeah, John Hill should have told us all about "scene framing" and "bangs" and such, because, you know, leading men in the Stalingrad Tractor Factory knowing that more will die if you screw up isn't dramatic without a lot of academic stage managing.

Quote from: Phillip;883712Yeah, John Hill should have told us all about "scene framing" and "bangs" and such, because, you know, leading men in the Stalingrad Tractor Factory knowing that more will die if you screw up isn't dramatic at all.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those potential narratives will be lost in time, like tears...in...rain.  Time to play Trollbabe.

Quote from: CRKrueger;883708The same reason it's always done, to blur any distinction or difference between a method of roleplay that concerns only roleplaying and a game system that includes no mechanics to do something else, and a method of roleplay that actively creates story at the same time and includes mechanics to add that to the experience.

Because while talking on storygames.com where such mechanics are debated and discussed and referenced explicitly as being a reason to specifically play that game, in other venues, all of a sudden those mechanics, playstyles and agendas become some nebulous, undefinable thing that probably doesn't even exist.

Where is anyone talking about using narrative mechanics? Is this statement from you in the same vein as where you claim that I have not agreed with anything that anyone has said? Or that people are telling you you are playing wrong?

I genuinely am puzzled as to whether you are consciously pulling bullshit out of your ass, or you actually believe that anyone in this thread has actually taken the positions you are arguing against.

Either way, it makes for pretty tedious discussion.

As far as some later comments made that I don't feel like multiquoting: Yes, I would say that Monopoly and Squad Leader generate a narrative in the course of play. The symbols used in playing Monopoly and Squad Leader map to things that means a narrative of events emerges from play. Playing Monopoly we experience a sort of weird and incoherent narrative of competing real estate tycoon wannabes. Squad Leader play generates an account of a particular squad of soldiers that we experience in play.

But that being said? You are totally free to ignore that narrative. You can think of Monopoly money as points. You can think of Squad Leader as a total abstraction like poker or tic tac toe that carries no symbolic representation of events. And even if you DO experience these games as a participatory accounting of events, you don't have to play the game with that in mind. I am not saying you are wrong if you play a game with no regard for the emergent narrative.

Is there just some kind of persecution complex at work here?

Okay. I am going to try to give a better sense of terminology I am using here just so I can refer people to it if they don't get what I am talking about. To do this I am going to employ a hypothetical scenario because I can't think of a better way to do it.

One day 4 friends decide they are going to try an experimental activity in which they work together to create a shared imaginary space (could really use a better name for this, but closest I can find is 'paracosm') and establish rules for determining what exists within that paracosm  (cuz screw it) and what happens within it.

1.Pure Narrative Approach

Adam, the first friend, says, "It's simple. Whatever any of us say exists within the paracosm must be accepted by the rest of us, and whatever we say happens must be accepted as happening." I think it is fair to say that Adam has proposed a narrative rule; whatever anyone narrates is accepted into the paracosm. He has also proposed that all players have equal and unlimited narrative authority.

But what the 4 friends find is that this ends up being not even really a game, and that without further rules no one can even keep track of the state of the paracosm and it is just an unsatisfying activity.

2. The Narrative Game (or Storygame) approach

So Bill says, "Hey, why don't we make this into a game?" And Bill proposes a metagame by which it is determined who has narrative authority at any particular point and what is acceptable in terms of narration. Perhaps he hardwires particular rules of narrative into the game, like the players have to follow a 3 act structure, or characters can't dies unless everyone agrees. Bill has independently created what is often called a "story game" where there are hard and fast rules related to narrative authority and other narrative concepts.

3. The Simulationist Approach (in Theory)

But after a few days of this, Chuck says, "Look, I am not a huge fan of everything in the paracosm following narrative related rules, and I am going to propose an entirely new tenet of rules." And what Charles suggests is that they come up for a system of defining elements within the gameworld and creating rules for how these things interact. They will determine how strong a character is, for instance, and instead of just being able to say things like, "My character lifts the boulder," they will refer to the rules of simulation to determine whether it is possible.

This is an approach which aspires to the way outcomes are determined within reality itself. Things don't happen because someone just narrates that they happen, and outcomes are not determined based on what the players want to see happen.

Furthermore, Chuck says that all of the players but one should entirely abandon narrative authority except for authority over ONE particular character. They can say what that character thinks, says, and attempts to do, but they will have no power beyond that.

Chuck is very excited by this approach because it will be a lot like BEING that chosen character, with none of the guarantees that come from 'protagonist status' or anything else associated with a paracosm governed by narrative rules and tenets.

4. The Simulationist Approach (in Practice)

So David gets elected as the GM. David knows that all of his players want him to take a pure simulationist approach to running the game. Ideally they would like the paracosm to simulate an entire world and for David to play the role of neutral arbiter in determining events and what results the declared actions of the Player Characters achieve. They want to be immersed in a world as real as can be possible.

But David realizes it is not possible to actually run the paracosm in which the game takes place under purely simulationist tenets.

First of all, it is impossible to simulate an entire world or even a village. Yes he can draw maps of towns and wilderness and dungeons and etc. He can define every inhabitant of these towns as precisely as the rules of simulation allow.

But he is still authoring things. David is not a computer.  There is no process for simulating the events of the entire world. He must directly author things into the simulation just as he did when the paracosm functioned purely under narrative rules. He must determine how NPCs act. What is happening out of the PCs perception and so forth. He must narrate to the PCs the things that they perceive. He must make decisions about things to skip over and things to focus on.

Secondly, though he has determined to abide by the rules of simulation in every particular (to the extent that this is possible) it is still up to him to present those results to the players in narrative form: e.g. he is going to present them with an account of events based upon their actions, the outcomes determined by the rules of simulation, and the things that he has directly authored into the gameworld as the GM.

So this is where I arrive at my OP.

David (or Manzanaro as the case may be) is considering these issues of presentation, and here are some questions he thought would be interesting to discuss:

What are some narrative techniques that can be effective within the context of a game that truly is arbitrated by rules of simulation to the highest degree possible? Can a sense of drama, mystery, emotional investment, or any other desired narrative quality be heightened through effective techniques while still remaining entirely a simulation?

Is pacing something that should be considered in GMing a game of simulation? Or is that somehow tampering with the sim?

What are some good ways of communicating a sense of character in NPCs?

Is it possible to achieve narrative effects like consistent tone and atmosphere? if so what are some good ways to aim for this?

Since rules of simulation are inherently unconcerned with narrative considerations, can we salvage things that seem to result in a very unsatisfying narrative into something that the players feel does result in something satisfactory?

Let me give an example of that last bit:

a. If Star Wars had been governed by sim rules rather than narrative rules, you know when Han Solo steers into an asteroid field and C3P0 tells him they have a 99% chance of being killed? Well... The Millenium Falcon very likely would have been hit by an asteroid killing all the PCs on board. Is there a way to make this satisfying as a narrative?

So, that is about as good a summary as I can provide of my perspective and what the kind of things I thought could be interesting to discuss. For the record, I am not looking for a particular thing that is missing from my games (sorry Bren) but thought it would be genuinely interesting to see people's individual takes and techniques relating to some of these issues. And yes, "I don't give a fuck about the emerging narrative or use of narrative techniques" is a perfectly legitimate response. But what do you expect me to say to that? It's like coming into a thread about how to be a good pastry chef and saying, "I don't give a fuck about being a good pastry chef and I resent your implication that I am cooking wrong."