Games using narrative components as the framework for play?

#21

You did not misinterpret, that sounds super-interesting.

#22

My starting point was, as someone running a fairly long Dungeon World podcast, the feeling that there might be room for a fantasy PbtA game that leaned more towards AW and lost some of the sillier D&D trappings. Unfortunately my brain doesn’t really have a stop button, so as soon as I started thinking more about a game that would encourage the kind of storytelling I enjoy being part of I end up having gone miles from any of my starting points and, conveniently, discovering a lot of super-interesting games on this thread.

I am definitely taking some ideas from Burning Wheel which I have read but not yet played ( largely because of the long-running podcast and the ridiculous amount of editing time that involves ) and there’s some really fun stuff in the Dramasystem but having read a little more of the terminology I now know that I’m a more interested in procedural storytelling - effectively PvE rather than PvP as the focus of the narrative. I am definitely interested in something geared to epic adventures and grand campaigns because if you’re going to make things hard for yourself you should do it to an advanced level.

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#23

Not to be That Guy Who Wants You To Look At His Game, but I am working on a hopeful-fantasy PbtA game. It’s definitely free of D&D trappings, but it probably doesn’t hew real close to AW either, so it’s probably not what you’re looking for.

It’s also in the “I’m pretty sure this is usable, but it needs tons of improvement” stage, so who knows where it’ll end up if it does end up.

#24

What kind of atmophere/style are you aiming to hit with it?

#25

It’s inspired by the more optimistic sorts of JRPGs, so if speeches about the power of friendship aren’t your thing, it may not be appropriate.

#26

That sounds like fun, but also on a slightly different axis to what I’m aiming for, which is epic modern fantasy in a Malazan/Five Gods/Cosmere/Divine Cities kind of space. Not exactly new ground for tabletop but there’s always that niggling thought that one could maybe do it a little better…

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#27

Misspent Youth is a youthful cyberpunk game that follows a narrative arc and builds the tension levels of the arc into the resolution system.

Annalise is a slowly creeping horror game that uses a super-clever callback mechanism to make everyday things creepy, and it has rules that change as the story arc reaches different points.

carry. a game about war. is a Vietnam drama game that frames combat scenes differently than personal (“squad”) scenes. It builds in character-changes through a dice pool replenishment mechanic and uses NPC soldiers as a sort of diminishing pool that hearkens the start of the End Game and Epilogue.

Nathan Paoletta wrote both Annalise and carry and you could do worse than to play and study his games to see how he attacks narrative structure in his games.

You already mentioned Fiasco, which focuses the narrative arc through the Tilt and the Epilogue.

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#28

These are good suggestions, thank you - I currently have approximately 8000 pages of Chuubo ahead of me, but I’ll be referring back here when I’m done with it.

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#29

As we say in China – 加油！It’s worth it. If you wanna chat about it more, feel free to ping me. RPG.net also has some good conversation about the game (I believe the game designer, Dr. Moran, posts there). For me, a flip switched at some point and everything clicked. It really is worth it. It’s a beautiful game design, and I really really want a sort of…I want a game like Chuubo’s written by someone other than Dr. Moran. She is a brilliant game designer, but I would love for this to become a genre, and not just “weird games written by one person.”

You can read the core rules, but things really clicked for me after reading the Techno Players Guide, and then the play examples (I think it’s on DriveThruRpg as “going home” or something like that). The Techno Player’s guide, oddly enough, at the beginning explains the rules very, very concisely…one wonders why the PHB didn’t do that…the PHB can be very meandering, interspersing rules with lore with personal philosophy. The Techno Player’s Guide presents everything much more tersely. And of course, the actual plays let you see how things shake out, and they’re pretty interesting in their own right.

It’s a really special system. I really really want more games that approach narrative in that way. Love it or hate it, please share what you think here!

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#30

Good luck! I read it and left with the feeling that the game was super simple and I still don’t know what like 7000 of the pages were for. x.x

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#31

A small update on where I’ve got to:

Characters have:

  • A background ( I want players to know where their character comes from, gives you a simple origin story and a single move from it )
  • A complication ( an enemy, a rival, a forbidden love, a curse, an obsession )
  • A set of basic stats ( thinking of Heart, Mind, Strength, Speed and Will ) in a +2 to -1 range.
  • Some kind of stress or harm track, not got around to thinking about this yet…
  • An Arc, which provides:
  • A positive and negative pole, summarised as “Amanda is [positive] but [negative]”. ( I think this is a borrow from Hillfolk )

The Arc is effectively a cross between a playbook and a quest with defined stages demarcated by landmark events, which can be triggered after a certain amount of XP has been earned. At each stage you get to pick a relevant move and you have a new set of XP triggers, one based on your positive pole one on your negative pole.

Play takes place in clearly demarcated scenes, with a set-up phase during which players declare their aims, followed by the scene playing out IC. At the start of the scene each player taking part rolls “Open the scene” - on a hit they will gain XP from their positive pole trigger in this scene, on a miss their negative pole trigger, on an intermediate success they must hit both triggers to gain XP.

So an example arc I have vaguely sketched out is “The Chancer”, a charm-based fast-talking opportunist type of character. Their poles choices might be:

Poles

Positive:

  • Friendly
  • Sociable
  • Inventive
  • Smart
  • Charming

Negative

  • Untrustworthy
  • Dishonest
  • Corrupt
  • Devious
  • Manipulative
  • Amoral

The arc might look like this:

The Chancer

Your arc begins when you do something that reveals your negative pole to the audience ( if not the other characters ).

During this phase:
When your positive pole solves a problem for the group, mark XP at the end of the scene.
When your negative pole causes a problem for the group, mark XP at the end of the scene.

When you have 5 XP and you come through for the group in a way that goes beyond what anyone expected you enter the rising phase in your arc, reset XP.

During this phase:
When your negative pole solves a problem for the group, mark XP at the end of the scene
When your positive pole causes a problem for the group, mark XP at the end of the scene

When you have 10 XP and you betray a friend or ally with disastrous consequences for them, to your own personal benefit, you enter the falling phase in your arc, reset XP.

During this phase:
When either pole solves a problem for the group, mark XP at the end of the scene

When you have 10 XP, the group needs you and you come through for them in spite of the risk of doing so and the advantage of abandoning them, you enter the close of your arc, you are free to choose where you go next.

or

When you have 10 XP, the group is counting on you and you let them down either for personal gain or out of cowardice, you are no longer the Chancer, you have become someone else.

Obviously this is a vague first-shot, the numbers are all wrong because I literally just this moment realised the relationship between pole, scene-opening roll and XP-triggers, but I think there is something interesting here.

I can see people worrying about the arc being something of a railroad, and that’s not inaccurate, but having a wide selection of arcs and having the rails sufficiently loosely prescribed that they describe opportunities that this type of character is likely to be looking for anyway means that even as a very agency-oriented player and GM I feel like I could have a lot of fun with this format of play.

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