Playing Stories Not Worlds
In TTRPGs we talk a lot about the fictional world and a lot of words have, quite rightly, gone into helping players and referees make the worlds they create feel consistent and grounded. There’s another angle that I want to consider in this discussion that contrasts in-character focussed and narrative focussed decision making. To start off with I want to explain a little about how I was to treat narrative in TTRPGs to frame this discussion. In this case I’m referring to narrative as the output of play, that is the story which is created collaboratively by the group as a whole. These stories will be made up of plot points which are largely derived from the points at which the players act in the world or presented by the GM. I’m not concerning myself with how those plot points are created at the moment but I’ll come back to it in another post.
The primary point that I want to make is that there is a subtle, but meaningful, distinction between obeying the rules of a fictional world and obeying the rules of a narrative. The former concerns itself with things like the availability of resources, the mechanics of magic, and the likelihood of harm. Obeying the rules of a fictional world creates a consistency which enables a verisimilitude and helps to facilitate a player’s immersion. The latter concerns itself with the shape of the narrative, what actions communicate to a critical audience, and the dramatic weight of a moment. It is my view that there is not tension inherent in this distinction. As a game progresses players will find themselves making decisions based on either one of these without contradiction. Furthermore there isn’t necessarily a need for players to cross The Line1 into an authorship position in order to make decisions in this mode. Rather it is primarily a consideration for the intention of actions and their interpretation by the GM or the table depending on the group.
When a player makes an action in a game through their character they are signalling their intention to the group. In order to make sure that their intended outcome is achieved it is useful for that to be telegraphed along with the action. This helps the facilitator more fully understand the action so that they can better articulate risks and outcomes2. A non-exhaustive but indicative list of intent categories may include: imposing a character's will on the world, imposing a players will on the narrative, or enabling the continuation of the game at hand. None of these have a preference for worlds or narratives necessarily but rather that preference is expressed by the player in their intention and it is likely to vary throughout play. To give an example, towards the end of a play session a character is in a position where they are running low on torches but are faced with a door to a pitch black room. In one case the player may make the decision to turn back because they want to resupply and come back better equipped to reduce the risk to their character. In a second the may decide to turn back because they want to set up a scene later where their character overcomes their fear. In a third case the player may decide not to investigate because they have an early start and want to save the reveal for next week. All of these result in the same character response to the situation but communicate different intentions to the group.
I have a lot of questions at the moment about how this lens of critical storytelling can be supported in collaborative TTRPG play. In a sense this is a continuation of a post about connections from last year3. It's my view that different games inspire and support different stories and different modes of storytelling. As a player my personal interest is in critical storytelling, and also highlighting the stories which different games or adventures promote in their design and world building. I'm also interested in being surprised myself rather than authoring a narrative for players, even if they aren't actively authoring content I want their decisions to feed into the story. For that reason I have a particular interest right now in how tools and advice for GMless and solo games can be applied to more traditional play. My thinking at the moment is focussed on how to support this sort of critical authorship of story across game systems by reframing existing advice with this narrative lens. I'm interested in creating some practical tools and procedures to support my own play in this mode but I have more to learn and more to read. The identification of this subtle reframing is hopefully only the first step.
For more details see Gallowglass by Tam H where Tam goes into some details about assumptions in play.↩
This is a continuation in narrative terms of the wonderful post Action-Intent Duality by Chris McDowall↩
I wrote about this here and the intersection of knowledge management and GMing is still a fascinating topic to me.↩