This is going to rpg be theory stuff, just so you know.<\/p>\n
A thing I’ve noticed lately specifically at Story Games, but also on other gaming fora, is the increased acceptance and advocation of narration authority sharing between players in a roleplaying game. It’s a nice technique, but I also find that it is being recommended and utilized in ways that might have unexpected consequences that need to be considered in depth. I’ll write a short treatise about the topic here – I don’t particularly want to piss in anybody’s cereals if they find that unrestrained sharing of narrative authority brings them happiness, but it’s not correct to call it the universal panacea of roleplaying, either – there are solid reasons for refusing to introduce this technique into every single game you might ever wish to play.<\/p>\n
The layman does well to notice that “narration” has basically nothing in particular to do with narrativism<\/strong>, an important theory term on its own right. This is often a superbly confusing matter for the majority of participants in rpg theory discussions, as they either assume narrativism where mere narrative is concerned, or assume narrative technique where only narrativism is indicated.<\/p>\n When we discuss “narration sharing”, we mean the type of roleplaying technique where first one player narrates things, then another. “Narration” here basically means adding to the fiction developed during the game with little overview, or none at all. An author basically “narrates” when he writes or tells things about a story: first this thing happens, then this other thing, and so on. Much of the communication in roleplaying is not “narration” in this sense of the term: for example, when you declare the actions of your character, this is not narration in most traditional games, as those declarations will still have to be processed through the game’s system or GM’s consideration before they will be properly considered part of the fiction. “Narration” is when there is no such constraint; you open your mouth, and what you say goes straight into the fiction because it’s been pre-vetted in some manner – you’ve been given the right to speak as to the fiction at this moment.<\/p>\n Narration is a crucial technique for many roleplaying games. One of the most spectacular games in this regard is Matt Snyder’s Dust Devils<\/a>. One of the ideas introduced in the game was that while there was relatively little narration in other parts of the play procedure (stuff is introduced into the fiction not as narration, but by consentual negotiation dominated by the GM), a single player would be randomly chosen to narrate the outcome and immediate effective consequences of all conflicts. This powerful technique of suddenly giving plot authority to a single player in resolution of a conflict has since then been duplicated in dozens of games, and with reason: a single voice with authority may ensure that the conflict outcome is resolved in a consequential and suitably dramatic manner in a way that would not happen with nearly as much impact if the details were negotiated.<\/p>\n Narration is also used in traditional games, of course. I would even say that wide GM narration rights are a cornerstone feature of traditional rpg design.\u00a0 Typically the GM would have you roll the dice and then tell you what happened as a consequence in the fiction; in this the GM is utilizing his narration rights. Some games and gamers would even extend the GM narration rights into full control over all aspects of the fiction.<\/p>\n (Although I don’t describe it, there are other places where narration rights routinely come up apart from conflict resolution. Scene framing is typically an example of narration rights as well: conditional on player veto, the GM narrates directly into fiction the set-piece from which play resumes after a scene change. The difference is mostly in which authorities are executed via pure narration as the concrete activity.)<\/p>\n “Narration sharing” is when the narration rights are distributed dynamically, such as in Dust Devils<\/em>. It’s an exciting technique, but one that I see being used in pretty futile ways now and then. Specifically, there is a certain game that is the logical outcome of fuzzy narration-sharing in game design. It’s usually called “conch-passing” in these discussions, and it goes thusly:<\/p>\n At the beginning of a session of conch-passing a player has the conch, and that signifies that he has the narration rights. Therefore he starts telling the story. Certain rules procedures tell us when the conch is given away, and to whom; at its simplest the player just continues as long as he likes and then passes the conch to his left. The player who gets the conch now has all narration rights, so he continues telling the story where the first player left off.<\/span><\/p>\n Obviously enough game designers don’t usually follow narration sharing into its logical conclusion in conch-passing; we just say that a game is “essentially conch-passing” if it undermines other, more valuable<\/em>, concerns inadvertedly by encouraging attitudes and playstyles related to conch-passing. Specifically, conch-passing lacks many features that are mandatory for different types of roleplaying games, so if your game reduces into conch-passing, you might find that the system no longer adequately supports roleplaying of the sort you wanted. There are games that are intentionally conch-passing as well: Once Upon A Time<\/a> is a well-liked conch-passing game that complicates the conch-passing by introducing player goals, allowing players to steal the conch and by requiring various stock elements to make an appearance in the story.<\/p>\n I’ll focus on one particular problem that seems to be becoming endemic in Internet discourse. This problem is when narration sharing is introduced uncritically into games that involve strong backstory authority<\/em> and character advocacy<\/em>, two very common roleplaying game elements. Let’s define these things first:<\/p>\n Both of the above techniques are immensely popular in roleplaying games. For example, Dungeons & Dragons<\/em> involves clear and strong backstory authority as a crucial part of the game: the GM not only should prepare a dungeon ahead of time for the game, but he is also allowed to amend and expand on his preparatory work during play on the premise that his task is to present the game world as fully as necessary for the players: there is no ambiguity about who gets to decide what is inside a treasure chest: unless somebody changed its contents during play, the GM refers to his notes or imagination and decides what should be in the chest. Only when player character history is involved might the GM ask a player’s opinion on a backstory issue.<\/p>\n Character advocacy is also a common ideal in D&D, although I do admit that there are readings of the game text where advocacy is not present. Still, it is common to claim that the ideal of the game is that each player invents a player character who is a full personality, and then represents this character’s choices and actions in the game for the benefit of the group. (An alternative reading might be that the player’s job is to create a mechanically powerful character that he then uses to win challenges set up by the GM. Thus this is not as entirely obvious as the above.)<\/p>\n There are also roleplaying games that do not involve the above concepts. For example, my game Zombie Cinema<\/em> doesn’t have unified backstory or a backstory authority as such: the game is explicitly No Myth<\/em>, as it presumes that the setting and characters and everything else in the game is only thinly present as story elements introduced by the players on the spot. Any backstory presented to the group is handled as an extension of other authorities the players wield, such as the right to describe a scene and thus imply things about the location’s past. To preserve story coherence and provide twists into the story the game doesn’t use a backstory, but rather evaluation of reasonability (if somebody starts spouting some wacky shit, you stop the game and talk about it) and pure imaginative inspiration (assuming your wacky shit is not too wacky, it gets into the game and thus changes the story on the spot, even casting doubt on what has gone on before).<\/p>\n Games without character advocacy can be tricky because traditionally game design has operated from the faulty assumption that all games involve an identical, overarching player role that only requires the player to “play the character”. As I mentioned above, it’s not even entirely clear what you’re supposed to be doing in D&D. My favourite example of explicitly non-advocating game design is the Turku School Manifesto<\/a>, which is pretty clear about elevating subjective experience as the primary task of the player; the player’s task is not to display his character, but to experience it.<\/p>\n When we bring the above terminology together, I can finally express my issue: I think that mixing narration sharing uncritically with backstory-heavy games and advocacy-model narrativistic games sucks ass. Examples:<\/p>\n The “Czege principle” is a proposition by Paul Czege that it’s not exciting to play a roleplaying game if the rules require one player to both introduce and resolve a conflict. It’s not a theorem but rather an observation; where and how and why it holds true is an ongoing question of some particular interest.<\/p>\nConch-passing<\/h3>\n
Backstory authority and character advocacy<\/h3>\n
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\n<\/strong><\/dt>\nThe problem<\/h3>\n
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