Your analysis helps me further refine my understanding at a mechanical level. I mention in the article that neotrad especially has an internal tension in that its rules are typically simulationist but the expectation from players is often an experience more like the one offered in story games. Your distinction helps me understand why that is, and also why story games aren’t more popular despite being better aligned with the fantasy of a heroic story.
While our views are normally very aligned, my experience with narrative games has been pretty different. I play mostly narrative games these days, but I tend to gravitate toward games that are so well conducted that they’re easy for anyone to understand and have a meaningful experience besides.
Thorny Games have impressed me most in recent years, with their games based on language (Sign, Dialect, Xenolanguage). Their games bring the structure with them and don’t require any particular storytelling skills; what they ask of players is very little, and yet the games are often profoundly meaningful. The design is very tight, very refined.
My favorite game in recent years is the Sentinel Comics RPG, an extremely narrative RPG that feels like a traditional one. That game constantly pushes toward story twists while granting heaps of player agency and telling players exactly what to do with these twists. It has enough mechanics to showcase big, splashy fights that are easy to remember play-by-play, since one thing affects another, yet the rules you need can cover a sheet of paper front and back.
I totally understand what you mean regarding the simulationist roots of traditional RPGs, and I completely agree that new players can grok the way these mechanics work. However, there’s a broad swath of the population that I’d be hard pressed to teach D&D to, yet they’d understand Sign, Dialect, The Quiet Year, The Skeletons, Microscope, and games of that sort far more easily. It could be we’re talking about different kinds of narrative games—I’m not sure. But I enjoy reading your thoughts, as always!
Interesting! I've so often found "Here's a situation, what do *you* do?" framing as a go-to teaching tool, as opposed to, "Here's a situation, what *could* happen next?"
I wonder if something like Dialect, with its clear focus, helps by reframing that fundamental question in a different way. I'll need to check out Sentinel Comics, especially because I think that superheroes as a genre do better with more story-oriented approaches.
In truth, I think the narrative game example you gave would drive me crazy and that a traditional RPG, by comparison, would be far more accessible. And I think there are a lot of narrative games out there that probably work that way. I've avoided those.
The tight structure narrative games I was referring to—perhaps they occupy a different branch of the RPG tree in that they're very focused, specific experiences that tell you what to do on your turn, so there's no confusion. Games like Dialect, The Zone, Xenolanguage, The Skeletons, The Quiet Year, Alice Is Missing... they're all very well conducted narrative experiences where there's little doubt as to what to do next, and that's why I admire their design.
But perhaps to your point, I've watched GMs struggle with the 7–9 mixed success/partial success result in Powered by the Apocalypse games. Player rolls an 8 and achieves a partial success, and now the GM has to come up with what that means. Most do a shoddy job of it; they're trying to keep track of a dozen other things. They're trying to figure out what *could* happen next with a partial success, whereas under 7 and over 9 works like D&D in terms of success/failure.
Sentinel Comics fixes that, in my opinion, by presenting this instead:
1–3 Fail. (Or... succeed. With a major, character-altering twist or major ramifications.)
4–7 Succeed with a minor twist. Each character has a set of questions for when minor twists happen to them, related to the hero's origin. If you're like Spider-man and you have a secret identity, your twist question asks questions like, What clue about your identity did you leave behind? So the PLAYER decides on the twist. The GM also has a table of mechanical things that can happen instead of narrative things (so, damage, more minions, etc.)
8–11 Success
12+ Succeed beyond expectations
It _feels_ like a traditional RPG but is at its heart a very narrative RPG. I could gush about it for hours.
I think you captured the difference really well with this statement: "this game is a tool to create interesting stories, not something trying to model reality." It makes sense that the crunchy simulation gives the players a sense of agency, knowing what is and isn't allowed, but can also dampen the heroic experience.
I’ve recently argued that the OSR maximize for an intellectual experience, and story games maximize for emotion, see here: https://gestaltistrpg.substack.com/p/the-eternal-dance-of-intellect-and
Your analysis helps me further refine my understanding at a mechanical level. I mention in the article that neotrad especially has an internal tension in that its rules are typically simulationist but the expectation from players is often an experience more like the one offered in story games. Your distinction helps me understand why that is, and also why story games aren’t more popular despite being better aligned with the fantasy of a heroic story.
Great article!
While our views are normally very aligned, my experience with narrative games has been pretty different. I play mostly narrative games these days, but I tend to gravitate toward games that are so well conducted that they’re easy for anyone to understand and have a meaningful experience besides.
Thorny Games have impressed me most in recent years, with their games based on language (Sign, Dialect, Xenolanguage). Their games bring the structure with them and don’t require any particular storytelling skills; what they ask of players is very little, and yet the games are often profoundly meaningful. The design is very tight, very refined.
My favorite game in recent years is the Sentinel Comics RPG, an extremely narrative RPG that feels like a traditional one. That game constantly pushes toward story twists while granting heaps of player agency and telling players exactly what to do with these twists. It has enough mechanics to showcase big, splashy fights that are easy to remember play-by-play, since one thing affects another, yet the rules you need can cover a sheet of paper front and back.
I totally understand what you mean regarding the simulationist roots of traditional RPGs, and I completely agree that new players can grok the way these mechanics work. However, there’s a broad swath of the population that I’d be hard pressed to teach D&D to, yet they’d understand Sign, Dialect, The Quiet Year, The Skeletons, Microscope, and games of that sort far more easily. It could be we’re talking about different kinds of narrative games—I’m not sure. But I enjoy reading your thoughts, as always!
Interesting! I've so often found "Here's a situation, what do *you* do?" framing as a go-to teaching tool, as opposed to, "Here's a situation, what *could* happen next?"
I wonder if something like Dialect, with its clear focus, helps by reframing that fundamental question in a different way. I'll need to check out Sentinel Comics, especially because I think that superheroes as a genre do better with more story-oriented approaches.
In truth, I think the narrative game example you gave would drive me crazy and that a traditional RPG, by comparison, would be far more accessible. And I think there are a lot of narrative games out there that probably work that way. I've avoided those.
The tight structure narrative games I was referring to—perhaps they occupy a different branch of the RPG tree in that they're very focused, specific experiences that tell you what to do on your turn, so there's no confusion. Games like Dialect, The Zone, Xenolanguage, The Skeletons, The Quiet Year, Alice Is Missing... they're all very well conducted narrative experiences where there's little doubt as to what to do next, and that's why I admire their design.
But perhaps to your point, I've watched GMs struggle with the 7–9 mixed success/partial success result in Powered by the Apocalypse games. Player rolls an 8 and achieves a partial success, and now the GM has to come up with what that means. Most do a shoddy job of it; they're trying to keep track of a dozen other things. They're trying to figure out what *could* happen next with a partial success, whereas under 7 and over 9 works like D&D in terms of success/failure.
Sentinel Comics fixes that, in my opinion, by presenting this instead:
1–3 Fail. (Or... succeed. With a major, character-altering twist or major ramifications.)
4–7 Succeed with a minor twist. Each character has a set of questions for when minor twists happen to them, related to the hero's origin. If you're like Spider-man and you have a secret identity, your twist question asks questions like, What clue about your identity did you leave behind? So the PLAYER decides on the twist. The GM also has a table of mechanical things that can happen instead of narrative things (so, damage, more minions, etc.)
8–11 Success
12+ Succeed beyond expectations
It _feels_ like a traditional RPG but is at its heart a very narrative RPG. I could gush about it for hours.
I think you captured the difference really well with this statement: "this game is a tool to create interesting stories, not something trying to model reality." It makes sense that the crunchy simulation gives the players a sense of agency, knowing what is and isn't allowed, but can also dampen the heroic experience.