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Game mechanics always imply a narrative, whether they're board games or ttrpgs or video games. Even something as simple as chess has the implied narrative (or ludonarrative, if you're feeling fancy) of the white army fighting the black army. The post that started this thread is about ways of making the expected narrative explicit. So, for example, your game of D&D will always have a plot. It might just be "we kill the dragon and take their stuff," but it's still a plot. When we talk about narrative tools, we mean ways for the game designer to make explicit their expectations for the game's implied plot, what Sandy Pug Games called the "platonic session".  Making these expectations explicit helps players (including the GM) get the most out of the game experience. So when someone who's completely unfamiliar with fantasy tropes decides they want to run D&D, laying out the platonic session for them would help them get the most enjoyment possible out of their own session. It isn't that drama and narrative are things we want more of in our games, it's that they're already there, and that not understanding them often makes play uncomfortable. If you had no picture in your head of a platonic session of Pathfinder, the story that "evolves through play" might be one of pastoral life and farming simulation. This would likely be confusing and not very fun because of the gulf between your game and the game that Paizo designed. Lots of things in the Pathfinder rulebook imply that this is not what your game's narrative should be, but the point of the post is that, because there are members of your audience who have never engaged with your type of story before, your game can only benefit from making these expectations explicit.


tl;dr Your characters already have drama and your game already has narrative construction: now let's talk about how to show your players how to match this drama and narrative to the game you've given them.

Deleted 5 years ago