Player Narrative Games
I recently purchased Don’t Rest Your Head. It is a wonderful little document with a game mechanic that supports the concept very well. One of the chapters in the book discusses how to run the game, and it touches on the fact that it can be run both in a traditional format (where the GM sets the tone, frames the scenes, and ultimately tells the main plot of the story,) or it can be run in a player narrative format (where some of the scene framing and storytelling is the responsibility of the players.)
I have tried in the past to run player narrative games (such as The Shadow of Yesterday,) but somehow I failed. Both myself and the players in those games were from a strong traditional background. I would try to put the narrative ball in the players’ court, I would see them floundering, and I would jump in and take control again. It is a reasonable response, I should think, even in a player narrative game. The problem with it is that we all fell back into our old gaming habits, and I was suddenly the one driving the story for the evening.
While I don’t think there is anything wrong with the traditional style of play, I want to try something different. Chocolate is a good flavor, but sometimes I like vanilla for a change–and sometimes chocolate is better with a little bit of vanilla sprinkled in. Metaphor aside, I am trying to decide how best to learn from my past mistakes. I am, essentially, trying to learn how to run a player narrative game. At the dawn of the hobby, lots of people had the same problem with D&D. So how did the progenitors of this fine past-time find their path?
I think, by and large, the way most people learn how to role-play is from gaming with experienced players. This avenue is not always available, though. It would require me digging up experienced players locally (which can be abysmally difficult for such an “indy” style of game) or to wait for a Con to come rolling around and look for events there. Another thing that drove the early conception of the game were additional publications. Modules and Dragon magazine helped foundling DMs who did not have access to other groups learn the ropes. The concept of a “module” is sort of antithetical to player narrative games, and while there is not a leading publication for this style of play, there is the internet. I intend to spend a little time researching both discussions of the play style and posts of actual play.
A final thing to consider is that the player narrative style requires players to narrate. This means that I will have to be prepared to teach this style of play to others. I have taught the traditional style of play to new gamers, and can’t imagine that teaching a different style differs too greatly. The real task here is to understand the subject matter well enough to be capable of teaching.
I will be sure to post again on my progress.
I’m not a fan of player narrative games (I’m coining the term PNGs which would be pronounced pong instead of ping, how Adobe says their format extension is pronounced). I either want to have the control over the story as I would if I were the GM or I want to have control of my character and that’s it.
Maybe I’m just being cynical but it seems to me that all PNGs would simply spiral into the abyss and end up like a Whose Line is it Anyway sketch. Granted, you could find some hardcore PNG players who would keep things tidy but those people probably aren’t the kind of person I want to RP with. …They’d be like that bastard from the All Flesh game at Origins 5 or 6 years ago who was a pompous ass but knew the GM (and I suspect he knew the adventure) so he got away with whatever he wanted.
I’m still bitter about that.
I started typing a response, and it got so long, I turned it into an article. (http://mediocretales.com/?p=134)
Also: Yeah, that guy was a jerk. As I look back, we totally should have mutinied. Although then those rural space hilljacks would have totally killed us all, because there would have only been three of us. Maybe we could have done something equally ridiculous, though, like setting the ship to self-destruct . . .
Origins, woot!