Today we’re going into the… gears… of tabletop rpgs
Ludonarrative is a fancy word thrown around in the video game industry for the narrative that arises from the mechanics, rather than the writing. Like how the scarcity of ammunition might directly scale with the feeling of scraping by for survival in System Shock. This could be leveraged for a horror feel or a post apocalyptic scarcity feel, but the mechanic itself directly affects the emotions felt and in game behavior. Watch this video if you’re curious for more: Ludonarrative in Darkest Dungeon
I’m also interested in emergent storytelling. It’s easy to think that tabletop games have already conquered this mountain, since you can “do anything”. But there’s a heavy reliance on GM improvisation to make this work. And since improvisation is really hard, there’s sometimes a lack of logic to it, and it can feel arbitrary. Video games in their limitations have created some great stories of triumph through clever use of the environment and the tools at your disposal.
This is all applicable to RPG design. It’s talked about a lot with a variety of terms. I wanted to look at a few games and some of the ways their systems affect tone and narrative.
Dungeons and Dragons, 5th Edition
Now I can’t possibly parse the whole hundreds of pages of mechanics, items, and rules for 5e. But I thought I’d point out a few ways it mechanically encourages behavior. Much like vanilla, it’s status as default has left it difficult to notice it’s particular flavor.
This is not a hot take: D&D encourages fighting. The most obvious way is that default rewarded behavior is combat. OSR bloggers often cite this as the best reason to return to treasure based XP. And one of the most common pieces of design wisdom is to award experience for the things you want to encourage.
There are other ways too. Since everything is nails, let us peek at our collection of hammers. Let’s stick to low level play, so I can make it to work tomorrow. Of the first level spells, 18 are direct damage spells, and 13 are combat specific utility spells, such as buffs and debuffs. 6 are tuned towards combat, but are generally useful anywhere, and 4 are healing spells, which are tied to combat but have broad use. 19 are out of combat utility spells.
That means out of sixty, 31 are for combat, 19 are not, and 10 are somewhere in the middle. Class abilities follow a similar trend. The bard is a notable exception, where over half of their abilities and spells are non-combat, and the other half is mostly in the mixed category. The barbarian and the monk on the other hand, lean about 75% towards combat at low levels.
Honestly one could write a dissertation on the play style encouraged by D&D, but I’m not going to. I mostly wanted to cover it to make a point. There are a lot of things that experienced DMs will discourage you from allowing in your games, and that can be taken for universal wisdom. But they are not bad, only bad for D&D. In a place where they mesh with other mechanics and with an intended narrative, they’re great.
Paranoia
This will mostly be about the old version, because I haven’t yet read the new — BECAUSE CHANGE IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH.
I love Paranoia and Friend Computer. It is fun while encouraging two of the most hated practices in D&D: Arbitrary player death, and unbounded player vs player conflict. Plus it’s a masterpiece of parody. It’s the Dr. Strangelove of games. I want to look at how a few mechanics play into the tone of the game, which might shed light on why these “bad” mechanics are so fun.
First off, the tone of Paranoia. Some may say it’s hard to pin down, because it actively talks about how you can play any soundtrack from yakety sax to pogrom firing squad. But the beauty of satire is that funny or tragic the central message is the same. People suffer a great deal because of extraordinarily pointless reasons, and bureaucracies are mostly run by people just as stupid as you. OF COURSE, THAT’S WHY THIS BUREAUCRACY IS RUN BY A PERFECT MACHINE. The mechanics:
Extra Lives. In the form of clones. This is simple and serves two purposes. You are literally replaceable and devoid of some amount of personhood. Also, this allows the pvp to exist without it sucking.
Rigid Hierarchy. The hierarchy is deeply baked into the system. This is a narrative conceit, but it is so deeply ingrained it must be discussed. Everyone in this world knows their “place”. The only real goal is to climb this hierarchy. If there’s XP, I don’t remember it. Just like D&D XP encourages fighting, this encourages ruthless loyalty to the system. But that is counterbalanced by…
Lies. Each player is given a secret that will kill them if found out. This immediately seeds distrust towards other players and all other people living in the world. This immediately rules out any thought of “banding together to improve society somewhat”. It makes every player deeply know the reason this society is a dystopian hellscape. But also most of these lies involve some goal that is to change the society, even if it’s for the worse. So it’s not all hopeless, unlike our next entry
Dread
Dread is the most innovative shooter I’ve ever played. Wait, shit, that’s the other fun existential dread. Dread wants to do horror. But they don’t achieve this by writing an extremely scary adventure for the game, or a bestiary full of terrible monsters. No, the dread of Dread is provided exclusively by gravity.
For the uninitiated, in Dread, whenever you attempt an action, you must pull 1-3 Jenga tiles from a tower. If the tower falls, your character dies, or is otherwise removed from the action. Now, I’m actually pretty good at Jenga, but even I’m made increasingly nervous as the tower starts to teeter. The game is simple, and not without flaws, but the mechanic alone creates horror. If the setting was a normal office job, it would still be horror. Horror comedy, but horror nonetheless.
Crafting Mechanical Narrative
I think the takeaway here is not a new one. Figure out what your game is doing, and remove the pieces that do not serve that goal. If there’s anything I have to add, it’s that even maligned mechanics have their place. In Dread, your character is guaranteed to die, and it can happen in the least narratively important place. In Polaris, you can’t die until after your hope and naivety starts to wane, and only then if your personal demons will let you go. Two opposite approaches, and possibly controversial ones, but they’re perfect in the games they’re in.
The Renaissance Woodsman 