I had a bit of an epiphany today while pondering narrative design in various types of game. Well, “epiphany” is probably overstating it. Angels didn’t sing or anything. But I did realize something:
In video games, story exists to supplement the game mechanics. Its purpose is to give the gameplay context and increase the player’s engagement with the game.
The same could be said about board games. As anyone who plays Eurogames can tell you, story is often a thin layer of varnish sprayed over the clever and interesting mechanics that are the point of the game.
In tabletop RPGs, however, the roles of story and game mechanics are reversed. The game mechanics are there to support the story.
As players of the game, what story are you trying to tell? What are the conflicts in that story? What are the obstacles? What are the protagonists like? How about the antagonists?
For (an obvious) example, if your story is about fantasy heroes who kick down the dungeon’s door, kill the monster inside, and take its stuff, then you need rules for doors, kicking, killing monsters, and all the stuff you can get.
But even within this story, there can be subtle nuances. Do your heroes start out as monster-killing machines who might get scratched in battle, but it’s nothing that can’t be buffed out with a 15-minute rest? That’s one set of rules. Do they start out as little more than peasants with sharp sticks and nothing to lose? That’s another set of rules.
This is why not every set of RPG rules is perfect for every game. While rules don’t technically tell you what kinds of stories you can and can’t tell, if the rules and story don’t match, the rules restrict what kinds of stories you can tell well. For example, you could technically run a game of courtly romance and intrigue with rules that focused on door-kicking and monster-killing, but you’d have to wing it a lot more than you would with a game that actually had rules for courtly romance and intrigue.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, as I start noodling around again with some original RPG design ideas.
The question at the heart of the RPG, even deeper than “What do the players DO?” is “What kinds of stories do you want to tell?”
First you answer that. Then you design mechanics to support your answer.
