RPG Design Patterns

Provide players with an incentive to create imaginative narrative descriptions of scenes and character actions.

Not Applicable

Attendance Reward, Failure Reward, Success Reward

The Narrative Reward pattern awards players concrete game advantages for describing character actions and game scenes with novel and interesting prose. Many games encourage players to use inventive phrases and approaches to game situations, but fail to provide any real incentive for doing so. The goal for providing these rewards is to shift narration from the repetitive “I swing my sword…I swing my sword…I swing my sword” mode common to many battle-oriented style games into something more varied and engaging. “I grab a handful of flour from the bag sitting on the chopping block and throw it into my assailant’s face… I leap up onto the kitchen counter and snatch one of the large hanging copper pots. I then use it to present the thousand and one ways in which a master chef’s culinary tools can be applied. I’ll start my demonstration by applying the kettle to the maitre d’s head.”

To follow the Narrative Reward pattern, a game must

1. Detail the conditions under which a reward for entertaining narration can be earned by players.
2. Have that reward provide a clear benefit in play.

Although not required by the pattern, some games tie the magnitude of the reward directly to the quality or emotional impact of the description. So an amusing anecdote that raised a smile from the participating gamers would be rewarded as a valid contribution, but not as much as a knee-slapping, tear inducing quip that would be remembered months or years later.

You should consider the Narrative Reward pattern for your game if your goals include

1. A strong emphasis on having players continually provide fresh and colorful narration for story events.
2. A willingness to have subjective judgments concerning narrative quality influence game mechanics in ways that can have very real impacts on story events.

Of course, it would be an unusual role-playing game that actually seeks repetition in narrative description over colorful dialogue. However, conventional wisdom in game design states that all rules of a game should focus on its central point. Anything extra distracts from that core idea and should be omitted. If you feel that flavorful narration is of secondary importance in your design goals, you may want to forego any kind of narrative reward.

Similarly, if you feel that subjective judgments are inferior to objective rulings in your game’s reward system, you might want to explore a more cut-and-dried approach, such as that espoused by the Success Reward pattern.

The Narrative Reward pattern is a potent means to encourage players to express themselves in offbeat and original ways. It promotes synergism between players that can help transform what would otherwise be a dry repetitive gaming session into an enthralling story. However, the interest of many gamers in role-playing lies in tactical competitiveness, rather than narrative brilliance. And, the inherently subjective nature of the rewards provided by this pattern may not sit well with players seeking clear-cut objective rules that “realistically” simulate real-world events.

Psychological studies have shown that the longer the delay in providing a reward after observing a desired behavior, the less effective the reward. This is one reason why cigarette smoking is so addictive. The delay between taking a draw on a cigarette and the nicotine “hit” provided to the brain is a mere fraction of a second. So, the human brain closely associates smoking with pleasure even though the act of smoking is highly detrimental to the smoker.

What this tells us is that the shorter the delay between witnessing a desired behavior, such as the speaking of a witty or insightful comment, and its corresponding reward, the more potent will be the reward system. Since players must provide some verbal description of their character actions during conflicts and those are quickly followed by some form of resolution to those conflicts, it makes sense to apply the narrative reward to the conflict resolution in some fashion. Some games reward good narration in this way. That’s not to say that narrative rewards must be applied to conflict resolution. Merely that this is a convenient and effective way to obtain the desired outcome. Alternately, the reward could come in the form of adding to some resource controlled by the player.

If a single die is rolled to resolve conflicts, a bonus could be applied as a reward to give the narrating player a greater chance of success in his endeavors. If the game uses a dice pool system to resolve conflicts, the reward could take the form of adding a number of dice to that pool to similar effect.

Suppose we’re designing an American Wild West style game named “Pig’s Eye” where we want players to tell tall tales about their characters and use poker hands to resolve conflicts. In our game, at the start of each “Hand,” each player is provided with 5 poker chips to add to his pile. The “Dealer” (see the Game Master pattern) then deals out five cards to every player, including himself, representing a poker hand. Play starts by having each player “ante” one chip and describing his character’s basic action in the current conflict. The “ante” action may be interesting, but cannot break any fundamental principles of “reality.” Play then proceeds around the table with each player placing “bets” from his poker chips based on the quality of his hand in a normal poker game fashion. Each time he “ups” the bet, a player can more fully describe what his character is attempting, with the following exceptions:

1. His actions must be spoken of in the past tense, as if the player was the one acting out the character’s part.
2. His actions must be made more outlandish than any of those coming before in the same hand but is subjectively constrained by how much the player “upped” the current bet. These descriptions may ignore common sense or what most players would consider physically possible. The player must be careful concerning how outlandish his actions are, however, as the odds of “beating” the Dealer’s hand decreases if he “stretches the truth” beyond what the Dealer considers acceptable given his current bet (more on how this happens later).
3. The description leaves the conflict’s outcome unresolved.

Of course, like normal poker, players can participate in the game even if they have poor hands by bluffing. Players who do not want to bluff or risk further bets can “Fold,” meaning that they can no longer modify their character’s actions in the current “Hand.”

Every time a player gives a particularly imaginative or exciting description of his character’s actions, the dealer provides a narrative reward by dealing him one, two, or three cards based on how entertaining he feels the narration to be. These are incorporated into the player’s hand. He must then discard an equal number of cards and give them back to the dealer who places them in a discard pile. The only player who does not get this possibility is the Dealer, who deals himself new cards only when a player narrates an action that is not sufficiently supported by the bet he has placed.

Once all bets are placed, the winning hand is determined by normal poker rules. The winner has the choice of either adding the pot to his poker chip pile or “cashing in” the chips by narrating the final outcome of the scene. If he narrates, he must take into account all previously narrated character actions and his description cannot result in the deaths of any player character. If he elects to collect the pot instead, the Dealer narrates the final result under the same restrictions.

Round 1: (Jesse antes 1 chip) “I aimed my pearl handled revolver at the gunslinger’s hand.” Earns no cards from dealer for narration.

Round 2: (Jesse starts out the round by betting 2 chips) “Well, I told you I was aiming my revolver at the gunslinger’s hand, but I forgot to mention that I was doing this while leaping over the railing into the water below.” Dealer gives player 1 card for interesting narration.

Round 3: (Jesse meets the current bet and ups it by 10 chips) “The water I told you about before was actually a shot glass full of whisky. After shooting and completing three summersaults in midair, I dove in head first. This was Mad Joe’s bar, you know. Mad Joe was always known for his generosity in pouring drinks and I was counting on that fact to save my neck.” Laughing out loud, Dealer gives player 3 cards for narration but deals himself one card because he feels the three summersaults went a tad too far for upping the bet by 10 chips.

All of his stellar narration won Jesse a full house and the hand. He decides to narrate rather than collect the pot: “Despite my mid-air acrobatics, my aim was so good that my bullet actually stuck in the end of the gunslinger’s six-shooter, rendering it useless. And, Mad Joe’s famous shot glass was so full that I never touched bottom. In fact, it took me a full minute just to swim back up to the surface.”

InSpectres is a game that is completely up front about its “Ghost Busters” origins and theme. Players portray agents of an InSpectres franchise, a corporation specializing in the identification and elimination of any and all embarrassing supernatural infestations. The game incorporates a mechanic known as the “Confessional.” At any time, a player can have his character “break the fourth wall” and speak directly to the players (not the other characters). At this time, he can provide additional information about current events, foreshadow future events that the players have not yet experienced, and even add traits to other characters. If a character is given a new trait in a Confessional and the character’s player then portrays that character with that trait as described, the players are rewarded with an additional “franchise die” at the end of the current adventure. This is important, because franchise dice are the only way in which characters gain access to more resources. Individual characters do not increase in ability in any permanent way.

My Life with Master has participants portray the minions of Evil Masters. It uses opposed dice pools of d4s for conflict resolution (see the Opposed Rolls, Dice Pools, and Conflict Resolution patterns). All 4s are treated as 0s and the results of both sides are added and compared. During each scene, the game allows the Game Master to award a single player one more die that is a d4, a d6, or a d8 to add to their pool. This award is earned by narrating interesting accounts of character actions based on specific rules. The size of the die added depends on whether the detail includes Intimacy (d4), Desperation (d6), or Sincerity (d8). Since only a single die can be awarded on any given scene, a player demonstrating Desperation will win the die away from anyone already having earned a d4 for Intimacy. Intimacy involves actions such as the giving of a gift, sitting down together with another person, sharing a glass of wine or food, or physical contact, such as placing a hand on a friend’s shoulder. Desperation is demonstrated by some emotional plea, “Master, please don’t ask me to steal the cathedral’s offering plates! Surely my soul would be damned forever. God could never forgive such an act!” Sincerity involves some great personal revelation exposing the character’s deepest concerns. The game flatly states that the Master of the game is incapable of Sincerity, so the other characters can always trump the Master in this regard.

Sorcerer uses a Dice Pool mechanic during conflict resolutions. If players incorporate novel and interesting descriptions for their characters’ actions, they can be awarded any number of additional dice to the roll. This “piling on the dice” can take a situation from which characters have almost no hope of winning and transform it into an event where they have a high probability of succeeding. These Narrative Rewards are given by the Game Master according to basic guidelines:

• A dramatic or appropriate quip while announcing the task: +1 die,
• The announced action moves the plot along significantly: +2 dice,
• Obstructive, petty announced action: -2 dice.