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So I’m mostly an old style D&D player at heart. But my best friend, business partner, frequent GM, and evil brother thinks he likes “narrative gaming”. I don’t think it’s correct to call what he does “narrative GMing”. Or, maybe this term “narrative” means different things to different people.

To me, a defining feature of narrative gaming is that players have the ability to manipulate emergent story from outside of the remit of their characters. This is an element in most RPGs to some extent; narrative game give this more importance.

There are other elements that some would say go along with “narrative”. “Fiction first” dictates that rules don’t define fiction. That’s not in itself narrative at all, but it does, in my opinion, sometimes remove too much of the “game” aspects of RPGs for my taste. “Player content control” is another aspect; the ability of players to shape the story and settings as they are playing. That can lead to some really lively world-building. It also could possibly negate the ability of a GM to bring a “plot-point” adventure to the table.

I have described the Lore System in other posts. Here I’d like to point to the ability of the system to accommodate Narrative Play. To do so, the players (and GM) would simply agree to be able to create and write new Lore Sheets during the play session, and record this on their GM’s Remit Worksheet (so the the rules are listed for the Table).

Normally, Lore Sheets can only be created during Downtime. This way, Lore Sheets can be used to create backgrounds and connection with the game world, but they are not used to spontaneously solve a newly discovered problem. It’s a resource which is already part of the world and player histories at the beginning of the play session. This allows for a traditional – style game wherein players can call upon social and knowledge resources much like Investigator Skills in the Gumshoe system.

With Narrative Play turned on, Lore Points (the XP of Rational Magic) become an in-game spendable resources used to spontaneously create retroactive story and settings elements. For example, when a player comes to a neighborhood while they are pursuing an infamous thief, the players can spend available Lore Points to create Lore Sheets which detail the player’s connection with the neighborhood (including contacts, fences, allies… anything).

This is how Lore Sheets worked in the game which the mechanic came from; Legends of the Wulin by EOS Press (and Weapons of the Gods before that). That game used Lore Points extensively as an in-game resource. However, Legends of the Wulin was not a “plot-point” oriented game. LotW campaign directions comes from the players who create Lore Sheets at any time. Those Lore Sheets dictate where the emergent story should be leading.

Rational Magic is not meant to be a “Narrative Game”, but it’s primary mechanics evolved from a narrative game. The default assumption is that the GM (or a content creator, such as me or a third party) has provided a direction which the players may choose to follow. By turning the Narrative Play options on, Rational Magic can be re-purposed for different styles of play.