Getting into the Mindset for Narrative Games

Playing narrative games can feel strange to people coming from more traditional TTRPGs like D&D or Pathfinder. In these “crunchier” games, players are often encouraged to maximize their character’s abilities, make sound tactical choices, and rely on a broad set of mechanics that model the world around them.

Narrative games turn many of these assumptions around. Players are sometimes surprised to find themselves encouraged to make intentionally bad choices, embrace failure, step outside their character’s point of view, or openly “metagame” by discussing the story with the rest of the table.

To enjoy narrative games, it helps to understand why these things are encouraged and to approach the table with a mindset suited to that style of play. What follows is a loose collection of ideas that helped me make that shift and eventually fall in love with narrative games.

Think Like a Writer’s Room

• A useful way to approach a narrative RPG is to imagine that everyone at the table is part of a writer’s room. You are still responsible for an individual character, but your priority shifts from simply advancing that character’s personal journey to helping make the whole story interesting. Ideally, by the end of a campaign everyone at the table should be excited to say, “This could totally work as a movie.”

• In a narrative game, you are always wearing two hats: the character and the writer. Your character has fears, goals, instincts, and beliefs that inform their choices. At the same time, the writer in you keeps an eye on the larger story and looks for choices that make it more interesting.

• When several writers collaborate, they need a shared understanding of the kind of story they are trying to tell. Narrative games benefit from the same thing. Before any dice are rolled, everyone should have a good sense of the genre, tone, style, and important themes. If you are trying to tell a suspenseful grimdark story, your choices should generally support that tone rather than constantly dragging it toward slapstick comedy or dungeon-crawling.

• The story belongs to everyone. Your character’s personal arc matters, but they are part of an ensemble cast rather than the sole protagonist. Share the spotlight, set up other characters for good moments, and be genuinely interested in what happens to them.

• This is also why “metagaming” is often perfectly acceptable. Talk about ideas. Suggest complications. Ask another player whether they would be interested in a particular scene or development. The player controlling a character should still have the final say over that character, but everyone can contribute ideas.

• Something that is often used a criticism of narrative games, is that they do not encourage constant character immersion. It is normal to move back and forth between inhabiting your character and stepping outside them to talk about the story. To many players, this may be counter to the purpose of playing a TTRPG. But those who are patient will often find that immersion can arise naturally even with such interruptions, as long as the fiction continues to be compelling and offers a coherent world that is worth being immersed in.

• For this reason, as a writer you should be very protective of the coherence of your story. Don’t be afraid to call out bad ideas that would diminish the quality and self-consistency of the narrative. When something simply does not fit the fiction, either as a result of a ruling or from a proposed action, let your opinion be known. Of course, do it in a kind, friendly, and polite way, and make sure to balance it out by being a willing improviser (more about this later) and collaborator. Most importantly, be open to such criticism yourself!

  • It can help to have a silly word or phrase that anyone can use to flag something that feels narratively off. I personally like shouting “Bogus!”, as suggested in Fate TTRPG.

• Finally, think in scenes. Frame the game in cinematic terms. Enter scenes late, leave them early, skip routine logistics, montage the unimportant parts, and spend your time where interesting decisions are being made.

Create Drama Through Your Character

• There is an important difference between what your character wants and what you want as a player. Your character may desperately want safety, success, respect, or an easy solution. You, as the player, should be interested in putting them in situations where getting those things becomes difficult.

• Do not protect your character from the story. Make imperfect choices. Follow emotions. Take risks. Let flaws matter. Get into trouble. If two choices are equally reasonable, consider choosing the one that reveals something interesting about the character.

• Failure is valuable for the same reason. A failed roll is not a punishment for playing badly. It is often the moment when the story becomes more interesting. Complications create momentum, and they make later victories feel earned.

Improvise and Give Others Something to Work With

• Improvisation is a major part of narrative play. Contrary to popular belief, improv is not mainly about lightning-fast reactions or being clever on the spot. It is about listening, accepting what other people give you, and building on it. A few basic improv principles go a long way:

  • Accept and build. Treat other players’ ideas as material to work with. “Yes, and…” is the classic principle, but “Yes, but…” can be just as useful when you want to introduce tension or complication.
  • Make offers. Give the table something to grab onto: a detail, relationship, fear, strange habit, unfinished problem, or half-formed idea.
  • Avoid blocking. Constantly shutting down ideas makes collaborative play stall. If something does not fit, redirect it when possible rather than simply rejecting it.
  • Make your partners look good. Set up other characters for interesting moments and build on what they contribute.
  • Stay flexible. Do not become too attached to your first idea. Some of the best moments come from several people’s ideas combining into something nobody expected.

• Try to be descriptive when narrating your actions. Narrative games especially suffer from “button-pushing” play, where players simply announce the name of an ability or mechanic. Do not stop at what your character does. Describe how they do it. The way someone threatens a suspect, opens a mysterious door, comforts a friend, or runs from danger can tell us far more about them than the action itself.

Play to Find Out

• This may be the most important principle, and it applies well beyond narrative games: let the story take you somewhere unexpected.

• The real magic happens when the story breaks free from its writers and becomes a creature of its own. You can be a shepherd that guides the story towards the “interesting”, but narrative games are usually designed to let the story to go in unexpected places that surprise and delight everyone. Nothing feels better in this game then having an expectation where things will go and then learning that the game took it in a completely different way.

• Nobody, including the GM, needs to know how the story will end. The GM can prepare situations, characters, pressures, mysteries, and difficult questions. The players bring characters with goals, flaws, and problems. Then everyone discovers what happens when those things collide.