Narrative Play in OVA

[Dreamstryder]

Goal: a way for the GM to consistently share story-creation duties with the players. Please punch holes in my ideas and mayhap offer your own!

And now, to lessen the line between players and narrator...
Currently it seems OVA uses the GM-centered practice of the GM telling the players what's what, and player attempts either getting the go-ahead or a denial (a failed roll) on their action. Things can dead-end if (A) the GM runs out of things to tell the players, or if (B) the players fail and the failed roll stops the story. Never stop the story!

To address letter A, let's shift the GM-centric paradigm:
GM tells players what's what a little, then each player gets to say what's what a little. Any roll-worthy activity? If a roll succeeds, the roller gets to say what's what, but if the roller fails, the GM (our arbiter) gets to say what's what instead (something happens either way).

Example with more details:
The players all come having their character's story premise and attributes; the GM gets some ideas (they need not be complete ones) of what would be tangential to these folks and says three things that are so. 3 what's-whats; something simple, like:
1. You're in a space station.
2. You're all awaiting the same ship.
3. You hear the enemy force will arrive in days.
The players have questions; they take turns making the answers based on what their character can do and perceive (ie I'm supposed to be crew on this ship when it arrives, I see a mysterious girl with blue hair also here, I know the captain of the ship, the stationmaster tells me they have a lot of problems with space pirates, I've heard news the pirates are hindering the enemy force, etc) Nobody, not even the GM, may contradict anything previously said; they can only add onto what has been said.
Players want to do things; they do things. If the character takes some meaningful action that may affect another character or the plot, they roll for the ability to narrate it. They succeed: they narrate what happens. They lose: the GM narrates what happens. When the players are done, then it's the GM's turn again. Repeat.

Next letter B above: Failures are not dead-ends. Even if the character's roll fails, something comes of that failure. Not what they expect, perhaps, but stories can flourish in the unexpected. The GM can narrate a failure 2 ways:
1. The character could indeed fail the action their player wanted them to achieve, but stories don't end just because the main character lost their grip and were sucked into space. Some stories don't even end when the main character dies.
2. The character does achieve their task, but it's not what they expected: the winner of the tournament is selected for human sacrifice, the riches claimed come with a catch, the person to whom you confess your timid crush takes it completely the wrong way.
Never stop the story.

Character vs Character action is determined normally for OVA, their players narrating their own successful attacks and defenses (taking into account how badly their opponents other failed their roll).

If the GM can't decide on difficulty for a task, DN of 4 (Moderate) might work. If the GM likes it random, roll 2 dice (of course adding doubles) for the DN.

Reading:
John Wick's Blood & Honor: Samurai Tragedy in Old Japan RPG (I stole ideas shamelessly from here)
"Designing Storytelling Games That Encourage Narrative Play" by Alex Mitchell and Kevin McGee (online article; deals with more competitive narrative games)

Other OVA story-help threads:
What's a fledgling GM to do?
Youkai Kabuki Monogatari

[Clay]

You're hitting a lot of notes I've been hammering on for the past months with OVA. It's a difficult thing balancing the future of OVA. On one hand, I very much would like to incorporate "new-fangled" narrative play that's become popular since OVA's release. On the other hand, I don't want to compromise the game people know and love. Some people just want a GM to be a GM and Players to be Players, and I don't want to force gamers to make that sort of change to their game.

Here's some of the things that will be in the game so far, and I hope that will bridge the gap between narrative play and traditional Game Mastery

Fuzzy Difficulty: Instead of straight difficulty numbers, players roll dice to see how well they did. A low roll means they did poorly, a high one, exceptionally. Rolls lower than a task's required result can still be partially successful, just not completely. The example I give in the book currently has Braun trying to sew a costume for Miho, which isn't a straight success/fail sort of thing. Braun will ALWAYS end up with some kind of result, it just may be a very shoddy one!

Declarations: Players can use abilities to make declarations about their surroundings. A character with contacts can declare they know someone in the area, or one with an expertise in computers can declare there's an exploit in a company's security program. Failed rolls mean the declarations don't happen.

These are both similar to the ideas you've suggested, but are still framed in mechanics familiar to the OVA game. Hopefully it works out!

[Dreamstryder]

I felt OVA benefitted from you incorporating different ideas from your varied RPG experiences, Clay, so it's good news you're still experimenting with new ideas. However you work them in, it will likely only strengthen the game.

I noticed that OVA's Abilities are mostly ...well, character abilities (Flight, Witchcraft) while many of the Weaknesses are story-related (Love Interest, Amnesia, Rival, Stubborn), so I felt OVA allowed both collective and GM-centric narrative techniques depending on what the group wanted, but I haven't yet figured how to use Weaknesses directly in any narrative mechanic.

[Clay]

Something a lot of narrative games do (and is especially obvious with FATE's two-faced Aspects) is give the Player a bonus when they roleplay a weakness or otherwise negative prospect. In OVA terms, it could be a free Drama Die. But whereas in FATE everything is represented by a mechanic (from verbal fights to giving a barn the "burning" Aspect.) OVA is largely intangible and behind the scenes. I'm loath to change that, since OVA's transparency is a large part of its appeal.

In any case, "free" Drama Dice is already incorporated into the rules as something the Game Master can hand out. The question I guess is should the Player have open knowledge of when he can earn it?

[Dreamstryder]

Well, my aim was to find a crutch or muse for those who lack one or more of "the GM's three treasures": Inspiration, Imagination, Improvisation. I doubt I can replace them, but...

Now, Weaknesses already mechanically work to prevent Mary-Sue characters who have only powerful Abilities, I suppose. One of my griefs with 4e D&D was its focus on the mechanics and game-terms over what the mechanics and game-terms represented in the game's worlds. After experiencing that, I appreciate OVA's focus on character narrative over mechanical tricks, and wasn't intending to ruin that.