Why the detest of Narrative?

[Grim Beasties]

So I've been on the tga community for some time now and I've seen an unfortunately trend towards narrative and narrative play being pushed to the side line on the forum. Now I understand this is mostly a matched play forum and narrative has its own section (witch has the problem of lack of visibility and thus having less people posting) but I'm even seeing people use narrative play as a pejorative for "bad and unbalanced" and other such elitists attitudes. I love narrative and it is one of the biggest reasons I love this hobby, but their seems to be some underling hostility towards it and I just want to know why?

[TMS]

Some thoughts...

Matched play is easier to discuss on forums since it is more rigid and set in stone, so to speak. Narrative campaigns and playstyles usually vary between player groups, making it more difficult to follow along if you're not familiar.

Also, the common culture of going to a club and finding people to play with there is really only suitable for matched play. A closer-knit group of players is much better for narrative things, with more administrating and organization required rather than just showing up to play.

In my experience, narratives and campaigns demand more work and attention but the rewards are also greater. It really does need a committed group of people, though.

[Kramer]

I agree with @TMS for the most part. Although their are plenty of narrative options that are just pick up and play. So it can work in club settings but just isn’t the norm. 

but I’d also like to add:

- it’s a cycle. Last few years around the ghb release the forum sees a focus on matched play. Come December it’s less matched play focussed and if I’m honest a bit less ‘toxic’. Although this forum is even in those spikes one of the most friendly places on the internet. 

- narrative is quite hard to communicate about imo. We do a lot of narrative stuff. I reckon it’s 50/50 for us. It’s just so much about the experience. 

- die to COVID it’s harder to play narrative than to discuss matched play. You don’t need actual games to discuss lists and other peoples games. And if you jump into the hobby your questions are all about what units to get and how the rules work. Case in point: the lumineth thread had more post in it than several other order factions before they even released. 

- people who play more narrative might also be the type of people with a small play group and play at home with not much need for the wider community. And as a result be less likely to go online looking for it. That’s how it works for most in my regular play group in any case. 

Edited August 19, 2020 by Kramer

[Aloth_Corfiser]

I completley agree with @Kramer about the notion that people who are more narratively inclined may not feel the need to discuss on a forum when they have their group already established at home etc.
Please let yourself not be dragged down by a few negative comments. This Forum is really a treat on the Internet for its civility and for the most part mature people. 
Concerning the visibility: I tend to follow a few threads in the Painting and Modelling section and I am greatly enjoying the content there. It is very enriching and people sometimes post stories about their armies and weave their own Lore into their paint schemes, etc. Also there is the Lore and Novels Thread which I visit from time to time. But yeah I get your point @Grim Beasties when you feel like Narrative Play is underrepresented. However as Kramer said, it is also more difficult to talk about on the Internet. 
By providing the thread-examples I did not want to sound overly defensive  -  I just wanted to provide my perspective. Because I think this Forum is one of the most welcoming Places for discussing AoS and my experience here has been, that players tend to be very open minded.

It is just also a matter of real life vs hobby time, at least for me. If I had a less busy shedule at University and more money I would build custom Terrain, organize a campaign with my friends, write Battle Reports about them and post Photos here on the Forum. I would write more Short Stories about AoS or convert more Models, etc.  So while the passion is there it also "demands" certain things to be set in place first. Anyway I hope this does not sound pretentious or anything.
There was also a discussion many months ago to establish a special thread/topic for Short Stories written by the Community here. I don't know if this has become a reality though 
 

[Ninelives]

I am wondering if this could spark a larger debate on how to "formalise" narrative gaming, obviously there are no wrong ways to do it. But would a community based set of guidelines/common vocab would help people discuss and exchange their ideas more easily. 

 

The GHB have published a lot of good content for Narrative gaming, but they don't necessarily provide a workable framework like this could... 

[RuneBrush]

I think there's a lot of reasons that contribute to what we have at the moment.  I don't think narrative has been pushed to the side though, the narrative part of AoS is actually pretty strong but it's also a really tricky one to talk about on a digital medium.

A huge part of the narrative side of things is writing your own stuff, be that on your own or with a group of friends.  Unless you're running a narrative event, it's generally difficult for other people to get involved with that narrative - you may have written a load of background that hinges around Baron Von Drak being the ultimate evil ruler and some random person you don't know interjects that Lord Wibbly Wobbly his neighbour eats Gryph Hound legs making them even worse!  Equally somebody who's written their own background may not want to get involved with somebody else's background (if that makes sense).

I can see what you mean about it feeling like there is a bit of an elitist attitude.  I believe this stems quite heavily from people having very different approaches to the hobby.  There's quite a few people who's sole focus is matched play gaming and they consider anything outside that small slice of the hobby a waste of time.  It's a bit like some of the PE teachers I had at secondary school were so focused on sports, they didn't see the point of some of the other lessons.  Things like army lists and tactics are ideal for discussion on a digital medium too, so you end up with a bit of an imbalance where matched player's are over represented and narrative under.  Certainly on TGA we wouldn't accept open hostility between different approaches to the hobby.

[EccentricCircle]

I agree that there is a large focus on matched play, and I reckon there is a bit of a feedback loop at play. The less narrative stuff gets posted, and the less active the narrative section, the harder it becomes to have new narrative stuff be seen, or gain traction.

There is also the fact that narrative material is more involved. Its easy to casually drop into matched play discussions, skim to the bits that interest you and engage with it on whatever level you want. Lots of people have opinions on rules, points, balance etc. You thus get very lively debate.

Narrative posts have a tendency to be a lot more in depth. People post campaign log, painting journals filled with their army's lore, short stories about their character etc. That content is amazing and I love it. However it takes longer to read through and appreciate than the latest points discussion or From he rumour thread does. It also takes much, much more work to write. Finally there is no real debate to be had. All approaches to narrative play are equally valid, so there is frequently nothing that can be contributed to a narrative thread besides "this sounds fun, go you!". Unless you specifically ask a question there isn't always that much leople can reply. In fact essence a lot of narrative threads are almost "private" one person posts their work , others appreciate in, sometimes with out respondung.

 If you want more traffic start a polite debate.but that's harder to do when there aren't really any controversies!

Finally the demographics of the forum are important. We are in no way representative of the warhammer fanbase as a whole. We're the ones who are so into the hobby that we want to spend ages talking about it with strangers on the internet and obsess over every detail.

There are very dedicated narrative players, and we do make ourselves heard. However for a lot of people, the near obsessive dedication required to be part of the online community really goes hand in hand with being a tournament player. People who are this into warhammer are often the really competitive matched play fans, so that comes across in the discussions. 

I suspect that a lot of .ore casual players play narrative or open games, but we only see the tip of the iceberg on the internet.

Edited August 19, 2020 by EccentricCircle

[Grim Beasties]

Thank you all very much for the responses, as I hope to post more on Narrative in future it is good to know it is welcome here.

[RedMax]

6 hours ago, Kramer said:

And as a result be less likely to go online looking for it.

Yes, on top of that I see a couple of other point that make narative "less visible" online:

1 - All question about rules and what is legal or not definitively not a such big deal in narative. In case of doubte, you take what make the most sens or MG/organisator decide but definitively an environement were we may be less focus on rule as write.

2 - Narrative is also a lot more personal. It may be only me, but this is a really more "private part of you" when you publish your own fluf, campaign, etc... than when you are just talking about rules, point and list. This is definitively something that, for old folk like me (aka "not the social network generation"), is less expected, especially when there is not a lot of other sharing.

7 hours ago, TMS said:

Narrative campaigns and playstyles usually vary between player groups

3 - definitively that. I was even thinking, following a question on the forum, to create a representative "spectrum" of narative play. IMO, narative go from "matched play like game with story and name on your caracter" to "almost role play game campagne" and over many variable level including Path to glory, campagne package like Firestorm and also using books like "the realmgate wars". in the midle of that I would also fit Silver tower, skirmish etc. and even here, depending if your using rules/product "out of the box" or adding narative element, this could lead to different "narrative level".

So definitively, my point here is there is 1 unique "legal" way & rules at a point in time to play matched play when in Narrative it will vary a lot depending of player group (and expectation).

10 hours ago, Grim Beasties said:

I love narrative and it is one of the biggest reasons I love this hobby, but their seems to be some underling hostility towards it and I just want to know why?

I would not say there is "hostility" against narrative (if you exclude the 3 weeks after GHB release where many people complain about book content and that they would expect the book to be 100% matched play only...), but I definitively agree on fact that narrative dont get amount of inputs (file, home made material to share, etc...) that it deserve!

[RedMax]

And also I forget about the language issue.

Just for sharing Anvil of Apoteotys creation (in another thread), I have to go in a complet process of translating and rebuilding warscroll in English as material I'm producing for my games are in my (and my group) natural language (French).

For AoA it already imply more than I suspected translation time (with only result to be able to share it on TGA as I won't use this material in English), so I dont even think about translating our campaign progression logs or battle reports...

I see this language issue beeing less a barrier on matched play as matched play generaly is less wordy productive (I'm definitively not talking here about Guys writing complet home-made battletome, I'm not even sure where work like this sit on the "narrative spectrum")

[Popisdead]

The problem is people come looking for help in playing an army.  people who have the most experience with optimizing lists, playing the army tend to be tournament players.  They are often the people with the clearest understanding, game-play experience.  They drive list creation, direction, meta, etc.  

The downside is they are often the most critical of breaking that norm, and often fleeting once the army looses the key.... method of execution?   It isn't uncommon to see "this army lost this in the FAQ when this ability/spell was changed so I'm no longer playing this".  And the thread/sub-forum is left to the more casual players who love the army and trying to make it work as best as they can.  

As a result narrative play and even open play or more casual gets stomped in the comments.   I think it's  a personality trait that makes them great at the game and bad at seeing it another way.  Also degeneracy of the commons.  online chatter is bad for communication as it isn't an actual conversation.  Just talking at the keyboard with hands.  

I also sometimes see a distinction between  the people who see things as good and see things as issues.  Anvil of Apotheosis sounds like a great way to leverage a few things (Slaanesh depravity, for example) and because it isn't a clear short exact "this is matched play" but encouraged instead you will have dissenters going after people both trying to use it for fun and to make their army better.  It can be too black or white too often.  Thus... narrative is bad because dragons.  Or whatever stupid isolated counter example someone comes up with.

[JPjr]

basically you know how football terraces are filled with tens of thousands of out-of-shape lads in cheap, ****** looking Sports Direct knock off kits, all hurling abuse at the few incredibly well paid, highly skilled, peak of human fitness men on the pitch.

well it's like that, just with little plastic wizards.

Edited August 19, 2020 by JPjr

[Neverchosen]

I am ashamed to admit that I don't fully grasp narrative play. I have been developing a narrative campaign with one of my friend's but it is quite deeply grounded in matched play rules. However, as it is only in its development phase and  I am looking at incorporating more narrative play elements. But as of yet it is mostly a case of using a constructed map to determine battles and armies (different countries/provinces will have different realm rules). And warcry matches as espionage missions that will effect the larger games in a few different ways.

But I have a deep love for narrative play and clearly I want to begin playing around with it, but I find it a little daunting. Maybe I will make a post or two asking for help and inspiration.

Edited August 19, 2020 by Neverchosen

[TMS]

@Neverchosen The point of narrative play is that you should be free to invent things to fit the story you want to tell in cooperation with your buddies. Matched play is actually a great starting point since it gives you the base which you can deviate from. It can easily feel like the wild west if you wing everything from the ground up.

An example of a campaign I've tried to do before but unfortunately never run to fruition is a combination of army and skirmish scales. Here that could be Age of Sigmar and Warcry. Imagine that players have both an AoS army and a Warcry warband. The armies are fighting to control the area around the site where the warbands search for treasure. Success on the battlefield will stengthen the warband with fresh reinforcements while fortunes from the skirmish will strengthen the supply lines of the army until one faction is eventually declared the winner. I think that could be the base of a great campaign.

[Neverchosen]

Thank you @TMS,

I guess I am a little nervous about starting a narrative campaign as much of the creative onus has been placed on me. But even with your brief description I feel much more inspired and I will definitely try and incorporate some of those warcry ideas as I was thinking of using the system in my campaign as well. 😊
We have so far discussed scouting missions allowing the winner to move d3 units prior to the first turn. Espionage missions which will cost the loser their first command point. We are trying to also develop an assassination mission that would be balanced so far we have discussed the possibility that the loser will lose access to a relic as it's bearer 'died'.  

One thing that the two of us have discussed at length is means of having the campaign stretch indefinitely (more of a grand meta setting for our battles) and the idea that once an army has lost all of it's territories it will be limited to Warcry battles until it can regain some of it's glory and redeploy a proper army... maybe the army will be required to complete its warcry campaign before reaching 2000 points.  This clause exists so that we can continue to play in this kind of grand meta setting and not simply play in a manner of pure domination as he is typically much better at tabletop games than I am. I also once saw the suggestion of requiring varied builds to represent different armies to take control of different regions this has my friend very excited as he loves building new army lists. 

Thanks again for the encouragement, I might post an update in the future as we figure things out. 

[Kramer]

42 minutes ago, Neverchosen said:

am ashamed to admit that I don't fully grasp narrative play. I have been developing a narrative campaign with one of my friend's but it is quite deeply grounded in matched play rules.

That’s absolutely fine. And probably best for the first few. Bend the rules not break them in the beginning. Or better yet. Use the matched play rules and put a narrative in between. 

make that post and you’ll get plenty of help. 

[Neverchosen]

@Kramer thank you for the encouragement. I will absolutely take you and the community up on the offer. Both luckily and unluckily, things are absolutely in the nascent phases of development so it will be a while yet. But we are both really looking forward to developing this narrative as the specifics of map control and risk and reward systems will make us both more invested in our games. We are still discussing the narrative in earnest and will take direct inspiration from the armies lores but we are looking to develop a somewhat more hermetic world.

I think we will also look into Anvil of Apotheosis as well when we start developing. I am playing Chaos and he is using Legions of Nagash and we have converted a Vampire lord from one of my Chaos Warriors so the narrative is already quickly developing 🙂

[TMS]

@Neverchosen That sounds good. Roll with your ideas and see how they work out, tweak if necessary.

A tip from my own experience though is that campaigns do need an ending of some sort, otherwise it'll just drag on and become everyday life, so to speak. Same as in sports, seasons end and then its time for resting and preparing for the next one. That makes a great point to introduce new players or armies if you're making it a long term thing and you can use it to dramatically change the setting if you want to. Make sure to end every "season" with some kind of grand finale!

An idea I got when it comes to varying your army lists would be something like this... both players (assuming there's two of you) will create 3 army lists. The first will be a fast-moving flanking force made up of mostly mounted models (or just especially quick ones), the second will be a slower defensive line with lots of battleline troops and the third will be more balanced (and your big bad general can only be in one of them!). Without telling the other, mark down on a map (or just a piece of paper) which location each of your armies are moving to and then reveal this to each other. This will decide which of your lists will be facing off.

The above is obviously quite basic and can be expanded with rewards for taking each location, making the different armies vary in size and move at different speeds on the map, having a small scouting force you can send out to discover what your opponent is sending where... there's so much you could do!

But you should probably start out a little smaller.

[Neverchosen]

@TMS Thanks for the expertise, I am very glad I posted about my upcoming narrative in this thread  

I will take up your idea of having an end objective, but I do want to keep up the setting for possible future campaigns. So maybe we can focus on the two primary armies of Slaves to Darkness and Legions of Nagash. But have it end when one side takes control of the region and then if we choose to create future narratives in the setting it can be about an allied army returning for revenge, or if we play a different army a new invading threat taking advantage of the war torn setting for their own benefit.  Which is kind of fitting your suggestion of different sporting seasons. If we enjoy it enough maybe expand the borders for a sequel?

But as I mentioned to @Kramer we are taking it slowly for the time being as we are just returning to regular social order again and playing pick up games to better acquaint ourselves with the rules and only just recently began discussing the possibilities of a narrative campaign in earnest a week or two ago.

Now I should stop hijacking this thread and let it return to the question at hand but I do feel that it was somewhat appropriate to showcase that there is at least one poster interested in entering into narrative play! 😛

Edited August 19, 2020 by Neverchosen

[Overread]

As noted several times, Narrative is hard to talk about online because its not really a defined set of variables. For some Narrative is just a matched play game with some fluff they wrote about their army. 

 

For others its a scripted campaign of battles that they and their friends are engaging in built around a world setting with a connected story; special mission objectives; limited unit rosters; unbalanced fights; random one-off epic battles and might not even stick to any kind of script week to week. So when someone starts talking about what army works the best or such its much easier to talk in matched play terms. The rules are universal; the concepts are universal and there's no niche elements to confuse. 

 

You can, of course, explain your narrative game and ask for feedback and help; both at building armies (perhaps you want to build some narrative arimes that aren't too strong); or at the story or construction end of things.

 

 

 

 

 

One other thing about forums is that you get what you put into them. If you never talk about narrative games; never start threads; never ask questions etc... If you wait for it to appear it most likely won't appear unless its a very big thing on the site. Instead if you want things you've got to ASK about them; start threads; talk about themes. Heck you've started this thread and already got a load of replies to it. Start a narrative thread with a positive angle and see where you go.

[amysrevenge]

Most of what I have to say has been said upthread, but here it is in my own words (I keep doing this....)

Narrative play works best when it's a group of buds/pals/mates (choose your regional lingo) playing together regularly.  The one thing those guys/gals don't really need to get their game on is TGA, at least not extensively, and more from a hobby/lore angle than from a gameplay angle.

Matched play is the best way to have quick pickup games with strangers or casual pals.  In order to facilitate a more uniform standard for Matched play, a forum like TGA is a very useful tool to talk about the Matched play experience, since uniformity is one of the main things you need for casual pickup games to go smoothly.  The closer everyone's expectations are at the start, the fewer game-breaking surprises pop up later.

[LuminethMage]

Just for emphasis of what @Aloth_Corfiser said, please have a look at Painting and Modeling section. I mostly sticked to the general forum and the Lumineth thread for a long time , and just lately went really through the painting section. It's great. If you like the narrative aspects of the game you'll find a lot of inspiration there. 

Another problem with narrative play on the forum is that story progression in AoS moves much slower than matched play updates. The Lumineth thread was mentioned before - and we had a lot of discussions and ideas about how the Lumineth BT could have an effect on the story line in general - and then the BT was released and basically there was nothing in there at all. If you aren't a Lumineth player, the narrative parts of the BT don't have any effect on you at all. You can ignore the whole thing and be fine. Compare that to the matched play aspect - a lot of people do think that the Lumineth will have an affect on the meta, or worry that maybe they make their preferred play style less fun or valid etc. Also, GW again introduced new abilities with them, which we haven't seen before. There is just so much more to talk about, and non-Lumineth players also can easily join that discussion, and have something valid to say. GW even already released an FAQ about their matched play rules, although no one possibly could play with a meaningful Lumineth army using the actual models yet. 

The RPG related threads (about the Soulbound RPG) could also point you in direction of players on this forum who share your interest in narrative play. 

 

[RuneBrush]

Reading some of the comments one thing I will pop in, is not to forget to play narrativly.  So during your game do things that thematically work, your Khorne warrior will certainly want to take on that enemy leader even if the game mechanics mean that you're more likely to be smooshed into the ground!  If your opponent is playing with the same thinking it makes some really enjoyable games and helps to create some fantastic stories that can be incorporated in the future.

One of the best examples I've experienced of narrative playing was at Warhammer Achievements last year where Steve Foote would undertake a bravery roll each time he wanted one of his Skaven units to do something "daring".  It didn't change the mechanics of the game in the slightest, but changed the outcome hugely and made you really feel you were playing against a real Skaven army.

[Kramer]

1 hour ago, RuneBrush said:

Reading some of the comments one thing I will pop in, is not to forget to play narrativly.  So during your game do things that thematically work, your Khorne warrior will certainly want to take on that enemy leader even if the game mechanics mean that you're more likely to be smooshed into the ground!  If your opponent is playing with the same thinking it makes some really enjoyable games and helps to create some fantastic stories that can be incorporated in the future.

 

I disagree... well kinda disagree 🧐. I agree that that works, and it will happen. But don't make it a rule/push it. And if your group is into that stuff it will happen automatically. But if you start out with a few players dipping your toe into narrative. Let it happen organically. 

You can have fantastic narrative campaigns and games by going all competitive in game. But what happens, in my experience, that after two games with the same named characters and units you will start to attribute characteristics and personalities to it. 
you can encourage that by, for example, letting each player give a unit a path to glory update after each game to a unit that hasn't got one, win or lose. But only if he/she brings the exact same unit next time and names it. 
You bet that after two games the Khorne Lord that gets extra attacks vs heroes will charge gloriously to his death because last time he was killed by clanrat. 

 

[MitGas]

Personally I find narrative AoS crosses over into specialist-esque games and/or RPGs. I'd rather play Warcry (or ages ago, Mordheim) or DnD for that kind of stuff and have a somewhat evenly matched AoS game. Might just be my reason for it though. It's not that I detest it in any way but our group seems to like to split those things up.