auticus wrote:
2017 has seen the emergence of public "narrative events" become more mainstream. I've seen narrative events, and narrative tournaments now.

My question is - to you - what is the difference between a narrative event, and a "tournament"?

 auticus wrote:
Adepticon has them, NOVA had them. The NEO movement is doing regular events. Apparently there is a thing called Holy Wars that has some youtube broadcasts talking about narrative events this week.

 auticus wrote:
Well hopefully it can generate actual discussion that is worthwhile. I am a narrative event organizer and I like to hear others' input on what they think a narrative event is to them.

I'm not interested in having troll commentary nor will I respond to people that jump in discussing that kind of thing.

 oni wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 oni wrote:
OK... You've been warned and you're still reading. Here is how I view it.

Narrative Event / Tournament = Warhammer 40,000 (proper, out of the book Warhammer 40,000)

Tournament = A mutated and molested Warhammer 40,000 for those who find the rules and missions as written by GW to be unacceptable (e.g. the ITC, Nova, etc.)

Your view is wrong. Out of the book 40k is not even remotely "narrative". If I see someone advertising a narrative event I'd expect them to have done significant work to add story elements beyond just running the RAW scenarios with RAW army construction.

TRIGGERED!!! Haha.

Check it out... I'm Peregrine... "RAAAHHH! You don't have the same viewpoint as me therefore you're "WRONG!"

Calm down precious little snowflake. It's OK for people to have different view points than your own. You will be just fine if someone disagrees with you.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
Yeah... I also argue that some of the stuff straight out of the current BRB is absolutely narrative. You know... like the whole NARRATIVE PLAY section?

The word "narrative" may be involved, but it's a bare-minimum effort. I'd expect much more from a narrative event that I have to pay to attend.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
So... to clarify, the BRB has narrative options, but they're not narrative enough? Just trying to understand. It feels like the goal posts are moving here. It feels like you're acknowledging that the BRB has narrative options, but then moving the goal posts by saying that those options aren't narrative enough to warrant being used in an event that charges money.

Simply putting the word "narrative" on something doesn't make it a compelling narrative event. GW's "narrative" rules are just standard tournament-style missions. They're designed to be played with any random pair of armies composed of any units, not custom-made for a particular pair of armies or story element or anything that would really set them apart from standard tournament missions. Sure, they tend to have asymmetrical objectives or whatever, but most serious tournaments have also missions that are deeper than the same old "5 objectives, 12" deployment zones along the long edges" or "let's just play kill points". And once you get past the generic missions and into actual story-based scenario design you get half a page of general "hey guys, playing with a story is fun, you should kind of do it and stuff" word count padding and a single poorly designed mission where the IG player should have a 100% win rate on the first turn.

Contrast this with previous core rulebooks where narrative play got entire chapters, complete with multiple detailed story-based scenarios as examples, suggestions on scratch building terrain to represent story elements, etc. That was legitimate narrative gaming, even if GW could have improved significantly on it if they really cared enough. What we got in 8th is a joke.

Would they be sufficient for a free event in a local store? Not every event charges money to attend. Given that there are A LOT more stores and clubs than gaming conventions, I'd hazard a guess that the majority of events don't come with an entry fee.

I'm operating under the assumption that "event" means "pay to attend", because even local store events charge money to cover their expenses. It might not be a major entry fee, but every time I've seen an event that was more than just some random person posting "hey, let's play a narrative game" on a local store's facebook page it has had at least a small fee. And even if we're talking about the rare event where the store decides to eat a loss on it for some strange reason and run it for free it's still not sufficient. If you're just using the standard rulebook missions and not adding your own rules to support the story then you aren't running a narrative event, you're running a normal tournament and calling it "narrative" to try to bait people into attending.

 auticus wrote:

Is this an academic discussion? Are the people in this thread actually playing in narrative events or is this arm chair posturing from interwebs? Serious question. Raise your hand if you have played in narrative events.

I'm a narrative event organizer. The problem I've run into is that what constitutes a "narrative event" seems to differ from person to person, so I like to discuss with the general community what a narrative event means to see where all the opinions and ideas are.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
For many, narrative just means that the mission has some sort of story element and that it's not a straight, balanced competition. For you, it sounds like there needs to be a firm story, preferably with a custom board layout designed to support the story and only catering to a handful of very specific armies. For me, that definition is WAY too restrictive. It's possible to run a narrative event for any army and using any table.

I wouldn't go to that extreme of all of that being necessary, but let's take the Patrol mission from the "narrative" section in 8th edition as an example of what I'm talking about. This is literally the old Dawn of War mission from 5th edition with slightly different deployment zones and a roll for reserves instead of an automatic turn-2 arrival. There's no story element at all here, beyond what is found in pretty much any mission. It's just a standard 1v1 scenario that can be, and has been, used in competitive tournaments. Same thing with the other missions. Yeah, the asymmetrical objectives probably rule them out of actual tournaments (since 40k takes way too long per game to play both sides in a two-game match), but they're the same sort of stock historical warfare concepts that are often used in random pickup games without any story elements at all.

So, I wouldn't reject an event just because they don't have custom terrain or whatever, but I'd expect to see more than just playing Patrol and Ambush instead of The Relic before I give someone credit for running a legitimate narrative event.

Why are 10 factions fighting in one event? To quote GW, "Forge the Narrative".

The problem is that such a narrative is inherently stupid. There's just no plausible reason for all of the factions, including factions that are extremely rare and/or limited to certain parts of the galaxy, to be in the same place at the same time. I have never seen one that was even remotely interesting or well-written, and there's rarely even more detail then "it's a planet guys, go fight over the magical artifact thingy".

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
I think your last few sentences point out why a lot of people don't like narrative events. A truly wonderful narrative event inherently excludes a ton of players. As a store operator, my narrative events almost had to be "You've just landed on Planet Everyoneismad and notice the evil [insert army here] have gotten here first. Fight!". As you point out, that's the only real way to cater to everyone. In a casual, non-store setting where you're perfectly happy to exclude a lot of potential players, a richer narrative is possible.

But at that point why even pretend that you're having a narrative event? Just be honest about the fact that you're running a competitive tournament and do it right.

"A BEACON IN THE DARK...
You've detected a distress beacon emanating from a previously unknown planet in a distant system. Deciding to investigate, you send a well armed expedition in the direction of the beacon. When you arrive, you're pleased to see an abandoned planet which your sensors show to be rich in both rare natural resources and abandoned technology. You're less pleased to see the vessels of your hated enemies dropping out of the warp around you. It's time to take what you can and get out quick!"

Scenario #1 - Modified Planetstrike Mission. 1500 points... must use a single Battallion Detachment.
* "In an effort to get a head start on your opponents, you plot out a landing site close to a large cache of natural resources. Unfortunately, it looks like you're not the only one with this idea."
* Players take turns placing 5 "Resource Cache" markers outside of both objective markers and at least 6" away from other markers. If a player has more units within 3" of a marker at the end of the game, he or she claims the marker.

Scenario #2 - Modified Cityfight Mission. 750 points... must be a subset of the above army using a single Patrol Detachment.
* "As the fighting over the planet's natural resources continues, your sensors detect what appears to be a fortified research station with strange energy readings several kilometers away from the main battle. Sensing impending victory, you decide to split your forces and send a patrol to investigate. Perhaps you'll find some rare tech resource or ancient artifact."
* Players take turns placing 5 "Resource Cache" markers outside of both objective markers and at least 6" away from other markers. If a player has more units within 3" of a marker at the end of the game, he or she claims the marker.

At the end of both scenarios, players add up the total number of markers they acquired. This is their score. The top player gets a certificate proclaiming him or her to be the "CONQUEROR of [Insert Planet Name Here]". Then, in descending order, every player gets to pick a price from the "Box of Wonders"... which was really just a box of random odds and ends. Lots of dollar store stuff and maybe a few small bags of themed bits or a candy bar or something. None of the prizes were particularly exciting, but everyone loved it.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
...because it's not a competitive tournament.

Yes it is. Structurally you're running a competitive tournament, you're just putting the wrong label on it. You're putting randomly-paired armies into generic tournament-style missions with a one-sentence "story" as the only narrative element.

Something like...

{rules}

IOW, "play some generic tournament-style missions and then at the end the person with the most points is declared to be the winner". That is a tournament, nothing more.

 Peregrine wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Or its a scenario where you don't have the most strategically optimized elements available and you have to make due with what is available.

That's a pretense, not a legitimate story element. What units are powerful has very little to do with what units are rare/powerful/whatever in the fluff, because rules power is usually based on point costs rather than individual rules in isolation. For example, IG conscripts and commissars were completely broken before the errata, and those are two of the most common units in the Imperium that even the most resource-starved forces would have vast quantities of. On the other hand, consider a Valdor: an incredibly rare "lost tech" tank destroyer with a 10,000 year old laser weapon that nobody can build anymore. It's rare to the point that the pride of the Cadian home regiments is lucky to have a couple of them. It's the kind of thing that, fluff-wise, you'd never see in a "make do" army. But rules-wise it's just a bad Shadowsword, and it will probably never see play in a serious tournament army.

If you're banning based on game balance and excluding overpowered tournament armies you ban the conscripts. If you're banning based on story reasons you ban the Valdor. But virtually every "narrative" event that bans lists/units bans the conscripts, not the Valdor.

 Kriswall wrote:
I think you're way too black and white here. There is a grey area between a hardcore, competitive tournament and a narrative event allowing only two models that reenacts a specific honor duel between a Dark Angel and a Space Wolf, with a predetermined winner. In that grey area live a kajillion events that have both narrative and competitive elements. This game is competitive in nature. The rules describe a competition between two people where there is a winner and there is a loser. As such, it's largely impossible to have a narrative event without some competitive elements. It's also challenging to hold any event where many of the players may not know each other and the organizer may not know the players where you're not randomly pairing players against each other.

Sure, what I described has competitive elements... but the competition largely doesn't matter. There's no real prize on the line. There's no cost to play in the event. It's for fun. Sure, the narrative elements are kind of light... but they're there. A short story is still a story, even when compared against a thousand page epic.

Ok, sure, there's a gray area. But what you're talking about is pointing to a patch of 254/254/254 color and saying "look at that gray". No, it's not gray, it's black, and that one point of color away from true 255/255/255 black is not really worth discussing. A tournament with a cheap prize is a tournament where people aren't going to care about the outcome. Making the prize cheap enough that nobody cares about it is not a story.