Bone Method: How Do We Use Narratives?

From the Wikipedia entry:

A narrative is a constructive format (as a work of speech, writing, song, film, television, video games, photography or theatre) that describes a  sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled".

So there you have it.  That's what a narrative is defined as, and looking at the description you can see how roleplay and wargames we've been playing fit neatly into the constructive format.  Now, you've seen me refer to these "narratives" numerous times on this blog, so now I'm going to elaborate on how we as a gaming club can invent and use narratives to keep our events and campaigns fresh and exciting for years to come.

First of all, narratives give the given scenario depth beyond the mission description.  It's one thing to be taking a heavily contested objective, it's another thing when that objective is the Dragon Sword in the Rhovanion.  It takes things one step beyond the standard "league" organization to make things more personal, and for some, more epic.  When we first started the narratives for a lot of our games, it was a neat experience to be sure.  Now, some years into the whole ordeal, the narratives begin to layer upon one another to form the campaign histories of our club.

This is sort of an organic process, as every club has rivalries and tales of valor.  Yet how many of those clubs really take the time to put the extra detail into the scenarios and campaigns to make things worthy of not just remembering which player and army, but a specific time and place that has impacted the games the club plays from then on.  Story affecting events that become recurring themes in certain universes adds a level of verisimilitude that can't be achieved by roleplaying games or wargames alone.

It's when the wargaming and roleplaying come together that truly interesting narratives appear, almost spontaneously, from the histories that create themselves.  Let me illustrate with the following example, using our wars and adventures in the Mardannon Sector from all our Warhammer 40,000, Necromunda, and Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay games for the last few years:

1. 2009 - Space Marine (using rules from Dark Heresy) -  In this scenario, the Mardannon Crusade drops into planet Ordavis, an important planet in the Carpithica system.  Here rampaging orks are destroying the important hive cities, and only the crusading Astartes have any chance of turning the tide.  The players fought across the open plains of Ordavis in the waste zones between the hives on the superhighways, and eventually freed the governor from the clutches of the insidious Alpha Legion who had seized control of one of the last hives.
2. 2009 - The Battle for Ordavis (Warhammer 40,000) - Two tribes of orks, two chaos space marine factions battle the space marines of the Infinity Watch for control of planet Ordavis in a long map campaign.  Chaos space marines seize the resources on the planet, but leave it to the marauding orks.  The crusade recoils, and the Infinity Watch are dealt a terrible blow they have yet to recover from.
3. 2010 - Under a Vast Grey Sky (Dark Heresy) - A team of acolytes under the direction of Inquisitor Corvus Mandera of the Ordo Hereticus investigate the Watchers of Poul, a Imperial Cult suspected of grievous heresy, on the planet Lucruzu Prime.  The players interact with the most powerful men on the planet, and save the governor from an insidious plot to murder and usurp him committed by his own son.
4. 2011 - Brave New Waaagh! (Warhammer 40,000) - On the planet Nokk (known to the Imperials as Tangrus III) aliens battle for the right to launch a new Waaagh! into space.  Eldar attempt to stop the ork tribes from completing their fleet of ships and hordes of stompas, yet there were two giant hordes to deal with.  The Necrons awoke during the carnage, marking Tangrus as tomb world, but in the end it was the threat of the tyranids that depopulated the world.  Now it is a terrible wasteland of eternal war between xenos.
5. 2011 - Gangs of New Waco (Necromunda) - We visited New Waco once, and we return to the outlaw planet once again to determine the state of the world.  The Red Redemption flourishes across the sector, and New Waco is the center of the movement in Mardannon.  The Adeptus Arbites crush most resistance, but the infamous Band of Basterds (from Under a Vast Grey Sky) elude thier grasp - though many suspect their involvement, no one but our acolytes from Dark Heresy know they are really working for the Inquisitor Mandera...
6. 2012 - Horrendous Hordes (Warhammer 40,000) -  Planet Nydrazom is came under attack from rampaging chaos forces!  The Warmaster Laserwolf and the Umbral Stalkers Cabal have summoned forth Azu'kulman the Blood Daemon, and opportunistic Dark Eldar strike from the webway to drink of Nydrazom's suffering.  The onslaught did horrible damage to the Black Templar's Mardannon Crusade, and armor regiments from Lumis were likewise horribly mangled.  Nydrazom is now in ruins, and the pirates have fled back into their hidden lairs deep in space.

Now, 40k is big so we've jumped around a bit to liven things up, but all this has taken place in the Mardannon Sector.  This year has two more 40k bits coming that directly relate to our Dark Heresy game - the continuing adventures of Inquisitor Mandera's acolytes as they visit planet Kelphis, and we return to Lucruzu Prime in our Necromunda campaign later this year, aptly titled Imperial Crackdown - we'll be seeing the aftermath of said acolytes actions as the Imperium reigns in the chaos on this vital world.

Our Warhammer Fantasy Battles games and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay  games are likewise intertwined, although a bit more closely than our 40k games.  It's this inter-connectivity that keeps everything fresh and moving forward, and also the shared history of fighting in the campaigns.  There are four major campaigns since we started this Wargate, but we've been playing in the Warhammer World almost constantly.  Actually, these four campaigns account for over a year's worth of gaming in and of themselves.

1. 2010 - Into the Delve (WFRP 2e) - Our player characters establish themselves in Khazid Grimaz, ground zero for our narrative and home of the dwarves near Karak Norn in the Grey Mountains.  Terrible events lead to a long forgotten underground city, and the players battle tribes of orcs, undead monsters and chaos entities to free the newly discovered Delve from evil.  In the depths of the forgotten city under Khazid Grimaz, they players discover The Black Vein - a warpstone corrupted node of Gromril.
2. 2010 - Death in the Delve (Mordheim) - Everyone knows wyrdstone is worth something.  Recently, a large amount has been rumored to be in a secret underground city under the dwarf realm of Khazid Grimaz.  A chaos cult known as the Despoilers of the Blight beat out all comers, apparently securing a horde of wyrdstone for some nefarious purpose...
3. 2011 - Welkommen Zu Wissenland (Warhammer Fantasy Battle) - Our warbands campaign depicted the fighting in Wissenland during the months surrounding our last two campaigns.  The Herd of Fekul-Hoof won the day, and the dark pall of beastmen has hung over our campaign narrative ever since!
4. 2012 - The Doomforge (WFRP 2e) - Our latest RPG campaign is literally one session away from being done.  The Black Vein under the Khazid must be gotten rid of - but there is hope the star iron can be cleansed as it was in ancient days with a mysterious device known as the Runewell.  However, even with the Runewell's power, an ancient forge with mystical properties must be set alight to burn away the taint of chaos from the Gromril.  Will the players succeed in finding the long forgotten records and defeat the hidden threats to the Khazid's existence?  Or will the dwarfs be damned as they are overcome by hordes of orcs and beastmen?

Later this year (next season in fact!) we'll be seeing the next chapter of our Games Workshop fantasy narrative come up in The Greystone Pass War for Warhammer Fantasy Battles.  We've got a lot of adventuring to do here yet, and the story is just starting to get really good!

We can even create narratives inside canonical restrictions, as I've spoken of in other posts.  We see that blossoming our Warmachine games into rivalries, and more players are taken notice of that extremely cool game.  Later this year, when the Iron Kingdoms RPG comes out I'm sure we'll be taking a stroll through that as well, intertwining the narratives between the RPG and Wargame so that it seems like the same game really.  As new players (warcasters) join our battles, more narratives will form.  When we make PC's for the RPG, we'll be adding new narratives.  All these will blend together to create our very own gaming stew, that's just the right amount of flavor.

I appreciate everyone doing their part and helping out with the stories we're telling.  The narratives from our armies are growing, and I might even give them their own category to help out with finding our individual forces background flavors from the growing amount of stuff on the site.  As we go forward, a lot of the new stuff appearing on the horizons from our favorite game developers will go into the narrative bucket, and we'll get to see our newest narratives interact with the latest gaming awesomeness (such as Colossals for Warmachine) to help us keep pace with the best clubs in the world.

That's enough from me for today.  Remember - when you build an army for the wargate, you're building a character for our narratives!