Tips For GMs on Avoiding Ludonarrative Dissonance in RPGs

To address the elephant in the room before we get started, the phrase ludonarrative dissonance began life as a fairly narrow critique of a specific experience, and it's bloomed into a broader, more sweeping term. Folks who are interested can get the full history and discussion of this in Ludonarrative Dissonance: What It Means and What It Means if they're interested. For our purposes we're going to use the much broader interpretation of this term, where ludonarrative dissonance is when the narrative elements of a game, and the gameplay elements of a game, butt heads to create inconsistencies.

Okay? Okay.

We need to make sure everyone is doing the same things, here.

So what does all that mean? Well, in short, it means that when you run an RPG you need to make sure that you keep the game flowing smoothly so that the narrative elements (your descriptions, your lore, etc.) and the gameplay elements (the class abilities, die rolls, etc.) match up to create a unified whole. Because otherwise you'll find yourself playing two different games, and where it transitions from one to the other will be noticeable at best, and jarring at worst.

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Any Examples of Ludonarrative Dissonance?

As mentioned in the references above, when you broaden ludonarrative dissonance it can take on a variety of different forms. Some common ones off the top of my head include:

- A character raised on a farm that's never seen a sword or worn armor before is immediately able to step onto the field and fight with a wide variety of weapons just as well as the career soldier who has years of training and experience thanks to their class choice.

- Characters who are played as squeamish or easily frightened who become hardened killing machines due to how battle mechanics function/are narrated.

- Supposedly impossible challenges that can be overcome with a relatively low roll of the die for a character with the right combination of abilities, skills, etc.

I've never even seen one before... I am proficient with it, though.

These are some of the easiest examples of how sometimes the story we're telling just doesn't match up with the mechanics on our sheets. Some players will recognize this, and choose to stick with their stories even if it means using subpar items and options (making their farm boy heroes use quarterstaffs, flails, and other weapons that are more in-line with their background). Others will invent ways to explain the mechanics to bring the two aspects of the game closer together (the sword has the magic of previous wielders, this great ax is almost like my father's ax on the farm, etc.).

However, RPGs are a group experience, and that interactions between players and storyteller, as well as between the game and the mechanics, can also create dissonance. Whether it's a GM who interprets a natural 1 as the seasoned mercenary slipping on a banana peel instead of their enemy raising their shield to block the blow, or a player who insists on playing a bubbly, bright, cartoonish character in a game with a grimdark tone (or the other way around, which one might argue is more common), these things can also give someone mental whiplash as they try to get into the game.

Fortunately, however, there is a way you can smooth these wrinkles out as a GM.

First, communicate with your players regarding expectations. Second, attempt to maintain consistency throughout the game and story so there are as few bumps in the road as you can. Third, make changes as necessary to marry the two halves as smoothly as you can.

When in Doubt, Favor Your Players

All of the examples given above, and the hundreds of others folks reading this no doubt thought of, could be dealt with by a GM who made consistent rulings regarding the story and game, how they interacted with one another, and who lead the table by example.

With that said, it's important to remember that your players need to have fun. So while maintaining consistency and fixing issues where the narrative and the mechanics seem to be at odds, always err on the side of not punishing your players.

Use your creativity to lift the table up, not push it down.

An ideal example hearkens back to the multiclassing section in Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition (and it was in the 3.5 update as well). The game stated in the flavor that becoming a wizard took a great deal of time and study to manage. It didn't specify a need for a tutor, to become an apprentice, or to attend an arcane university, but such things were taken as some of the common ways one became a wizard. However, it was perfectly possible for any character to take wizard levels any time without any in-game requirement for the kind of work and background mentioned for starting wizards.

The way you marry the story and mechanics here was to find a reason that the PC found a way to understand how wizards did what they did. The example given was a bard (already an arcane caster) who was now multiclassing. By simply stating that, in downtime and between action scenes they'd been studying with the party wizard to achieve a greater understanding, the dissonance was cleared up and waved away. It gave the player the mechanical goal they wanted, while providing a story reason to satisfy the narrative that didn't bog the game down or restrict player choice. Other solutions I've found that are equally workable is that the PC taking the wizard level dropped out of their arcane college before they became an adventurer, but they still had the fundamental knowledge to cast low level spells. Alternatively, they'd been studying the grimoires and scrolls they've been raiding from dungeons, and they've managed an understanding of how magic is supposed to work.

This sort of example is what GMs should keep in mind when attempting to square narration with mechanics, and general game play. Players are already operating under rules constraints, and they have a limited pool of resources available to them; don't take away those options. Instead, find ways to preserve your players' freedom and choice, while also making sure the options they choose match up with the narration and story of the game.

It's not difficult, but it's going to happen a lot when you run a game. So make sure you get into the habit, and stay in the habit.

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