Where lists intersect with narrative media, and especially narrative gaming, is where things get interesting. They can certainly serve an organizational purpose - what else could we call a book's table of contents? Here, it almost operates as an abridged version of an author's outline, with massive spoiler potential... no wonder you almost never see them in books of modern fiction, short story collections notwithstanding. The books that comprise the physical incarnation of tabletop RPGs, on the other hand, are dominated by lists, even if we're more likely to call them "tables." Here, though, they serve almost the opposite purpose of an author's outline, showing every possibility and variation rather than leading through in a specific direction. But as signifiers, they're even more... significant because they represent things that will only exist in the imaginations of the people at the gaming table. In other words, rather than standing in for things that we know exist, the list (or table) conjures these things into existence. I certainly hadn't imagined certain things existing in the Star Wars universe, for example, until I saw them in a list of equipment a PC could purchase in West End's Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. Skills and actions work the same way, laying choices out in front of players (and GMs) like a dim sum menu. Having said that, I always hate to undercut the freedom available to participants in tabletop roleplaying by limiting their possibilities to a list of "moves" like a board game. (Yes, I'm aware that Powered by the Apocalypse games do use the term "Moves," but this isn't quite what they're referring to.) As I've said before, and will certainly say again, players indicate what they'd like their characters to do, then skills and abilities are used to model the way it works out - not to indicate the only available courses of action. It's up to the GM which skills and abilities apply, and sometimes things will need to be kludged into place... and that's okay. There's a reason we play RPGs when we want this kind of experience, and get something different out of them than in games that are all about making the most strategic choices from a limited set of possible actions. That's not what these lists are for, and I think it does a disservice to treat them that way.
This may not seem like much, but the implications are significant. Ultimately, they present different views of how the story (and the stories within it) is told, and its relationship to player, as well as that player's relationship with their character. These are third-person games, which applies both to their literal presentation and genre of play ("third-person action/adventure") and their narrative style - we're following established characters, and event though we control their (non-cutscene) action and some dialogue, they are ultimately external to our perspective, just as they would be in a novel or story written in the third person. In presenting the list to us directly, the border is clearly delineated between the player's experience of the story from the outside - not exactly a spectator, but not immersed in the character's existence either. To use film terms, they're in a position combining the roles of director, actor, and editor. To be fair, substories in the Yakuza franchise and others that take a similar approach don't generally present you this list up-front, so not exactly a table of contents, but as something to be filled in with potential substories you find along the way. Although even this process of exploration becomes delineated when a player is told how many of these stories there are to discover. Narration becomes a checklist to be completed - even if we're viewing them as storytelling events rather than tasks to perform. There's still the authorial voice presenting it all to us, reinforcing the boundaries and emphasizing our distance.
Here's where my love of electronic gaming as a narrative medium is at odds with the realities of making a game accessible and playable. If the true power of this format is the ability to experience a story as another person, these kinds of delineations run counter to that - at best, something for a player to compartmentalize... something we're already doing with other forms of media. On the other hand, I also don't want to feel like I'm missing out on any aspect of the story, something that's almost certainly going to happen in any kind of random-access narrative like these games, and presenting everything as a list ensures I'm able to experience the whole thing. One compromise approach is to view these smaller stories as episodes in a series - we accept TV openings with episode titles, and their appearance doesn't particularly mar our enjoyment. It can serve the purpose of any other good title: to prime our imaginations for the kind of story we're about to see. And when we see these titles as a list, say, in a physical media package or the kind of episodes guides I pored through as a kid, we don't feel that our experienced is diminished. Still, there's something sad in seeing a new medium with open possibilities have to conform itself to existing conventions.
This doesn't affect every game, of course, there are plenty of stories, particularly from indie developers, that aim for a more immersive "player experiences only what their character does" experience. And the games I've been talking about very consciously aim for a more "cinematic" feel, which requires externalization to present any kind of developed world. It's just another of those give-and-takes we get with media that we don't think about very often... and we probably should. You know, if we think of a few more, I could even make a list.
- B
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